How deal with the sense of failure and despair? I just can’t set my mind to lucid dreaming or even dream recall because of my former failures. I just can’t get started. I just want to sleep in the evening. I let go of any thoughts of lucid dreaming then because thinking of it only makes me feel anguished.
The worst thing is that I’ve already had lucid dreams — five in a period of three months. All were disappointments. All were brief, and in all I had no powers at all. They were interesting experiences, but not what I’d be prepared to put so much time and energy into. Even if I’ll get lucid dreams again, it might never be worthwhile.
I wanted to use lucid dreaming as a tool for personal growth and psychotherapy. Problem is, the same thing I want to resolve through lucid dreaming is what keeps me from doing it: uncertainty.
Well…To have the lucid dreams you want, for personal growth etc - you have to think about that too when you concentrate to have lucid dreams.
Cuz, when you are lucid, you see things which are mostly in your subconsciousness. But if you think about what you want in a LD at day (for example the quest) - you will remember it in your dream too (but some have to practice that a lot). What you want (conscious) is not always what you want in your subconsciousness… that’s why you need to program a little if you want to dream what you want, instead of dreaming about what happens in your subconsciousness.
Phoee… at least that is what I think, cuz sometimes I have the same problem though it is hard to explain in English.
Uncertainty is a real killer for lucid dreams, believe me. So work on that first.
And keep believing you WILL have the lucid dreams you need for your personal growth.
Well, it’s necessary to encourage yourself, cause you won’t be able to have any lucid dreams if you are frustrated or desperate.Calm down.Convince yourself you will have one.
Maybe I didn’t express myself clearly. It’s not a problem convincing myself that I will have lucid dreams, sooner or later, as I’ve had them before. The problem is to convince myself that it would be worthwhile, since there is no such guarantee.
After all, none of the five lucid dreams I’ve had already were worthwhile at all. The last two weren’t even more vivid than normal dreams. So even if I’ll ever have a lot of lucid dreams, who says they’ll be any good? Many of others’ lucid dreams do not inspire me — partly because I have other interests.
I don’t care about lucid erotic encounters, action adventures, controlling people or idle manipulation of the dream scenes. Those are easier goals, but they do not interest me at all — and they’re certainly not worth the efforts I put into lucid dreaming.
In fact, if either of the first two would occur because my subconscious would take over, I’d find it terrible. I’ve already killed someone who waylaid me in a lucid dream without giving it much thought — I felt like a beast when I woke up.
I want to fly over celestial landscapes. I want to create beautiful gardens and sceneries. I want to expand my consciousness to levels of transcendence. I want to meditate on the nature of the universe. Until I’d gain those powers, the only thing I’d find worthwhile doing in my lucid dreams would be to learn them.
Hmm I can fly over magical landschapes - but I only have them as a kind of award when I feel soooo good, because I’ve won from my ‘‘bad side’’.
Maybe I’m the only one, but if I feel bad, if I’m not in a mental ‘balance’, I will not have those great lucid dreams.
And the dreamworld is kinda stubborn hehe - a part of you is. I mean, you can’t pick what you want in a dream, you can not program yourself - that much!- to dream every night the things you want - you dream what your mind wants, or what your mind haves to work on.(ok maybe some people can, maybe the ones who can say they are 100% lucky and don’t have anything to work on) If you are selective with dreams, f.e writing down the ones you like and others not, only want lucid dreams if you dream theme X without accepting other lucid dreams… yeh then it will take some time indeed before you have those great lucid dreams.
The faster you accept you can have other lucid dreams too… and knowing that EVERY dream can learn you something (and if you can’t translate them, you can ask someone else to give some feedback), the faster you let go the thoughts that you only want -those- goals and no other - the more lucid dreams you will have and the more chance you will dream the one you want.
Lucid dreaming is not about controling dreams. You say you don’t want so, but you do!, you want landscapes and beautiful gardens and nothing else. So if you could, you would control your dreamscape. But the more you want to control and push yourself to dream what you want, the less it will work.
Lucid dreaming is not about controling, it’s about learning from your own mind - and accepting it in the way it becomes a reality in your dreamworld.
Oh my… a lot grammar mistakes forgive me, I’m tired and don’t feel like thinking about my mistakes.
Anyways…Maybe other lucid dreamers say my opinion is all the way crazy …But after writing my dreams down for 3 years (between 3-10 dreams at night) and having 95 lucid dreams since februari 2008 - I learned A LOT about my way of dreaming, lucid dreaming and -working- with my dreams. It’s just a personal truth, so maybe (and I guess so) it’s not a truth for all others.
But maybe it can help you…
If you can recall any dreams you may have had in the past. Try to remmber them, and how you felt at the time. Get some insence, and a Newage, or thunderstorm C.D. Create a dreamy atmosphere in your surroundings. Read other people dreams on this forum. Dont try so hard. Find another hobby that you feel is just as good as LDing to fall back on, incase you dont suceed. This way it want make it so importent, and your be more relaxed in your practice of LDing. Allso watch the movie Waking life. O hope this helps.
when you have not dreamed at all, in any way, and have become briefly awake,
open your eyes
and fall asleep with your eyes open
this increases wakefulness.
at some point you will simply focus all your awareness on your forehead
you don’t need to do MILD
mild is not possible, you cannot deliberately think mantras in delta brainwaves unless you are sitting in a chair meditating
you don’t need to WILD because that takes effort
focusing on your forehead and keeping your eyes open takes only a tiny amount of effort, and this effort can pass through delta ,
i will not write any detailed instructions, its for you to understand what i am saying :
focusing vividly on your forehead and keeping your eyes open will give you alertness, but you don’t do it until after you have slept for a few hours.
do it sometime that you say “hey i am rolling over, i have been asleep for a while, time to practice”
Kava: except for the Waking Life movie — done that. Waking Life does seem immensely intriguing, I’ll make sure to see it.
Eyelids: I don’t think it should be the forehead per se, but I’ll partly take your advice and meditate on my bodily sensations, probably my breathing. Meditating on breathing is more complex, but also more pleasurable, which encourages one to focus more.
I’m pretty sure I couldn’t sleep with my eyes open.
I think in your situation, the best thing to do, despite how it sounds, is to let go of your expectation to lucid dream. Accept and love yourself in any situation and try to forget all about it. One should consciously attempt to lucid dream only when this activity is empowering for him.
Acceptance lead to control. Wise words, I’ll remember those.
I’ll focus on dreaming, then, not just lucid dreaming. If I let my objective be to become more conscious in my dreams, even if I’m not lucid, then that’s something already.
Also, if you must tunnel your attention to this, I suggest you try and be more and aware/conscious in waking life. You’ll find that this is the only thing keeping you away from lucidity in dreams.
Try to be as aware as you can of your surroundings, your experiences, what you see, what you feel, always know where you are, what you are doing, what you are experiencing etc…
That’s a very helpful insight. That way my entire waking life can be connected to lucidity, and vice versa. That way I can do something to increase my chances of lucid dreaming without really worrying about it.
the best way to do it is just let them come to do i have more touble when i try to have them you cant overcome the dream world until you overcome the waking life
Tried everything. It doesn’t work. The frustration remains, and it grows every day. I cannot but feel miserable about it: lucid dreaming has simply been the greatest failure of my entire life. I have never so been tantalized by anything in my life. To me, dreams mean everything, both in waking life and at night — they are all that safeguards me from the cold, empty world outside. I am someone who has traded his existence for dreams, in books, in writing, in drawings, in poetry, in meditation, in music — anything but that dry nothingness of reality! I have never longed so much to do something, and I never failed so utterly.
I feel a failure for how long it even took me to have my first lucid dreams; I made my first attempts at the age of 15, and didn’t succeed until the age of 18. Likely no-one on this forum took so long, or else those that did probably didn’t get far either. And when I finally had them — the few I had — it turned out it was only to stand before yet another obstacle, and that even if I’d be able to lucid dream often, I wouldn’t be able to control them for a long time. The few lucid dreams I had over which I had no control were not worthwhile enough to motivate me.
Obviously, some people have more predisposition than others to lucid dream. We all have a different biochemical machinery, and some are more favorable for lucid dreaming than others; even if everyone can lucid dream with enough effort, for some it takes far too.
I am so angry with myself that even if I’d have lucid dreams now, even if I were able to control them, the only thing I could or would want to do is to destroy everything in sight.
Even supposing that I would manage to have successful lucid dreams in the end, what would it matter? Being bipolar, sooner or later, and sooner rather than later, I would tumble into another depressive episode again and lose all my abilities, only to start over again when it’s over. That’s a fact I can’t escape or deny: my depressions are quite severe.
Every time I even think of lucid dream, I feel depressed for all my former failures, and thinking of every night I spoke the lie that it would work, I cannot do so again, nor gather the power of will to care to try. Even if I wish t do all I can, my subconscious does not. It appears that when I am falling asleep, the last thing I want to think of is lucid dreaming and the bitterness of failure in it. Every thought of lucid dreaming only pulls me further down and, rather than strengthening it, only further attenuates my willpower to wake up in my dreams.
This is no average mental block, and it can’t be solved with average platitudes.
THIS is your problem, why you don’t lucid dream. cursing in Dutch Someone need to kick your ass very hard dammit!
Complaining doesn’t help, does it? I told you before in private what the problem can be, but as long you just want to be depressed about it - well, in a year it will be still the same.
Be patient. Stop complaining. Don’t give up.
Deep inside you know what the problem is, so solve it instead of writing depressed autobiographies.
You know what? Go say that in a mental hospital: “Your problem is that you’re depressed. Stop being depressed.” I’m sure everyone will be healed.
I’ve heard those clichés before, thank you. I am describing a problem as the first step to solving it, expressing an emotion as the first step to getting rid of it.
I know this problem is a big one, but no-one asks you to try to help if you can’t deal with it. If you can find a way to help tackle this issue, then I’ll be very thankful. But don’t underestimate it: I’m working very hard on my emotional state every day, and it’s not like you can just say “I’ll just feel alright” and it will magically work.
I realize this isn’t a psych forum and that this may be a difficult question to answer — but then again, on a psych forum few know about lucid dreaming.
There must be others who’ve had significant mental blocks here and found a way to overcome them?
I’ve contacted a hypnotherapist recently and asked if he could help me get rid of the mental block. I know he’s dealt with a wide variety of problems, so surely he should be able to help with that.
Lowering short-term expectations helps to prevent disappointment, but that also decreases motivation; I might at the same time raise long-term expectations, but with low short-term expectations, even the highest long-term expectations can come to feel too distant.
I suppose I should strike a very careful balance in short-term expectations, but that’s tricky, because if those expectations are not met, motivations plummets.
)
though it is hard to explain in English. 
forgive me, I’m tired and don’t feel like thinking about my mistakes. 
