wRembrandt

The only lucid dreams I've had have been me leaving my bed and going outside for 30 seconds then losing lucidity and not remembering the rest of the dream. The majority of my non-lucid dreams have been me at my old elementary school in various scenarios. The major question I'm asking these days is: why?

Why dream about an elementary school I haven't attended in a long time vs. the number 1 thing I'm trying to incubate. Better question: How do I have a person, place, thing or idea from waking life appear in my dream at night?

My educated guess about the cause of dream content is problem-solving. From this, I've developed a model to hopefully yield positive results in dream incubation.

1. I will think of a goal in the form a person, place, or thing.
2. I will break this goal into three parts: the desired outcome, the problem(s), the possible solutions.
3. Before bed every night, I'm going to fully focus and fantasize the solutions to the problem that are preventing me from reaching my desired outcome. The ultimate goal is that my subconsciousness will take over the problem-solving element during sleep leading to a dream about the topic.

To put this into practice, let's say I'm looking for Naomi Grey, a dream character from many dreams ago. I want to find her(desired outcome) but I don't know where she is (problem #1), what she necessarily looks like(problem #2) and she could be in one of several dozen places(problem #3). So before bed, I'm going to think hard and meditate on where Naomi could possibly be(solution #1) and how I would find her (solution #2). The key here is that my solutions should inconclusive, none of them should actually answer the problem - just creatively keep my mind busy until I fall asleep. The focus should be on the problem rather than the desired outcome.

The paradigm shift is making Naomi into a mystery to be solved instead of a person I hope to see in my dream one day.