I've wandered these forums for a while now, and have tried to devour all the relevant info to help me in my lucidity endeavours. I'd only had one (remembered) lucid dream in my life before my introduction to this site, but since this my attempts have been nothing but a futile struggle. After a very successful night last night, with multiple lucids (that is, second and third ever), i think i've worked out the necessary element to attaining lucidity and detailed dream recall.

Obviously, i can only speak for myself, but doing so, i am perfectly sincere in saying that i'm confident that my success was due almost entirely to the seemingly silly "psyching up" beforehand. I'd in the past tried that which is mentioned on these forums of 'telling myself to remember my dreams' before going to sleep, but had never done so more than half-heartedly. But last night i made a great effort to be conscious of nothing but the concept of dreams when fading into sleep.

Up until now i've not only failed in the lucidity attempts but also even in recall. As such, i'd become impatient with the whole process, and it was this impatience that lead to my attempts at cheap shots at efficiency. That is, rather than just trying to be aware of 'waking up and recalling my dreams' when going to sleep (as i've been told to get recall down before attempting lucidity) i went for a more general awareness of the dream concept. I stressed the simple concept of dreams themselves, of imagining the unreality of them, of knowing their falsity, and it was this stressed point that took care of all the rest. In simply thinking about the dream, rather than any rote techniques, the concept penetrated my dreamstate as an analytic idea over and above any experience of dreams throughout my sleep. I'd managed to drill into my mental state such a broad, and thus stronger, idea that it completely flooded all my dream experience that night, heightening my awareness of all consciousness in the dream state.

Thus, i recommend (as it may just work excitingly well for you too) to stress when going to sleep, no more than the general concept of dreams. Don't tell yourself anything rote-like, simply think of what dreams are and how unreal and penetrable they are. If you can develop the cognitive importance of this idea to make it a constant part of your thoughts for at least a few minutes before sleeping, the strength of your attentiveness to the noticeability and disctinctions of dreams from reality should dominate your consciousness throughout sleep too, to the extent that the idea will penetrate the seeming reality of an unreal dream. Hence, realisation, and hopefully lucidity.