Troubleshooting Ultra-Short DILD's

Hey guys,

So I've been doing a lot more mindfulness and reality checking lately, and it has come to fruition! Over the past two weeks, I've become lucid three times (two of which were last night)! I'm incredibly excited about this, but there's one problem: Each of these only lasted about 20 seconds or less. Here's a description of what's happening:

1) I enter the dream, and things go normally.
2) Eventually, at some point, I just realize I'm dreaming (not for any particular reason).
3) I look at my hands, and usually notice I've got 12 fingers, or a ridiculously large thumb.
4) I rub my hands to get my touch sense going.
5) I keep rubbing until the rubbing really feels real.
6) I either stop, or not, but either way I end up waking up.

Overall, these things last about 20 seconds, and usually end within ten seconds of finishing rubbing my hands. Generally, it seems like I never get fully "immersed;" it never feels quite real.

Any tips you guys know of?

Thanks,
Jelly

I'd suggest taking a look at the Dream Stabilization and Clarity tutorial. It goes over how to stabilize the dreams (which it sounds like you may be having trouble with) and how to prolong a dream which is about to end. You've got it with the hand rubbing technique to cement yourself in the dream, but I'd suggest taking it a bit further. Just like when you do a RC while awake, you really want to focus on the "feel" of the dream. Focus on all of your senses and really try to immerse yourself in the dream. The point of rubbing your hands together is that it incorporates the physical touch and heat that is generated. You can also try grabbing nearby objects and "grounding" yourself to the dream.

You can also use vocal commands to stabilize the dream. Simple things like "Stabilize!" or other short mnemonics can help a surprising amount. Just be sure you are very convicted in what you're saying. Just repeating them over and over won't do anything if you don't mean it (as is most things in lucid dreaming).

Chances are you can tell when the dream is about to end. Things my get fuzzier or darker or you may even begin to feel your physical body laying in bed (I often do). When this happens you can either try rubbing your hands together again, or try spinning yourself around. Literally just twirl yourself. The tutorial linked above goes into more detail about these techniques and provides more examples but these are the ones I personally use.

Also, if you can feel yourself begin to fade from the dream and your last ditch efforts aren't working, try using this time to prep for a DEILD. DEILDS are often performed after normal dreams but they can be much easier after lucid dreams. Since a key factor or DEILDs is remaining still when you wake up, you can use your lucidity to prep yourself for this.

Lastly, things like dream length, stability, and clarity will increase with experience. Most of my first lucids were also very short, around 20 or 30 seconds, and my level of dream control was fairly low. Once I started nearing 10 LDs I really began to take control of my dreams and had lucids reaching some significant length. I still have the occasional 10 second LD, but they're becoming more scarce the longer I work at it :)

One thing I'd note is that dream experiences do feel different than waking experiences. There may be many things that have waking-level qualities, various senses at various times for example. But dreams are dreams, they tend to be fluid and dynamic.

Another thing I'd note is that beginning LD practitioners tend to get lucid right at the end of their sleep for the night in the final sleep cycle while the mind is in the process of waking up for the day. With continued practice, you can get lucid more earlier and earlier in the night, so the experiences will last longer the more you do it.

Finally, practice lucidity throughout the waking day. Try to balance involvement in your experiences (critically reflecting on the nature of your experience) along with active participation. Lucid dreaming is one big balancing act: balancing relaxation with focus, detachment with involvement, and so on.

You're getting lucid so that's great! Keep it up, both your day and night work, and the experiences will continue to deepen over time.


And don't stress about waking. Instead, focus on concrete, short mini-goals, things that don't take a lot of time or concentration/effort to do. Focus on how much you're enjoying the dream, and they will last longer.

Hey Jellyd0nut, I used to have the exact same problem as you. Instead of simply rubbing your hands together, you could try sitting down on the floor and paying attention to every single detail in the dream. Sort of like meditating with your eyes open. Look around at everything and attempt to heighten the detail, feel the ground beneath you and focus intently on any sounds you can hear. Be completely present in the dream and this will inevitably boost your awareness.

I now do this whevever I become lucid and now my lucid dreams last a looot longer! Best of luck :)

Hey guys,

Thank you all for your awesome replies. I'll definitely have to try some stuff! I've been surprised lately at the effect of simply taking active notice of odd things throughout the day on the frequency of my LD's. Since I gave that last post, I've had 2 (possibly 3) more -- something I never thought would be able to happen.

Now that I've got the frequency, I've just got to get the immersion I'm looking for. It seems to me as I surf the forum that most of people's LD's are pretty 'meh' (definitely still cool though), but every now and then they get one that's outstanding and euphoric. I just can't wait until I get mine.

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

Finally, practice lucidity throughout the waking day. Try to balance involvement in your experiences (critically reflecting on the nature of your experience) along with active participation. Lucid dreaming is one big balancing act: balancing relaxation with focus, detachment with involvement, and so on.

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I certainly haven't been the best about being actively lucid throughout the day -- for me, LD's have taken the backburner for the time being. What seems to work well for me is just catching myself in the middle of whatever I'm doing to do a mental reality check. There's a certain sensation that comes with the realization of being lucid, so I try to replicate it as much as I can in waking life.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ImpossibleMinds

Instead of simply rubbing your hands together, you could try sitting down on the floor and paying attention to every single detail in the dream. Sort of like meditating with your eyes open. Look around at everything and attempt to heighten the detail, feel the ground beneath you and focus intently on any sounds you can hear.

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Thank you, ImpossibleMinds. This is something that I did in one of my best lucids, and it really helped. I completely forgot about the technique though. I realized I was dreaming when I was in a supply closet, then stared very intently at a microwave for a few seconds, taking it all in. I did the same thing with a stack of donuts in the same dream. The detail is unreal, but it was very cool. Thanks for the reminder!

Have a goal, or get one fast, if you aren't doing anything in your dream its sure to end. So make your goal to look around corners, or find some number of items, or ask 10 DC something.

be careful not to set a goal like finding 10 hub caps or something, next thing you know everything is made out of them and next thing you know your goal is done, and your dream might end.

Moving around itself can be stabilizing. Get a goal, get moving. Alternatively you could try focus and meditation, but I think if your already doing hand rubbing that is plenty of that, don't forget to revert back to it if your exploring/goal-seeking begins to destabilize. But while your doing it think of your goal and then when done get moving. Maybe when you RC in real life tick off a predetermined possible goal as you count each of your real fingers then rub your hands, remember one of your recent dreams and think of what would have been a good goal for that dream (a target of opportunity, like if you had been on a beach, find 10 awesome shells or some such).

Hey guys!

Guess what happened last night? LUCID! And the first thing that I remembered was cooleymd's response.

So...

First off, I don't know exactly why I became lucid, but I did. I looked at my hands, realized I had twelve fingers, and then rubbed a little bit. Meanwhile, I tried to remember what I was going to do, and cooleymd's technique came to mind first, but with a little typo. I happened to remember him saying "try looking for 10 hubcaps," but I forgot about that being wrong. I thought to myself, "10 hub caps? What's the fun in that?" and I tried thinking of something that would be more interesting.

In reality, he said:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cooleymd

be careful not to set a goal like finding 10 hub caps or something, next thing you know everything is made out of them and next thing you know your goal is done, and your dream might end.

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The first thing that came to mind was one of my long-time goals: shoot a firearm in a LD. So, I thought that I would try looking for 10 guns. At first, I was a skeptic, but then I happened to use a little dream control. I saw this desk, and created the expectation within my mind that there was a gun in the keyboard tray, and sure enough, there was! It was a Welrod-type thing, but it shot ball bearings. I took a few shots with it, and it was nice! Then, I created the expectation that if I fiddled with it a bit, I could get it to shoot full-auto, which it did!

This was not only a great step forward in terms of stabilization, but also in dream control, and I can't thank cooleymd enough for the advice. This dream was one of my longest LD's yet, reaching about a minute. It's still not much, but I could imagine there's a bit of a learning curve.

I think the biggest takeaway for me from that advice was in, "Get a goal, get moving." I realize now that all of my previous short LD's were short because I had no idea what to do. What's the point of being lucid if you're not going to do anything?

Thank you so much,
Jelly

p.s. I'll be sure to post when I try ImpossibleMinds' technique soon!

You might as well confess it, when you looked at what you shot there on the wall were 10 hub caps that all had jelly-donut-holes in them :)

and yes have a plan

think back to each of your many recent non-lucid dreams, imagine yourself becoming lucid and think what would a goal be here, I'm next to the river (breath underwater)
I'm by a skyscraper (walk straight up the wall)

relive the dream with your eyes closed, remember a stupid transition like suddenly being up higher and sliding down, imagine you detected it and became lucid. I'm high on a slope ---> skate board at high speed

have a plan for every situation. When you are in a dream your prospective memory will almost certainly be crap but if you have thought of two-hundred goals one will come to you.

I'm by a river 1) breath under water 2) walk on water 3) draw excaliber 4) summon a hot mermaid 5... N) whatever

1-3 minutes is a respectable lucid dream :)
only some will be in the 3-6 min category and some in the 6-10
the most important thing is to learn from every experience

experience is the most important thing

I learned to survive the void, and come out the other side (doubling the time in half of my longer lucid dreams)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cooleymd

have a plan for every situation. When you are in a dream your prospective memory will almost certainly be crap but if you have thought of two-hundred goals one will come to you.

I'm by a river 1) breath under water 2) walk on water 3) draw excaliber 4) summon a hot mermaid 5... N) whatever

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Oooh, yeah. I'll have to come up with a list for this kinda stuff. Thanks!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cooleymd

I learned to survive the void, and come out the other side (doubling the time in half of my longer lucid dreams)

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Whoa... what do you mean by this? Sounds very epic. You mean that you retained consciousness after a dream ended and remained so in the next?

I will recount two non-lucid dreams only the last part of each of them. One was a nightmare of epic proportions. We'll call it 'Fearing the Darkness'

The other was a momentous dream (more impactful for all that came before what I will describe but that is another matter, it was a long dream, recalled in great detail) we will call this second dream 'Fearing the Light'

It was a momentous dream because it taught me to survive the void, I unlike you knew what it means to survive the void, but this was the dream that taught me, a non-lucid dream. The next time I was lucid I ended up in the void, and I survived.

'Fearing the Darkness': I was with a couple of joker type guys they handed me a device, it was a bit like opera glasses, they said look into it its great, they laughed a bit. I held it up to my eyes they laughed some more, and flash a bright light, and then darkness, as I listened to them laugh I knew I had been tricked I thought of wandering around lashing out trying to kill them but that didn't seem to matter much at the moment as I realized this wasn't temporary, I had been permanently blinded. I awoke in terror.

You don't forget a dream like that.

'Fearing the Light' : As I said this dream was long and impactful and I spent a long long time recalling all of the first part of the dream before I analyzed the import of the latter part, but it is that latter part that taught me void survival so I will only retell it.

I was on a cat walk near the old powerhouse in Folsom California, and the Auburn bridge had been built right thru the building, I walked inside it was dimly lit and cars were coming almost straight at me at speed and then suddenly turning 90 degrees straight down and zooming over the edge (nothing to trigger off here, our capacity for stupidity in dreams is endless). suddenly the cars were gone. but I knew there must be a space beneath me since that is where they went, I was in a dim room, lit by a covered lamp. Then I heard voices, I head someone being beaten by an extortionist. I listened, I heard punches, groans, the chambering of a weapon, I was afraid, I began to fear that if I could hear them maybe they could hear me too. I was in a dim room but I wasn't safe they were right down that stairway just below me in another dim dark place. I moved to the light I reached under the canvas I clicked the rotor switch, I was safe in the darkness. I listened as the beating continued. Then something momentous happened tho I didn't realize it until much latter analyzing the dream (remember the first part of the dream was much more important to me). What happened was the light just came back on. I was surprised how could it happen I had turned it off, but I'm a smart guy I knew what to do I reached again beneath the canvas and I unscrewed the bulb, no way its going to come on again, (of course in reality turning a light off and on in the darkness is a good way to get noticed but) I was once again safe in the darkness. Here comes the lesson I learned, after a good while (remember light can't come back on now), guess what it starts to get light again, an old woman is walking up behind me carrying a lantern. I hear the voice below suddenly stop talking I see a shadow of a tall thin woman, the shadow of her gun, of her silencer, I hear her footsteps climbing the stairs, I'm doomed. I wake from fright.


The very next time I was lucid and I destabilized I entered the void as I had many times yet I had never survived it, always there in the void rubbing and rubbing my hands to my doom, but this time I knew, I KNEW...


sure we all fear the darkness

but what the dream had taught me is that dreams abhor a vacuum

Oh sure if your an Expert at WILDing you can find yourself asleep in a sensation-less void and just float in the nothingness, no sight, no sound, no taste, no smell, no touch, and just lay there with out having to pay for a sensory deprivation tank, and wake up feeling a great sense of accomplishment, but lets face it that's not the dream for me.

I learned that dreams don't want to be dark, just like the secret was for you to get up and go, if you stay in the void, the light WILL return, it had returned twice in my non lucid dream and I just needed it to return once. I sat patiently in the void rubbing KNOWING the dreamscape or a dreamscape would return and it DID :) I had survived the void.

Now I survive about half the voids I enter If I am quick enough to start rubbing my hands, tho sometimes I will emerge in a false awakening and start false journaling, or even once I got to a new dreamscape and immediately thought this isn't my dreamscape and woke myself up (DOH!)

I have even been in the void and thought I don't care what dreamscape comes, I'll take any random dreamscape (the result Mesh-Kevlar-Armor-World a high tech world of hotties dressed in mess Kevlar that were retreating to the sound of a Klaxon thru glass towers as armies of zombie like un-armed Cuban soldiers slowly meandered towards them, never again will I hope for a random dreamscape, tho I did have fun and lasted several more minutes)

Surviving the void means you stabilize and wait for a new dreamscape and I have now done it many times :) but it was that stubborn light bulb and the old woman with the lantern that taught me to survive :)

Wow... I've heard of the concept of jumping through a window, or a mirror to find a new dreamscape, but never one like this "void." Would you describe the void as an area between dreams, or the result of something like closing one's eyes within a dream? Is it essentially your method of switching dreamscapes? Is it a challenge to stay lucid in the void?

You'll know the void when you encounter it. It is basically a loss of dream environment: it could be dark (mostly mine are dark), it could be white/light. It seems to be a sort of "holding place" where your dreaming mind is resting a bit from the work of dreaming before continuing. The most important thing is to realize that landing in the void does *not* mean that the dream is over. If you keep thinking about dream plans and maintain some movement (dancing, walking, flying), and think about where you'd like to be next, very often (most often with practice) your LD will continue and regain visuals in a few moments.

I agree on the earlier comments that movement helps, and keeping goals in mind is key. My best and longest LDs have arisen when I had clear, multiple dream goals and I kept them in mind in the dream moving from goal to goal. But I'd avoid jumping into movement without first having the first goal firmly in mind or you can risk losing lucidity. I think an initial moment scanning your surroundings, letting things stabilize, and affirming your lucidity before moving (too far or too fast at least) is very helpful.

Every dream like every dreamer is unique, however some things in dreams and dreamers are the same

Lucid dreams (/dream chains) end in 1 of 3 ways, you wake up (sometimes intentionally), you false awaken (and don't realize it), you just lose lucidity.

but dreamscapes all end too, eventually,

but what is the same for pretty much all dreamers is they don't end all at once, almost always vision is the first to go and touch is the last to go, so if you have lost your vision, even your sound, and smell and taste have gone too, still you can be in the dream still aware, all three fates are still possible but there is a fourth fate, you survive to a new dreamscape, rub rub rub wait wait wait as I say dreams abhor a vacuum, if you are at the end of REM even then you're not doomed, of course the caveat above '/dream chains' still applies a more advanced dreamer then I might intentionally micro-awaken and rDEILD into a new lucid dream in their chain (but I have only succeeded in DEILD once or twice)

but if you are not at the end of REM then your odds are fairly good, I reach the void about 1/2 to 1/3 of the time when I destabilize, and I survive in the void at least many seconds to a few minutes, and survive to a new (/similar) dreamscape about 1/2 the times I enter it :)

I think a simple and practical way to approach it is always assume that you're still dreaming. Just continue on with your dreaming thoughts and plans, take off flying and expect visuals to return, and they usually will.

Here FryingMan hits an important point in void survival

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

Just continue on ...

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Just as in your dream having a plan, taking an action, keeping moving is what helped stabilize your dream and let it last a whole minute, one of the best things if your in the void is get up and go.

Sometimes I'll be standing up when I begin to destabilize, and the void closes in around me I clap my hands together and rub rub rub, but then I realize I'm not still standing now in the nothingness it feels like I'm lying down, once I realize this I get up and go. Just jump up and hit the floor take off running (DON'T STOP RUBBING YOUR HANDS, or otherwise engaging the last sense to go Touch), how many possibilities are there, you just run forever unlikely, you smash head first into a wall, you fall off a cliff into a bottomless pit, maybe but the most likely outcome is that you when your feet hit the floor your dreamscape will render a floor, when you hit the wall your dreamscape will render a wall, sight will likely return.

Another trick I love is (all while rubbing my hands) feel for a door handle and open it, you will expect the door handle to be on a door (and not a hellen keller trick) and when the door opens you will expect to see and likely you will :)

in any case don't just lie there Go, Get Moving just like last time it will dramatically increase your chance of extending the dream,

Even If I lose the dream scape 5 seconds in and stay in the void for 1.5 minutes and never make it out, I was still lucid for 1.5+ minutes it is a victory.

This void stuff is really intriguing to me. I don't think I've had an LD long enough for me to experience the void, or I simply haven't noticed it, but it will be very interesting when I do.

I love the sound of the door handle trick. That sounds useful even in non-void situations. I'll definitely try that next time! I've found that the setting I become lucid in is typically not of much use for my goals.

Have you guys tried closing your eyes within the dream and opening them up to a new dreamscape?

I wouldn't generally intentionally try closing my eyes (tho some set a goal to have a dream within a dream and lay down and close their eyes and essentially wait for sight to return even tho they don't open their eyes, hence a supposed dream within a dream, in reality it is like choosing to be in a void of blindness, to me it seems pretty stupid, since stabilizing and avoiding the void is the best route, entering a void is only a goal if I want to commit dream suicide because the current dreamscape truly sucks)

However, in my most epic dream, I did enter the void and survive it, but when my sight returned it was dim and blurry. This dream was epic for many reasons, but one of the good things about it was that I used verbal commands (something I hardly ever remember to even bother to do), so I decided to close my eyes and say "Get Clearer". Well it sort of worked, I opened my eyes and was in a nearly pitch black dreamscape, but I could make out beams and walls and counters and they were all perfectly sharp, no blurriness here. Of course this sucked, so I closed my eyes and this time said "Get Brighter" when I opened my eyes it was a nice sharp twilight, at this point I took a wiser approach and kept my eyes open and got moving (in no time it was brightening up).

In general even tho this bit of stupidity did work I would generally recommend you keep your eyes open. If you think of opening your eyes in a dream, what if you accidentally suggest to yourself that your real eyes open, you might wake up.

Void is not found in my dreams usually... It is connected to deep meditation for me and OBE.

ground yourself right away