anyone else has this problem when you are lucid?

[Iriba]

getting lucid for me is already hard as hell, but when i finally get lucid i try everything to make my dream look as real as real life and never works, also i can never feel my dream body there i already tried - rub hands - spin around - touch stuff, feeling their texture (normally i touch walls) - looking at hands - telling my dream to increase it's vividness, or feel as real as real life all of these failed, and when i fail i also start to lose lucidity eventually for some reason i can't understand. is it just me having this problem? it's like the 6th or 7th time it happened by now and i have no idea what to do anymore...

[Occipitalred]

In that situation, I allow the dream to have delay, that is, I tell myself it will take a bit of time for the dream to load all the details but they will come, and I continue giving the lack of detail little attention. I focus on my other goal. It's not so important that all the details be perfect. If you pay attention to "real life," you'll notice, everything your not paying attention is really blurry actually. Like you, I often end up touching walls and they're very vivid, but they don't really help making anything else vivid. I just accept that what's vivid in the dream will likely be what I pay attention to and the rest will be as blurry as it would be in real life and that's just the way it is. What I think helps is having goals and direction. When we become lucid, I think we tend to lose focus. The new focus is our newly gained infinite freedom. It's no longer the dream plot. So, I think this leads to a decrease in vividness because there is no more focus. Know what you want to do before you lucid dream so that when you do, as you realize your infinite freedom, you know where to focus it, and then the dream can load the details around that. If you just say "I'm lucid. Everything in the dream until now is not real. Look at hands, touch walls," that's not the greatest seed of creativity to help the dream form. I like visualizing my dreams so that I know the sort of thing I want to do when I get there. Instead of daydreaming, I'll just "lucid daydream." I'm still just working on that to move away from touching walls but I hope that this practice will help with my in-dream creativity.

[Hilary]

Besides the excellent suggestions above, another tactic I use to increase vividness is to declare "Increase clarity now!" to the dream when lucid. It always works for me (it may or may not work for you).

[DarkestDarkness]

Iriba, I too rarely have lucid moments, despite having actively been into lucid dreaming for plenty of years now, so I can imagine how you might feel. At the worst of times I find it quite frustrating, though most of the time it's just an annoyance, as I often think about how I still have plenty of time, in principle, to have more lucid experiences. Because of my health, my experience on vividness and detail (especially while lucid) seems to be that it relates a lot to that aspect of "health". When I've been at my best in terms of health is also when I've had my most vivid dreams and is also when I am typically more likely to actually become lucid. Perhaps this is not a usual relationship between things for most people. From my experience alone, I would encourage you to find out if there's something that is impacting your sleep, mood patterns or physical/mental health in a significant way and think about whether you can improve this or not. My personal opinion only, I think sometimes creating improvement in a specific part of our lives is not about direct intervention in that area in itself. So it could be the case that affecting something in a less direct way can create improvements too.

[ZAD]

The two things that work for me are verbal commands like "Clarity Now!" and focusing specifically on a small portion of the ground, for instance the grass. Not just anywhere, a nearby section of the ground is preferable. Focus your sense of vision and touch. This may just be an imposed schema coming from my work with of 3d rendering techniques, but I find decreasing the scope of visuals that your mind needs to "render" while you're first getting established in the lucid can help stabilize you enough to start exploring the rest. If a scene is by nature too complex, I'll phase through a wall, a window, or the floor to open into a new room or scene. Often times this does the trick. Other times, it seems like I'm destined to have a short and blurry dream at this specific time due to where I am in my sleep cycle, my environment, or my physiology at the time. In these cases, it's best to enjoy the moments of lucidity you have and let the scene naturally transition or end, trying instead to hold on to your awareness so that you can become lucid more easily at another time in the night. Never become too attached to the idea of getting lucid right now -- a little bit of patience and resilience goes a long way. Cheers!

[Sivason]

I think you are doing good. The truth is LDs are almost never as vivid as real life. It is not like the Matrix where you experience everything from real life. Parts of it may become vivid but other things may fade. You focus on a turtle in the sand and it becomes wonderfully clear. Did you notice that you can no longer hear the seagulls and waves? We do not really feel our whole body while awake. We focus on obvious things like what our hands are doing or a discomfort we have. Work on getting things clear but be satisfied with much less than real life quality. Here is a Master tip: Think about what Occipitalred said about "I tell myself it will take a bit of time for the dream to load all the details" and think of the dream as software being processed by a computer (your brain). What do you do if you want to play a high resolution game on a PC which does not have an adequate video card? You can turn down the visual details so the game runs faster. Often you can continue a lucid that would have collapsed the same way. You reduce the clarity and amount rendered and it allows the processing to catch up. I may focus on tying my shoes in black and white low resolution until things catch up. This saves me from many lucid dreams ending before I want. You can experiment just in changing the amount of detail but do not worry about pushing it too far. What if that is not enough for you? Back to the video game situation, you can upgrade the video card to get more out of the game. How? Time and many lucids and building the visualizing part of your mind. If you really want to put in the work, the results can be amazing. Here is a link to a lesson about doing this.

[FlyingFree]

Almost all my Lucid dreams/WILD's start out with not sight. Its especially hard to get sight when I haven't done it in a long time. The more I phase, the quicker and easier sight comes. All the points you mentioned in your first post work for me Seems to me, its about engaging your 'dream senses' and expecting to see something. Sometimes, I just run randomly in one direction until vision works. Usually touching things with my invisible hands works. Rub them together vigorously and clap them too. Sounds help anchor your consciousness in your new reality too. How often are you getting lucid? Work on increasing regularity and like me, I think it will go away.