CAMELOT FANTASIES

Alcohol or any substance for that matter is a no-go. Try staying away from coffee 12 hours before sleep as well as energy drinks or coca cola/pepsi/mountain dew. Those will always interfere with the crystal image you want to have.

There are 5 steps in my book:

1. Sleep order
2. Creating a symbol
3. Dream remembering
4. Consciousness training
5. Lucid training

The first 3 are basically the most important ingredients ever.

1. Sleep order
One cannot truly master the dreamland with a chaotic sleeping program. If you go to sleep at diverse hours every night, your deep sleep phase will not always coincide with the right time of night in order to produce memorable dreams (these are the dreams you need to have). I bet that you already have an order here, Lady Emma, otherwise you wouldn't be so passionate about dreams. Fact is that once sleep is in order you always get a good night sleep and remember your dreams in more than 75% of cases.

2. Creating a symbol
This is a direction. You must train your mind to focus on symbols you enjoy most in your life. The symbols can be anything from your daily life, from a special cup you drink with to your boss's suit. My symbol is the light bulb to be honest. Whenever a light bulb is on, I look at it carefully and notice all the details it possesses. That's the key here. If you can remember all the details of your favorite object and you encounter it in a dream, it will always lack some elements, which will trigger your mind to realize it is dreaming. The weird part about a light bulb is that in a dream state it won't make your eyes see a bright spot after you look at it. You must train yourself with your symbol, always admire it while being awake. The more you see of it, the more chance there is it will also appear in one of your dreams (no matter if your dream land is a parallel universe).

3. Dream remembering
The key to lucid dreams is memory. If the memory is faulty, you cannot enter a lucid dream without waking up. Remembering your dreams sets your mind at ease and creates pattern essential to remembering the world you've dreamed before. The dream world is usually episodic, so you get to remember stuff in dreams from a previous dream because they happened in the same place (which doesn't exist in the real world). For instance, I once had a 3-part dream about a train ride through Russia. The dreams happened on different nights, and my memory was playing tricks in the real world, but all was so clear while dreaming. This is what you must correct. Remembering the dream in the real world as well will enrich your dream world, because imagination will enrich the image you remember with new stuff all the time, so that, when you are in the same place again, the dream world will have enough detail to keep you lucid. Lucid dreaming is detail, without detail it falls apart, either you go back to deep sleeping, or you wake up.

So, remember the dreams each time you wake up. Repeat them in your head, try re-seeing the images. The brain usually lets go of a dream really fast, so you must concentrate immediately after waking up to keep the memories intact and repeat them enough to remember them later. Do that every time you wake up, either be in the morning or in the middle of the night.

4. Awareness training
Now comes the hard part. We, as a race are usually busy and in a hurry all day long, getting from A to B. With more attention, we can actually remember more details of what we see around us. So, a key to lucid dreaming is to always be aware of your surroundings. Remember places, objects you saw, cars that flew by, people. They will reappear in most of your dreams. But if you train your mind to be aware, it inherits the ability to see more in detail, and any dream will demand more complexity as the brain will get used to being more aware. Now, every once in a while, you must create a "dream test", which should be anything you can think of that happens only in dreams:

a. open a book (the perfect dream test) - if you do this often to check up if you're dreaming in the real world, your brain will get used to doing it in the dream world.
b. turn on/off a light (also perfect) - I can do this with my mind in a dream. If I fail to do it, I know for sure I am not dreaming. But for once, you must try the button. If it fails to work at least once, it is a dream (your mind will know). All dark dreams have problems with lights, you probably know this already, but you must let your brain train for it in the real world, so that the idea is born while you dream.
c. look in the mirror. This is the scariest test you can do because in 90% of cases, there will be someone else in the mirror, or nobody at all, or your face will look different. Do this often in the real world. While in darkness, look in the mirror. When I was 12, I had a nightmare that started just like that. I looked in the mirror and I saw a monster, a sound started right away and all lights went dead, then something grabbed me. The scariest dream I ever had is always in my head, and I know just what to do to stop it if it happens now, because I trained my mind. Be warned, if you're unprepared, this 'c' won't make you realize you're dreaming, it may either cause a nightmare or wake you up.
d. open a closed door. In a dream, what you'll find on the other side will always be different to what you expect for some reason. If you repeat this to the same door, your mind will know the result from the real world, and it will click that you're dreaming.
e. the special thing. You can use your own custom dream test. For instance, I used a dream test featuring my wife not being in bed right near me. In a dream world, nobody was there, which would have been impossible.

Your awareness will not grow over night. You need years to get to a level which will benefit you. But you don't have to be too preoccupied with it. You also need to be relaxed to allow your mind to dig new information all the time.

And now, the piece of resistance:
5. Lucid training
As your awareness grows, it is essential to know what to do once lucid dreams start appearing. Don't do anything crazy at first. You must know one crucial stuff first: sleep paralysis. It can happen that you have a false awakening. What you must do when you wake up in the middle of the night is not open your eyes. Let your mind drift, count to 10, don't concentrate on anything but the dream you had. Many times, you're not really awake, you're still dreaming, this is a false awakening that can put you in a lucid dream instantly. You can now invoke sleep paralysis to realize you're dreaming. If it's night and you're lying in bed during this sleep paralysis, in 90% of cases you won't be able to move. Train your mind to remember this stuff and when it will happen, your mind will become lucid the second you realize you can't move. And that's the miracle of lucid dreaming, you will be able to move right away.

Now comes the training. A lucid dream taxes your mind, it can make you tired in a flash or send you to active mode waking you up. When you get too tired, you fall asleep. If you become too lucid you wake up. You must try to keep concentrated and always do something with your mind, like flying, telekinesis, turning on the lights, jumping, etc. etc, but also know when to stop and let yourself drift. These days I am training for teleportation for instance, which has always awaken me because I concentrated too much and drifted into and active mind state. Your subconscious is active so the dream will also evolve by itself, it is important to not interfere with the dream, as it will fight you and defeat your lucid state (I am not kidding). I really had strange people pop into my mind telling me to stop what I'm doing and go to sleep. It's the most intriguing thing ever.

Ah, but I've composed a book here. I should stop now.