Thread: SubConscious resistance to LD's

Its only natural that as something that you have used as a dream sign becomes more and more common as you continue to use it, that eventually you get used to it. This is the same for the visual or audio cues from induction devices. You're mind changes. Your techniques should change with it.

So how do you LD masters handleyour repeated failure to achieve lucidity?

perserverance and willingness to let go of preconceptions. If something isn't working, change it. The most important thing is to not get discouraged, it is counter productive.

There was a time when I considered myself a master of lucid dreaming. This view lead me to slacken in my basic habits. I stopped recording dreams that 'weren't worth it', I stopped reassuring myself that I could be lucid since I had taken it for granted. Now I'm trying to break a year long dry spell and I'm just realizing all of my mistakes now. I restarted keeping a regular dream journal and started writing down my goals every day. Basically I started over. If you accept that starting over is okay and is not an admittance of defeat, you can be back in no time.

Im in a similar position to the OP, ive only been working on LD for about 3 months now. in the first 2 months i went from nothing at all up to having 2 fully conscious LDs and about 5 layer 1-2s. but for the last month ive not had anything. nothing reallys changed in my approach, still RCing, keeping a dream journal, trying WBTB most days etc, not sure where im going wrong. ive been messing about with different induction techniques so i suppose its only a matter of time before i hit the jackpot but its still a bit annoying.
as mentioned by a poster above i think ill try incorporating a statement of intent into my DJ to see if that can hellp focus my mind.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

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There was a time when I considered myself a master of lucid dreaming. This view lead me to slacken in my basic habits. I stopped recording dreams that 'weren't worth it', I stopped reassuring myself that I could be lucid since I had taken it for granted. Now I'm trying to break a year long dry spell and I'm just realizing all of my mistakes now. I restarted keeping a regular dream journal and started writing down my goals every day. Basically I started over. If you accept that starting over is okay and is not an admittance of defeat, you can be back in no time.

Rings a big bell for me...slacking and bad habits which I'm trying to break..The two hardest aspect for me are 1. Accepting that failure (scrub that) temporary inability to achieve lucidity is not an admittance of defeat.

The other aspect is the view that my Subconscious is somehow separate from me ie not within my control. ...therefore easier to "blame" it and not myself....Mmmh that's a bit of a breakthrough thought for me..

Is seeing ones Subconscious as being somehow separate peculiar to me or do others share this feeling and what do you do to bring your subconscious under control?

As depressing as it sounds, I'm relating LDs to a video game.

When you first start out, you're level 1. It's very difficult to get around, you don't do much damage, your skills are lacking. In short, You're a newbie. As you continue to play and practice, your level up, you gain more skills. Eventually, You'll be at the point where you can do anything in the game with ease, because you'll have the skills to do so.

As you try to LD and recall your dreams, You're putting more and more importance on it in your mind. Eventually, your brain will realize it is important to you and make more connections to it. It'll get easier and easier, until you can do it at will. That;s what I think. I'd say I'm about level 6 right now! =)

Intersting comparison...maybe my dry spell would be like ..your joystick/controller going on the blink!

I think lucid dreaming is like raising your awareness from 0% (except in the wild) in your dream body. To sleep, we need to drop our awareness in our real body at conscious, subconscious and unconscious levels. But in that process we almost "turn off" our conscious, then only subconscious and unconscious stay awake while switching their awareness to the dream body. WILD is basically maintaining the conscious bellow a point where you can't go to REM and above the point where your conscious sleep. With that said, it's all fault of our conscious which is too lazy and loves to sleep (hope it wasn't confusing, making sense is not my strongest skill ).

Conscious, unconscious, subconscious....it's a confusing subject, expect we all have different views about what they are...it's only about putting our thoughts into words that we start to clarify things ,well at least for ourselves..I'm starting to have a clearer idea about where I've been going wrong...ie blaming my subconscious...when really I should have been embracing it and not seeing it as a separate entity...now I know we are a team and have set myself the goal of having become lucid again before this Christmas!
RE WILD's never done it but a couple of experiences with SP puts me right off it!