Thread: Swimming against the current

Hi, I feel very identified with your words.
Turns out, on my experience, the worst and most unstable lucid dreams are definitely the ones were I get lucid say 1 min ir less previous to the dream ending, and sadly is when I get lucid the most. I don't really know why this happens, maybe you progresively raise your awareness previous to waking up, hence you are more prone to have a LD on your last dream minutes??
In any case, same thing happens to me, RC don't necesarrily work, dream characters dont interact or even run away from you, vision becomes blurry and the feeling and thought of waking up becomes progressively stronger. Stabilization techniques also do not work properly in this period, actually since I am feeling that I am really close to waking up I usually use those last seconds to do something interesting like flying or changing landscapes, which actually works negatively and rushes the waking up moment.
For me, no question the best LDs are the ones that take place somewhere in the middle of the night (say, 3-4 hours after normal sleeping time), in here there is no rush to wake up, stabilization works and dream characters do as I say and interact with me, so I try my best to aim at this time.
Anyway, you are not alone in this for sure.
Best,

1) Sometimes sleep cycle will be the issue. You can dream outside of REM and the quality will be very different.
2) sometimes you can make it shift to a more vivid stable dream.
3)Sometimes you can be on the verge of weird dimensional/astral stuff. The astral stuff is far less controlled by you. Other dreamers or astral being can be there and will not respond to intent or control, while others are fake dream images and are like any DC

Hi ZAD,

I had a lucid dream like that just a couple days ago. I realized I was dreaming, jumped through a window, and found myself floating in the dark without my senses functioning properly. It was a little like being underwater, which gave me the idea to treat the dream as if that was where I was, which meant that I could fix it if I swam upwards until I reached the surface. And after a minute or two of swimming, I surfaced in a lake – and in a fully-formed dream. I got 10 to 15 minutes of exploring and messing around before I woke up, which wasn’t bad for such an unpromising beginning.

What I find generally is that if you take the scenario the dream gives you and play along with it, you can often use it to find your way into a better one, letting the dream itself inspire the choice rather than having all the details planned out in advance. Of course, there’s a fine line between playing along and being swept along into a nonlucid dream.

I can’t speak to difficulties involving dream characters in particular, but it seems like a similar approach could be worth a try. Rather than just trying to apply willpower, improvise a solution that makes, if not waking life-sense, then at least dream-sense.

Some suggestions:

1. Once lucid, say "Increase clarity!" or "Increase consciousness to super conscious level!" I have tried this and it does affect the dream in a positive way. The key is practicing before hand and setting the intention so that you remember to do this once lucid.

2. I honestly believe that we get lower level lucid dreams on our way toward higher level ones. It's a spectrum of awareness. Editing.. after re-reading your post, I'm wondering how long you've been LDing. I would suggest this, but if you're someone who's not new, then this advice doesn't apply as much.

I hope that's helpful. Keep going!!

When it comes to increasing dream quality, what I've found works for me is stop what I'm doing and look very closely at something, like a wall, the floor, my hands -- as if I'm putting my face just a few inches away from it.

I then focus on the small details of that thing, it's color, material, and texture. I also feel it with my fingers to really try to give at all of my attention. You can even try smelling it and tasting it!

Doing this tends to bring that object into crisp focus, and with it, the rest of the dream once you decide to resume what you were doing. It's also a good way to keep from waking up, as well as materializing a dream from "the void" that can occur between DEILDs or during sleep paralysis.