Grasping lucid dream straws

Quest for Lucidity
1

I got interested in lucid dreaming 4 months ago, and I could recall about 2-4 (rarely 6) dreams per night. However, I have dry spells every month that last for weeks. For example, my longest dry spell lasted for 3 weeks, or about 21 days. I am currently in a “lucid dry spell” already lasting a couple of weeks. In the four months I have been practicing lucidity and dreaming, I only got 1 lucid dream, which was very brief, and may be actually a lucid moment.

For weeks, I tried reality checks, FILD (or HILD), WILD, WBTB, and DEILD. I also tried Living Lucidly, but I keep forgetting to do it. The only techinque that worked for my one lucid dream was a completely random reality check (I never did this reality check in real life, but I did it in my dream.) There are some successes in my “dreaming career” (which I am happy for), such as

Thought Induced Nightmares (I induce nightmares to wake up into sleep paralysis to try to do WILD or another method)
One five second long lucid moment.
One FILD night almost worked.
(Sleep paraylsis is no longer a problem for me)

Sometimes I put myself into sleep paralysis to try summoning both happy and scary images or sounds. But nothing happens except for feeling many vibrations all over my body (especially on my head). Does my brain lack the ability to have an imagination for lucid dreaming?

Am I trying too hard? I’m trying hard not to try too hard, if that makes any sense. :razz:
Is it because of my expectation that nothing works for me? For example, most times I try to learn a new language (programming language), I always think to myself, “I’m never going to learn this language, but other people can.” then I sadly never learn it. The same goes with lucid dreaming techniques. I’m always unconciously thinking “WILD/FILD/WBTB/DEILD always works for everyone else but will never for me.” even though I try to dispel it from my mind. How can I get my expectations turning in the right direction?

I want a (more than 5 second, lol) lucid dream but I cannot get one. Is there anything I am doing wrong? I sleep at least 9 hours. To do WILD/FILD/etc I wake up at 5 - 6 AM, depending when I sleep.

Concluding, here are my main questions:

  1. Does my brain lack the ability to have an imagination for lucid dreaming?
  2. Am I trying too hard?
  3. Is it because of my expectation that nothing works for me?
  4. How can I get my expectations turning in the right direction?
  5. Is there anything I am doing wrong?

I understand that these are many questions, hopefully I’m not “angering” anyone with my questions.

Thank you all in advance!

PS: I don’t know if this is the right place to post this. If it’s not, please move it to the correct place. thanks!

2

Firstly, unless you’ve experienced a recent head injury you most certainly have the ability to dream and lucid dream just like everyone else. Only people with brain damage have proven to suffer from a loss of dream life.
It seems like you have tried a lot of techniques. Often when tries a lucid dreaming technique one has the goal of having a lucid dream in mind, which is entirely rational. However, for the technique to work it is best to pursue the technique rather than the goal. So, you shouldn’t just go through the motions of the technique without actually engaging with the technique’s purpose. For example in a reality check you must learn to genuinely question your reality.
In the area of expectation, don’t expect to succeed or fail. If you expect to have experiences you can learn from you will never fail. All in all, the goal of lucid dreaming is to become more aware of your reality. Become more aware of your reality and dreams will come to you.
I have been lucid dreaming for over a year, what has been most important to my success has been patience, and steady use of one or two techniques. Don’t beat yourself up if you have an occasional dry spell. Some people just take longer to lucid dream than others. I introduced lucid dreaming to a friend and he accomplished in a few weeks what took me months. If you want to have a lucid dream that lasts longer than five seconds, focus on your hand occasionally to ground yourself. Try to remain calm as well.
I hope I helped answer your questions, I’m sorry if I sounded too philosophical, I had trouble expressing my take on dreaming in words.

3

I agree with everything said here, also I would like to add that when trying and using a technique use it for some time. Things need to sink in in order to get some results. I usually like to give at least a week to a new technique but I don’t expect lucid dreams, I expect some results, like DR or higher awareness or partial lucidness or FA’s or FLD’s…

It seems like you got a long way already with the WILD but you are stuck like many newly lucid dreamers are with WILD tech. You do WBTB you are lying down in your bed you start to feel tingling sensation, vibration and such HH’s. But after that nothing happens, right?

Ok, I said that a lot here but people tend to forget. WILD is “wake induced” but as you know you can’t dream(at least not old fashion dream which happens in REM sleep) unless you are asleep (in REM sleep). In order to do that you need to fall asleep. With my experimentation of WILD technique I learned that we are not in SP until we’re in REM, until we dream because the function of SP is to paralyzes us so we can’t act out of our dreams(which I suppose you know) so brain won’t paralyze you until you are in REM because then you would drop like you are dead. (Although there are medical cases where people have problems with breaking the SP after waking up). So everything you might experience before actual dream is HH. These may be sound, image, smell… But it’s not SP because you can move, if you were in SP then you couldn’t move…

Second thing which is most important in my understanding of WILD is transition. When to make a transition. You may not see it as transition but it is, that’s why I said that you need to fall asleep first then expect the dream. So when you are experiencing the HH’s then is the best way to make a transition. Most common ways to make a transition is making a sensation of rolling over(and imagining yourself waking in dream bed), floating up or sinking down into mattress or one of my favorite is falling asleep but in crucial time.

So I think that you are doing everything like you supposed to but you don’t make a transition and that’s why you keep failing at WILD…

Hope this helps, good luck! :content:

4

Thanks for the replies!

So I should perfect the technique first before pursuing the goal? I’ll try focusing on WILD for the rest of the year.

In the times when I did WILD, I would take an alarm clock and wake up at 5 AM, which is in the middle of my sleep cycle. I get into a nice comfortable position and proceed to do WILD and go into SP and whatnot. However, when I’m in SP, I get about 15-45 seconds into SP, sometime an imaginary finger always tickles me in my foot and wakes me up, which is very annoying :neutral: . I also tried FILD, which worked for the most part except I kept falling asleep right when I was seeing HH (I think).

5

That’s something you need to overcome and just learn how to lay down not moving. I would suggest SDR technique. It helped me with the same problem and also it gives you a chance to end up in wanted position, you don’t need to do WILD on your back, like you said - in comfortable position. Something I didn’t mention before I do make a transition when I experience some kind of “rush” while experiencing HH’s. I can’t describe it precisely, it’s like all HH’s become even more intense it usually a fine line between hypnagogic state and wakefulness!

Try to stay conscious a lite bit more. It’s the same as WILD…

6

The first of all you have to strive for experience you want to have,not for lucid dream. Lucid dream is only a tool to fly or whatever you want :smile: If you can dream at all,it means you can have lucid dreams also :smile: If you forget to do RC and ect. You have to change something,change your desktop picture,change picture on your phone,make a black dot on your palm,move something in your room and ect… These things should remind you to do RC,that’s how i got into habit of RC :smile: i used to forget them too :smile: I hope you found something usefull gl!

7

What does awareness and dreaming mean to you?
I think it would be a good idea to find your own definition of this, because techniques can easily be misunderstood as hocus-pocus, when they all really are just different ways to train your awareness.

I think the most straight-forward way to get lucid dreams is to constantly be curious about your environment and ask yourself things like “where am I now?”, “what do I feel like right now?”, “does this place seem realistic?” etc, just to double-check your situation whenever you start daydreaming.
Eventually you will start asking yourself these questions in your dreams as well, which with any luck will make you lucid.

Oh, and keeping a Dream Journal is extremely important as well, for many reasons - chiefly for training your ability to remember dreams at all, so you can actually remember your lucid dreams when you have them.

8

@DrCalciumToad: Have you been successful with the thought-induce nightmares?

If you’re maximally frustrated, I’d suggest trying another road into lucid dreaming.

Get interested in your non-lucid dreams and begin wanting something out of them. Ask questions of your subconscious. Try incubating a specific dream situaton three times.

9

Thanks for the replies everyone!

I do have a dream journal I start 4 months ago and I still fill it up today, although it has many week-long gaps.

Laurelindo:

Most of the dreams I remember is after I failed at WILD/FILD and fell asleep during them. Most of my dreams after failing at WILD/FILD are in my room and me doing normal stuff, like breaking my chair accidentally, reading, or using my computer. :eek:
Every time I look back, it was so realistic that it felt like real life that I always think after waking up, “Was that a dream or real life?”.

dreamosis:

Yes, I was successful with inducing nightmares with simple thoughts. I just think of a scary image while I’m going to sleep and most of the times I get a nightmare. Usually, if my dream is intensely scary, then I will wake up into SP. Most of my nightmares have to do with lucid dreaming techniques failing. For example, sometimes I look into a mirror and see a scary reflection of myself (since I expect a scary image on the mirror) and I wake up. I wouldn’t recommend it to people who get scared or surprised easily, though.

I don’t know what this categorizes as, but I found that in a non-lucid dream, I can control my dream with my thoughts? It’s hard to explain, so here’s an example. I was in a car, and there was this truck right in front of me. I thought, “All the cars in my dream stop when I’m right behind them.” then suddenly, the truck in front of me stops and I, unfortunately, crash. This also happens in FA, when I wake up, and expect SP to appear, some of the images from previous SP episodes appear. Is this like a normal part of normal dreams? Or is it quarter-lucid or an eighth lucid?

Thanks for all your help!

10

It sounds like you have found your dreamsign right there. :happy:
If most of your dreams take place at home then you can make it a habit to be extra aware in your home, and frequently ask yourself “I am at home right now, so could this be another one of those dreams?” or something similar.
It’s great if you can develop this association to such a level that your entire home starts to give you a continuous “dream feel”. :content: