The book Lucid Dreaming by Stephen Laberge was a treasure trove of information. Laberge was a professor and researcher at Stanford and was on the cutting edge of lucid dreaming research. Hell...he WAS the cutting edge. He conducted scientific experiments with his students, wrote his findings and published them--which amazingly enough was available for the general public. I devoured that book, some sections repeatedly, as though it held the key to the kingdom of God. Initially, It was kind of shocking to see that a prestigious university was conducting experiments (funding it no less) in a field that I had stumbled onto while dreaming on a night that was no different than any other.When I came across Laberge's list of exercises to help induce lucid dreams, I struck the mother-lode. They were tools, like hammer and nails to a carpenter.One of the most useful tools and the one I implemented immediately was the Reality Check, or "RC". He may not have used that term back then in 1987, but its a term I've seen used in online forums today.The RC was crucial in my return to lucid dreaming. It's a tool that requires practice, honing and developing. Basically it works like this: Periodically during the day, you observe some minute detail in your physical surroundings, like the position of hands on a clock, or the pattern of leaves fallen on the ground, or the lines in the palm of your hand. You observe it just long enough to memorize the image. Then you look away for a moment, and return your attention to that object. If the subject matter is identical to the first, it is certain you are in the physical world, in your waken state. But if the details had shifted, like if the hands on the clock were in a significantly different position or different shape, length, color, etc., or the leaves on the ground were in a different configuration, then you are dreaming. This was based on the inherent nature of dreams, that details shift and flow and never hold together long. It may sound a little strange, but I tell you it worked. That simple little Reality Check brought your awareness to the forefront of your consciousness, whether you were awake or asleep, which was the key to lucid dreaming. You have to know your dreaming to be lucid within the dream, to be present. And if you made RCs a thoughtless, periodic habit during the day, that habit would extend into the night in your dream state.It didn't take long until I was routinely conducting RCs in my dreams, and those RCs triggered my awareness of being inside the dream--lucidity.At first, that initial excitement of becoming lucid in the dream would instantly bounce me out of the dream and wake me up. Every damn time. It was frustrating.That very first lucid dream--the one that sent me on this quest--seemed epic, unapproachable, unreplicatable.It became a matter of remaining calm at that moment of lucidity, to the point of suppressing your emotional reaction--totally. The better at smothering my emotions I became, the longer I would stay in the dream. It was a very gradual learning curve, but with practice I could go a little further, and the next time a little further than the time before. Very small increments.It was like the movie Edge of Tomorrow where Tom Cruise's character was caught in a loop. He was a soldier in a future war against aliens. When he died in battle, he instantly woke up the previous day. He relived that day, again dying, but each time he used what he had learned from the previous day and extended his life on that battle field. In each of my lucid dreams, I would creep a little further into the dream world, and a little further the next time.Eventually I mastered becoming lucid and remaining lucid. I call it "the drop-in,' because it felt like I just dropped-in out of nowhere into another world, and I never knew where I was going to land. The next few years were full of lengthy excursions into the dream world, being fully lucid and having superhuman abilities. It was a wild ride and I had no clue where it was taking me. I had one, single goal though: transition over to one of the dream worlds, Any one of them. It didn't matter which, just as long as I stayed there...permanently. Find out more in my next blog post.