Thread: Looong dry spell! Please help!

Lol, sorry, not to laugh at your plight, but you've been LDing for only about 3 months and you've hit a "long" dryspell? Back when I first started I'd regularly go 3 to 6 months without having any LDs at times. Honestly, the fact you had 15 LDs during your second month means you've had a rather irregularly high rate of success for a beginner. Don't let your abnormally great early success give you the wrong impression. Not counting natural LDers, for people to have LDs just about every night and even several a night on top of that is typically something only highly experienced LDers who've been doing it for at least a decade, if not decades, are capable of. Many who've put in 3-5 years still only find they have about 3-6 every 2 or 3 months at regular intervals, with the occasional LD spurt of 15 to 20 in a month or two's time here and there.

Really, try not to worry so much about dry spells. Focusing/dwelling on them only seems to lengthen their duration or at the very least emphasize how long they feel. The more you dwell and stress out over something as common, cyclical, and regularly experienced as a little old dry spell, the more you guide your expectations in such a way that you unconsciously presuppose your failure and associate it with the assumed failure of any particular techniques you've recently been using. In doing so, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy that winds up determining your failure before you ever even begin your attempts on a given night.

Dry spells are like colds, troubles and woes, joys and victories, and all the other myriad experiences life has to offer; they come and they go. Why they come isn't always known, and when they'll happen next or eventually end is a mystery that remains to be seen. There's a rhythm and harmony in life, and during such times of uncertainty it is best to let go and let yourself flow with the pulse of the rhythm rather than to attempt swimming upstream trying to fight a battle that you only ever end up losing anyway. Without periods of dreaming in a state of non-lucidity, there can be no lucid dreaming.


This last part is a bit TL;DR so feel free to skip over it, as it's just a more in-depth way of understanding and contextualizing the occurrence of things like dry spells and why there isn't any real point in being concerned over them or lamenting that you are experiencing one
Think of it this way, to help understand things in a broader context (as this applies to all things that exist and all systems that govern their existence, including but not limited to the human mind and perception). When a pendulum swings in a given direction, a counter-swing of equal measure in the opposite direction must follow as a consequence. That cause and effect is what maintains the equilibrium of the system responsible for driving the pendulum's movement and existence. The pendulum cannot exist without the system guiding the ever progressing motion of its swing, no matter the degree the of swinging that is occurring (imperceptible swings still occur on a microscopic level even despite it at times potentially appearing still). We do not feel or express concern, protest, or surprise over the fact that there is a counter-swing of equal measure that follows in response to the swing that preceded it. Likewise, we should not become overly concerned with, protest against, or be surprised when we have negative experiences given we have positive ones, or that we experience times where the outcome we'd prefer is exactly the opposite of what actually happens. It just means that it is only a matter of time, then, that the counter-counter-swing happens, where the outcome we want actually occurs.

Originally Posted by snoop

Lol, sorry, not to laugh at your plight, but you've been LDing for only about 3 months and you've hit a "long" dryspell? Back when I first started I'd regularly go 3 to 6 months without having any LDs at times. Honestly, the fact you had 15 LDs during your second month means you've had a rather irregularly high rate of success for a beginner. Don't let your abnormally great early success give you the wrong impression. Not counting natural LDers, for people to have LDs just about every night and even several a night on top of that is typically something only highly experienced LDers who've been doing it for at least a decade, if not decades, are capable of. Many who've put in 3-5 years still only find they have about 3-6 every 2 or 3 months at regular intervals, with the occasional LD spurt of 15 to 20 in a month or two's time here and there.

Hahah. I had no idea of how long does it take to consider a dry spell. In my defense I'll argue that those 15 LDs were super short and I had to work hard to achieve them (with long WBTBs and so). But happily I have entered again into a good rate of success!