Doors, doors, doors, they keep trolling me.

Hello Dreamviews, I've been lurking these forums for the past 8 years on and off, and finally I registered. I've tried getting lucid before but didn't have any success since I wasn't really willing to make an effort (now I understand the importance of will when it comes to lucid's). A couple of weeks ago I went on my vacations and I was reading one of Castañeda's book's which surprisingly helped me become lucid ("Journey to Ixtlan", awesome book). I saw my hand in the dream and questioned the nature of the experience I was having and 'voila', I was lucid for the first time of my life, I even stabilized it by looking at the back of my hand just like Don Juan's suggestion. I'm never forgetting the feeling of my first lucid, it was beyond amazing, it felt more vivid than reality.

This experience motivated me to keep on trying to get lucid, so I decided to make and envision a goal, I wanted to meet someone from my childhood in my dreams, let's call her V. After reading several books and threads about dream control I understood that control relied in focus & intent, so I knew that if I wanted to meet V I had to find her first. This led me into a series of traumatizing events with doors (I've read in several books that the door method is the best way to teleport somewhere), this is short summary of my LD's so far:

Week 1:
First LD, no goal here, got distracted my female DC's.
Second LD, super blurry, couldn't stabilize it, ended up awake after a few seconds.
Third LD, the moment I became lucid I remember my goal, so I went and looked for the first door I could find. I knew I had the intent of "finding her behind the door", but instead I found a classroom with 3 DC's studying. I asked one of the them if they had seen her to which he replied he didn't. This made me really upset since I knew I had the intent, so I tried shouting her name but instead of her appearance one of the DC's ended up telling me to shut up. This made me even madder and I ended up awake.

This made me wonder if my intent was wrong and I decided to approach it in some other way, instead of "finding her behind the door" I decided to "be in her room after I open the door", I'm sure I'd have to find her in her house.

Week 2:
Fourth LD, I was in my house, tried every single door in the house but always ended up on my own house. Got so frustrated that I ended up awake.

From this LD I learnt that maybe opening and closing the same door might have the same effect so I tried that in my next lucid.

Week 3:
Fifth LD, was in a backyard I've never seen before, and I see three doors, so I decide to go and try again. Open an close the first door several times, all the times with the intent and focus on the task of finding V's room. After failing so much I decide to try with the second door, and again, same awful results. As a last hope I decide to try the third door, so I open it and find another door behind the door (doorception), which was locked. At that point a DC pats my back and gives me a key, so I try opening it with the key and it didn't work. At this point I look at the DC with a "wtf" face and he starts laughing. Again, frustration and me awake as a result.

I'm really running out of ideas on DC summoning so I'm here looking for suggestions. Anyway, thanks for reading this wall of text and I'm happy of finally posting here, I look forward to your insight fellow dreamers.

tl;dr: Want to summon a DC but when I try to teleport with doors I end up being trolled by the dream doors.

Doors are most likely by now a tainted object in your dreams, you unconsciously expect them to fail, or troll you. Try another method and ignore the doors.

I reached my first long term dream goal (that was also reaching a certain location, to find someone) by dream spinning into the room. To do this you visualize the location - you need to have a good memory of the place - and really expect to end up there when you teleport via dream spinning. Then you keep your eyes open and spin around fast, once or twice. I usually end in a dark room, but when I re-stabilize, it is most of the time the intended location.

Two methods that are related to each other that work superb for me to find people:

- just move through the house or wherever you are at the moment and expect the person around the next corner. Just believe she will be sitting in a chair around the next turn. I sometimes need some attempts, but it nearly always works.

- use vision obstruction for the same effect. I wanted to find my wife in bed in one dream and she was not there. I moved back a bit, until a table blocked my view to the bed. Then i re-set my intention to find her sleeping in the bed and walked forward, until the table no longer blocked my line of sight, and there she was... felt very easy.

Welcome maus! Congratulation for your interesting lucids :)

Doors can be very tricky. I have success like 1 in 70 tries, so it's not very easy teleportation technique for me.

On the other hand, summoning people is easy for me. Start small, for example summon a thing that bellongs to your intended person, or call her and say where can you find her. Or try summon your dream guide, my dg has awesome powers, so he can make the hard job for you.

If you can fly, it's probably the easiest method for teleportation. You just fly up and then expect the place beneath you. Works fine for me!

keep posting your progress and mainly have fun :muffin:

I have little to no success when trying to summon a specific person using a door. It's good for the times when I just want to see who would show up, but not when I create an expectation of a particular person. I think it may be because the door is too general a metaphor (at least for me).
What I've found works pretty well is to imagine a specific context in which that person would agree to arrive. For example, if I'm trying to summon a person from my class I'll say "It is presentation day and participation is mandatory unless you want to fail!" If you create a context where that person not showing is highly unlikely, it is highly likely they'll show up!
Has been my best technique thus far.

Thanks everyone for your input, looks like by keep on trying the same thing I was reinforcing negative results. I'll try some of your suggestions and let you know how it goes the next time i'm lucid (hopefully soon).

Had another LD tonight but summoning didn't work either.

I became lucid from a FA in my house, and I used hand rubbing for the first time and couldn't believe how real it felt (I used to just focus my sight in my hands). Once I got up from my dream bed I was motivated to achieve my goal, so the first thing I tried was to stand in the middle of the room knowing she would be behind me, so I said "grab my hand, I know you are there" and instead of her my dog did :/

Since that didn't work I decided to try something else, the vision obstruction thing. I got out of my room and went to another room, before entering I had the expectation of seeing her sitting on the bed but she wasn't there so I went back and in again just enough to stop seeing the bed. When I did this only the bed sheets had changed. Tried the same thing like 5 times and the bed would get done and undone with different sheets all the time.

After the 5th time I suddenly lost lucidity and noticed my heart was racing, so I'm guessing I probably got too anxious in the LD. From this experience I learnt that trying the same thing over and over only kills my lucidity, so I wont try the same thing after the second fail from now on.

I also noticed that LD's that are born from FA tend to have less control over other type of LD, is there some reason to it or am I just too used to my house that I subconsciously expect things? Maybe I should stop wasting LD's this way until I learn proper dream control more naturally?

I cannot say I have advice for you, but I found your third LD description comical! I can picture the DC telling you to shut up, then you becoming infuriated and waking up.

Also, great progress! It seems you have already found consistency in becoming lucid after your first lucid dream.

A lot of people have trouble using a dream control if it is a copy/paste form of dream control. It is good to look up a lot of what you are wanting and invent your own method. Creativity is the best form of dream control.

thats so true Sensei. Also, the methods don't work 100% for me, I sometimes need to try different methods or it won't work at all. Just keep at it, from what I read out of your posts you are doing great. :)