Strange experiences when becoming lucid - nability to think about what I want to do

This is very hard to describe. I have had two lucid dreams in the last few weeks. But they were both very strange.

In the first place the regular parts of the dreams, before I became aware that I was dreaming, were very detailed. They were so detailed that there was little difference between them and when I usually gain lucidity. My first lucid dreams had a jump in reality and detail from regular to lucid. Now it's an imperceptible shift that I only notice if I look really close.

Next up I have no conscious thought processes. I can walk in the woods wherever i want to go, I can even keep myself in the dream, but it's almost as if I am still limited in some way, on some sort of track. I can't all of a sudden decide to fly, or return to my body to start an OBE, or summon the fox, my spirit animal/guide/guardian to join me. It seems as though I have a very limited control of my actions.

For example in the first of these two strange lucid dreams a vaguely familiar lady offered me a piece of candy. For anyone who was read my other posts and seen my book recommendations, you know I am highly educated on the subject of dreams. I know to take such a gift. If I was in full control I would have. But by the time I realized that I should have accepted the gift in my dream it was too late. For some reason what I would make a conscious choice to do as I sit here typing this was not the choice I made in the dream, like I was following some script.

I am meditating and trying to keep to a regular exercise and meditation schedule. I am using affirmations - I think they are why I am getting more lucid dreams. So my mindset is right. What else would you recommend I do to get off the rails in my dreams when I become lucid? I want to tear this stupid script up! If I allow a dream to play out the way it wants, I want it to do so as my own conscious choice, remaining conscious while it plays out, able to take the reigns as it were anytime I want.

I appreciate your help!
- DreamBliss

To me it sounds like you aren't really lucid, or that the lucidity level is so low it is barely even perceived as a lucid dream and you have no control. It doesn't matter how many hundreds of lucid dreams I've had, I still typically always have an "ah ha!" moment when lucidity strikes and the dream shifts over from a non-lucid into a lucid dream (unless of course the dream starts out lucid) and then I can do whatever I want. Perhaps you are having suspicions that you are dreaming, but you haven't confirmed it in your mind, and you haven't made the full transition into lucidity. Next time try doing a reality check, like finger through palm or holding your nose and trying to breathe, or just try to fly. When the reality check fails, you'll be able to say with certainty that you are, in fact, dreaming...the mind won't continue to question it, and you should be able to take the reigns. If you are still unable to take control of your lucid dreams, even though you feel you are truly and fully lucid, then perhaps some of your techniques aren't right. I can't really say, since I have no idea what techniques you even use.

different levels of lucidity. sounds like a low level. try doing some math sums or remembering details from waking life such as capital cities or equations to get a more clear consciousness. i know the feeling you describe, it's like the dream version of you knows it's in a dream but is still on autopilot so I just end up flying aimlessly. I just attribute it to low lucidity and I notice that the dreams are actually not very vivid nor easy to remember. I think this autopilot thing might happen because people form schemas or preconceptions about what it is to be lucid and what their activities ought to involve and these schemas are activated and off we go. It's just like in waking life where we go about our day, for instance when going to the toilet, we just run on autopilot not really thinking about our movements. In this way we have very little recall of chunks of waking life especially when they are very routine because we are so absent minded.

I agree with the two above thinking that its either low lucidity or not lucid at all. What I would do if I was lucid and I felt like I was stuck in a "script" what I would do is reality check like nuts, and look down to the ground at the dirt and start crawling aimlessly while looking at the detail. When you crawl around aimlessly don't think about the script, and when you get up it will be broken. It just a suggestion, not sure if it would work.

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Originally Posted by DreamBliss

In the first place the regular parts of the dreams, before I became aware that I was dreaming, were very detailed. They were so detailed that there was little difference between them and when I usually gain lucidity. My first lucid dreams had a jump in reality and detail from regular to lucid. Now it's an imperceptible shift that I only notice if I look really close.

Next up I have no conscious thought processes. I can walk in the woods wherever i want to go, I can even keep myself in the dream, but it's almost as if I am still limited in some way, on some sort of track. I can't all of a sudden decide to fly, or return to my body to start an OBE, or summon the fox, my spirit animal/guide/guardian to join me. It seems as though I have a very limited control of my actions.

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DreamBliss: Though the suggestions above seem more than adequate, I need to throw in a couple of notes, simply because the two things you say in the bits I dragged down are puzzling:

First, contrary to its name, lucid dreaming is the result of a presence of waking awareness in a dream, and has nothing to do with the dream getting brighter, or more detailed. Plenty of LD's lack detail or color; indeed my favorite -- and by far most powerful -- LD's have no detail at all, just gray fog or even black nothingness. In other words, lucidity here doesn't mean more light, literally -- it means more awareness. I assume you already know this, but it seemed like a good thing to mention, given your statement above.

Second, you said,"I have no conscious thought processes." This says in itself that you were not lucid. You may have been dreaming that you were lucid (which happens to me a lot), but a lack of waking consciousness definitely implies that you were not lucid. As Nina notes above, you really ought to be having an "Ah-ha!" moment of some sort after lucidity is triggered. You might consider a waking life regimen of state testing (RC's) and questioning the "odd." If you make habits of both, they ought to manifest in your dream, and help secure that Ah-ha moment. I'm sure you already know this, but I can't hurt to repeat.

Finally, the third leg of lucidity, memory, doesn't seem active in this dream. I would guess that the reason you couldn't decide to do anything -- especially if you had planned something before sleep, which you also should always do -- is simply because you didn't remember to do so. It's not that you couldn't do things to take you off those rails, the ability is always there. It's that you did not remember to do them. Memory, especially the short-term variety, is very difficult to "turn on" in a dream, but it must be accessible in order to be fully lucid. You might try doing some mnemonic exercises as during waking life as well. You could even build them into your state testing routine: for instance, after you do an RC, try to remember exactly what you were doing fifteen minutes previously. Sounds silly, I know, but it works.

I hope these thoughts helped tear up the scripts -- sorry they took so long!

My different take on this:

Your inability to accept the candy is intentional on the part of your mind which put that event in your dream. It is offering the candy and simultaneously blocking your ability to accept it. This is demonstrating the control it has over your will and your awareness, and also suggesting that you are blocking your ability to accept what the candy represents by the control that you're trying to exert. The course of action that everyone else is advocating is to work to overpower that part of your mind. I agree that such an effort will almost certainly result in a higher degree of dream control. But you'll be giving up the candy, and it may not be offered again for a long time. This isn't a matter of obstinacy on the part of the offerer, its a matter of the trajectory you take. My suggestion is to enter into a dialogue with the candy offerer, listen to it, meet it part way, dance with it, not pushing it out of the picture by taking full control of the dream. Don't worry about accepting or not accepting the candy, and don't worry if that image is never presented again, its the dialogue that matters.

What I'm suggesting is more like the route I took. For me there remains the issue of integrating myself with the candy offerer, if that's even desirable. This is a problem I'm still working on. But my way led to other remarkable experiences that most overt dream controllers appear to have trouble reproducing. Maybe you can try something that's not quite what I did, but also not what the other people are suggesting, and that will lead you to somewhere else uniquely interesting. Perhaps, for instance, you could work towards being more fully lucid while consciously and intentionally leaving space for the 'other', from the outset of your development, rather than aiming for the lucidity first then reaching out to the 'other' later. That would be different from what I did, in that I pretty much blew off the dream control part entirely, while focusing on the lucidity of other aspects of my dream-time and waking-time thinking.

Although your dream may be accurately characterized as only very weakly lucid, I consider it to be valuable. Its small, but its a door, and I wouldn't trade it for an hour of fully lucid battling with flying orcs.

OK I didn't provide enough clarification here...

Up until recently all my LDs had a shift in detail. The reason for this has to do with my physical body. I have what's called a stigma in my left eye. The eye is not completely round, it is slightly flattened, affecting the lens. When I put on a pair of prescribed glasses (worked all summer to get the money to do this at WalMart) there is an instant and noticeable increase in detail. In my dreams there is a similarity. One author does describe or talk about this sort of things. Anyhow during my normal past dreams things looked normal, at a level of detail equivalent, even though its actually less, than waking life. However when I became lucid, it was like putting on glasses. Everything changed to the other end of the spectrum. Now in a lucid dream the detail is equivalent to wearing my glasses in waking life, but it's actually far more detailed. Colors, light, details - everything stands out. There is a dramatic shift. The only time I experienced anything like this in waking life was the day after I had take some amazonian cubensis mushrooms. There are simply no words to describe that experience in waking life, or for me in past LDs. No, I have not taken shrooms for a long time now, nor any other drug, legal, illegal or otherwise.

Now however my dreams are always just about as detailed as my earlier LDs. Every one I've had the last few months. I think this is because of my meditation practice and the occasional full consciousness walk I take. If I could take a picture of an earlier "Ah Ha!" LD and any non-lucid dream of mine now you would be hard pressed to find any difference in the quality of the picture.

Also I'm fairly certain I was lucid, and I agree is sounds like I was at a low level of lucidity. I never knew that there were levels. This is not something I have read anywhere. It's definitely going into my book, with credit to the users here! That you for sharing that with me! Anyhow in the dream with the candy I went through a wooden gate/arbor and said something like, "I'm dreaming." There was a sort of shift and I could go anywhere I wanted, within the range of the area I was in. I could not go back or leave the area, and it seemed I was influenced in some way to go towards the building. I couldn't veer off and go somewhere else. Same thing when it came to the store I entered, hence my description of rails. It would be more accurate to think of it like a level in a video game where someone put invisible walls all around, and they channeled you towards a particular structure.

In the forest LD I could walk all around the woods., but not out of them, not back, and towards a structure again, this time a small cabin. I could even keep myself awake in the dream. I did this by leaning on my arms on a sink, closing my eyes, lifting myself up and opening my eyes. I was in control if I stayed lucid and stayed in the dream.

By conscious though process I meant that while I had made a conscious decision to be lucid, I could not seem to access the conscious mind for anything else, other than staying in the dream. In my first LDs I could pretty much go and do whatever I wanted. I could think about something and arrive at a decision. In these later lucid dreams I had no such ability. I could not think! But despite that I was lucid and had a little control.

I have never tried to use reality checks. Nor have I tried to mnemonic exercises. I will make use of both of these excellent suggestions. Thank you!
- DreamBliss

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Originally Posted by DreamBliss

Also I'm fairly certain I was lucid, and I agree is sounds like I was at a low level of lucidity. I never knew that there were levels.
- DreamBliss

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It is in saying this, that you realise you were on a low/very low level of lucidity, or not even lucid at all.

If you are fully lucid (or mostly) - everything you do turns from dream memory into actual memory. Everything you "did " in the dream is stored as a much more vivid memory than your normal dreams, and you find that even hours/days after waking, you (pseudo)-physically remember doing those things in the dream. If it is still kinda' hazy, and still feels that like a fleeting, fading memory of something that never actually happened, then no, you werent on a decnt level of lucidity. To say "you are certain" or "sure" that you were lucid is indicative of the fact that you probably werent, or at least werent on a decent lucid level.