Beginners Guide To Lucid Dreaming

I think i'm going through a dream deprivation. The passed few nights my dreams have seemed to elude me right upon waking. I have a few glimpses of what I dreamed of, but not enough to really make a clear post about. SO instead of that, I will write a Beginner's Guide to Lucid Dreaming.

This blog post examine some easy lucid dreaming techniques, that guide most people with their first lucid dream and will take between 3 days and 3 weeks.

I have put as much information into this  Beginner's Guide to Lucid Dreaming as I possibly can, so don't worry if you feel overwhelmed. Just take it slow.

First, my name is Christopher Franko. I've been lucid dreaming since I was 13 years old. Over the last 13 years I have spent alot of time researching dream control. I have learned many different lucid dream techniques and developed a few of my own ways to become lucid and stay lucid in the dream world for longer, allowing me to have many fantastic lucid dream experiences. 

Step 1 - Improve Your Dream Recall

Dream recall is really important and you should improve your dream recall so that you remember at least one dream every night (and preferably more). The best way to do this is to remind yourself regularly, "I will remember my dreams", especially just before you go to sleep. This will put the intention to remember your dreams in your subconscious.

I recommend keeping a dream journal by the bedside so you can write down your dreams as soon as you wake up. Right before you actually get up though, take the time to go over all of the details of the dream a time or two even before you open you eyes, this way your recall will be more implanted into your memory. Also discuss your dreams with friends as often as you can, to really soldifigy the message that dreaming is really important to you and must be remembered. 

Step 2 - Perform Frequent Reality Checks

A very easy lucid dreaming exercise, reality checking is the secret weapon of those who want to start with Dream Initiated Lucid Dreams (DILDs). If you have ever seen the movie "inception" they accomplish this with tools they call totems. Either way. It works. By doing reality checks frequently  throughout your waking day, you will enhance your awareness of waking life and be much more likely to recognize that small changes of reality that happen during dreams. An example is, reading text, and flicking a light on and off. Because in a dream, both of those things (though not impossible) are difficult at times. Soon you will spontaneously perform a reality check in a dream, exposing the nature of the dream reality and giving you instant dream control.

Step 3 - Learn To Meditate

Meditation is a practice in which an individual trains his or her mind or induces a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit. Meditation is generally an inwardly oriented, personal practice, which individuals do by themselves. When you meditate, you have the chance to experience some amazing phenomena, including hallucinations, euphoria and epiphany. Meditation tunes you in to your waking life on new levels, and helps you feel more at peace.

Research has linked meditation with easy lucid dreaming for several reasons. First, meditation trains you to enter altered states of awareness on demand. Secondly, meditation bridges the gap between your conscious and unconscious brain. And third, meditation makes you more self-aware, helping you to recognize the unreality of the dream world hence you become lucid in a dream more often. You can find some good beginners guides to meditation all over the internet, so give it a google!

Step 4 - Lucid Dream Research

If you are serious about having lucid dreams on the regular then you need to do research. It can help you find the best induction methods for you, and will help you learn easy ways to control and explore your lucid dream world. If you don't know the ropes, the whole process takes a lot longer to learn. I have also discovered that, if I am researching lucid dreams, the research is like priming my mind to become lucid that night. So you are essentially telling yourself, dreams are important, lucid dreams are more important, and this is what I want to accomplish when I wake up.

This part is easy. Lucid dreaming has become increasingly popular with books, websites, forums and even appearing in mainstream media now. The more you think about lucid dreams during the day, the more likely you are to become lucid in your dreams at night. The more you understand about this amazing mind phenomenon, the sooner you will take to it.

Step 5 - Discover Advanced Methods

Once you get yourself into a regular routine with lucid dreaming techniques, like dream journaling and reality checking, it's time to begin more involved methods. Get ready for some acronyms.

So far, I have only offered methods for Dream Induced Lucid Dreams (where you start dreaming normally and become lucid from within the dreamstate). The most popular type of DILD is called Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD), created by Stephen LaBerge. I recommend starting out on this route, because DILDs often give way to spontaneous lucid dreams.

There is also a whole other category known as Wake Induced Lucid Dreams (WILDs). These were originally developed by Tibetan Buddhists in the form of Dream Yoga, which involves training yourself to go directly from waking to a lucid dream state. It involves falling asleep consciously and induces some strange phenomena linked with the out of body experience (OBE). 

So there it is - easy lucid dreaming for beginners. Of course, a beginner's guide is only the start. Once you have found some effective ways to become lucid, you will have more questions about controlling and working with the alternate reality of lucid dreams. But that is another article altogether...

Smoking a Cigarette at Grandmas House

As the title suggest. The dream wasn't very exciting. The dream coalesced in my grandmas backyard. I was underneath their gazebo cleaning off their gazebo furniture. For some reason I was smoking a cigarette and thoroughly enjoying that cigarette. I remember lifting up the lining to some of the furniture and washing it down with the gold water from the hose and scrubbing the dirt off with a Brillo pad while my grandfather watched sipping lemonade and telling me how good i was doing. My grandma  said, "Chris you don't need to be smoking those cigarettes, if I can quit, anyone can." I replied, "Ya know, i'm not even sure why i'm smoking this cigarette because I don't even smoke.." Then my mom chimed in. "He says he doesn't smoke but i always see him with a cigarette, so i'm not really sure why he says that." Excitedly i explained. "I dont! I swear, Ask Heather!!!" Then the dream faded and i woke up to tell Heather of my dream. She laughed and here I am telling you about it.

Apocalyptic chaos fades into a first memory

Apocalyptic Chaos
When my awareness of the dream coalesced into my current reality, i found myself with a group of random people hunkered down in a scummy looking mobile home. Armed to the teeth with rifles and hand guns knee deep in a feud with the neighbors. From the intel that instantly gathered from artificial "memories" in the first few seconds of awareness, the country was in utter collapse, government and military was no longer an establishment, and anarchy was the way of life. We were armed to the teeth because we thought the neighbors were encroaching on our food cache. After a few mins of deliberation i walked outside to find i had to walk on huge slabs of wood because the area we were in had been destroyed by some kind of flood, or similar catastrophe, the trees were stripped of leaves and looked rotted. and mud was everywhere. Everything looked filthy, even us. After braving it up and traveling to the neighbors house i found the house was completely empty. So we decided to go in search of them. As we were walking down the muddy hill our mobile home was resting on, i could hear faint foot steps in the distance. Then a decent sized militia of what appeared to be a few hundred people came up over the hill. From the left side an equal sized militia were walking down the hill. Instantly we felt releived because we knew they would have supplies and that we could join them. I remember feeling like i couldnt believe they were real because I felt like humanity was extremely sparse now. After joining their ranks and recieving cleaner clothes and a canteen of water, aswell as munitions for our weaponry, we began to march into the distance and the dream faded.

The first time our energy met
I walked into an old bank and walked up marble stairs, the railing was painted black and iron. When i got all the way to the top and wanted to talk to the loan officer. I needed his signature for something. Well after i got the signature i looked around and wondered. "what year is it?" so then i walked up to a teller and asked her. She replied with a confused look on her face. "Sir its 1953..." I remember thinking "OH damn i can make money with my insight of the future!" So i went to another tell and asked her if i could buy some stocks and maybe  few bonds with the loan money i just recieved. She said "yea but not here, your going to have to go to wallstreet." I remember asking her if i could instead buy gold and silver coins. She looked at me dumb again and said that i could, and she proceeded to find me some. I ended up with like 500$ worth of silver dollars, and 500$ worth of gold 50$ coins. On the way down the stairs I noticed two really attractive brunette woman standing at the top of the stairs. I walk over to them like the MaC i am and asked them if they knew how to get to wall street and would they take me. They said it would be fine and we started walking down the stairs. As we were walking down the stairs talking with each other the dream started to fade to black like they often do. I was completely aware that it was a dream ever since i asked the teller what year it was so when the dream was fading i was i was holding on to it. Something very interesting happened this time, i started to see flashes of one of the girls and I and the life we ended up having together. I seen a flash of our wedding day, of  holding her, intimate moments and i didnt want to leave her. Then awareness of this reality that im in now manifested around me.

Empire Avenue in my dreams haha

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Actually i dreamed about wrestling in a tournament as a kid. Its been like 8 hours since ive woken up so, im not really sure about the dream.

Mac miller and ice road trucking

A few hours of life has passed since I have awoken into the day from such a strange dream. All I really remember now is little flashes of the dream. The first dream I remember starts with me in the passenger seat of a huge  cargo truck. Like the trucks on seen on the history channels show Ice Road road truckers. The driver of the truck and I were speeding through a dark collapsing tunnel. Just as we near the end of the tunnel we pull through successfully into a winter tent city settlement of refugees. Why this frozen encampment existed was beyond me, but I remember there was a food tent because it was the first one I went too as my cargo of liquid fuel was taken from the truck. Then the dream faded.

The second dream faded in from the infinite darkness no me standing in the mall with my wife in between a bench occupied by two people and a,marry go round. I could hear the ambience of the faint music  in the background and lights were flashing everywhere. As I focused in on the two people sitting on the bench one of the people became clear. The person was the rapper Mac Miller. He was signing t shirts and charging ten bucks for a piece them. My wife  criticized him for it and walked off. So I walked over and sat down on the bench.. "yo man ur cd macadellic is bomb, I've got the cd in my car.. I make music too I go by jedi swift on sound cloud." He then hands me his, phone and invites me to open up for his next concert. I was mind blown then woke up.. Haha weird dreams right?

Zombie Apocalypse with out Bath Salts

I had the most epic dream series last night. Zombie apocalypse. Like, this agency (probably umbrella lol) was trying to condition me to forget who i was, and forget how to speak nshit. but i refused. I grabbed a pen and paper and wrote down.. "your conditioning is weak, i know who i am, l2pavlov lol" and the nurse freaked out, took something out of my mouth and said SAY THAT. but all i could say no matter how hard i tried to say anything else was. MY NAME IS CHRIS FRANKO, next scene, i some how escaped that holding place and found myself in a downward traveling elevator with two doctors that seemed to be helping me. Well he reaches down and sticks a needle into my foot for some reason and says he is restoring the blood flow to it, i was like shit, sounds good to me. And i look down and my other foot looked like it was starting to decay, and when i showed it to the man he started to freak out saying, oh god you are infected, you are infected and i have your blood on me, im going to be infected too, i have a family i have a family, oh god. I was like YOU.. IM INFECTED, MY FOOT LOOKS LIKE ITS ROTING OFF, he was like stfu you will be fine it will heal in a second just look, and i looked down and i was healed. The doctor was soothed a little more, saying, obviously they were testing the virus on you and your body was the only one whos accepted the virus's  synergy and didnt decay rapidly like the millions of others who had been infected, that i was basically the Aphex of humanity. Well then the elevator comes to a stop and opens up to a science lab. I walked over and found scissors which i then broke and took the larger side and concealed it like an assassin in my shirt. I was already dressed like everyone else in the facility cept for my lack of footware when i proceeded down the hall and towards the exit. At the end of the hall was this huge dome like structure sort of like the entrance to the building in irobot, had stairs, the companies logo, etc, well i went down the stairs and started walking with the masses out of the complex, i walked up to the first gaurd and took the scissors to his throat, he droped like a sack of potatoes. then i walked through the detectors, they alarmed and i ran out the door and escaped into a world of people that were all morphing into zombies.

So it was like this facility took in a bunch of people, infected them, and then set them lose after they brainwashed them to forget the whole experience. Like one huge zombie social experiment with out bathsalts. Must say. Best dream in a long time.. Crazier then that is, it happened in my brain, in an alternate reality. So the dream was as real as this reality is, but only in my brain. ^_^