medicine 4 the mind said:
gigaschatten, did you have to learn how to lucid dream or have you always been able to do it. ive been trying for about a month now and still no luck.
Before I got 14 I had lucid dreams and out-of-body-experiences without trying to. It was rather frightening and only when I got 30, I became interested in it again, because I had another unwanted experience and used the internet to investigate it. There I found various methods for and communities interested in lucid dreaming and OBEs. So I started to actively provoke such experiences, which was and still is quite difficult. Even with all the things I tried, the most revealing experiences occured when I didn't try at all.
On one of those forums I heard about Sage and for some reason it attracted me - I never was interested in "psychedelics" before, but this plant seemed to open a whole new world for me... and it did. I researched all about it that I could and prepared myself as good as possible. Nothing could have prepared me for its effects though. From that point, I became interested in plants as well, not only psychoactive plants, but medical herbs or simply beautiful, nice smelling or good tasting ones as well. I then tried various psychoactive plants after learning about them and - to come back to your question - the most wonderful lucid dream I had after using Nymphaea caerulea (Blue Lotus).
It allowed me to spend two hours in a lucid dream where I created reality from nothing. I found myself in a small garden that was surrounded by endless white fog when suddenly I realized "Hey, I'm dreaming!" I never heard anywhere that N. caerula can have such effects so I was very surprised. I used it for hedonistic reasons, to experience it's opiate like effects that are great indeed, so I consider the "side effect" a great unexpected gift.
I also tried a very high dose of Calea zacatechichi. It did nothing for me but taste awful, the worst thing I've ever tasted.
Sage was very helpful with dream recall and lucid dreaming. At times those secondary effects seemed to become too much to bear and many nights I woke up from a dream, soaked in sweat with my heart beating rapidly. I didn't get much rest in those nights. I had to give it a break and after about three months the effects faded, yet my dream recall is still very clear.
When I try to have lucid dreams on purpose now, I simply go to bed with the intent to do so and after a few hours of sleep there is a good chance I become lucid. As I read, for most people it works best after they had some rest already. When I try to lucid dream by keeping my consciousness aware, I don't get to dreaming at all, but fall into a state of trance, having all kinds of hypnagogic sensations, mostly very frightening ones.
I can't tell you how to lucid dream, you've got to find your own way. Everyone's different, but now you know my story.