LILD – Letter Induced Lucid Dreams

Letter Induced Lucid Dreams, or LILD, can be an excellent technique to begin experiencing lucid dreams. Like most lucid dreams, these are Dream Initiated Lucid Dreams, or DILD. This simply means you’re already asleep when you become lucid in your dream. If you want to start lucid dreaming so you can take control of your dreams and experience a new level of self-consciousness, letter induced lucid dreams are a great way to go about it. Here’s a bit about how this technique works.

My experience with LILD

LILD were some of the first lucid dreams I experienced because they’re quite easy to get started with. Now, letters are still one of the best ways I know to induce lucidity when I’m already dreaming. The key here is that you have to make a habit of reality checking when you’re looking at certain letters. Since I spend lots of time reading and writing, I do plenty of reality checks during the day. Once I made this habit, I found it was actually pretty easy to start lucid dreaming by using the LILD technique. LILD is still one of my favorite ways to begin lucid dreaming, although now I use other techniques, too.

Here’s how it works

LILD is basically a symbol-induced type of dream. After all, what are letters other than symbols? When you practice letter induced lucid dreams, you start training your mind to check reality every time you encounter a certain symbol. I like to use actual letters because I’m around words a lot, but you can also use other symbols, or even concrete things. For instance, I have a friend who uses his cat instead of a letter because he sees her several times during the day and she often pops up in his dreams.

Basically, you’re going to pick your symbol. It can be a specific letter, word, or being that you encounter during the day and that might also tend to pop up in your dreams. Not sure what symbols recur in your dreams? Start keeping a dream journal and recalling as much of your dreams as possible! Since our dreams are made up of mostly things we know and think about during the day, chances are likely that you’ve got some recurring symbols in your dreams like most people do.

Once you’ve chosen your symbol, start training yourself to do a reality check each time you encounter that symbol during the day. If my symbol is the letter A, I’ll remember to do a reality check each time I see A during the day. I prefer to use capital letters, but you can use whatever you like.

Then, at night, I’ll wake myself up after five or six hours and stay up for an hour. During that hour of wakefulness, I’ll concentrate on the letter A, remembering that whenever I see it, I’m supposed to do a reality check. Once my brain is trained to check reality, almost automatically, when it sees a capital A, I’ll normally remember to do a reality check in my dream when I encounter this same letter.

You might think, “When is an A ever going to come into your dream?” But you’d be surprised! When you’re intentionally trying lucid dreaming, LILD is a great way to start because the symbol or letter you choose will often automatically appear in your dream. You’ve been concentrating on that symbol for so long during the day, that it automatically becomes incorporated into your dream life. Then, when you do a reality check upon encountering your symbol, you can have LILD and start experiencing lucid dreaming at its best.