Hey there members of LD4all, this is my first post on LD4all, and I am fairly new to the whole lucid dreaming thing. Anyway, here’s my problem.
I was trying WBTB last night, and after just over 4 hours sleep I stayed up for about 30 mins on LD4all. I saw a topic on SSILD and thought that I would try it. I repeated the senses exercise about 4 times, and then decided to go to sleep. I woke up (not sure what time, but it was bright outside) without having an LD, but then fell back asleep after a while. I had a Layer 3 LD (not in full control), and I kept telling myself to do RCs. They all worked, but I still didn’t have control over my actions or the dream. I kept rubbing my hands together in order to stay in the dream, but, no matter how many RCs I performed I was stuck at Layer 3. Can anyone either tell me what this is or how to overcome it?
Much appreciated if you can help,
~Evil
I’d say it’s just a matter of practice 
Keep trying and you’ll get higher levels of lucidity. You can try yelling something like “increase lucidity!” in the LD (doesn’t really work for me, but does for many people…). Also I recommend meditation, it really helps you learn how to stay calm and focused, which can really increase your awareness in and out of dream.
Alright, since I’m going to keep trying every night I can until I get, I’ll experiment around a bit with what I CAN do in layer 3. That “increase lucidity!” thing sounds like it might work, since I can become lucid for about a second or two, then either wake up or go back to layer 3. I’ve tried rubbing my hands to stay lucid, but that didn’t work really. Anyway, thanks for the advice 
Something that helped me a lot was learning to plan out my LD’s. Go into the dream with an action plan. Imagine what you’ll do in your next LD and have your goals clearly in mind. I’ve found the less I have planned, the less control and the less “fulfilling” my LD’s are.