When Dream Signs, Dream Synbols and Waking Life Training does not work...

[DreamBliss]

Once upon a time when I started to initiate Lucid Dreams I used Dream Signs, in my case common places that appeared in my dreams. At some point I stopped going to those familiar places in my dreams for some reason, and when I did end up in one of them they were heavily camouflaged and unrecognizable until after the fact. So that way of attaining lucidity stopped working for me, and this is still the case. I managed to wrest control again by putting up signs that say, "Is this a dream?" or, "Am I dreaming?", what I have called, "Waking Life Training" around various things I commonly use around my room. That worked for a while, and I am still training myself, but these objects and the related questions I am trained to ask no longer appear in my dreams. I have tried to use the, "deja-vu" experiences as signs but they now appear only inconsistently. I finally understand what these are I think, according to Stephen Berlin (he has some cool videos at YouTube) there is a group of people who subscribe to the idea of a sort of dream memory bank. That we have two, a dream memory bank and our typical waking life memory bank. It is difficult to connect the two. But this would explain why I constantly get this sense of "deja-vu", intermittent but constant (meaning it is still happening), because my mind has chosen to recycle my dream memories for some reason, maybe more than is normal. Wandered off topic there, but returning back now my main point is that all typical ways of training one's self to lucid dream no longer will work for me. So what would you recommend I try next? My idea, at present, is perhaps to start setting an intention that I will be fully lucid and remember my dreams every night as I go to sleep. Then look for any sense of something familiar. Not deja-vu, just something familiar. Use that to get lucid, and when that fails look for something that looks unfamiliar. Since my mind can only manufacture familiar or unfamiliar things I would trap it, always being able to become lucid, because when I sense the familiar or unfamiliar I could use that sense to ask myself, "Am I dreaming?" But I'm curious... Is there a way to sidestep this most likely lengthy process? Shorten it? Is there something a person can use that would, true or false, be induced by the same feeling, perception, etc.? Something already present in the majority of people's dreams? I hope I made that clear enough... What I am looking for here is something that upon seeing it, interacting with it in some way or feeling it I can train myself to ask, "Am I asleep, is this a dream?" and gain lucidity. But this something, whatever it is, is not something the mind can take away or easily camouflage or anything else. You know, short circuit whatever it is in my mind that tries to keep me from being lucid. I think another approach I may try is to write a script for a mental movie where I go into my mind, seeing it as a computer, and I turn off whatever system my mind is using to keep me from becoming lucid. To do this I need to understand this system. Are there any books, videos, etc. that cover this you could recommend? I appreciate the help! Oh and one final off the topic request... Does anyone know of any free/open source for Windows, program (not website) that can take the spoken words in an audio file and convert them to text? Thinking about trying to improve my dream recall by using the mic on my mp3 player. Thanks! - DreamBliss