Thread: Eyes Closed / Eyes Open

Don't do either of these. I've been awakened by both closing my eyes and widening them.
BUT sometimes blinking 'refreshes' the dream for me, giving me fast control.
Widening my eyes sometimes but RARELY increases vividity in my dream.

Originally Posted by mikeac

Don't do either of these. I've been awakened by both closing my eyes and widening them.
BUT sometimes blinking 'refreshes' the dream for me, giving me fast control.
Widening my eyes sometimes but RARELY increases vividity in my dream.

Thanks for the input. Next time I'll try touching something in the dream or rubbing my hands together. I've heard these are good ways to increase your "attachment" to the dream.

To maintain the dreamscape, you simply have to attend to it. Rubbing your hands, touching something etc are ways of engaging your attention, but anything suffice to capture attention will do. You could look at your hands, look at an object. Many things.

Consider this: In waking life, peer out of your window at the scene beyond it. Notice how this is the wrong type of attention for maintaining control in dreams: you're looking everywhere, but no where. Now, peer out of the window and look at a particular object in the scene as if you were going to draw it. This is the attention needed; it is fixated and focused.

Anything satisfying the second type of attention will be sufficient.

PS. To maintain cohesiveness of the dreamscape, you want to excercise top-down attention, not bottom-up. That is, you need to attend to the object you wish to, rather than let the object capture your attention.

I have always had trouble with closing my eyes and losing lucidity. But recently, I was in a dream and sat down to meditate and closed my eyes. I didn't lose lucidity. I think it's because I was closing my eyes purposefully and I had an expectation about what should happen when I close my eyes (I would mediate and increase my awareness). So I think you should try to do everything purposefully. When your mind knows the purpose, you can maintain focus, awareness, and lucidity.

Don't close your eyes in dreams, it destabilizes them. A lot of people do that to purposely wake themselves

I had a DILD while napping four days ago, I was in the shower and my hair wasn't wet so I did a nose-plug RC and became lucid. I had very poor vision, while trying to step out of the shower and thus felt out of balance, it was like my right eye had no focus like there was some water in it or how your eyes get crusty when you wake up sometimes.. anyway, I tried to rub it and that didn't work, so I tried to just open my eyes really wide since that usually works in waking life, and focused on that and I woke up opening my eyes.. I guess if you focus too much on the sensation of widely opening your physical eyes, since this is a common action if you concentrate on it enough your physical body will open it's eyes.. I still had the whole feeling/vibe of a lucid and was positive this was an FA but did an RC and it failed, and was indeed awake I've learned from this that if my vision is failing me in a lucid, to focus and spread my awareness out through the sensation of touch and hearing. I did this in a lucid two nights ago and was able to maintain lucidity for the longest time period yet. . hope this stayed on topic

Thanks for the great replies guys!

I have had really poor recall the last few days, but I had a very brief moment of lucidity in a dream where I saw my family (far away in the United States right now). When I realized I was dreaming I tried touching the carpet to ground myself to the dream. Unfortunately I don't know how well it worked because I can't remember anything else. Great tip none-the-less and something I will try again in the future for sure.