Thread: What am i doing wrong?

Are you thoroughly RCing, or doing it unconciously? If you do it unconsciously, then you may miss an obvious thing, like you have six fingers, but you still say your hands look perfectly normal. What you must do is ask yourself, "am I dreaming?" Then you must do your RCs ocnsciously, actually making sure it's the truth, not just saying it looks normal or is impossible. Then use this as evidence, and say somthing like, "because of this I am not dreaming." Finally to add a self suggestion factor to it, say to yourself, "but next time I am dreaming, I will become lucid" or something similar. I am saying this from my experience of having 3 LDs in 2 weeks after about a month of no LDs recently. 2 were on days I did many good RCs. I know this may seem tedious to do, but even carefully doing this with multiple RCs as evidence for my, "I am/ am not dreaming conclusion", it takes less than 10 seconds to do, and it is well worth it.

Originally posted by PenguinLord13
Are you thoroughly RCing, or doing it unconciously? If you do it unconsciously, then you may miss an obvious thing, like you have six fingers, but you still say your hands look perfectly normal. What you must do is ask yourself, "am I dreaming?" Then you must do your RCs ocnsciously, actually making sure it's the truth, not just saying it looks normal or is impossible. Then use this as evidence, and say somthing like, "because of this I am not dreaming." Finally to add a self suggestion factor to it, say to yourself, "but next time I am dreaming, I will become lucid" or something similar. I am saying this from my experience of having 3 LDs in 2 weeks after about a month of no LDs recently. 2 were on days I did many good RCs. I know this may seem tedious to do, but even carefully doing this with multiple RCs as evidence for my, "I am/ am not dreaming conclusion", it takes less than 10 seconds to do, and it is well worth it.

Yeah i probably only do about 5 full out RCs a day. Most others are very quick and absent minded. This is mainly because i am studying for exams. Thanks for the advice. When summer starts i will try a day (when i have nothing to do) of like 50 intense reality checks, and see what happens.

Im going to try to listen to that mp3 tonight. So that may help as well.

Be patient. 18 days is nothing. Having 4 dreams a night, you are doing fine. Just keep trying and it will come to you.

It's as Carlthungis said.

Patience is one of the most important, if not the most important thing about lucid dreaming. Keep trying very actively but never get discouraged. Always hope to have a lucid dream, but never expect you will surely have one. That will only discourage you. It seems to me like you're doing fine, and you will probably have a LD pretty soon.

Also, autosuggestion might help you. You might already be doing this, but what I'm talking about it telling yourself to try and recognize the dream state and become lucid. When doing this, however, it is also important not to tell yourself something like: "I must have a lucid dream tonight!". This will only discourage you. Instead, you might try something along the lines of: "Tonight, or in the near future, I will have a lucid dream".

Finally, the fact that you're studying for exams means you head can't be on lucid dreaming all the time. If you don't succeed during your exams, you surely will after they are over.

Whatever you do, don't worry about it. Know you're going to succeed sooner or later.

Thanks for the adivice guys. I'll give those ideas a shot. Ive started to do more intense reality checks. Such as saying out loud the reasons why i am not dreaming and tht in the future i will continue to check my reality.

I am enjoying the process. thanks for the help. Im sure it will come soon.

Originally posted by .jared.
The closest i have come is telling someone I was in a dream in a dream. I realized that what i had done was not normal. But im not to sure, because it was so quick.

I got news for you man, that was almost definitely a lucid dream. Here's a quote from the Dream Views "What is Lucid Dreaming?" article:

...lucid dreaming is simply dreaming while being aware you are dreaming. You can think of lucid dreaming as being conscious while dreaming. If, by chance, during a dream it suddenly dawns on you that you are dreaming, then you have experienced a lucid dream, regardless of whether you have been able to attain control of your dream.[/b]

Now, consider this: why would you say to someone that you were in a dream unless you had sincerely realized that you were in a dream? I can't think of any circumstances in which I would tell someone in real life that I was dreaming. I concede that it is possible that you could have mindlessly uttered the phrase "I'm in a dream," but the chances are slim to none.

Do you see where I'm going with this? If you were aware that you were dreaming (which you appear to have been), even if only for a few moments, than you experienced a lucid dream. A bit anti-climactic, eh? Don't worry, most people's firsts are. Keep in mind that it is extremely common, especially among new lucid dreamers, to quickly forget again that you're dreaming. Your brain literally does not function the same while you're asleep as it does while you're awake, so don't beat yourself up over it. However, it should be encouraging to know that after only 2 and a half weeks, you've already become lucid once. You're definitely getting somewhere. Keep doing what you're doing .

Originally posted by DuB

Now, consider this: why would you say to someone that you were in a dream unless you had sincerely realized that you were in a dream? I can't think of any circumstances in which I would tell someone in real life that I was dreaming. I concede that it is possible that you could have mindlessly uttered the phrase "I'm in a dream," but the chances are slim to none.

Do you see where I'm going with this? If you were aware that you were dreaming (which you appear to have been), even if only for a few moments, than you experienced a lucid dream. A bit anti-climactic, eh? Don't worry, most people's firsts are. Keep in mind that it is extremely common, especially among new lucid dreamers, to quickly forget again that you're dreaming. Your brain literally does not function the same while you're asleep as it does while you're awake, so don't beat yourself up over it. However, it should be encouraging to know that after only 2 and a half weeks, you've already become lucid once. You're definitely getting somewhere. Keep doing what you're doing .

Thanks for the encouragement. The thing that just caused me to wonder is i cant remember if i directly knew that i was in a dream. it was somewhat like 2 scenes in a movie.

Scene 1: I warp the walls (no thoughts of dreaming are in my mind)

scene 2: (completely new place) i tell someone that (in the previous scene) i warped the walls because i was dreaming.

then i wake up.

So the thing is i don't directly know if in scene two i knew i was dreaming. However I think that i may have (it was very hazy and quick). But i think that i wouldn't have woken up had i not realized i was dreaming. Either way I choose to view it as progress and i will call it a lucid dream.

Thanks for the encouragement everyone.