I've done a sort of variant I guess. It wasn't a lucid dream per se, but years ago when I was living in Boston I had got to thinking about nightmares and how it had been years since I'd had one. Since childhood really. I thought about how emotionally charged and frightening they were to have such an impact that they often forced you out of sleep.

I hypothesized that the reason I hadn't had one in so long was because I generally did not have much anxiety in my daily life. I don't know if that was the reason or not, but I decided I was going to change that.

I was going to give myself a nightmare.

So I committed to meditating each evening on the cusp of sleep, - really focusing on what few anxieties I did have and trying to imagine worst case scenarios playing out. I dwelt on morbid thoughts. I played Bone Machine by Tom Waits in the darkness. This went on for about a week and a half before I succeeded. I had the most mind-shattering terrifying fucking nightmare of my entire fucking life and it wasn't even close.

I literally woke up screaming. Full throat screaming. I won't go into the whole dream but it ended with me tripping on the stairs of my house in the darkness and landing on the top step, cheek to cheek with the warm severed head of my best friend in a plastic bag. I have to say though, I felt satisfied when I laid back down having accomplished my mission, and in such a big way.

Hi cysctocarp, welcome to hubski.

There was a wee discussion of lucid dreaming here. I didn't realize one could "try" lucid dreaming, as in bring it on yourself.

I've already had a number of interesting experiences within the dream world.

I could never get it to work.

One time I thought I got it to work and changed all of my friends to cats, but then I realized if I were really lucid dreaming I would have done other things than change my friends into cats.

Other times I could tell I was dreaming thanks to the lightswitch trick, but I couldn't go farther than the acknowledgement that I was dreaming. I couldn't actually do anything. I tried with something that I thought was simple: Changing the color of a room. My dreams usually take place in the night time for some reason, so I thought I could change between morning and night, but that never worked. I could also never fly in a dream.

Sometimes the lightswitch trick doesn't even work. One time I remember dreaming that the lightswitch was broken instead of realizing that I'm in a dream world. The fingers trick doesn't work as well. I try pulling my fingers, but they don't extend like others say they should, so it oftentimes makes me think I'm awake when I'm not.

I suppose the best tip I know of is to keep a dream diary. Not just for lucid dreaming, but also to keep track of your dreams, since some really interesting shit happens in dreams. I can't even begin to explain what goes on in some of my dreams. It's amazing what stuff your mind can come up with.

All the other tricks tend to not work for me that well, but I guess it's like anything else; If you really want something and work for it, you'll get it. If you spend time thinking and trying to lucid dream, you'll get it.

I used to LD frequently as a child and it was almost always a negative experience. As far as I recall I would tend to become aware during a period of sleep paralysis, which I found terrifying, and having started off on such a footing the subsequent episode of LD was equally frightening. This continued erratically a few times a month from the age of maybe 8 or 9 until I read something or other in a book at perhaps 14 which explained it, and after that it lost its terror and became a curiosity to explore. By then it started to occur far less frequently and eventually faded completely. In hindsight I think I can relate episodes of SP and LD to migraines in the preceding day or two, and these also faded in my teens.

Anyway, a few days ago, probably not far off 25 years after my last LD, I became aware of sleep paralysis as I dozed one rare quiet Saturday morning and I excitedly latched onto the opportunity to enter LD, which I did only briefly until rudely shattered by real life wife/child/cat requiring some kind of interaction.

One memory this brought flooding back to me is the sensation of buzzing. As I lay there in SP there was a strong sensation of auditory and physical buzzing, and I immediately recalled experiencing this sensation as a child as the precursor to SP. Now with the benefit of spending mere seconds on google I know this is a common part of hypnagogia. I would have loved to have this facility when I was younger, have the fear removed and have been able to explore the weirdness rather than fearing it!

Actually, it just occurred to me as I finished typing the above that my parents split up starting when I was 8, and both settled with new partners when I was about 14.

I became interested in LD a few months ago and tried FILD, albeit halfheartedly. It didn't work, I only tried it on a few nights. I'll try again in the following nights, I'll let you know how it goes.

I've only had a single LD, which I experienced around the ages of 8-11.

I've had like 3 LDs. Which is a surprising amount since I usually don't dream at night (yes, I realize people always dream).

As for tips: get a good nights sleep, keep a consistent sleep schedule, write in a "dream diary" (where you record your dreams in the morning), etc. I'm sure you know this but do RCs (various tricks to check if you are dreaming, not pinching your arm though).

ecib, you brought my attention to this conversation. It made me want to have a lucid dream, though I didn't follow up. An hour ago I awoke from my first lucid dream and took the following notes.

Last night I had two beers, a coffee and a glass of wine. I was trying to read Embassytown in the lounge, but was distracted with thoughts of the Drake Equation after conversation the previous night with Barış. He had suggested a technique to approach Project Euler problem 101 so I was trying to learn how to invert a 3x3 matrix by looking up references on my phone.

Once I had my phone out, I started chatting with Barış about lucid dreaming and read about techniques for checking for the dream state.

The advice was to get in the habit when awake of checking, so hopefully it would happen in a dream. Look at your hands, one site said, usually you will have some number other than five fingers. Or look at a mirror, mirrors are funny. (Just bought a copy of Ficciones yesterday.)

Went to bed around 1.

Was having a typically crazy, meandering (but internally sensible) dream.

Walking around the upper level of an open parking garage, looking for an exit but each one was fenced off or locked. Talking with some concern about my car (nearby but unseen) how someone, a mechanic maybe, had messed with it.

Came down somehow. Then a weird episode with my rarely-remembered childhood friend Travis, now adult, and some other guy. We wanted to bother somebody, so Travis pooped out a ball of poop and we were going to throw it into another backyard. It was a rubbery bluish ball, like playdoh, and not sticky but still gross.

Not sure about sequence here. Was experiencing an arty drama film, in which some historical background was portrayed with a series of office rooms which would pan off to the left while Kevin Spacey or similar narrated. It was a police/CIA modern noir set in the Cold War era, and the office rooms were meticulously arranged with evocative props: file cabinets, markers, scribbled folders. Had read on Hubski (KB) that the director was known for these intensely detailed scenes, and he had a trademark of including handguns. Indeed, saw some laying on desks, and wanted to photograph the scenes but didn't have my camera (a subject of waking discussion on current vacation).

Back outside the parking garage, walking and looking for some fast food place. Went in and saw someone I knew (in dream only) who had received a paper bag of unacceptable (for some reason) food. She was complaining and I wanted to help, but someone else helped her, and it was resolved somehow. On my way out, a large, southern, blues man entered and we passed awkwardly close through the tight doorway. As the door closed it pinched on the soft case of a large item he was carrying. It had a banjo inside, I knew. I un-caught the door and made some unspoken apology.

A scene from another movie. The hero needed revenge on someone upriver in some tropical southern locale. He had strung together a dozen water cooler bottles and attached propellers to them. They were buzzing and going upriver on their mission. I followed.

The hero was marching ahead on the marshy river. It was really just thick, matted down grass, with some wet openings and channels of water. The river was enclosed in a tunnel-like fence, making an outdoor hallway with dense jungle on the outside. It was known in this movie you could only go a short way upriver.

I followed the hero. Then there was a shot of a bright green snake rapidly snaking out of the matted grass and crossing the river and diving back in. Then more snakes.

I was barefoot and afraid of the snakes, so I continued forward by "walking" with my hands on the sides of the passageway and holding my feet above the ground, where snakes occasionally emerged and passed.

Here I first thought this might be a dream. I thought I should do some test to see if something impossible would happen. So I continued "walking" on the walls but now with only my right hand. Impossible! Then I looked at my left hand. It was horrible.

I had three and a half fingers. At the end of each finger was another little hand, articulated with fingers and perhaps further bifurcations. I made a fist and a vow to never look at my hands in dreams. I wanted to look at a mirror but there was none.

I decided to fly. I flew! It was almost fantastic, but I couldn't get very far off the ground, so I soared at some speed over the ground toward some university, roaring at the top of my lungs. I alighted outside a building, then had another idea. "Let's have sex!"

Then I woke up.

It seemed to take time to wake up, as if returning from far away. I was lying on my back and my body felt heavy and leaden, like I couldn't move. It was dark and I could hear sleepy breathing nearby. I concluded that I was awake in bed, but wanted to be sure. I tried to look at my hand, but it took some effort before I could start moving my hand. I knew I was awake, and had just had a lucid dream. I began replaying the scenes from the dream in my mind, hoping I would remember them. I thought I should make some notes on my phone, but also wanted to go back and dream more. I picked up my phone, saw that it was 4:17 a.m. in Istanbul. I took these notes.