Its all so fuzzy...

[Vejita00]

Hey Hey I feel bad that nearly every post I've made so far has been inquisitive in nature but hey, what the hell. This one is regarding the fact that my lucid dreams leave me feeling as if they weren't very clear. Essentially, lately, I've been able to attain "lucidity" a couple times recently for at least a minute or two. I assume it was lucid, I remember thinking I was dreaming and doing reality checks however, after the fact I still felt as if I had somewhat limited control over my actions or my surroundings. The major question of this however is how to improve that and also that my dreams are often very fuzzy and disorienting when I become lucid. I find that they are not even remotely as clear as real life might appear. My vision is often obscured, I sometimes have vertigo and its just simply difficult to control myself and navigate without losing my grip on my surroundings and sort of fading out into black, if that makes sense. Anyways, any thoughts would be helpful. Thanks just for reading my little rant. -EDIT- Forgot to mention that I had tried a lot of the methods of spinning/rubbing hands, focusing etc. Perhaps it just comes with more practice.

[Captain Sleepalot]

This is a common experience and I think that it just gets better with practice. My own lucidity skills are still in early development but I kind of had a "breakthrough" a few days again as far as the clarity of my surroundings are concerned. Many of my lucids have been fuzzy visually but my first WILD was extremely clear and almost hyperreal. So just keep at it and it will improve. That being said, I have read the dream journals of some advanced LDers and have noticed that not all of their lucids are completely clear, visually speaking.

[Robot_Butler]

Sometimes the fuzziness and vagueness can occur because you are too lucid. You have to distract yourself from thinking too much so your subconscious can take over the job of making your dream environment. That is why a lot of dream stabilization techniques involve distracting yourself by engaging with only a small part the world You concentrate on one thing, like rubbing your hands, so the rest can take care of itself. When things start to fade, I will grab onto one thing with either my vision or my hands. Then the rest my dream will stabilize itself. Its a backwards concept. You would think that if everything is starting to fade, you should try to keep it from fading by locking it all in place. Instead, you have to ignore it, and focus on one thing that will keep you in the dream and lucid. Like your hands, or the ground beneath your feet. Think of it like your peripheral vision. Your subconscious takes care of the periphreal dream world, and your conscious mind takes care of something more manageable.

[Vejita00]

Sometimes the fuzziness and vagueness can occur because you are too lucid. You have to distract yourself from thinking too much so your subconscious can take over the job of making your dream environment. That is why a lot of dream stabilization techniques involve distracting yourself by engaging with only a small part the world You concentrate on one thing, like rubbing your hands, so the rest can take care of itself. When things start to fade, I will grab onto one thing with either my vision or my hands. Then the rest my dream will stabilize itself. Its a backwards concept. You would think that if everything is starting to fade, you should try to keep it from fading by locking it all in place. Instead, you have to ignore it, and focus on one thing that will keep you in the dream and lucid. Like your hands, or the ground beneath your feet. Think of it like your peripheral vision. Your subconscious takes care of the periphreal dream world, and your conscious mind takes care of something more manageable. Hmm, I'll give that a try the next time I manage to become lucid. Its been random as to when it occurs since sometimes I sleep right through my attempts to do the WBTB method. I tend to just keep on sleeping heh heh.

[Echoes]

I have the same problem a lot, and heres what I find helps.... Don't try to immediatly interact with your dream, first take a moment to acknowledge your lucidity, look around a bit. Then get down on the ground and really feel it, look at it and see all the glorious little details ( if you are on a beach for example, look at all the little grains of sand and the shells). Take the time to say to yourself "this is the ground I can see all the tiny little things around me." I find that this really stabilizes the dream, making you less likely to wake up and also increases the over all vividness of the dream.

[The Cusp]

Everything in a dream requires your direct attention to exist. The more attention you give something, the more detail it creates. That is everything you need to know about dream control. (Of course things you pay attention to during the day flavor your dream as well, but it boils down to the same thing in the end.) You problem may be that as soon as you attain lucidity, you attention shifts to other things, perhaps onto yourself as you are doing RCs. No longer paying as much attention to the dream world around you, it begins to decay because it needs your attention to exist, and fades to black. You need to balance where you focus your attention in a dream. Too little, and things decay, too much attention and things grow out of hand. An example of giving something too much attention in a dream is a classic tooth dream. You notice something wrong with your teeth, and the closer you look the more things wrong you find. All control issues in dreaming come from where you focus your attention. If a dreaming skill such as flying isn't working for you, it's because you're paying too much attention to aspects that are counter productive to your goals, like the ground or gravity.