 Alright, what's up guys? We've got a question from our buddy Alex today who says, I've got a question about lucid dreaming. I'm keeping a dream journal, doing reality checks, researching for about a week now. I really want to lucid dream, but you know, he's never in control of them. Sometimes he adds up to five dreams in one night, but it seems to just be a normal dream that he happens to remember and he never seems to be in control. Any suggestions? So, a number of things here. Firstly, you know, if you've only been trying to do this for about one week, that's just not really long enough. Typically, from the very start, when you first start learning about lucid dreaming to the point where you're able to have reliable lucid dreams, this process can take anywhere up to six months or even longer. And you know, that's not something that a lot of you want to hear, but that's just the truth. It can take a long time to build up these new habits. Obviously, if you're good and if you really apply yourself and do as much effort and research and practice as you can, you can have lucid dreams in up to a month from when you start, but usually it takes six months or more. Now, obviously, if you would like to only have lucid dreams after a month of practice, I would highly recommend that you go and check out my boot camp course. There'll be a link in the description, but this is the fastest way that you can start having lucid dreams really soon, even if you've never had them before and you're starting here. But you know, beyond that, one week is not really a lot of time to be expecting to have reliable lucid dreams. That being said, the other thing that Alex mentioned was that he had trouble remembering them and he didn't seem to be in control. So that is one of two things. Firstly, okay, is your dream recall, which is something that with a lot of people is always bad. You know, typically when people start lucid dreaming, they just cannot remember their normal dreams and they find it really hard to remember what they even did the last night. Before they even start lucid dreaming, okay, before they, you know, just as they're starting to practice the techniques and trying to induce lucid dreams, if they can't even remember their normal dreams, they have no chance of having a lucid dream that they remember or even a lucid dream at all. So always the first step I say is to practice your dream recall, you know, write down your dream signs, keep a dream journal and just generally practice trying to remember your dreams because by actually telling your brain that you want to remember them, you train yourself to want to remember them more and eventually it becomes like a snowball effect. The other thing that you want to consider really, if you're not having as much control in your lucid dream, is meditation. Now what meditation does is it sort of tunes you out from the noise of the world and lets you focus on your mind only. And, you know, say if there's all this noise going on around you, by meditating you sort of put yourself back in your own head and in sort of a place where your thoughts aren't in control of what you're doing. Because often in lucid dreams, it's very easy to become distracted, right? One of the main reasons that people can't control their dreams is because as soon as you enter them, you know, there are all these exciting things going on that you'll, you just want to interact with, which then takes away from the fact that you're lucid, okay? It makes you think about what's going on over here instead of actually remembering that you're lucid, which happens here in the dreaming mind. A very good example is say if you just become lucid in a dream and you look down at your hands and you realise that you're lucid, right? You realise you're in control in your dreaming. But then what happens next, you know, you might see somebody else over there, another dream character, and you go over and talk to them and before you know it, you're engaged in a conversation with another dream character and you forget that you're lucid, which was the most important thing. So really it's important to through meditation, practice separating yourself from everything that's going on around you, even for just a few minutes a day. And that habit will then transfer into the lucid dream and it will become almost like a sort of protective bubble. Okay, so if you imagine you've just entered the dream and because you've been meditating for a while, you're able to separate your thoughts and keep your self-awareness intact, meaning that things can happen in the lucid dream, right? But you're less able to be distracted by them because you've got this sort of meditative bubble around you. And I know that this isn't, you know, this isn't very scientific. This is based on my own experiences. Obviously, there are others who have had similar experiences as well. But you know, it's pretty much true. What I've found is that by meditating, you're able to separate your thoughts and emotions from reality, at least just for a few minutes a day, which means that in a dream, you have the ability to create this sort of shield, which stops you from getting too excited and too involved in what's happening in the dream, meaning that you stay lucid, as opposed to just being distracted by something and then losing lucidity. So if this has helped you, please leave a comment with your question. I'll try and answer them all as soon as I can, and I'll see you next time.