Hello all,

I've been making a big push for LD for about the last month. What prompted this big push was a single LD experience I had that lasted less than 30seconds about 4 months ago. I did a half ass attempt after that to no avail. I would do some RC (reality checks) but not very consistent. Last month, after reading many books, I began doing many reality checks many times daily without fail. Really questioning if this was real or not. Looking for inconsistencies with the environment around me and such as well while I did the RCs. Started my dream journal, changed up my go to bed routine. Tried some wake back to bed techniques. Nothing helped, just that single experience many months ago. But what was helping was my dream journal, I was getting so much information about how I dream, things I'd never even realized before. I don't know if this is common or not, but I dream a lot in 3rd person, kind of like watching a movie. Over the past month of journaling I've found that a lot of my dreams are me moving in and out of 1st person and 3rd person role. So I'll be watching the me character do some stuff, then I'll be that me character doing the stuff, then I'll be watching it again. I had a big realization, RC's alone aren't working for me since I willing suspend disbelief when watching TV/Movies and playing video games. I am used to being awake in the real world but doing un real things that I buy into fully. So I started trying something different yesterday, every time I am watching TV/Movies or playing a video game I do RC's of a different kind, I tell myself that I am aware and the TV/Movie is not real, or the video game is not real. While I didn't get Lucid last night, I can tell that approach is doing something. The 3rd person experience I had last night over and over was about me knowing what I was doing wasn't real and trying to convince others in my dream that it wasn't real. I apparently didn't make the dream connection though, at least not enough to become Lucid. At one point I was even looking at a printed flyer and the words kept changing to 1 1 1 1 1 1111 1 1 and such, when I'd show them to the other characters the words would be back to some version of dream normal. I've been experiencing number synchronicities this past year since going through the Astral Dynamics material so the series of 1's was significant to the 3rd person me as more than just an oddity. At one point in the dream I "woke up" after apparently being asleep in the dream and the 3rd person me was trying to tell other dream characters that this couldn't be reality since I couldn't remember going to bed the previous night or anything else, that what was happening couldn't be real. So many of those types of things were happening. I'm 40ish and have been an avid gamer and movie guy for my whole life, I can now start to see the damage those have done to this type of experience. I've got quite a bit of years worth of bad training to deprogram to get to my goals. So for anyone else out there that is having trouble with LD, if you're in my situation, try the above approach when watching TV or playing games. Do it as well as the normal RCs. In the past year I've significantly changed my activities, it's hard to have certain realizations and continue on with what you just used to do. So I rarely game or watch much TV anymore, I get more and better sleep, am eating healthier and taking stuff to detox from the years of crap that are in the foods we eat and air we breath. Keeping the faith, there is always the next night to try again!