First time in a while + questions

Hello!

I'm not sure if any of you are familiar with it, but I wanted to do some techniques by someone named Raduga. I ended up getting too tired to do them and kept sleeping. However, in my sleep, I had my first (or technically second) lucid dream that I had in a while.

I've been trying to build up a habit of counting my fingers for about 4-7 days I think, and as I was counting, I was thinking "One, two, three, four, five... six? I'm dreaming". I then tried to do a leap where I'd like a little and go far, and it worked. When I went to go to a mirror however [a task that I wanted to do first], I blinked and then the dream disappeared.

Later, a dream came up where I counted my fingers again, where the same thing happened but I counted seven. I then thought, "Alright, now this time I have to try and not bli-" and then I blinked again and it disappeared.

My questions are the following:

1. I can't quite remember the feeling, but I felt like I was conscious but not very conscious at the same time? It's like I counted them and stated I recognized what I was doing, and then I tried to complete my first task I wanted to do. However, at the same time, I don't think I felt very conscious either. Is this normal? How can I try to become more aware/conscious in my dreams? (One thing I was thinking of is the "All Day Awareness (ADA)" method, but I don't know much besides that.
   
2. What can I do in order to work on the blinking leading to me falling back asleep?

Thanks for your time!

Just keep practicing. The first few lucids are rarely stable. Mine weren't... lasted a couple seconds I think?

By focusing on the blinking, you're giving it the power of your expectation. You expect it to wake you up. So best to try not to focus on that. Focus instead on stabilizing the dream. You can look at your hands until they become very vivid, you can say your name out loud, and of course, interact with the sensory world around you.

Tips - if it become a recurrent issue for you.. first thing is hold very still, eyes closed, as you lose the dream. You can sometimes get it back, or get into a new dream. Next is, if you are lucid and stuck with your eyes closed (this has happened to me multiple times), you can use your dream fingers to peel open your eyelids. This has worked to regain the visuals of the dream for me.

Good luck and welcome to Dream Views! :okbyenow:

First of all, congrats on the lucid :)

Yes to everything MoonageDaydream said; stabilizing the dream is priority #1 once you realize you're dreaming, especially in the early days when you're still getting used to managing your expectations about the dream mechanics. I personally like the staring at my hands too, since I've often just used them to RC anyway. When visuals are really poor sometimes I'll go for the tactile approach and try to feel the ground or whatever happens to be around me and then build the visuals based off whatever I feel. Less commonly, when I find that I'm floating in total emptiness, I'll dive downwards expecting to find the ground again, which has a decent success rate for me. Remember that you're not just exploring but dynamically helping to create the world around you with your expectations. If you expect blank space, you can create blank space. If you then expect something to appear in that blank space, you can do that too! It may help to reframe an event like having your surroundings disappear (if it does happen again) as just a scene change - that is, if you can stay aware that you're still dreaming, it doesn't have to be the end. It does make sense to start repopulating the dream with a new scene or using sense perceptions to stabilize things soon, though, because that gives your mind something to focus on which helps a lot in staying aware. I'd also recommend getting in the habit of doing an RC upon waking. That way you can catch any false awakenings and recognize that you're still dreaming. Again, it becomes more like a scene change then.

As to your first question, yes, even lucid dreams can have varying degrees of awareness and vividness. Stabilizing the dream will help, the rest is practice. For instance, you can practice specific skills like recalling tasks you wanted to do or other details from waking life. In my early lucids I found that challenging, plus my analytical thought processes tended to be quite fuzzy. Both of those aspects improved on average with experience (although I still have some lucids where I behave pretty daftly).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Melli

1. I can't quite remember the feeling, but I felt like I was conscious but not very conscious at the same time? It's like I counted them and stated I recognized what I was doing, and then I tried to complete my first task I wanted to do. However, at the same time, I don't think I felt very conscious either. Is this normal? How can I try to become more aware/conscious in my dreams? (One thing I was thinking of is the "All Day Awareness (ADA)" method, but I don't know much besides that.
   
2. What can I do in order to work on the blinking leading to me falling back asleep?

Thanks for your time!

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First of all congrats ! The first LD are always so cool to have even if they are sooo short. Mine were like 5 or 10 seconds lol.

So i am not an advanced lucid dreamer at all, i am in fact still a beginer (5 lucid dreams) but i wanted to share with you what worked for me. On my 5 lucids dreams, my firsts 4 lasted like 5 seconds and were really really fuzzy. Some of them feeled like being under water, other being sleepy, etc.
But my last one was really in an other level. In this dream i just woke up and idk why told myself : "wait, this is maybe a false awakening" so i did a reality check. I understood i was dreaming, so i tried to spin around myself and to rub my hands as fast as possible.
The thing is that this is common tips that i heard to stabilize your dream. But for me it didnt work in my LD number 3 and 4. This time again woke up. But i somehow went back into my dream (wich i will not talk here) and i performed another Reality Check. I became lucid again and this time i was mad because it was the third time and the spinning and rubbing thing wasnt working. So i started to spin around again but like i said, i was mad so i shouted out loud : "Calm down !" and this is were all became extremely clear and i knew i was in.
I now understand why people say LD can be extremely real. Once really grounded into my dream, everything was looking so real that i couldnt believe i was dreaming. This didnt happen in my 4 fist LD were like i said everything was too fuzzy.

So idk if this can help but you can try to talk out loud what you want and it might work. At least for me, it seems to work extremly well. I need to try it more in my next LDs.