Questions for Rebecca

[oliverlittle]

thanks Rebecca, havn't been dedicating for very long 4-5 weeks but have already obtained some Calea z, kinda feel like taking it this early in the game is sort of cheating? I guess something is telling me to wait, perhaps fear. my dream recall is pretty good now and I've had flashes of lucidity, generally followed by waking up. any advice?

[Rebecca]

thanks Rebecca, havn't been dedicating for very long 4-5 weeks but have already obtained some Calea z, kinda feel like taking it this early in the game is sort of cheating? I guess something is telling me to wait, perhaps fear. my dream recall is pretty good now and I've had flashes of lucidity, generally followed by waking up. any advice?

Just keep dreaming....

Read my tips on prolonging lucidity on the website and increase your waking self awareness... soon enough you will have an epic lucid dream and realize what it's all about!

Then things will really kick off.....

[Snaggle]

Thank you for being so nice and starting this forum. How many forums are you running? How accurate are these estimates? You seem to be doing very well with your forums, most of which make only $10-$40 a month-well done.

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[SarahDank]

If you're having lots of highly anxious dreams, then it's possible you have unresolved psychological issues that need addressing.

I have suffered from Depression and Anxiety on and off for a few years now.
So yes, I am sure it has something to do with that.

I would get some expert help on this as anxiety dreams can ruin your sleep and your waking life.

They definatley are doing this.
I don't think I have had a restful sleep in a LONG time.

Thanks for your time Rebecca,
You really have made something special here for all Lucid Dreamers.

[Doctorjuice]

Hello Rebecca, this is a wonderful site!

I have problems with doing the WILD technique. It takes me a long time to go to sleep normally (without using the WILD), my internal dialogue has always been hard to shut off. Before trying to attempt a WILD, I had looked up images of a very relaxing place, tried to memorize as much details as I could, and tried to imagine this place as the place to appear right away. I had watched your videos on WILD, and was trying to switch between feeling asleep and comfortable in my bed and lucid and aware in my dream world.

The problem is, when I'm consciously aware, my body goes rigid. It's only when I'm letting my mind drift into subconsciousness does my body start to relax and fall asleep. It's only when I forget about my body does my body go to sleep. Consequently, it seems as though my body goes to sleep only when I'm conjuring up normal dream images (rather than lucid dream images), and this is bad because if I'm conjuring up normal dream scenes and whatnot I lose my lucidity.

Also, you mention in one of your articles about WILD about meditation. Before knowing anything about lucid dreaming or meditation I tried to come up with my own meditation techniques to help relax myself and have myself think more clearly. So, I would meditate in the shower since it was most relaxing to me. I would try to be aware of as much sensory input as I could, it took some concentration, and this silenced my inner dialogue, so it worked pretty successfully. However, I could only do it in the shower with my eyes open because there was a large amount of sensory input in this situation. I don't think I can do it as effectively in bed with my eyes closed because of the sensory input being so little.

Also, after trying this technique last night I was able to get maybe 6.5-8 hours of sleep (which is a short amount of sleep compared to other nights. At some point I wasn't keeping up awareness enough and I just must have gone to sleep. Strangely, I had no dreams. That surprised me because yesterday I was thinking about lucid dreaming a great deal. I had some images and videos that only lasted maybe a minute or two here and there. And over the past 4 days or so I have had many dreams, at least two of these days I had three or more dreams in one night!

So my question is, what suggestions do you have for me when it comes to WILD?

Also, I had three plus dreams one night and during that night I had only gotten maybe 5 hours of sleep tops before I woke up. The night before I had had maybe 8 or 9 hours of sleep. So this doesn't make sense, I shouldn't be able to dream that long with only five hours and also REM shouldn't kick in until around 6-8 hours. So what was going on there?

EDIT: I thought it would be a good idea to mention that I have only tried the WILD technique twice, that I've had only one lucid dream but that lasted less than 10 seconds (woke up right after I had the revelation), and only one semi-lucid dream (Very little control, and it was very blurry). I have been attempting to lucid dream for less than a week.

[surimistick]

Hi!

I have a problem. I have tried lucid dreaming for a long while, but without success. Even tho I remember my dreams almost every night and sometimes my dreams feel very vivid, I can't seem to ever realize i am dreaming and control my dreams.
I think that is because I'm afraid of having nightmares or hypnagogic hallucinations of monsters. I've read some people tales about their night terrors and stuff, and i am scared of having them, i'm afraid of the fear.
You see, I think my mind is preventing me from having lucid dreams because i know my fears will pop up!
I am afraid to open my eyes and find jeff the killer staring from the window or the dog from smile.jpg to appear from a dark corner.
I am afraid of doing reality checks, because i fear that when I look myself in the mirror i'll se a distorted, monstrous version of miself staring back.
And because of this i KNOW my subconcious will materialize this fears in my lucid dreams... i know i will probably be able to exit the nightmares, but I'm afraid of the feeling of being afraid. Know what I mean?
Yet, I don't want to miss out the opportunity of control my dreams, since my work requires a lot of creativity and it may help me.
Do you think i should give up on lucid dreams? If not, how could I get to relax enough to have them, or have them without my fears coming true?
thanx in advance
(and sorry if my spelling is bad, i'm italian)

[Doctorjuice]

Hi!

I have a problem. I have tried lucid dreaming for a long while, but without success. Even tho I remember my dreams almost every night and sometimes my dreams feel very vivid, I can't seem to ever realize i am dreaming and control my dreams.
I think that is because I'm afraid of having nightmares or hypnagogic hallucinations of monsters. I've read some people tales about their night terrors and stuff, and i am scared of having them, i'm afraid of the fear.
You see, I think my mind is preventing me from having lucid dreams because i know my fears will pop up!
I am afraid to open my eyes and find jeff the killer staring from the window or the dog from smile.jpg to appear from a dark corner.
I am afraid of doing reality checks, because i fear that when I look myself in the mirror i'll se a distorted, monstrous version of miself staring back.
And because of this i KNOW my subconcious will materialize this fears in my lucid dreams... i know i will probably be able to exit the nightmares, but I'm afraid of the feeling of being afraid. Know what I mean?
Yet, I don't want to miss out the opportunity of control my dreams, since my work requires a lot of creativity and it may help me.
Do you think i should give up on lucid dreams? If not, how could I get to relax enough to have them, or have them without my fears coming true?
thanx in advance
(and sorry if my spelling is bad, i'm italian)

Actually, this is very similar to how I am. I've never really had any frightening or disturbing nightmares, and in real life I'm usually quite calm and rarely fearful. But when I had my first somewhat-lucid dream and tried to conjure a dream character, the look of the character turned out to deeply disturb me. I woke up in the middle of the night because of this (this is real life now, it wasn't a False Awakening) and went into the bathroom and looked into the mirror thinking, "Is there some monster inside of me?" I got close up to the mirror and I felt this great fear over my own eyes. I don't think I'll ever forget this experience.

Regardless, I'm still going to give it my all to have lucid dreams and master them, and if there are any monsters inside of me, I'll face them. (At this point I'm pretty skeptical over there being any monsters inside of me, this disturbing figure could've been a number of things. If there is any fear of me lucid dreaming, it is small now.) And btw, the next day I did not fear my own eyes anymore.

[oliverlittle]

Hi Rebecca, was lying in bed the other night listening to Binaural beats. My mind had wondered of into an imaginary social scenario, then all of a sudden my train of though hit a brick wall.
It was quite disconcerting as I usually have to coax my mind back to the here and now. I seemed unable to regain any imaginary abilities which as a life long day dreamer was a very strange sensation.
I have since watch Jill Taylor's TED video where she talks about shutting down the internal chatter of the left side of the brain. Is this just a natural Part of meditation that I should embrace if/when it happens again?

ps had my first lucid dream the other night using your palm through the hand technique!! amazing!!!! thanks for all your advice

[Rebecca]

Thank you for being so nice and starting this forum. How many forums are you running? How accurate are these estimates? You seem to be doing very well with your forums, most of which make only $10-$40 a month-well done.

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Hey, thanks... I run two forums and several websites:

1. World-of-Lucid-Dreaming.com (plus Forum)
2. SheltiePlanet.com (for my love of Shetland Sheepdogs, plus Forum)
3. Improve-Vision-Naturally.com (about how I improved my eyesight naturally)
4. Career-Evolution.net (about the lessons I've learned running my online business)

I also started but didn't finish two other sites... which I will sell if there's an interest (they are fun niches to write about but I don't have the time to do them justice!)

5. 1000WeirdFacts.com
6. Improve-Memory-Skills.com

The estimates you mentioned - the Alexa ranks seems right. But they don't know how much money my sites make - only I know this. I have a number of private advertising and affiliate deals set up to support the sites. The forums make nothing (you may notice the lack of ads here), they are just for the community. But running the main sites allow me to earn my living online and I thoroughly enjoy spending my days doing what I love. I totally recommend it.

[Rebecca]

Hello Rebecca, this is a wonderful site!

I have problems with doing the WILD technique. It takes me a long time to go to sleep normally (without using the WILD), my internal dialogue has always been hard to shut off. Before trying to attempt a WILD, I had looked up images of a very relaxing place, tried to memorize as much details as I could, and tried to imagine this place as the place to appear right away. I had watched your videos on WILD, and was trying to switch between feeling asleep and comfortable in my bed and lucid and aware in my dream world.

The problem is, when I'm consciously aware, my body goes rigid. It's only when I'm letting my mind drift into subconsciousness does my body start to relax and fall asleep. It's only when I forget about my body does my body go to sleep. Consequently, it seems as though my body goes to sleep only when I'm conjuring up normal dream images (rather than lucid dream images), and this is bad because if I'm conjuring up normal dream scenes and whatnot I lose my lucidity.

Also, you mention in one of your articles about WILD about meditation. Before knowing anything about lucid dreaming or meditation I tried to come up with my own meditation techniques to help relax myself and have myself think more clearly. So, I would meditate in the shower since it was most relaxing to me. I would try to be aware of as much sensory input as I could, it took some concentration, and this silenced my inner dialogue, so it worked pretty successfully. However, I could only do it in the shower with my eyes open because there was a large amount of sensory input in this situation. I don't think I can do it as effectively in bed with my eyes closed because of the sensory input being so little.

Also, after trying this technique last night I was able to get maybe 6.5-8 hours of sleep (which is a short amount of sleep compared to other nights. At some point I wasn't keeping up awareness enough and I just must have gone to sleep. Strangely, I had no dreams. That surprised me because yesterday I was thinking about lucid dreaming a great deal. I had some images and videos that only lasted maybe a minute or two here and there. And over the past 4 days or so I have had many dreams, at least two of these days I had three or more dreams in one night!

So my question is, what suggestions do you have for me when it comes to WILD?

Also, I had three plus dreams one night and during that night I had only gotten maybe 5 hours of sleep tops before I woke up. The night before I had had maybe 8 or 9 hours of sleep. So this doesn't make sense, I shouldn't be able to dream that long with only five hours and also REM shouldn't kick in until around 6-8 hours. So what was going on there?

EDIT: I thought it would be a good idea to mention that I have only tried the WILD technique twice, that I've had only one lucid dream but that lasted less than 10 seconds (woke up right after I had the revelation), and only one semi-lucid dream (Very little control, and it was very blurry). I have been attempting to lucid dream for less than a week.

Hey, I'm going to make an assumption here... and say that you're overthinking things.

The problem with this is you can make inaccurate assumptions. Stick to what you know to be fact, and you won't drive yourself into contradictory conclusions.

For instance, you can indeed have lots of dreams in a 5-hour sleep. If you are sleep deprived from the previous night, you can dive into "REM rebound" (which also commonly happens during afternoon naps) the moment you drop off. It's also true that you have a REM phase at the end of each sleep cycle (lasting around 90-110 mins) so in 5 hours you might well have 3 full sleep cycles, three periods of REM, and multiple dreams. In your 9-hour sleep, you would have had plenty of dreams too - it's just that you're not remembering them. A sleep that is more disturbed (more wake ups) and more conscious (if you're stressed out) will make you feel as if you had lots more dreams than usual - in fact, you're just remembering way more.

As far as WILD goes, if you've only tried it twice, I wouldn't be too concerned. It is hard to get the hang of. It requires strong focus. In fact, I probably practiced WILDs dozens of times before I finally had a lucid dream. When it happened, I though "that was EASY!" yet you wont realize how easy it is to slip into until it happens. Then you can look out for all the appropriate trigger points next time, and you'll be able to decide much sooner whether it's the right moment for a WILD. Timing is everything.

I suggest you practice more silent meditation (try sitting in nature for 20-40 minutes and listening to all the stimulus there while clearing your mind). Or try guided meditation as you go to sleep (this is a nice way to program your non-lucid dreams, just by focusing on a particular person or scenario). I created a lucid dreaming hypnosis MP3 to help people with this goal, it's part of my Fast Track program: http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/lucid-dreaming-fast-track.html

When you're more comfortable with meditation, then return to WILD. You may need to do it 1, 5 or 15 times before you are successful... I wouldn't like to promise as WILD can be the hardest technique to master. However I do find practicing it very peaceful and enjoyable so that there is no such thing as a failed attempt. Playing with this borderland state will expand your awareness of it. Explore your hypnagogia too - mold the images and shape them into primitive dreams. It's all fun and good practice.

Thanks for the kind feedback... I hope you continue to explore the site and learn more about your sleep and dreams so you are well equipped for lucidity.