Inability to Lucid Dream?

[DreamWolfHorse]

I've tried everything. Blams, crystals, essential oils, intentions/mantras and I can't seem to get in control. I even tried a slight visualization last night and got nothing. Any tips for a struggling and desperate lucid dreamer? Note: reality checks confuse me so if someone could kindly explain them, that'd be lovely. Ta!

[MisakaMikoto]

Hi, I don't think you have inability to lucid dream If you have dreams then you can have lucid ones aswell You just did not try with enough effort yet. In most cases there needs to be done effort to progress further with achieving lucid dreams I'd suggest you reading up Intro Class http://www.dreamviews.com/intro-clas...sons-i-iv.html Aswell as checking out sticked topics in that section Intro Class I could try to explain reality checks yet i belive those tutorials wrotten in professional manner will be better option for you

[Zyangur]

Reality checks are exactly what they sound like; you check for reality. There are things that you can do that won't work while you are awake, but while you are sleeping will. In a dream, if you plug your noise and try and breathe in, most of the time you will be able to do that. They're mostly used to confirm that you are in a dream after you suspect that you may be dreaming.

[Verre]

Have you tried WBTBs? If you're not familiar with the acronym, this is the "wake back to bed" method where you sleep several hours until you're primed for REM, wake up for a period of time (you'll have to experiment to figure out how long works best for you), then go back to sleep. On returning to sleep you can try any number of additional methods to increase your chances, but WBTB is the structure in which pretty much any method (at least the ones intended to be performed while falling asleep) is going to work best. I'm not sure what "blams" are (clarify?) and crystals and essential oils are unlikely to accomplish much beyond a placebo effect (which evidently isn't working for you), but it sounds like there's still a lot that you haven't tried. Browse through these forums and you'll find lots of ideas! And the granddaddy of print manuals, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge, can be picked up cheap on Amazon and will explain a lot to you -- it's put a lot of people on the right path, plus you can access it offline. Lucid dreaming requires incredible dedication and constant practice, even after you've been doing it a long time (unless you're one of the rare "naturals"), but it's worth it! So don't give up, keep experimenting...

[Sageous]

I don't think it's time yet to be desperate, DreamWolfHorse, because your journey hasn't even begun yet! I'm not sure what inspired you to try some of the things you tried (seriously. crystals?), but it might be time to start looking into the fundamentals of lucid dreaming (from my point of view: self-awareness, memory, and expectation/intention), and start afresh using actual tools along with getting your mind ready to LD. So follow the advice of the folks above (especially Verre's suggestion to read EWOLD), look through the tutorials and intro classes on this forum, and get started for real. Hopefully the time to actually get desperate will never come!

[Memm]

Essential oils? If you think lucid dreaming is some sort of spiritual journey of the body; it's not. Reality checks are just a way to check if you're currently in a dream, that's all. Simply because there are things you can do while dreaming that don't work in real life, so if it works, then you're dreaming. Like breathing through a closed nose or flying around. You need to think you might be in a dream first, then you can check if you're right. Simple. For starters you need to be able to remember at least 1 dream a night, secondly don't "struggle" or be "desperate", for success all you need is to put a bit of effort towards a well respected technique, or two or three. The most popular methods would be MILD and WILD, so read up on those, the other techniques are usually just variations of these. Leave the oils out of it and start at the beginning: by learning what people are currently doing. Good luck. =]