My frustrating quest for Lucid Dreams.....

Quest for Lucidity
1

A few months ago, august 2004 to be more specific, I decided to register at this forum.
Both Dutch as English, because I’m from the Netherlands :wink:
I have already posted at the Dutch forum, but not at the English one.

In short my (frustrating) quest for Lucid Dreams…

I am currently reading this forum for almost 5 years!
Yes, I’m the true lurker type :tongue:
Although I haven’t visited this forum continuously over the past 5 years.
I have had some periods where my motivation for lucid dreaming was low, and so it happened regularly that I did not visit this forum for a few months.

Through an article in a magazine, which discussed different states of consciousness, I began searching on the Internet for more information.
That’s how I stumbled over the subject of lucid dreaming and this forum :wink:
After reading some information, I decided to give it a try too. I liked it at once!
This was already in 2000!

Like many others, I could barely remember my dreams… in fact I couldn’t remember them at all!
My first action was of course to recall and write down my dreams.

You already guess it…

Like many other people, I had - and still have - trouble remembering my dreams.
In the very first beginning I began remembering my dreams after a few days, but I couldn’t take the discipline to write down those dreams. (to sleepy :confused: )
So I wrote those dreams down after I got up, but half of these dreams where already faded away.
I do have had some periods where my dream recall was good and could write them down without much effort. This lasted only for 1 or 2 weeks.
So there are many gaps in my DJ.

Nevertheless, I have had a couple (4) of dreams where I become aware that I’m dreaming (occurred in the last 3 years). These lasted only a split second, and the level of lucidity was very low.
My last lucid dream was in February, which lasted a little bit longer than my previous ones, but the dream was bit blurry. Although I was more aware in this LD than the other LDs.

I tried different techniques (MILD, WILD, VILD etc) to get more lucid dreams, but none of them seems to work. :sad:
True lucid dreams seem far away for me… :sad:

At the beginning of this year, after trying several techniques, I decided to go back to the basics.
I would only concentrate on remembering and writing down my dreams, but till today without much success.
It is even getting worse…incidentally I remember my dreams, but most of the time I’m to sleepy to write them down during the night.
And the ones that I do write in mine DJ are just snippets of the dreams. (Only a few words)

One reason that might cause my inability to remember my dreams perfectly, might be the fact that I am getting to little sleep.
Going to bed late and (must) get up early. I am also a deep sleeper.
I have tried to adjust my sleep cycle, since the beginning of this year. I’m going to bed around 23:30h, and get up at 6:30h at workdays. But this doesn’t seem to work.
Even at the weekends, when I sleep for about 10 hours…

Looking back after 5 years of trying, I must say it is very frustrating for me to read how other people achieve their first lucid dream very quickly and continue to have them.

Maybe this post will help to recover…

Thanks for reading :smile:

2

Cygnus,
if you are a deep sleeper it can be very hard to remain awake long enough (during the night) to record your dreams.
If you want to lucid dream badly enough though you have to make a huge effort to overcome this. I’ve experienced the same problem and the key to overcoming it is to get out of bed when you wake in the night. As soon soon as you wake you MUST get out of bed no matter how tired you feel. If you remain in bed the need to go back to sleep is overwhelming and you will have little chance of staying awake. Don’t give yourself any time to think about this, just practice making it an automatic reaction and get out of bed straight away even if you are virtually sleepwalking. I’m not pretending that this is easy, it’s not, but once you make it a habit it does get easier - and it’s worth the effort!
Go to the bathroom, have a drink, open the front door and breathe that cool fresh air - whatever it takes. After 5 or 10 minutes you should be much more awake yet still sleepy and those dreams should still be fairly fresh in your mind. Now go back to bed and for a few minutes just go back into those dreams and try to relive them. You should find that it’s easier to stay awake now and you will start to remember details of your dream which you had forgotten. Then before you go back to sleep write down just some key points about your dream, you don’t have to be detailed here - if you jot down the important parts this should be enough to trigger the memory of the whole dream when you come to record it more fully the next day. Just a few sentences should be enough for this.
When this is done, go back to sleep using WILD or MILD. These techniques (as you probably know) are much more effective when you have woken during the night, but if you find they are keeping you awake just give up and try again the next night. It can also be great at this point not to try any induction method but just to get into watching your HI without any pressure to enter a dream. If you do this often enough it may give you some spontaneous WILDS ( for me, the pressure of trying to induce a WILD became counter-productive and kept me awake. It was only when I removed this pressure and decided to “just observe” for a few weeks that I had an amazing and unexpected WILD).
If you really want lucid dreams, you have to be prepared to get out of bed in this (zombified) state. Strongly setting your intention to do this before you go to sleep at night can really help. I’m sure this is the key to re-awakening your abillity.
Good luck!

3

Well clearly you need to work on your dream recall first.

Waking up in the middle of the night and writing down a complete dream(s)can be difficult but you do not need to write the entire dream. I found that just writing a sentence or two about your dream will help you recall the entire dream in the morning. I have recalled entire dreams from just a few words. Another alternative is to use a tape recorder. Check out the Big Remembering your dreams sticky topicfor more suggestions.

4

What you could also try it so set your alarm clock in the weekend after 9.5 hours of sleep (if you normally sleep 10 hours). In my experience, when I just sleep long and wake slowly (like we tend to do in weekends), I have trouble recalling dreams. However when I wake suddenly by my alarm, its much easier.

5

Interesting, for me it is the opposite. If I am startled awake (like from an alarm) I have more trouble remembering dreams then if I just wake naturally.

This was especially true when I first started out. As my dream recall improved I could wake by an alarm and still remember most of my dreams. However; even today, I still remember my dreams best when I wake naturally.

6

Oh yeah, sound all familiar to me. (who doesn’t :+ )
About a year or 2 ago I tried to set my normal alarm clock to wake me up in the middle of the night, but most of the time I didn’t even remember shutting it down when I woke up in the morning.
And the few times I did remember, I was too lazy/tired/sleepy to write it down. :sad:
Instead I tried to remember it till next morning, with not much success.
A few months ago I used the alarm clock on my mobile phone, to wake me up. I had to get out of my bed to shut it down, because I had put it a few meters away from my bed.
This led to some funny events. One time I couldn’t turn it off, because I was to sleepy. Just pressed the wrong keys all the time :cool_laugh:.

But I will give it another try!

A little note, the last few days I’m trying to wake up naturally with a (self invented?) technique during the night. I have had a little success with it, I woke up naturally, but didn’t take further action…

Thanks!

My experience is, that this is not the case by me. I cannot recall a whole dream by the few words I have written down. I don’t think a tape recoder will help me at this time. First of all I have to force myself to get up in the middle of the night.
Thanks for the suggestions!

I have already tried this, but strangly enough never in the weekends…hmmm, why not :tongue:

Thanks for your replies.

7

Just an update after 2,5 weeks.

I finally managed to increase my dreamrecall :happy:
Although still very poor…

Since my last post in this thread I have rememberd at least 1 dream almost every night.
I couldn’t remember any dreams from 2 nights, but from all the other nights I recalled 1 or more (up to 4) dreams!

I even managed to wake up in the middle of the night for the most of the time. :smile:
Which could be one of the reasons of my progress.

As mentoined earlier, my recall of the actuall dream is still poor. I can only remember some flashes from each dream, no detailed dreams.
That gives me a sort of a detached feeling of the dream, I cannot really relive the dream…which could block my lucidness.

Well, let’s hope my dream vividness will increase!