主题:The Necessity Of Reality Checks Ld4AllIMO, one of the biggest myth in LD is that by doing lots of RCs during the day you will eventually do them in your dreams. Sadly, a myth, well, is often just a myth, and not real.
Two of the many reasons that the RC technique will not work:
1. Frequency. Your dream only lasts a very short time. Even the longest REM probably won't last over an hour, and they are scattered throughout the night. So even though you are doing RCs on a fairly frequent bases, your chance of doing that during these REMs are still very slim. It's a simple math.
2. Day-time ego vs. Dream ego. Are you the "real you" in your dream? This is not a philosophical question. Let's look at it this way: assuming the "real you" is your day-time ego, with all your physical attributes, backgrounds, current status, personality, and memories. Do all these get transferred verbatim to your dream ego? The answer of course is NO! The dream ego is often just a fragment of our day-time ego, and quite frequently a "mutated" one with many new attributes! How are you supposed to remember doing RCs in those dreams if your dream ego doesn't possess that memory?! Same thing goes with the increasing awareness routine -- they rarely work, by the same principle!
IMO, day-time LD trainings are not very effective at all. They are largely a waste of time. I suggest you focus on more "direct" techniques such as WILD and MILD. They are much more effective. I also just posted a new technique named Senses Initiated Lucid Dream (SILD) which is very easy to learn. You are welcome to check that out.
Rhewin wrote:
@cosmic.iron: I have to disagree entirely with you. While it might be your experience that RC's are a waste of time during the day, they have been immensely helpful to me. Now I'm the first to admit I am bad at keeping the RC's up, but I have had several periods in which I have maintained them frequently. During those times my LD count has risen significantly, much more so than when trying more active techniques. Part of it is the awareness.
In fact, while I've had some success with WILD, most of my techniques come from autosuggestion, DILD and RCILD. All of these are vastly improved when I increase my awareness during the day. Sure, your dream self is usually disjointed and all over the place but it is still a part of you. Making a significant change to one part changes the other.
Also, your theory on "frequency" doesn't come into play. When practicing lucid living, in which I incorporate very frequent RC's, the "reality check" never stops. It is a constant mindset. Frequency doesn't come into play here. Again, my LD count isn't in the "thousands" but when I do practice this I go from a few LD's a month to 3-6 per week.
I'm not saying RCILD will work for everyone. In fact, I think it's very rare to find a technique that everyone can grasp. I like the concept behind your SILD and it has shown mild success, but that doesn't mean it would work for everyone. The fact is you can't say doing RC's won't help. Sure, the bland action may not do much but the mindset it brings is key in my opinion. Everything, every technique is based on awareness, even SILD. What's the harm in doing such a thing to increase that awareness?
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Dear Rhewin,
This subject is still much in debate nowadays, so I can't say you are wrong. In fact, the so-called Lucid Living or All-day-awareness had always been the primary building blocks in many ancient spiritual practices, and no doubt they worked. Also, in case you have not noticed, my previous reply started with a big "IMO" which stands for "In My Opinion".
This whole constantly checking reality thing kind of remind me when I was small, I used to practice an ancient martial arts technique which asks you to swing your fist in order to extinguish a candle from certain distance. It is said that if you continue doing this hours after hours, days after days, you will eventually (after many years) be able to kill someone from a hundred feet away without ever touching him. I practiced it like crazy for two months, and then suddenly I was able to put out the flame in an instant with a very light punch from eight feet away! Not that it did anything else for me but it was pretty amazing just to be able to do that! Of course, I never reached the point where I can kill anything because soon I got distracted by romance, video games, and the whole nine yards
Again, there are much debate on this subject in the academic world, therefore I don't want to enter any deeper discussions here. I'm just trying to help the poor guy who spends countless time to practice and rarely sees success.
On my forum we grew from less than 1,000 to more than 60,000 active members in less than a year. We exposed these people to all kinds of techniques and collected their stories and experiences. I'm sorry to report that there is no single successful case of the RC technique being registered. We do see cases which the RC tech seems to play a role in increasing LD counts when combined with other techniques such as MILD and WBTB though. On the other hand, ever since the release of the SILD technique in late August last year we see success stories on a daily basis. Since then we've collected many hundreds of such reports yet we believe they are just a small percentage of the actual successes.
You are absolutely right in saying that techniques may not work for everyone, in fact, many LD techniques, from my experience and observations, only work for few people, and usually the first few times. SILD, on the other hand, has shown a lot of promise. It may still not be the method for "everyone", but from our experience it is darn close.
The SILD method, in a way, is not the product of a single person but collected effort from hundreds if not more people. The reason I'm posting it here, in addition to helping people, is that I hope together we can further refine it and improve it.
Rhewin wrote:
Very nice reply there, actually
And yes, I did notice you said IMO (which I greatly appreciate) as did I ^^.-------
The other day my older daughter, who is 14, told me that she developed an habit of doing an RC every time she goes to bathroom at night. She had LDs every single night for a week! You can tell I was astonished. Interestingly in the following week she couldn't remember to do the RC at all! LOL.