missing completely obscure dreamsigns

I've been trying for months to have lucid dreams to no avail. Until just recently, I'd barely even remember more than just a glimpse or idea or phrase from a single dream per month. For some reason my dream recall has always been really terrible. But over the past few weeks I've been remembering my dreams more consistently, and much more vividly almost every night.

Now that I'm starting to recall my dreams more often (sometimes even multiple dreams in a night) I'm beginning to notice that they are quite obscure and full of really obvious dream signs. But I never pick up on them, ever. I should also mention that I habitually perform reality checks in waking life, almost always upwards of twenty times in a day. And I also have firm belief in the advice from these forums about awareness, such as KingYoshi's awareness tutorial, and I put forth a strong effort to keep myself very aware of my surroundings.

So I guess what I really need help with is recognizing obscure dream signs. For example, a good portion of the dreams I've remembered in the past two weeks have taken place in fantasy settings that were obviously of dream manifesto. But until waking, I didn't even have the slightest clue of the nature of these experiences.

It seems as if any amount of effort I put into being aware of my surroundings and performing reality checks and keeping a detailed dream journal shows very little progress toward having a lucid dream. It sort of seems like my dreams are so much different than my reality that the fact that I do reality checks doesn't even carry over into my dream world.

so, looking for any advice here. thanks for reading!

Ok dream recalling is excelent If you don't have that you can't LD even If you did you wouldn't remember so what's the point?

My advice will be try to think about the weird images of your dreaming state, and tell yourself "That's imposible that could never happen in Real world, therefore If I see that I must be dreaming" doing that have worked amazingly for me it seems that my brain is keeping notes of what I'm telling him.

& About the RC I always use one I don't see why use more, but I really believe in the one I use (I use "Jedi Powers") So whenever I try to move something in real life I really really believe that I will do it like seriously put effort on it, I dont say "I know I'm awake and I know this will not work is just the RC protocol" That's why It doesn't work if you do it thinking that your brain wont even notice ur doing it, I'm more like "What if I'm sleep? How could I know? What if what I think is real is not? Dreaming works that way right?

anyway hope I helped I really want everyone to experience LD's ;P

I have a few pieces of advice for you as this commonly happened and still does every now and then to me.

Remember, when dreaming your brain turns off your working memory - which makes illogical things extremely easy to miss because you're not "lucid" in more ways than one - your brain is just Reacting to the situations because your logic isn't fully functioning. RCs will help if you perform them consistently but also confidence in the result of your RCs will definitely help. You could be performing RCs in the dreams and then somehow convincing yourself that you're not dreaming. This happened to me for a long time and it's something I think happens to a lot of people - especially if your in a social situation in your dreams.

Remember when you're performing an RC in real life to first convince yourself that You Cannot Possibly determine whether you're awake or asleep until you perform your RC. Most people shrug off the RC in the waking world as "I know I'm not dreaming but I'll perform this RC anyway." What they don't realize is that this carries over into the dream world. So you can be in a fantasy realm of ridiculous things and before your RC you've already convinced yourself you're not dreaming because you haven't accepted the fact that until you do it you don't know and, as before, your working memory is shut-down.

The other thing that contributes to this and ties in with the above, that you'll notice when you have your first LD, is just how Real dreams are. It shocked me in my first LD and still to this day amazes me in LDs - it's nearly indistinguishable from the real world - which is why convincing yourself that you don't know until you perform your RC is so important.

Good luck!

mainly you just need confidence, you have to get to a stage where you dont need any method or RC or anythign youd just know when a dream starts youll know. it has to be effortless the more effort youd put in the more dissapointed youd feel next day and wouldmake you loose motivation. just make it confident, effortless and as if its very unimportant if you become lucid or not just that youd know itll happen anyway.

Do you think about lucid dreaming a lot? Do you get anxious about it? Do you ever stress out about it?

I ask this because I've had the same problem before when I am trying really hard to have lucid dreams and failing. One thing that has helped me before is going "okay, I'm not going to try to have a lucid dream AT ALL for two weeks," and then taking a break completely... Sometimes when it feels like it's something you have to do, or want to do so badly, it can become stressful.

So, my advice would be to keep up the dream journal, continue talking about dreams/lucidity on the forum, and take it easy for a week or two and then start back up. I've found that a lot of the time in my "time-off" from lucid dreaming, I'll end up having surprise lucids :)