Thread: Giving up on lucid dreaming...?

Hello there Rose,

I know the feeling. I've been there more then once myself. I'm sure most lucid dreamers have.

To start with, I'd advise you to take a break. Do nothing but keep your dream journal for a week. It's important to get out of your current mindset. Whenever lucid dreaming becomes a source of frustration, starts feeling like a chore, or you feel you're sacrificing important things for it, you've probably taken it a little too far. Throttle back a bit, relax, take a break, restart after a week when you feel motivated to try some more. Dreaming and lucid dreaming should be fun. When it's not, take a break.

Additionally, try to appreciate your regular dreams first and foremost. If you consider any night where you didn't have a lucid dream as a failure, you're probably going to burn yourself out fast. Instead, learn to love your dreams, learn what elements reappear, identify dreams you had fun having and give special attention to these in your dream journal. All this can be done easily without having to make too many changes in your waking life. It will also give you a strong starting point from which to gradually increase your dream awareness.

Then, look for points where you see that dream awareness rising. Lucid dreaming isn't an all or nothing, black or white affair. A failed reality check indicates a higher level of dream awareness then no reality check at all. Even simply having more vivid dreams and remembering more dreams means your awareness in dreams is gradually increasing. Recognize these small steps that you're making. Know that they all add up. Think of it as learning to run. If you want to learn to run ten miles and have never ran a mile in your life, you start by training with smaller intervals, and gradually build up, little by little, while at the same time taking breaks and resting when you've become too exhausted. Its the same for lucid dreaming. Approach it with a positive mind set, enjoy the dreams you have and be proud of the little progresses you make, and before you know it, you'll be telling us all about your first full blown lucid dream.

Hope that helps,

-Redrivertears-

Hey Rose,

I could not have said it better than what Redrivertears said. There's no reason that lucid dreaming requires you to sacrifice your own physical health. If you're feeling exhausted and frustrated, take a break. Frustration is one of the worst enemies of lucid dreaming.

It sounds like your main problem is with getting up for WBTB. The solution for that may sound stupid, but it's true - just don't do WBTB. Seriously, it's not required. Just stick with MILD or another technique that doesn't interfere with your sleep schedule.

Other than that, you sound like you've made good progress. Like Redrivertears said, a failed reality check is the first step towards a successful reality check and a lucid dream. One tip that might help is to have multiple RCs each time you do it. So you might plug your nose, then count your fingers, and then try to push your finger through your hand. The odds of one RC failing is small, but the odds of multiple failing is even smaller. So if the first one does fail, you have one or two backups to improve your chances.

So my advice would be to take a break for a week or two, get your sleep schedule back on track and your frustration out of your mind. Then, go back to practicing RCs during your waking life, and then just go to sleep at your normal time while practicing MILD.

I honestly think that a lot of people who struggle with lucid dreaming simply approach it in the wrong way.
Lucid dreaming doesn't need to be a big project where you try to find the perfect "technique" and whatnot in order to succeed, all you really need to know is that lucid dreaming is the art of increasing your self-awareness and critical thinking during your dreams.
The most obvious way to do that is probably to start practicing your attitude to your surroundings in general in waking life, and be more "alert" for possible signs that you may be dreaming.
All techniques are in some way based on paying more attention to the dreamworld - MILD improves your ability to remember to question the dreamstate, WILD makes you actually remain aware and witness how the dream starts forming, WBTB gives you a chance to catch a REM period more easily and thus increase the success rate of a lot of techniques, etc.
But in the end, they have the same purpose - increase your self-awareness and critical thinking.

How often do you question your state in waking life, and how often do you "know" that you are awake?
You will bring those attitudes to your surroundings with you into your dreams as well, and that's why you will end up not questioning bizarre things, because your mind will go "hey, I am obviously awake, so there must be some explanation" - if you even question it on any level in the first place.

I also think that you should not only practice prospective memory (which is basically MILD in a nutshell), but also make sure that you have a good retrospective memory.
You see, in dreams we will sometimes have a feeling that something may not be "normal", but then immediately forget about it and get distracted by something else;
for example, you might fall out of an airplane from 30,000 feet and yet land safely on the ground without a parachute (MAJOR dreamsign), but then you will probably create some sort of false memory that "you lost the parachute right after landing", and not only that, but you might also get distracted by something else at the same time!
That's how our minds usually work in ordinary dreams - we MIGHT feel that something doesn't make sense, but then immediately forget about it and run off to do something else.

I think it would be a very good idea to try to remember both what you were doing a moment ago, and also try to remember what you want to do in the future, so that you really pay attention to what happens in your life.
Eventually, this attitude will become more and more common in your dreams as well, and dramatically boost your chances to become lucid.

Listen, I went through the exact same thing as you.
You know what I did? I chilled out. Stopped religiously keeping a dream diary, apart from when I had cool dreams. I stopped researching, I stopped trying techniques such as WILD and FILD. Just chilled. Did some reality checks whenever I remembered to. Then suddenly, I had a lucid dream! And another, and another, and another- you get the gist. Just don't stress out over it. I spent months researching and trying special techniques and nothing ever happened. It's perfectly natural.

Some tips would be to stop researching, stop consciously trying to lucid dream, and do reality checks once in a while. I used to do the counting the fingers reality check but in dreams i would count 6 fingers and just ignore it. The best reality check which always works for me in dreams is pinching the nose and trying to breathe. Dreams revolve around the subconscious, so just try to let your lucid dreaming thoughts seep into your subconscious rather than keeping them at the forefront of your conscious.

I hope this reassures you in some way,

-Amani

Ok, first of all, I need to say that, pochopino, stopping conscious attempts to LD is a bad thing. Even if you have RCing a habit, you still need intentions to succeed at LDing. You can forget WILD, yes, but then you'd be left with DILD, and DILD needs conscious efforts to boost self awareness, prospective memory, and an attitude to question oddities all the time (aka critical thinking) with the idea that you might be dreaming at any given moment.


@OP:


First off, I need to clear something up. In no way is SP (sleep paralysis) or HI (the lights and vibrations and flashing colors and stuff) a thing you need to seek during WILD. On the contrary, they distract you from the WILD dive. You are supposed to not focus on HI or on your body during WILD. You should instead visualize the dream you want to be in for example. Be engaged in that visualization while trying to remind yourself constantly that you are WILDing (this preserves your self awareness). This takes a lot of practice. A lot. It took me a year and a half personally to start getting WILDs constantly, and I WILD constantly, almost once or twice each week. It's just that DILD is my main technique. I get my first LD ever 2.5 months after i started. So hell yeah 1 month is nothing. LDing is a lifestyle. You adopt it knowing it's a slow process. It takes years of consistent practice before you start getting consistent long vivid LDs.

Here's DV WILD class (seeing the types of WILD tutorials you read, I highly recommend you to forget EVERYTHING you know about WILD and relearn it here, bcz WILD is very simple, but it just need time and practice before seeing results, just like any other mental skill. Learning chess rules is easy. Becoming a pro takes years of practice. LDing is the same. Well, it might be worse bcz in LDing it's harder to see your improvements going on, but you do get better, even if you don't realize it.): WILD


Second, you can do DILD and WILD at the same time. Like, at the same wbtb. It's not either one or the other.

DILD requires practice too. I'll split it into chunks just so I can explain it better:

_Prospective memory: It is your internal alarm clock that reminds you to watch the football game at 8 PM. You can use that to remind you to become lucid. For example, during wbtb, place the intention to "after half an hour, I will be in a dream, and I want to remember to realize that I'm actually in a dream". This is called time based prospective memory. Another type is event based prospective memory. It's when you say "next time I pass a store, I wanna remember that I want to buy gum". In LDing, you can place the intention to realize it's a dream when you see a flying cat for example, if that is a common dream sign of yours. Say "next time I see X, I will remember to realize that this means dream".

_Critical thinking: We roam our dreams usually not feeling suspicious of any oddities around us. YOu should, during the day, train yourself to notice oddities that happen, all the while thinking that "I might be dreaming at any given moment." This attitude will stay with you, even when you are dreaming. This will make you feel suspicious and doubtful if it's a dream if something weird happens inside the dream. Now of course, this requires lots of practice. Also it becomes stronger and stronger the more you have practiced it. This uses prospective memory too, even if partially, since you are training to remember to notice oddities and remember that oddities might mean dream and you might be dreaming at any time.

Also this attitude of critical thinking, or training to notice oddities, and realize that they mean dream, becomes more and more effective the more you train it. You see, you will start reaching a point where your subconscious will become active and good at checking your surroundings and thoughts and so on to detects oddities that might mean dream, all the while knowing that this might be a dream at any given moment. This is called "insight". This will make it much easier for you to become lucid. You will even start getting more of these "I got lucid out of the blue. I just realized it was a dream for no reason". It's not for no reason. It's your insight. Also this needs time and lots of practice to become strong.

_Self awareness: Self awareness is your ability to realize you are an individual existing here and now, separate from other individuals. It is what makes your brain perceive this body and mind as "I" or "me". This is what lucidity is actually. Realizing that what is happening now (in your dream), the person and life and reality and role you have been playing now is not really you. Now of course, in dreams, you might be with your parents or sitting on your computer, but it is never really your life and day to day reality. Training your self awareness helps you to be more 'sober' often about who you are and your impact on reality and your part in it. So in dreams, you will realize that what is going on isn't your life and your reality or how you affect it. It is not you. Simply, it is not you. Imagine a dream with me. You are doing whatever. Now imagine becoming lucid. What just happened? You realized tat what was going on wasn't your normal life or thoughts or self. Now imagine you have the attitude to be aware of your self often. This will be great bcz you would be in a dream and be like "this is wrong, I don't affect my reality like this. I don't think like this. This doesn't feel like how or what i would usually feel or be like, or how my day or environment would be like". It simply makes you aware of your self and your effect on reality. You get out of auto pilot and be sober of your interactions and effects and self, and this is obviously useful bcz in dreams, all of these are distorted and different from WL, so if you are in this aware mindset, you will catch that and realize this is a dream and not how you are or interact or who you are in WL.
Sageous explains this in the WILD class I linked above. I hope you'd understand better from his words that mine.


As you see, prospective memory is a big part of LDing. You can actually train it like a muscle, make it stronger. Just google how. This is very important.

Also, don't worry about dream devils. Even if you believe in them, it's very unlikely that these entities you see in your dreams are more than dream figments. It's actually even worse if you think about them as dream haunting devild, because that'll fule and expectation for them to visit your dreams, and as you might know, if you expect something inside the dream, iit happens. For example, if you see a shadow in a dream, and fear it might be a robber, then BAM, a robber appears.

And finally, if you are too overwhelmed, take a break and just dream journal for a week or two. Know that this takes time. Don't expects amazing LDs soon, but stay motivated, bcz you will reach the end goal sooner or later, it just takes time, commitment, and patience. Also dream journaling is very important. Your dreams are actually very vivid and aware, you just lose those golden details bcz dream recall is bad if you don't train it. So, the more you train your recall, the more you can preserve that vividness and awareness through waking up. So it gives the illusion that your dreams are becoming more and more vivid and aware the more you practice, but in reality they are already vivid and aware (especially in later REM cycles), but your recall is just crappy. That's why you see some beginers with crazy vivid and aware dreams. It's not because you lack the ability to have vivid and aware dreams, it's just because they happen to have a born high skill in recall, regardless whether they are crappy LDers or not. You just need to train your recall by journaling consistently and as much details as possible.

Here's a great tutorial on how to journal effectively: http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-sign...ml#post1947583

Hope I helped, and always remember, you just need to practice and have faith that you will reach awesome frequent amazing vivid aware LDs with proper time, patience, consistency and practice. In the end, as long as you sleep, you dream, and it just takes time and training to be able to become frequently lucid and have great recall and self awareness. Everyone can do it. No one is limited to 'just 360 px quality' or 'you can reach a max of only 70% awareness' lol. It just sux at first, but it gets better and better as the years of practice pass by.

ive been trying to lucid dream for about 3 months now. i haven't got any lucids yet but i had to work on my recall first. lucid dreaming to me is something i just want to accomplish so it isn't discouraging me. every night i fail just makes me want to do better the next night. ive kept persisting and now im getting much closer, i feel like i will soon have a lucid :p

Fair enough. Perhaps I should have elaborated further on what I meant by 'consciously' trying to lucid dream. I was mainly referring to WILD (FILD). Of course MILD is important but you can't force a lucid dream. I'm just recounting my own personal experiences so sorry if there was any confusion

Hey rose maybe you should try sleeping with crystals and gemstones under your pillow thats what i do and i have ld's almost every night. Oh and you should try get some sleep cause it wont work if your exhausted