Thread: Having Trouble Lucid Dreaming

Originally Posted by ecp13

In my dream last night I actually went shopping for lucid dream sleep masks but still didn't pick up on that! :/

This is something that takes practice - after all, you are relearning an entirely new attitude to life itself, at least if you haven't been familiar with lucid dreaming in the past.
One thing is for sure, though - the more you practice and persevere, the greater your chances will become each night, since your brain is getting more and more used to the idea.

One question that arises from your problem regarding the sleep masks is - what do you think would happen if you were searching for lucid dreaming sleep masks in waking life?
Wouldn't you just assume that you were awake in that situation, since you "felt" awake?
I think you have a similar problem in your dreams - you "know" that you are awake (even though you aren't), so you never think of double-checking your state.
It is highly recommended that you start to question your state even when you are sure that you are awake.
You might feel completely sure that you are awake since you have been awake for a long time and everything feels familiar and unchanging etc, but try to check your state anyway - can you do something impossible?
For example, can you look at a red house, then close your eyes and imagine a new colour, and actually make the house get that colour instead, just from the power of your thoughts?
Try to perform harmless tests like this even in waking life.
If anything, this will at least make waking life feel more "dreamlike" to you on some level, and this might make it easier for you to connect with the feeling of being in a real dream.

Personally I really like to think of waking life as a form of dream, because this gives me a foretaste of lucidity, kind of like "this is what I would feel like if I was aware in a lucid dream!".
Then I will walk around in safe unfamiliar places, like for example places at my campus that I have never seen before (new places are exciting, and will feel like unfamiliar dream environments that I am just starting to explore; "what will I find behind the next corner?" etc), and also try random tests every now and then, just to "make sure" whether I am dreaming or not.

One of the very best types of tests is to read a piece of text, then look away for a while and then see if something has happened to it.
Texts tend to be very unstable in dreams, and usually the letters will start floating around or behaving in weird ways - so written texts can often be used both for confirming your waking state and your dreaming state;
they will always remain perfectly stable in waking life, and pretty much always end up moving around and doing strange things in dreams.