Premature Awakening

hey everybody,

god I love having a site like this to come discuss. I've been having LD's intentionally since last february, for about 4 months I would have between 1 - 7 in a week, my longest lasting one being 10 minutes. During summer my life was kind of hectic and I sort of let my dreams fall to the back of my mind, but for the past month 2 month's I've been pretty heavy back into it. Right now, I'm probably having one lucid dream a week, lasting about 5 minutes.I'm becoming frustrated with the fact that no matter what technique I seem to use, my dream will fade.. and I can't always do everything I would like to do.

For example, my last LD I began to fly and repeated over and over to myself "I will not awake, my dream will not fade" and it worked for a bit, increasing vividness and my senses. Any premature technique pretty much does this for me, working temporarily.

I guess what I really want to get down to is, I want to be able to have lucid dreams that last as long as I want them to, and I want my subconscious mind to be the narrator.. I'm wanting something more spiritual and self-exploring than just being the controller and satisfying desires.

Has anybody had this problem and if so can you help me solve my problem?

Alright, you've probably heard of the rubbing your hands trick, but probably not why it works. Since your dream is just sensory information your brain kicks out, not getting input is what can wake you up. The people that wake up when they close their eyes are likely doing so because there is nothing visual to keep the dream going. Rubbing your hands gives lots of information to arguably the most important external body part.

In the flying dream you mentioned, you were doing just that: flying. Too far off the ground or going too fast to see things on the ground distinctly? You just lost visual stimulation. Too high up to hear much going on? Lost auditory. Not to mention the only tactile stimulation you will be getting in the air is probably the air rushing past, draining that much more detail.

The next time you find yourself lucid, let your subconscious handle the plot - but try and reject anything that would deprive you of sensory information. Not sure about you specifically, but a lot of people report that their subconscious seems to be predisposed to keep them away from lucidity. It's possible your subconscious has figured this all out and is using it to keep them short.

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Originally Posted by winnicki

For example, my last LD I began to fly and repeated over and over to myself "I will not awake, my dream will not fade" and it worked for a bit, increasing vividness and my senses. Any premature technique pretty much does this for me, working temporarily.

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One big problem with that particular suggestion is that you are using negations, and negations are bad. If I say to you "don't think of a pink elephant", you cannot avoid thinking of a pink elephant. The suggestion you used will only plant the suggestions "awake" and "fade" in your mind. It could be improved a lot by phrasing it positively: "I will keep dreaming, the dream will stay vivid".

Another problem is that you are talking about the future. Talking about the future can only weaken a suggestion. So if we prase the suggestion in the present tense it becomes: "I keep dreaming, the dream stays vivid". This suggestion is far more powerful and more likely to work.

thanks for the replies, I have a response for each of you but as well one question for all of you. What is the longest lucid dream you've had?

for licity --

I have heard of the hand trick and the reasoning behind it, I'm almost finished reading "exploring the world of lucid dreaming" by leberge and rheingold. You do make a good point about the lack of sensory information, and I have noticed sometimes if I'm flying too fast, it's almost as if my mind cannot produce the landscape fast enough for me.

In the same dream I described to you, I tried flying up to the top of a mountain so that I could look out over the city. Anytime I would fly towards it my dream would start to fade, and I couldn't figure out why. Perhaps it's because of lack of stimulation. I will definitely try the rubbing hands trick

for imj --

I guess I use a combination of a few methods. I wear a watch and throughout my day anytime I check the time I do a state check and check the time twice to make sure nothing has morphed. This has worked a lot for me. Besides the watch, I have a list of dream signs collected from my DJ and do state checks whenever any of them appear. I also use MILD and I have WILDed on a few occasions. Lastly, I've been experimenting with melatonin, vitamin B6 from a standard supplement store and as well as mugwort and dream tea (still need to get what the ingredients are) from a good friend who works at a natural herb store.

for thor --

funny that you brought this up because my friend told me the exact same thing later that day. I think that this might be the key reason for having less LD's lately. I remember when I first started practicing lucidity, I would achieve it almost nightly. I think it's because I knew that I could do it and never worried about dreams fading and such. So I'm going to meditate on positive outcomes and believe that I can have it happen so easily once again.. and I should be back :).

Something to realize is if you wake up from a sort LD, you are probably still in the middle of a REM (dream) period. So just do a DEILD and return to the dream, stabilize it (notice how clear, real and solid it all is), and get on with what you were going for.