Emerald

Hello! I'm someone who loves to transform into a dragon in my lucid dreams, and when I'm not exploring dream worlds, I have a passion for art, planes, and all things tech-related. Oh! And astrophotography now too! I'm excited to share my interests and knowledge with you here on my blog.

Last Notes

2026-06-06 11:35:54 GMT

The crystal itself was laying on my carpet in an out-of-body experience, which I re-made using Blender.
You ought to think, why did I not use my real carpet? Well, it was too dirty for a photo, and I was too lazy to clean it!

2026-06-06 11:24:17 GMT

This was from a dream where I was in a world where this was the snack to have. Large fries in a paper bag, with molten gummies in the bottom. Yum!

2026-06-05 17:20:59 GMT

> **Recovered post**
>
> This article was recovered from my originally deleted blog.
>
> **Author:** emerald
> **Original date:** March 11, 2023
> **Original category:** Personal Journal
Ever needed to open find that specific email, only to be distracted by a newsletter? Did you manage to talk to your friends online only to stick around for something entirely different? Then this post if for you, and you might get better lucid dreams in the process!
For the past 3 years I’ve [been moving away from practice during the night, and focusing on the day instead](https://web.archive.org/web/20230312063735/https://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/comments/e67sup/had_4_lucid_dreams_in_4_nights_broke_my_own/) (although if I do wake up at night, I do practice traditional lucid dreaming techniques).
Practicing lucid dreaming techniques during the day is nothing new, and you might even be familiar with a few of them. Reality checks are a common example of lucid dreaming techniques one practices during the day, with the intent it becomes a habit, and is also practiced during dreams.
Not so far-fetched, I have had experienced with those as well. For example, pinching yourself, as we have seen characters do in cartoons when they want to know they are dreaming are common in pop-culture.
![Diagram showing an observer noticing a red car and a glass of water, leading to reality checks](https://media.emerald.show/60046b4b142ead1b8cbcb606d5ff60ed51414595037c7f6bf568ad12e2f1dae7.webp)
My “reality checks” that happened based on 2 triggers: seeing a red car or water (a river, or a glass of water)
While these nightly ventures have been successful for me, there’s something that was lurking underneath – they worked at most only once! My brain, as crazy as it is, “patches” imperfections as soon as I used them to become aware in a dream. As a child, this was hardly a problem, I simply picked something new to focus on. Oh, suddenly I feel pain when I pinch myself in a dream? Let’s focus on text becoming blurry or unreadable! Oh, suddenly text is accurate? Well let’s focus on the time on the clock, it should shift back and forth in dreams! Oh, suddenly time is linear! But wait, I notice that when I look back, the houses I just passed during a walk are different! Darn it! Next dream (and all that followed) had accurate housing!
You see where this is going, right? Every time I picked a new trigger, my brain fixed it for me, and never seized to let it go.
## Becoming partners
It was clear something needed to change, and thus I did what I always do with internal struggles: Meditate. The answer came in a simple sentence: stop fighting your subconscious, but team up with it instead.
![Four people holding hands in a bright dream landscape with floating airships and castles](https://media.emerald.show/b231d57349d7ab3dde938f943415dda33cfcafd76c36a4b323f576a798c6823b.webp)
People holding hands in a dream
The first thing I decided to get rid of is the idea I had to “hack” my way around to get towards consciousness in dreams, this wasn’t a glitch in my brain that I abused anymore, but a practice shared by both the conscious and subconscious parts of my brain. My hypotheses were that if I could master this one thing, then no matter the circumstances, I’d be able to lucid dream.
Rather than using triggers in real life, I started to be aware at any random point in time. No limits, no quota, just whenever I felt like it.
Since physical reality checks such as pinching myself, or any of the others you can think of started to become ineffective as my dreams got more realistic, I had to tune the intent.
I noticed how reality checks often stem from common stigmas of an already conscious mind. While “are you dreaming”, is the banner of Reddit’s [lucid dreaming community](https://web.archive.org/web/20230312063735/https://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/), for me, even in dreams, it was too easy for me to say “no” without thinking much about it.
“How did I get here?”, was my new mantra.
- I could do it in public, as it is just a question I ask myself in my mind (It just looks silly to pinch yourself in public).
- It forces me to think almost every time, as the answer is never “yes” or “no”, but different depending on when you ask yourself this question.
- It brings lucid dreaming to mindfulness, and therefore, even if you fail to lucid dream, you still can use this during the day to become more aware.
![Timeline diagram showing random prompts asking how did I get here across three tasks](https://media.emerald.show/0a3cba351439d796ab9bdbf7370f8d66718b09aa7cdaf269261b3802cc797b2a.webp)
Randomly being aware, and asking myself “how did I get here?”
After about 3 months, I noticed my dreams becoming lucid from this practice alone. No waking up at night, no constant practice, just randomly being aware, looking around and focussing on things on the horizon, the “How did I get here?” and some dream journaling.
## The limits of our partnership
While the technique itself worked out great, after about 3 years, the limits of this newly forged partnership between the subconscious and conscious became apparent, and improvement stagnated. While I had lucid dreams, and most of them were good, some lacked a proper plan of action, and ultimately ended up in chaos.
![Man standing in a wooden picture frame and looking out over mountains](https://media.emerald.show/3149fd5454f92af704e2104016a6b7d300ed8fdf19959d3e99420c6f8f54bf76.webp)
When you’ve seen it all…
Since the techniques clearly trickled through my dreams (and improved my real life and even work life), it was clear that I should focus on fine-tuning, and building on top of the foundation I have today. And so, after 3 years, I meditated again on this subject.
## Coming to terms
I found out that it’s not how I execute the techniques, but when. You see, when someone has trouble lucid dreaming, or having a good night in general (depending on what your goal is), it’s often our own mental state that we overlook. We think: “I need to fix my sleep”, but never really think what caused it to be broken in the first place. When you get more experienced, these difficulties become more subtle, but can still become an annoyance.
![Three futuristic people meeting and shaking hands in a neon-lit room](https://media.emerald.show/f52dd52f37a863f4ac27e9a57f2bfdb0ac4d7d3a8d3221eeab659f65b7d60f23.webp)
Coming to terms in dreams
Just like with more prominent things like being unable to sleep or have dreams, my own difficulty was also paired to a similar difficulty in real life: focus. I’m someone who’s easily distracted. When I open Discord and talk to a friend, and see a ping in a server for a new science paper, I immediately download the PDF and start reading! Only later I come back to the task I wanted to do.
For the past week (at the time of writing this post), I began focussing on asking myself another question “What am I going to do” at the end of a current or the start of a new task:
![Timeline diagram showing prompts for what am I going to do and how did I get here across three tasks](https://media.emerald.show/95713636576730465e0aeea7fffdf4c6c2686135673d3288414827aed6e9a4e4.webp)
The new method, asking “What am I going to do?” at the start of a certain task, in addition to “How did I get here?” at random.
A few interesting things happened:
- I became more aware of what I was going to do
- Not only that, but also why I did it, and what or who I did it for
- This increased the overall motivation and fun at a task
- Even when working and presented with distracting stimuli like an interesting newsletter or PDF, I can still focus on my own task first
While it certainly is too soon to tell if this will trickle through in my dreams, I certainly hope that this will make me more aware of my plan of action when the time comes to dive in the dream world.
As with most mindfulness practices related to lucid dreaming, the benefits of the practice should already be noticeable in real life from day one, meaning that even if it doesn’t do anything at night, it should – at the minimum – make you a better person during the day!
Of course, I’ll be keeping my research up to date, so any results that do come from this method I will let you know on my blog. It typically takes about 3 months for my mind to trickle things into my dreams.
Love to all!

2026-06-01 13:47:00 GMT

> **Recovered post**
>
> This article was recovered from my originally deleted blog.
>
> **Author:** [EmeraldOdin](https://web.archive.org/web/20220918211537/https://emeraldodin.com/author/emeraldodin/)
> **Original date:** Aug 1, 2020
> **Original category:** [Odins Journal](https://web.archive.org/web/20220918211537/https://emeraldodin.com/category/odins-journal/)
Morning, July 29. I just woke up, had a very nice lucid dream that lasted as long as a movie, and got up on my phone to check some messages on Discord. There was a message from someone I knew for a while now.
He said he was banned from a mutual server (a chat group in Discord) we were in. I was really surprised to hear that since I never had a problem with this guy. Don’t get me wrong, people get banned left and right, but he wasn’t just a guy that got banned to me. We both live in the same country and had a lot in common, I think that it was nice to be able to talk to him.
First I didn’t believe it, so I checked the server, and indeed he was banned. Then I asked in the server why he was banned and that I was shocked and just woke up so I missed everything that went on before. Nobody replied, and I was even asked to stop talking about it. It already happened, right? It’s in the past.
For me it wasn’t, I was asleep and didn’t know any better, for me it just happened. It’s very important to keep this in mind, but this is where my anger started to form – I thought: “Why do I always get a nice lucid dream on a day that is full of drama?!”
In the hours that followed, I started talking to an admin in DM’s and I noticed that he was very interested in both sides and was too, not happy with that someone had to be banned. This is where everything started to turn for the better. Normally speaking, I would have left the server, and blocked those that were responsible, including that admin. I looked back on all the times I did something similar, and I always had one result in the end: regret. If I did block everyone I wouldn’t have seen the admin’s other side which was very nice and non-toxic.
Today, I won’t let my emotions be the boss of me. They can guide, but not steer. They can advice, but not act.
I started meditating for a good 15 minutes and I began seeing from all sides: I saw the sides of the admins, I saw the sides of the other members asking me to stop, I saw the sides of the guy that got banned.
It suddenly hit me: The admins didn’t like to do this either. It wasn’t fun for everyone. All this time, I saw myself as the victim in this transaction together with the guy that got banned, but that’s not the case. **We all lost something!** There are no winners in banning someone from a community.
The members: they already were past this, and they didn’t know I was asleep, probably. This is all perfectly normal behavior. My anger started to diffuse into some kind of wonder, I don’t know, maybe even pride.
Then, I started readjusting my attitude: instead of being angry that I got a lucid dream, I started thinking: “I’m happy that I get a lucid dream because it helps me cope with difficult things during the day”.
Gratitude started to replace all the negative thoughts, and everything started to turn for the better. I took a break of 2 days, but in the end, I managed, and a perspective shift had caused me to deal with this in a normal way, and no damage was done.
The moral of the story is, look at good things with gratitude and make it so that it can be used as a soft sponge when things get nasty, the impact of it is less. For me, that is lucid dreaming, for you that could be a craft, writing, or gaming, who knows!

2026-06-01 12:29:32 GMT

> **Recovered post**
>
> This article was recovered from my originally deleted blog.
>
> **Author:** [EmeraldOdin](https://web.archive.org/web/20230215211802/https://emeraldodin.com/author/emeraldodin/)
> **Original date:** Jan 19, 2023
> **Original categories:** [Odins Journal](https://web.archive.org/web/20230215211802/https://emeraldodin.com/category/odins-journal/), [Uncategorized](https://web.archive.org/web/20230215211802/https://emeraldodin.com/category/uncategorized/)
A few days back I had a small revelation. Work was heavy and during those times I sleep less and when I do sleep enough it’s typically a period of little dreams, and virtually no lucid dreams.
I still did my meditations, my reality checks, but it didn’t do much to get those sweet travels to vastly different worlds and lifetimes back that make me feel more free than I could ever be IRL. This is the 4th time it happened in the last 2 years, and my mind started to wonder: “why even bother?… Why not stop doing these reality checks while I’m in a busy period?”
That felt so wrong. To make room for the very thing that makes me feel this way in the first place. No, something else had to be done. And so, I took a bath, and meditated on it.
My first thought was: “Why am I doing reality checks and ADA (all-day-awareness)?”. The answer was: “To get conscious while dreaming”.
**But then it hit me.**
The answer to my problem was already in my own reply. The first 3 words: “To get conscious”. My mind continued to wander: Getting conscious is a win, no matter where you are. Now, when I do a reality check or simply regain my full focus as I do something simple or every day and pick up way more details than I’d do on autopilot, I already feel like a winner. I got conscious.
> The practice isn’t to lucid dream, but to be lucid™.
>
> Me, Jan 19, 2023
Think about it: Are we really more lucky if we get conscious while fighting side by side with dragons in a dream than in a train packed with people who are all looking on their phones, all wanting the same thing: to go home? If I’m the only person in that train actually looking outside and knowing where I am what I’m doing, wouldn’t that make just as much a winner?
This new perspective started to blur the line between the dream world and the real world. The practice isn’t to lucid dream, but to **be lucid™**.
Since we’re liberated from being so hellbent on working hard during the day to make us aware during the night, things became a lot clearer, because the blame of a lack of dreams isn’t immediately projected on the practice. We know the practice works at night, as it worked at day.
For me, that meant the lack of (lucid) dreams wasn’t because of my practice, but because my sleep quality wasn’t 100%. That’s what I had to work on.
## Where to go from here
This revelation came to me a week ago, and as of last few days, I’m no longer at heavy pressure at work, so, naturally, my sleep has recovered. It will probably take a few months before I see how fruitful it really is. Maybe, by that time, my thoughts have shifted again, and we meet each other again in a new article about a revelation. Things are never perfect and we always learn.
Maybe it helps you sooner? If you do find success from this article (or not), feel free to share in the comments!