I recently had my first LD in a long time last night (thanks to the SSILD technique) and I had quite an interesting experience.

After having been dreaming for a long time, I walked into this beautiful courtyard and instantly realized I was dreaming. For about a second, the scene was extremely bright and vivid; however, I freaked out and my vision faded to nothing. In a panic to get my vision back, I began rubbing my hands together intensely. Sure enough, my vision never came back because my thoughts were something on the lines of:

"Cmon! Come back vision! Come back! Why aren't you coming back? Appear! Cmoooooon! It's not working! My vision is gone."

Although I was rubbing my hands intensely, my vision simply did not return because I was trying so hard to bring it back without believing it would.

Suddenly, I realized that I still had my sense of touch (and hearing for that matter). I remembered that I was on some stairs and tried to jump down them. My first attempt was something like this:

*jump*
"Are the stairs still there? I hope they are there. I don't think they are still there."
*lands at the same height I jumped from*

Then it hit me. I remembered that I had read about expectations playing a large role during lucid dreams and decided to try something. Simply knowing that the stairs were still there, I resolved to jump again and land on the next step down.

*jump*
"Now I'm going to land one step down"
*lands one step down*

This fascinated me! All I had to do was expect the stairs to be there in order for them to still exist! This has more or less confirmed (in my mind) Mzzkc's thread about dream control.


In retrospect, if I hadn't tried so hard to get my vision back, but rather had just expected it to return, (in the same way I expected to land one step down) I am positive I could have gotten my vision to return. Unfortunately, I didn't think of this fast enough and became discouraged, allowing the dream to end.

In conclusion:

For those of you that suddenly find yourself in a dream like I did, I would suggest remaining calm and rubbing your hands slowly. This way, even if you freak out like I did and lose your vision, your sense of touch will be still firmly grounded in your dream, and you can calm down and allow your vision to come back.

Hopefully what I have experienced today will help someone else avoid the mistake I made and will lead to longer and more satisfying lucid dreams.