As you can see, my LD count is getting near 20.
That might sound quite decent, but here’s the problem:
almost all my LD’s have been very short DEILD-induced False Awakenings, and they collapse VERY easily - sometimes I can even feel that my thighs are itchy in the dream itself, and even wake up because of that feeling, so I’m clearly an extremely light sleeper on these occasions.
I actually had one of these dreams this last night, and it behaved just like usual:
I “wake up”, do a successful light switch check on my bedlamp, then I get out of bed and I notice that I move very slowly, about two steps every third second, and it feels like walking in jelly - and I say to myself “ah, it’s one of these dreams again, now I should relax, it’s a dream, it’s a dream, take it easy” and similar “mantras”.
Then I look around my room, and feel some delight in how real everything looks - sure it’s usually kind of dark but I can still see some details and I’m always impressed by the realism - and then I enter the kitchen and notice that it looks very different.
Then I turn around and start walking towards my front door, and this is almost always where I wake up.
This morning the dream was so unstable that I woke up just because I blinked.
I understand that any lucid dream is a huge step in the right direction, and I also understand how precious it is to actually have had almost 20 lucid dreams - but I’m honestly getting tired of the way they always collapse after like 30-40 seconds.
Hey, i’ve been having a rather similair problem, as you can read here: Here
The following helped me:
When you get sensations from your real body, try and get a lot of sensations from the dream eviroment. Rub your hands together and feel the friction and warmth, touch a lot of things in the dream, if you feel it isn’t working you could always try spinning or letting yourself fall backwards. I haven’t tried the last two yet but getting the sensations helps me. It is important to remind yourself of it being a dream when getting the sensations, as I’ve lost lucidity a couple of times doing so.
As “Laurelindo” said in my topic (Edit: Lol , didn’t realise you were in fact Laurelindo, haha ), it might also help to treat the dream as a real enviroment for a bit. I met somebody I knew in one of my ld’s when it was fading and just decided to walk and talk with her for a bit. After a bit we entered a classroom and she said “good luck with your teaching”. I looked a bit puzzled and said to myself “Huh…? I’m not going to teach, this still is my dream!” and then teleported away"
I also have this problem, and have had for a looong time. So if it ever gets to your motivation remember that I’ve had over 500 LD’s and still have this increadibly unstable crap going on.
A few things you can try to see what results you get:
As Shadow of a Day said, try to focus on your senses. Taste and smell are very secondary (in my experience, at least), so you can try to focus on touch, sight and hearing all at once, or alternating. I’ve only had a problem with this because I usually get distracted but while I’m focusing on all three at once it seems the dream can’t collapse, it’s like a sensory triped! You can rub your hands, focus on the feeling, on the sound it makes and what your hands look like, instead of just rubbing your hands and feeling them as is often suggested. For me only touch isn’t enough to hold my very unstable LD’s together, so give this a try.
Another problem for me is thinking about the fact that I’m dreaming or that I might wake up. Sometimes it seems that even starting the thought makes the dream collapse, even feeling the tiny “fear” I’ve gotten used to that I might wake up makes me wake up. This is very tricky to get around in my experience, as it makes you wake up even before you realize you’re doing it. The other day, though, I was LD’ing and thought about the fact that I usually think that I might wake up and that didn’t affect the dream at all. I’m guessing it’s because the thought itself lets me get lost and involved with it, but thinking about thinking is a more detached… thought. I still struggle with this especially, but I try to catch myself starting the thought/feeling that I might wake up and then try to drasticly change my focus back to the dream.
(got to go now, I’ll come back if I remember anything else that might help )
Thanks a lot for your advice.
I will try to focus on as many senses as possible next time I get an LD like this - at least I seem to have a talent for these kinds of LD’s, they always start happening within a week after I start paying attention to my Dream Journal, and typically when I wake up in the middle of the night and instantly fall asleep again.
And yeah, I can definitely relate to the tiny fear of losing the dream.
You get this feeling that it might collapse at literally any moment, and you cannot be sure when you will get the chance next time.
It’s sort of like trying to get a chance to perform a very difficult balance act, and when you get the chance you instantly lose balance and have to wait for x days before you get the next chance.
But it’s clearly very important to take it easy, and I’m not sure that mumbling “take it easy, take it easy, it’s a dream, don’t become too excited…!” over and over like I tend to do is that relaxing.
I asume you both know about WritersCube and his mythical “DREAMCLOCK”
My current LD goal is to use one. And how does this relate?
I want to try and see if using a dreamclock works for me (I’ve scanned forums but never found hints anybody using one except with WritersCube)
Since you programmed to dream lucid for ,let’s say, 10 hours, you are ought to dream lucid for 10 hours without any disturbances. So you wouldn’t have Fa’s or Fade into an ND or wake up al together.
So if a Dreamclock really works it would be the perfect sollution for these problems!!
I was very close to using a Dreamclock this morning, but just before I reached it my dream collapsed. If I manage to use it I will tell you guys, and if anybody else uses it I would love to hear if it works
Good luck,
P.s. I’ve used one in the past and manneged to perform ten of my ld’ing goals, but back then my recall was actually quite awefull and I couldn’t tell how long it had lasted since I had forgotten the biggest part of my dream. It certainly felt long but I only remembered the goals I finished, and frankly, If it all happened one afther another, it would have been 5 minutes in total
Well I can pretend to be smart now after everybody said what you actually have to do but I did have this problem and I just wanted to say:
Stop thinking that you will wake up because it’s almost like a command. I had the same problem. I find myself in a dream and I know that it’s a dream and the moment I thought that I will wake up I did, it didn’t even last 30 - 40 seconds like yours did and all that after I had long and stable lucid dreams.
It may seem hard not to think about waking up, then use sensations and focus on them. You are in better position then I was, you have time to prepare yourself, I found myself in a dream and woke up after a few seconds and I was doing WILD.
Also I had one possible theory. In my case when I was doing WILD I was possibly to rested and I just couldn’t sleep so hard because I was attempting it after 8 hours of sleep or 9 sometimes. Could be that you are no sleepy enough? Oh you said you are a light sleeper…
Don’t know… With me when I put negative thoughts out of my head (meditation helped) I get rid of that problem… Also I used mantras and autosuggestion…
Well I said what everybody else already said, just to let you know that you are not alone in that problem…
@dB_FTS: It’s just so hard! well, in my case I’m usually low lucid, the rare moments when I get decent lucidity the dream tends to collapse a little slower. With low lucidity it’s a lot harder to remember not to think about waking up and hard to focus. So my main problem might just be try to get higher lucidity! (on the other hand, low lucidity makes me think so little some times that I don’t think about waking up and the dream lasts longer, but… well, low lucidity). And every time I read the word “meditation” I should slap myself, until I practice more. what’s wrong with me!?
@Shadow of a Day: I think I tried the dream clock once or twice. The clock always looked different than what I expected… and it wasn’t high lucid, so that might have been part of it not working. I should try this again. Or maybe create some kind of Dream Lock! Which will make me lock in the dream untill I unlock it…
My recall and motivation are low at the moment but I’ll see if I can get some results tonight.
Mediation is hard for use if we don’t dedicated enough time and even if we do we do not have discipline to actually maintain the practice of mediation. Usually something pops up and you skip one session then you don’t feel like you should meditate and one thing plus another you just with time quit.
But in my opinion even though one should practice mediation it’s even better to meditate like I described in first section of the post, although I’ve read that true power of the mediation comes with time, more you practice more benefit you have, well isn’t that way with everything!?
Also I’ve read and also experienced it something regarding the time of the session. Usually people tend to ask: how much time I need to spend meditating? Most of the answers I found is that time isn’t crucial. If you were sitting for 5 minutes aware is more than sitting 1 hour not being aware. And experience something like that, like genuine awareness (I was practicing passive observant type of the meditation - you are passively observe and acknowledge every thought, emotion, feeling, sensation and then you let it go and you move on another). It is truly something amazing.
I can’t even imagine how awesome would be to be so much aware, all the time…
I know! I think my main problem is I can’t (or won’t ) set aside some time to meditate, so when I do try it’s usually when I go to bed at night, since I usually just lie there with my thoughts anyway. But I think lying in the dark makes my mind wander a lot more! The few times I’ve meditated sitting up I realized that just because my back was erect my mind was a lot more focused (or it was just easier to stay focused). Now that you say it, I remember I’ve’ heard that too, that time isn’t that importat. So I’ll see if I meditate sitting up before bed, even if just 5 minutes!
Because, personally, I’m 110% sure meditation is the key to LD’ing! (well, or any other form of awareness like LL).
Hmm, this thread has actually made my motivation go up a little! (plus an awesome ND I had last night, where I got into a tiny personal spaceship! I was able to get back into it in a LD and flew around. it was perfect!)
Shadow, Ive used the dreamclock a couple of times. It worked like a charm. The real challenge when you use it is keeping your lucidity high.
Just yesterday I had provlems with dream stability. I got hit by surprise SP, and I moves into a dream scene. I could still feel my back on the bed, and it slowly faded away.
I found that imrunning or flying and feeling the momentum in your body keeps you in the dream really really well.
Although my LD count is currently 29, I still have this problem. As a matter of fact, I didn’t include a few minor lucid dreams I’ve had recently simply because I stopped considering them as true LDs. Through the concept “minor” I mean the ones which last no more than several seconds and nearly they all consist of dreams like those. The longest LD I’ve had so far lasted, I would say, 40 seconds and I’m very proud of it. What bothers me, however, is the fact I tend to forget what I should do to stabilize dream and to prevent fading as I usually get easily distracted or get this weird desire to do something perverted, even though there are far more important goals I want to achieve. Also, I wish I could become lucid more often in other places than my home. If this happened, I certainly would have more possiblities to improve my skills.
Thanks for advices. I’il try them all. Anyway, don’t give up!
Thanks for the response
Well, if the dreamclock works imagine what kind of other idees could work. Perhaps a lucidity lock that keeps your lucidity up.
This thread is giving me tons of things to test in LD’s. Now I just need to have one again
Is it worth investing time in trying to prolong these FA’s that I mentioned in the original post?
Or do those kinds of dreams always fade within a few seconds?
Sensory immersion usually works for me to stabalize or prolong a dream, but what if you tried something really different?
You usually try to get up from bed and walk toward the door, but what if you used your imagination to enter a painting or walk through the wall into another dream?
Thanks, I will try that next time.
Actually I did try something slightly different once, and walked through a back door in the kitchen and ended up on a small hill (both of these things were super-obvious dreamsigns by the way, because neither the door nor the hill exist in real life), and from there I could explore random places for about 2-3 minutes or so before I woke up.
Definitely an improvement over 30-40 seconds.
Yeah, my “False Awakenings” actually start out with me already lucid, so True Awakenings into dreaming would be a more accurate term for it.
I did have a genuine False Awakening this last morning though, because I dreamed that I went to the bathroom and was totally sure that it was real life because it felt just like getting out of bed for real, but then I suddenly woke up again before I had gone back to sleep, so it must have been a False Awakening that time.
Anyway, I guess it is a good sign that I decided to practice LL during a dream the other night and this last night I dreamed about getting out of bed and trying to start the day.
I guess this means that my chances to become lucid tonight are very high.
This morning I suddenly got lucid as I was staring down a hill. I noticed that everything was really stable and that impressed me. I tried to stay calm and then I made something levitate as an RC to make sure. I then got up and went down the ramp and the dream faded. I don’t know if it was the RC or the walking that made it fade… I’ve had this before, where I get sort of lucid and the dream is super stable, but as soon as I do an RC and have some kind of proof that it’s a dream it all falls appart. So I don’t know what to do! Maybe I just need to convince myself I am in fact dreaming without doing an RC and see how that goes, but I think I’ll slip back into a ND like that… I should try to meditate in a LD again
You situation is kinda strange and also new to me… I’ve never experienced this type of the situation as long as you do.
Your assumption:
The main problem with lucid dreaming is that we don’t get it as frequent as we would like to(maybe in your case is different) but let’s assume you do get frequent LD’s no matter how long do they last you should take on course of action and test it let’s say for a week. If you don’t feel that’s enough you can try it for a month!
I mean maybe you should confirm that you dream without RC or maybe you should meditate in a dream for a week/month and see what happens.
If you stick to a specific assumption long enough I believe you will find your way to maintain lucidity!
, didn’t realise you were in fact Laurelindo, haha ), it might also help to treat the dream as a real enviroment for a bit. I met somebody I knew in one of my ld’s when it was fading and just decided to walk and talk with her for a bit. After a bit we entered a classroom and she said “good luck with your teaching”. I looked a bit puzzled and said to myself “Huh…? I’m not going to teach, this still is my dream!” and then teleported away" 
and that didn’t affect the dream at all. I’m guessing it’s because the thought itself lets me get lost and involved with it, but thinking about thinking is a more detached… thought. I still struggle with this especially, but I try to catch myself starting the thought/feeling that I might wake up and then try to drasticly change my focus back to the dream.
)
but I’ll see if I can get some results tonight.
I know…
) set aside some time to meditate, so when I do try it’s usually when I go to bed at night, since I usually just lie there with my thoughts anyway. But I think lying in the dark makes my mind wander a lot more! The few times I’ve meditated sitting up I realized that just because my back was erect my mind was a lot more focused (or it was just easier to stay focused). Now that you say it, I remember I’ve’ heard that too, that time isn’t that importat. So I’ll see if I meditate sitting up before bed, even if just 5 minutes!
