Thread: So far Always instantly drop out of dream after RC

Awesome work getting lucid so much! What's your secret?

I am sure that the level of awareness you have in your lucid dreams will only increase with practice. Good luck and welcome to DV! <3

Hi, thanks, then I will update again. I cannot say clearly what is the reason, but some possibilities:
- high motivation
- high dedication (litterally nothing else on my mind for the last 3-4 days since I began reading DV and I am also pretty dedicated in the practice of Hukifs RC, at least I try to)
- polyphasic sleeping - I sleep Dual Core 1 Extended (more about it on polyphasic.net), so one could say I have WBTB twice daily (so far the first core does not give me any dreams because it is mostly NREM, but I have a morning core where I can most times recall 2-3 vivid dreams und 1 more in the nap at noon). And I am not even fully thorugh adaptation, so I expect my dream quality and recall to improve more in the next 2 weeks.

Good job for your success!

If you've been as disciplined and as successful as you say here, it doesn't seem right to me that you would only be getting lucid when the dream is already unstable due to waking up. You said you had 3 lucids in one night... Although lucids are more likely to be before waking up, you should be getting some lucidity at other moments at this rate. It's very common for me to have lucid moments that come and go with a lot of dream before waking up. Everything I'm saying is from my feelings, I don't know the actual data. But given all this, I think you're waking yourself up as you gain lucidity.

Maybe you become too excited (1. too overwhelmed by emotion, 2. too alert, too awake).
Maybe you unconsciously think that being lucid is the death of the dream (1. You associate the "Aha, I am lucid" moment with waking up (from experience), 2. You associate dreaming with "It's all a dream! It's not real. Nothing here is real" so everything disappears).
Maybe you are not patient enough (As you gain lucidity, the dream might collapse and restart slowly. Maybe at this point you always assume that you're waking up and so you do, but what you need to do is be patient for the dream to slowly "reload." Think of it as a delayed response like Azo said in a recent thread.
Maybe all 3. You become lucid --> increased excitement + alertness --> dream starts collapsing. Simultaneously, you are expecting it to end as always. Also, you're thinking nothing in the dream is real so any stimuli loses its value and disappears. You are now feeling disconnected from the dream. It's over. You're feeling like you're waking up. You choose to wake up and you do.

I suggest you prepare to be calm as you become lucid. I actually have no idea about this so don't expect this to be a hard rule. But you are sleeping after all, so do take it chill the first times. Like someone's trying to sleep beside you so keep it quiet for them.
Then, I suggest you reflect on the substantial nature of dream. All stimuli may not come from an outer objective reality, but it's all connected. It comes from the biochemical structure of your brain. Accumulations of memories. Associations. Connections. It comes from your psyche. Your mind. And it's a real thing. And it's alive. It's not permanent, but it's as meaningful as anything.
And finally, I suggest when the dream collapses, be patient and accept the invitation to enter a new dream. Give it time to manifest.

Description of how I feel when waking:
- I think I often feel my body in waking reality already when doing the nose RC, but not always. Sometimes it only comes after I realized I am dreaming and the dream. starts to fade
- Also I am pretty sure that i do wake up, but I will keep my eyes closed and just wait to fall asleep again - it might have been a problem that on the other side I want to remember my dreams so i make myself wake up fully when I feel the dream has ended.
- Yes, I do get somewhat excited when I realize that it is a dream, but I never perceived this as a problem as it is rather minor, and after 20-25 dreams I am becoming accustomed to it
- I'd tend to think that I dont have any harming beliefs that you mentioned except maybe from experience that getting lucid means the end of the dream.
- I just have a small epiphany: Yesterday when I had the 3 dreams, 2 of them occurred **at the beginning** of the morning core. I know this because I always look on the clock after waking and recording a few bits. So You are absolutely right, these are most likely no natural awakenings in the sense that the sleep is over, I am waking up myself. I think it is a combination of wanting to record them + getting excited + being not fully relaxed when I go into sleep (I feel pretty relaxed in the moment of going to sleep, but i think subconsciously it is as if I expect difficulty attaining and then keeping lucidity, I guess) - also i dont set a strong intention of LDing consciously, i only suggest to myself to remember my dreams and am looking forward to them, but probably during the day subconsciously I set a pretty strong intention to LD because I think about it so often).
- Maybe another contributing factor is that I have great anticipation of my first long and clear lucid, so I value it greatly and thus i might be somewhat anxious about it ending prematurely. But with my recent success in inducing LDs, I can rest assured that I will have enough opportunities.

I think from now on, I believe that there is no externally imposed end of the dream (except alarms ), but that if I get the feeling of waking up it is just a short interruption or break and that I can easily continue the dream. This supports your suggestion of having a calm attitude and reflecting on the nature of the dream. Thanks!

Could You please elaborate on what you mean with I could be

too alert, too awake

?

Originally Posted by InvisibleO

- Also I am pretty sure that i do wake up, but I will keep my eyes closed and just wait to fall asleep again - it might have been a problem that on the other side I want to remember my dreams so i make myself wake up fully when I feel the dream has ended.
...
- I just have a small epiphany: Yesterday when I had the 3 dreams, 2 of them occurred **at the beginning** of the morning core. I know this because I always look on the clock after waking and recording a few bits. So You are absolutely right, these are most likely no natural awakenings in the sense that the sleep is over, I am waking up myself. I think it is a combination of wanting to record them + getting excited + being not fully relaxed when I go into sleep

It sounds like the usual recall vs. DEILD dilemma. Always choose DEILD. If it fails, you can still record later. If it works, you get something much better than what you are waking from (while still remembering something from the previous dream, maybe not everything, but still a lot, probably, because the subsequent lucid dream for some reason helps with remembering the previous non-lucid or pre-lucid dream).
Focusing on your dreams (including the work on the recall) should help you get lucid, not prevent you from it.

Originally Posted by InvisibleO

- I just have a small epiphany: Yesterday when I had the 3 dreams, 2 of them occurred **at the beginning** of the morning core. I know this because I always look on the clock after waking and recording a few bits. So You are absolutely right, these are most likely no natural awakenings in the sense that the sleep is over, I am waking up myself. I think it is a combination of wanting to record them + getting excited + being not fully relaxed when I go into sleep (I feel pretty relaxed in the moment of going to sleep, but i think subconsciously it is as if I expect difficulty attaining and then keeping lucidity, I guess) - also i dont set a strong intention of LDing consciously, i only suggest to myself to remember my dreams and am looking forward to them, but probably during the day subconsciously I set a pretty strong intention to LD because I think about it so often).

I have grown convinced that there's something about the way we learn about and practice lucid dreaming that inherently creates this subconscious expectation because of the lucid dream police trend I've seen from so many people. What I call the "lucid dream police" is when someone becomes lucid, and the dream characters start to oppose it, and stop them from doing this or that.

I think it's because we treat lucid dreaming as abnormal, as unnatural, for the elite, for the rare interested person. I like to think that all dreams are conscious dreams: even in non-lucid dreams, we are conscious enough to be aware of the dream. If we were unconscious during dreams, we wouldn't be seeing and feeling things, making decisions, thinking, and remembering. Lucid dreaming only means we recognize the experience as a dream, which honestly, doesn't require much more awareness. We've dreamed every day of our life, and we easily recognize it subconsciously, I think.

I dreamed last night that I got caught by an enemy and they injected me with my own blood, and then my corporal experience was weird, so I started narrating over the dream and saying I was now a spiritual being, that my gravity was opposite everyone else's and that I couldn't exist in water. And then as I said those things, I would experience them. I wasn't "lucid", but I was deciding the dream at this point. Doing this, then, thinking, wow, that's crazy, what if someone pulls me underwater, I will die!" I was simply engaged, but subconsciously, I clearly recognized I was dreaming or else I wouldn't be narrating and deciding the dream.

In that sense, lucid dreaming is not abnormal or unnatural. It is anything but. Nonlucid and lucid dreams are natural dreams. Our awareness belongs to dreams.

We shouldn't have a sense, as we become lucid, that we've woken up from unconscious slumber, that we are now in the unknown territory of lucid dreaming. It's a continuous experience. We've been dreaming all our life. No reason to wake up now all of a sudden.

Originally Posted by InvisibleO

Could You please elaborate on what you mean with I could be [too alert, too awake]?

I don't even know. But in sleeping, although we are evidently conscious, our brain has been numbed for sleep. Much of our cognition has been dimmed. I'm not sure how it is, but I imagine if your cognition is too highly activated, the brain might begin to wake up. For example, if you have an anxiety dream, you're likely to be nearly awake. And don't take what I am saying too seriously because I am only speaking from intuition. I don't know the facts. But I do think "lucid dreaming" requires a balance of cognition (higher than in the dream, lower than awake). But nothing that I would consciously think about.

Welcome to DreamViews! Becoming lucid and instantly waking is not something that’s been a regular issue for me though I’ve heard it’s a very common problem for many beginners. I wouldn’t worry though, the fact that you’re getting lucid so regularly is fantastic and arguably the hardest part. We all have our challenges to face and this is probably yours, at least for now. I’m sure practice and persistence will help you get past it.

When it does happen to me I always feel it’s because I’m so close to waking not because I’m at the end of a REM cycle but because to become lucid is to become more aware of yourself and you naturally become more aware of the fact that you’re laying in your bed as well and can wake up. Your teetering on that edge of being awake and you can very easily fall off and wake up. It’s a balancing act and you’re probably falling off a little too quickly. This is no fault of your own, perhaps you’re a lighter sleeper and closer to being awake when lucidity comes?

The only advice I can give is what works for stabilising my dreams. Once you become lucid instantly try to ground yourself in the dream. Touch the scenery around you, rub your hands together and inspect the detail and realism of your dream environment. After that keep moving, keep interacting. This always helps me to prolong my dreams though I’m still fairly new myself and sometimes lose it quicker then I’d like.

My personal belief is that lucidity comes when we’re close to being awake and to have that desire and want to wake more often in the night or morning is what brings us more often into that lucidity sweet spot. We’re half awake already when it happens because we want to wake up whether it’s for a WBTB or to recall our dreams. My first thought when ever I wake up on a morning is “What did I dream about? Was it lucid?” If you have that thought process clearly planted at the forefront of your mind then as you start to come close to waking but are still very much dreaming, that waking thought of “what did I dream about” slips in there and you realise I’m still dreaming and become lucid. Just my personal take.