A tip for stabilizing

Last night I had a dream where I became lucid on a bus where I was with my wife and a number of other people. I started rubbing my wife's shoulders to help stabilize as well as to "get some things going" in the dream. But within a few seconds everything went dark. However, I kept rubbing and concentrating on the fact that I could still feel her just fine. I thought about "opening my eyes" (my dream eyes), but in the past when I did that I would wake up... I think being early morning I was close to the awake state. Anyway, I hadn't closed my dream eyes so I rationalized they were already open. So instead of opening my eyes I just waited for them to start working and sort of tried imagining seeing. Shortly the vision came back and I got several minutes of lucid dreaming instead of several seconds. So don't make the mistake of opening your eyes!

it's almost always like this for me, once I gain lucidity, the dream dims down if I don't get myself involved asap. Even if I do, it takes a moment until I can see again. Usually feels like 3-10 seconds. I never actively tried to open my eyes or anything like this. Since I have not closed my eyes (the dimming down does not feel like closing my eyes, but more like a camera going out of focus while the light rapidly dims down) I just wait out the darkness and then the fun starts.