This will probably become one of those posts here that will stay unfinished for long without getting to the point. But I'll try not to care. But if I want to be able to finish it at some point I have to start it first.
Lucid Dreaming (I'll not include a definition here. But there are different ones.) was one of the subjects I spent years intensively studying. Both by reading and by experimenting with my own dreams. Most of my experimenting was about trying out different induction techniques. My success wasn't greater than that of most people attempting to learn to dream lucidly at will. Most give up without much success. I was too interested and not blinded by exaggerated claims enough to stop after a few months. To be honest and complete, I did stop after a few months and not as much success as I wished for. But after a pause of a few years my newfound interest in the subject was greater, lasted longer and lead to a deeper dive into the literature, science and culture of lucid dreaming. I hung out in the largest German-language lucid dreaming web forum and connected chats and TeamSpeak gatherings a lot. I read every recommended book on the topic, then continued with every mentioned book, then went to find even more on my own (and then stopped because most newly published "ebooks" on the topic at the time were of very low quality). I visited meetups, started the German-language podcasst together with Zitrom.I've tested and compared a lot of dream diary software (most, actually), filled books of physical dream diaries and built my own dream diary software. I took part in a project to fix up the German-language lucid dreaming wiki, assisted in research, edited and translated texts, helped fund projects, tried assisting tech and drugs, wrote articles for several blogs in the field, and so on.
I've also looked at every published lucid dream induction technique in 2014 that I could find in German and English sources, compared and categorised them and wrote and overview about them. I've tried many of them for four to six weeks at a time and picket out some for more experiments. This is probably the part most people who take an interest in lucid dreaming are mainly interested in: How to increase the rate of lucid dreams and improve their quality? I don't necessarily have any better answers to that than others. But I have a few years of experience of and for my own.
I've always struggled to keep my mind free enough from stress to be able to accomplish much in my hobbies (or anything beside my day job) when I'm working full-time. So while I'm working full-time (I am and have been since I stopped my intense occupation with the topic of lucid dreaming) I don't have any advances over any other motivated and interested person. But I did collect some experience in some key abilities that help to increade lucid dreaming rate. When I want to remember my dreams (and am not super-stressed and distracted), I do. When I have free time and sleep in I remember my dreams if I intenmd to or not. This is a good jump start to using my dreams for insight or lucdid reaming attempts. Every now and then I gain insight in the fact that I'm dreaming without trying, even in times where I'm not interested in my dreams at all. It's just something that happens in my dreams now. It can be part of the plot of a non-lucid dream, or I realise more of the possibilities that my dreaming state opens for decisions in that moment, or I have a full lucid dream worth taking a place in one of my dream diaries. Either of those are usually fun or at least interesting.
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