Starting to give up on DILDs..

[mimihigurashi]

Out of the few LDs I've had, only like 3-4 have been DILDs. And only one was a normal non-lucid where I suddenly realized I was dreaming and became lucid. The rest were like, I simply "woke up" in a dream already lucid without even trying to WILD. No pre-WILD sensations, just went to sleep and woke up in a dream lucid. Here's what's going on -I have great dream recall again and write them all down in a DJ -I do over 15 reality checks per day, which include pinching my nose and trying to breathe, and also reminding myself of my dream signs and to recognize them -I've been practicing (self) awareness for weeks. Granted, I'm not aware 100% of the time because I find it so difficult, but still -I repeat mantras before going to sleep -I wake up once or twice during the night to write down dreams -I meditate 45 minutes per day (been doing it for 5 days now, it greatly increased my recall but no awareness in dream results yet) I'm starting to give up hopes on DILDing, nothing seems to be working, even though I've been doing most of the above for months.. Am I doing something wrong or what? All my effort have been futile so far, almost no progress when it comes to DILD.

[FryingMan]

How many months? Has your effort been continuous or do you keep stopping/restarting? Do you observe the fundamentals? (exercise, diet, sleep schedule). 15 RCs/day is on the low side if you want very very frequent LDs. Try to maintain continuous awareness that you could be in a dream at any time, at any place. Never, ever simply assume you're awake. Even if you don't hold awareness all day long (it takes quite a while to get the hang of this), this should boost your RC count much higher. (They all need to be quality RCs, too, not reflex and forget, but seriously consider). Have you partaken in any DV competitions? Staying active on this site is a great motivator. More than 1/3 of ALL of my lucid dreams have come to me during DV competitions. You need to make sure LDing is really important to you, deep down inside. If you really really desire more than what you've gotten, you need to turn up the effort/expectation/intention/dedication/awareness. When you "wake up in a dream" that is a DILD, even if it's the start of the dream. Open up a workbook in the DV Academy (DILD class is a good one, I'd recommend that). Negative expectation can suppress LDs. The beginner dry periods are murder, I know, I started LD training about 8 months ago and thought I'd have way more LDs than I do now. But I know I'm training my brain to operate in an entirely new and unusual way, and that every day I spend with high awareness is getting my brain more and more compatible with lucid dreaming. You have to believe, and *know* that you will reach your goals! How many dreams do you recall a night? How vivid, how long? Never give up. Giving up is the 100% guaranteed way to never get to your LD goals. You need to be brutally honest with yourself and self-evaluate critically, since nobody else can get in your head to guide you. I'd say post a very much more descriptive post listing the full details of your practice, your experiences, your recall, etc., and we could chime in with more appropriate suggestions.

[mimihigurashi]

How many months? Has your effort been continuous or do you keep stopping/restarting? Do you observe the fundamentals? (exercise, diet, sleep schedule). 15 RCs/day is on the low side if you want very very frequent LDs. Try to maintain continuous awareness that you could be in a dream at any time, at any place. Never, ever simply assume you're awake. Even if you don't hold awareness all day long (it takes quite a while to get the hang of this), this should boost your RC count much higher. (They all need to be quality RCs, too, not reflex and forget, but seriously consider). Have you partaken in any DV competitions? Staying active on this site is a great motivator. More than 1/3 of ALL of my lucid dreams have come to me during DV competitions. You need to make sure LDing is really important to you, deep down inside. If you really really desire more than what you've gotten, you need to turn up the effort/expectation/intention/dedication/awareness. When you "wake up in a dream" that is a DILD, even if it's the start of the dream. Open up a workbook in the DV Academy (DILD class is a good one, I'd recommend that). Negative expectation can suppress LDs. The beginner dry periods are murder, I know, I started LD training about 8 months ago and thought I'd have way more LDs than I do now. But I know I'm training my brain to operate in an entirely new and unusual way, and that every day I spend with high awareness is getting my brain more and more compatible with lucid dreaming. You have to believe, and *know* that you will reach your goals! How many dreams do you recall a night? How vivid, how long? Never give up. That's the 100% guaranteed way to never get there. You need to be brutally honest with yourself and self-evaluate critically, since nobody else can get in your head to guide you. I'd say post a very much more descriptive post listing the full details of your practice, your experiences, your recall, etc., and we could chime in with more appropriate suggestions. 3-4 months.. My effort has taken some breaks but not many and not long at all. I took like, 2 or 3 breaks of a few days in those months. Yes I've got the fundamentals.. Seriously, more than 15? RCs aren't even that valuable, they are mostly used to check in a dream while you are dreaming or not. But I use them just because I don't know what the heck else I can use. Continuous awareness, be it of the possibility of being in a dream right now or just general self awareness, is very difficult to maintain. I tried very hard many times before and it only got me extremely frustrated, it seemed impossible to maintain it constantly. Also, I've heard some people here saying that you're not supposed to maintain it constantly. I prefer not to rely on external aids like DV competitions and stuff like that in order to get my LDs. My recall is about 6 dreams per night, average to long length. Sometimes normal vividness, sometimes vivid. More appropriate suggestions? Thanks for the help but I doubt there is something else I can do, as I said I've tried all I can think of and nothing seems to be working. The only thing I haven't done properly is the awareness, because I find it so difficult. I guess I just ought to work on that.. I'll go read some of those workbooks though.

[Mismagius]

Reality checking in waking life is to increase awareness, which is an important part of lucid dreaming. Like FryingMan said, make sure to do quality RCs, take a moment to question and examine everything each time you RC. WBTBs and naps are both great for DILDs, try it out if you're able too I understand about ADA being difficult to keep up, have you tried doing SAT (Sporadic Awareness Technique) instead? It's also a great technique for increasing awareness and isn't as hard to maintain as ADA. Stressing too much about having LDs can hurt progress, so try to think about it like this: each day and night you're getting better and progressing. Each night you're having a lot of cool vivid non-lucid dreams, which shows the work you've put in has paid off. You've also had success with other methods, so even if you don't get a DILD you can still get a lucid dream using other methods. I hope some of this can be of help, good luck with DILDing!

[mimihigurashi]

Reality checking in waking life is to increase awareness, which is an important part of lucid dreaming. Like FryingMan said, make sure to do quality RCs, take a moment to question and examine everything each time you RC. WBTBs and naps are both great for DILDs, try it out if you're able too I understand about ADA being difficult to keep up, have you tried doing SAT (Sporadic Awareness Technique) instead? It's also a great technique for increasing awareness and isn't as hard to maintain as ADA. Stressing too much about having LDs can hurt progress, so try to think about it like this: each day and night you're getting better and progressing. Each night you're having a lot of cool vivid non-lucid dreams, which shows the work you've put in has paid off. You've also had success with other methods, so even if you don't get a DILD you can still get a lucid dream using other methods. I hope some of this can be of help, good luck with DILDing! Yes, I do my best to do quality RCs, I know doing them mindlessly isn't useful. Now that you mention it, I have been quite stressed about it in the past few weeks. A few weeks ago I had 3 DILDs in a row, in 3 days, and since then I was very frustrated because in every one of them I miserably failed at dream control. Maybe that affected my confidence a lot more than I thought, with the disappointment and stressing over it. Thanks, didn't really take that into consideration. I know state of mind is very important, and I've had a really bad one for quite some time.

[FryingMan]

Please note that "being aware all day" is not the same thing as KingYoshi's "All Day Awareness." I believe it is not the minutiae that matters like the shape/color of every shadow and feeling every breath of wind in the depth of your soul . There have been discussions about this before: the awareness of a mouse is not the awareness that a human needs to LD, we need higher level awareness. You can pick one aspect to concentrate on: the feel of gravity, your location, etc. Yes it takes a while to get into, but I think the rewards are great. It's pretty easy to just stay on the lookout for dreamsigns and unexpected changes in your environment (hey that pile of gravel didn't use to be there....) Yes your recall sounds quite good. Always reach for more recall. 3-4 months is a drop in the bucket. Some people go that long with no LDs at all, consider yourself one of the lucky ones who's *succeeded* in such a short period of time. With LDing, one must take the looooooong view. It can takes years of investment to get to the higher levels of LD ability. Never assume you've tried all there is to try, and that you've done all you can do. *Know* there's always more to learn and more to try. For one thing, 3-4 months is just not enough time. So that's one thing you haven't done: given it enough time. A couple day breaks here and there is probably fine.....but get right back to it. And poo-pooing the competitions I think is throwing away some great LDs and a fun experience. Motivation (and goal setting, and constant goal evaluation). is a proven major factor in improving in skills. Seriously, more than 15? RCs aren't even that valuable, they are mostly used to check in a dream while you are dreaming or not. Uh, yes, seriously. 1 RC an hour? Not enough. And the fact that you consider them as not that valuable is probably another problem to fix, maybe more important to fix than the count. But I use them just because I don't know what the heck else I can use. What else? RCs are very valuable. But there's also: reflection/intention, Sageous RRCs, continuous awareness, "ADA", SAT, meditation (you just started that, keep it up), dream yoga (check out the classes here they're really awesome), and you could look up the "OPEN BETA" threads of the last couple weeks, they offer some interesting exercises. Reading LaBerge if you haven't. Do daytime MILD. Practice dream incubation. Work on DEILDs and waking up without alarms. Auto-suggestion. Just to name a few.

[mimihigurashi]

Please note that "being aware all day" is not the same thing as KingYoshi's "All Day Awareness." I believe it is not the minutiae that matters like the shape/color of every shadow and feeling every breath of wind in the depth of your soul . There have been discussions about this before: the awareness of a mouse is not the awareness that a human needs to LD, we need higher level awareness. You can pick one aspect to concentrate on: the feel of gravity, your location, etc. Yes it takes a while to get into, but I think the rewards are great. It's pretty easy to just stay on the lookout for dreamsigns and unexpected changes in your environment (hey that pile of gravel didn't use to be there....) Yes your recall sounds quite good. Always reach for more recall. 3-4 months is a drop in the bucket. Some people go that long with no LDs at all, consider yourself one of the lucky ones who's *succeeded* in such a short period of time. With LDing, one must take the looooooong view. It can takes years of investment to get to the higher levels of LD ability. Never assume you've tried all there is to try, and that you've done all you can do. *Know* there's always more to learn and more to try. For one thing, 3-4 months is just not enough time. So that's one thing you haven't done: given it enough time. A couple day breaks here and there is probably fine.....but get right back to it. And poo-pooing the competitions I think is throwing away some great LDs and a fun experience. Motivation (and goal setting, and constant goal evaluation). is a proven major factor in improving in skills. Uh, yes, seriously. 1 RC an hour? Not enough. And the fact that you consider them as not that valuable is probably another problem to fix, maybe more important to fix than the count. What else? RCs are very valuable. But there's also: reflection/intention, Sageous RRCs, continuous awareness, "ADA", SAT, meditation (you just started that, keep it up), dream yoga (check out the classes here they're really awesome), and you could look up the "OPEN BETA" threads of the last couple weeks, they offer some interesting exercises. Reading LaBerge if you haven't. Do daytime MILD. Practice dream incubation. Work on DEILDs and waking up without alarms. Auto-suggestion. Just to name a few. You're right about people going that period of time with no LDs, but the reason why I thought it's unusual for me to have almost no DILDs is because I had a good number of WILDs. I thought why can I WILD but DILD seems impossible. I don't really get how concentrating on gravity will get me lucid, since gravity always feels normal in my dreams, but I'll try the location one since in dreams I'm often in weird places. Well, I prefer more practical approaches, but I'll get into the ones you listed if I really don't get results. I guess I'll do more "quality" reality checks and awareness then. Thx for your help.