I’m a new member to this site, as I’m also new to lucid dreaming as well.
I had this dream last night. The beginning of the dream I was on an island. I think there was some cartoon character with me, although I can’t remember who though. He started to communicate with me. He asked things like “Is this for real?”. He finally concluded that HE was dreaming. For some reason, my mind didn’t click that I was dreaming. And looking at this in retrospective, I find myself incredibly stupid for not realizing this. I was so close too. And at this time, I wanted to Lucid dream. And before bed, I kept on saying in mind “I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming”. I guess I was thinking that if I thought that phrase long enough I would eventually become lucid. Can someone help me out on this? It seems as if I’m close to being lucid, but not quite.
Hey, don’t feel stupid. I’ve missed plenty of obvious things before, and half the time when I’m lucid it’s not because I’m concentrating but because it’s a random realization. But since you say you’re new to it, you sound like you’re doing pretty well so far. There’s not much I can say except to practice and try different techniques. Have you read about the different techniques listed here? Here’s some different techniques that might help you: https://community.ld4all.com/t/all-ld-techniques/24932 I hope that helps.
There’s not much else I can do, so I hope this helps you. So, good luck with the lucid dreaming!
Remember, sometimes we are oblivious to the obvious. Don’t worry, just be patient and have confidence. If anything, even expect to have one, or two, lucid dreams tonight. It will not always happen because there’s always things that we miss in dreams and don’t realise that until the dream fades and we wake up.
I came up with a new method, and it’s been very successful:
In this method, formulate a habit of rubbing your hands every five minutes (or whenever you feel comfortable with). Eventually you’ll do this every day and it will become a second thought. The clever thing is that it will also stabilize the dream.
When you go to bed that night, rub your hands a few more times and tell yourself, “Next time I find myself rubbing my hands, I will realise that my surroundings are a dream.” You need to be very inspired and very compulsive, as this gives power to your expectation. When you get into bed, plan your goals and go over them all in your mind. You can even throw things in like “When I wake up from this next lucid dream, I will remember the whole dream, even before the point that I became lucid”. Since dreams are powered by your expectations, if you expect to have a lucid dream that night, you most likely will.
But one thing, though: this may take some practice. If you don’t become lucid, just acknowledge that you have an almost infinite amount of tries more. Then do the method again. This works almost 100% of the time for me, since I’ve been doing it for so long now.
Don’t feel stupid for missing an RC. Feel smart for successfuly performing one!
About the method you are about to try - Have you checked out MILD? Your method is a bit similar, and you might want to run a search through the fora for it.