Losing the dream when I focus on sight

[solpic]

Hello everyone, In all of my lucid dreams I follow a general stabilization procedure. I start by taking a few deep breaths, rubbing my hands together and then I focus on each sense individually to enhance it and help stabilize the dream. However, after a short unstable LD I had last night I realized something. More than once, when I focus on sight as I'm enhancing each sense (I do this by looking at things far away, trying to see more and more details, etc) the dream often fades away entirely. Usually I can even feel it happen as I'm focusing on sight. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening? If I didn't explain myself well enough please let me know. Sorry I meant to put this in the dream control category and I don't know how to delete my post.

[dutchraptor]

Maybe instead of focusing on any senses try to just be aware of what is going around you and keep focused on the fact that it is a dream, you do not want to forget this. Try leaving it and instead just proceeding with the dream to see how that goes.

[transflux]

This is normal and expected. It happens when you're dreaming in real time and you activate the primary visual cortex of your brain. You may experience this faster when you try to make out minute details on an intricate surface. The solution is not to overdue focusing on your visual sense before you leave the common dream state. It's still one of the better ways to stabilize REM-dreaming, you just need to be more careful.

[solpic]

Maybe instead of focusing on any senses try to just be aware of what is going around you and keep focused on the fact that it is a dream, you do not want to forget this. Try leaving it and instead just proceeding with the dream to see how that goes. Yeah I guess I'll give that a try. I have other ways of making my dream vision better that don't involve me specifically focusing on my sight. This is normal and expected. It happens when you're dreaming in real time and you activate the primary visual cortex of your brain. You may experience this faster when you try to make out minute details on an intricate surface. The solution is not to overdue focusing on your visual sense before you leave the common dream state. It's still one of the better ways to stabilize REM-dreaming, you just need to be more careful. Could you elaborate more on this? I've never heard of this before.

[TheOneirologist]

I think what transflux is saying is that since several parts of your brain are inactive during the dreaming state, putting too much emphasis on one of them (in the case of sight, apparently the primary visual cortex) can destabilize the dream. If I'm correct, instead of overloading all of your senses to involve them, you need to just observe the dream and interact with it as you would in real life, while not forgetting that it's a dream. Did I get that right, guys?

[dutchraptor]

Pretty much, focusing too much on one sense can actually destabilize your control on the dream because your brain cannot sustain it. You have to stay all around aware.

[transflux]

Yeah I guess I'll give that a try. I have other ways of making my dream vision better that don't involve me specifically focusing on my sight. Could you elaborate more on this? I've never heard of this before. These are all huge topics and I'm not sure what you want me to elaborate. Talking about the physiological substrate of dreams has little practical value in my opinion. I can basically agree with TheOneirologist's explanation, if that's how you want to go about this stabilization thing. I'd not try to read into his conclusions or try to stabilize based on that. You obviously do something wrong, but it's hard to say what based on your description. Can you get a clear view of the horizon? If it's obscured by a morphing, surreal nightly landscape, it's always night time, or you cannot sustain the dream for more than 3 minutes without constantly reentering it, you definitely need to work on your stabilization skills. Sensory based stabilization does work but to achieve higher stability you need to leave the initial dream.

[elucid]

that might not be the reason you are losing the dream, it could be that when you become lucid, it has an effect on the dream.

[solpic]

These are all huge topics and I'm not sure what you want me to elaborate. Talking about the physiological substrate of dreams has little practical value in my opinion. I can basically agree with TheOneirologist's explanation, if that's how you want to go about this stabilization thing. I'd not try to read into his conclusions or try to stabilize based on that. You obviously do something wrong, but it's hard to say what based on your description. Can you get a clear view of the horizon? If it's obscured by a morphing, surreal nightly landscape, it's always night time, or you cannot sustain the dream for more than 3 minutes without constantly reentering it, you definitely need to work on your stabilization skills. Sensory based stabilization does work but to achieve higher stability you need to leave the initial dream. I definitely need to work on my stabilization skills but what is perplexing me here is that what is supposed to be a stabilization technique is causing me to wake up. What do you mean by leaving the initial dream? You also said "before you leave the common dream state" which confused me. Are you talking about creating a new dream scene, entering that, and then doing sensory based stabilization? Also if it's relevant, I don't have any problem with any other form of sensory based stabilization, i.e. focusing on touch, smell or sounds never causes me to lose the dream. It's possible though that I don't try as hard with those senses as I do with sight because visuals are always a big deal for me. To elucid, I get that too, where the act of becoming lucid makes me lose the dream. But when that happens it always happens within a couple of seconds. This has happened multiple times and it's always been after about a minute or two in the dream because I generally take my time with stabilization and I usually do sight last.

[transflux]

The problem with popular stabilization techniques is that it's easy to do them the wrong way, at a bad time or in a messed up sequence. Spinning is the most notorious one. What do you mean by leaving the initial dream? You also said "before you leave the common dream state" which confused me. Are you talking about creating a new dream scene, entering that, and then doing sensory based stabilization? I was talking about stabilizing the inverted state (not necessary REM dreaming) by entering into a new dream, ideally completely different in settings, and doing this multiple times with some sort of (basic) stabilization in-between. There's a lot of ways to go about this depending on how you get lucid, how you entered the initial dream, what kind of dream it is, and where you want to exit it, etc. Mastering this can take lots of time because you would bump into all kinds of resistance. As for general (but not basic) stabilization I'd start with reconnecting with the state you were originally projected from, while still inside the dream you first get lucid. You may start with some basic stabilization then you instruct yourself to get transported back to the point where you entered the dream. If you get into the dream in a false awakening type scenario or OBE style, you would likely experience a short fly that would end up with your dream body smoothly rolling into the position of your sleeping body. Then you stay for a few seconds and roll out again. Either way, this would have a strong stabilizing effect on the initial dream and the REM sleep in general. It would not necessary prevent you from fading back into the sleeping position every now and often, but you would be able to roll out back into the dream each time and stick to it until the REM-sleep stabilizes. Now you can walk or fly away with less risk at waking up, lay down somewhere and fall asleep the second time, in a different sleeping position with the intention to enter another dream. This would work from DILDs too but it can get complicated and there are better ways.

[Darkmatters]

Is looking fixedly at one thing a stabilization technique? I don't think I've heard of that one. Whenever I look too hard at something it suddenly magnifies somehow and kind of screws everything up until I look away. And I'm pretty sure Don Juan said that looking fixedly at one thing is a sure way to end the dream and wake yourself up. He recommends glancing at things, a way of activating the visual sense but not letting it overwhelm the dream. He told Castaneda once he's able to find his hands in a dream he should look at them briefly, but if he looks too long it will end the dream, so he should then look at some other object - ony for a moment, and then back to his hands. He recommends glancing back and forth between your hands and several different objects as a good stabilization technique, starting with just 1 or 2 objects but as you get better you'll be able to graduate to several, which should make the dream very stable.

[oliverclay]

May be while focusing you awake up and that is why the location get faded.

[transflux]

Is looking fixedly at one thing a stabilization technique? I don't think I've heard of that one. Yes, for the most part, fixing your visual attention would wake you up, usually within seconds, assuming you're in REM sleep and running on low sleep pressure. At least it will throw you into a FA type scenario that you might fail to control and eventually lose lucidity. But fixation can also trigger the zoom effect. At first zooming appears as some sort of alternative to flying. If you're not zooming for the great fun it is, you probably use it to enter another dream in order to establish REM sleep. This is also a good move before leaving for transpersonal levels in deep sleep. If you don't come back the right way or miss the REM sleep on your way back, all you would remember, if any, is a sick dream about a long mission you had in the 17th dimension with a talking cat that sometimes looked like Al Pacino. Few tips. When you start practicing zooming you would often pick the wrong object, most probably parts of the dream's visual setting such as a fake horizon or building on the perimeter of the dream (yes dreams have perimeter). Then you would either overshoot it or fail to stabilize the perimeter scene after landing and end up into the interdream space (limited visuals and body awareness) or a state that can be mistaken with full wakefulness (because you can feel your body laying in bed). Don't forget that you have many options to reenter the initial dream. Don Juan's technique you have mentioned is an excellent way to stabilize the initial dream. Castaneda may have been a fraud, this technique clearly delivers. I've found a few other uses of it, like creating specific dream environments, obliterating subjective elements in a shared environment, entering dreaming while waking up or falling asleep.