Thread: Trouble increasing lucidity...

Hello there

I started trying to Lucid Dreams about 2 months ago and using MILD and binaural beats I've been able to have around 5 successful LDs.

Emphasis on the word "successful". I've probably had closer to 10 lucid dreams but half the time I encounter a rather frustrating problem. I realize I'm dreaming and become lucid but everything is very dark and hazy, as if I were watching a movie with the brightness of my TV screen turned down to 10%. When this occurs, nothing I do can increase the clarity of the dream. I rub my hands together, I spin in a circle, and I constantly repeat to myself "I'm dreaming" all to no avail. Eventually I just lose lucidity or wake up.

Can anyone offer me some advice or explain to me why this happens? It's very confusing.

Thanks

Try flipping on a light switch or turning up a dimmer switch. This should help with the light as long as you're expecting the light switch to truly increase the brightness of the dream. You could also yell "lights on" or anything similar to increase how well you can see. You could even try majorly increasing the size of your pupils allowing more light in, much like an owl. Though this would take a fair amount of dream control it would still be interesting, fun, and possibly helpful.

That may be the best advice anyone could offer. Not having experienced this I can offer no real world suggestions but I see nothing wrong with attempting the posted ideas.

Do please let us know how this turns out.

Just a question that doesn't have anything to do with your dark lucid dreams. Do you keep listening to the binaural beats until you fall asleep?
Because I'm also doing Mild and I wanna try using binaural beats aswell.

Yes, I fall asleep to them. Well, in reality, they put me to sleep. I always have a tendency to fall asleep while listening to the beats even when that's not my intention

Originally Posted by pipedreams

Hello there

Emphasis on the word "successful". I've probably had closer to 10 lucid dreams but half the time I encounter a rather frustrating problem. I realize I'm dreaming and become lucid but everything is very dark and hazy, as if I were watching a movie with the brightness of my TV screen turned down to 10%. When this occurs, nothing I do can increase the clarity of the dream. I rub my hands together, I spin in a circle, and I constantly repeat to myself "I'm dreaming" all to no avail. Eventually I just lose lucidity or wake up.

Can anyone offer me some advice or explain to me why this happens? It's very confusing.

Thanks

Sure, I can clear it up. You have become lucid in a nREM cycle. We do dream in nREM but it is not at all the vivid movie like dreams of REM. Because we can dream in nREM we can LD in that state to. You have done very well to have so many LDs in such a short time. It is also intersting you are becoming lucid when not in REM. I LD in nREM all the time, but it is uncommon.

Practicle advice. nREM dreams can have very vivid tactile awareness. You were able to rub your hands together. The next time this happens, worrk in the dark on stablizing the dream. Do not worry about increasing the details. Use one hand to feel the other, the pat down your arms and legs. Now feel yourself move around and have some blind fun. You can feel yourself dance or run for instance. Go back and forth between stablizing and screwing around in the dark. Something about doing this triggers a shift into REM. So you just do what I have mentioned and in about 5 to 10 minutes you may shift into a REM LD in which you are very very stable and ready to go. This also puts you at the very beginning of the REM cycle, so with the nREM time and 30-90 minutes of REM, you can have very long LDs this way.