Quote Originally Posted by Squilli0 View Post
I've been stuck in a dry spell for a couple of weeks. I am getting frustrated, due to a bit of a block occurring with my DEILDs. It has stopped me from having an LD many times. I keep on waking up with my eyes closed, imagining the dream scene, going back to sleep and then losing Lucidity. When I do get lucid, I either stabilize and fail, or forget to stabilize and lose lucidity. Please share some tips, because this is getting really discouraging.
Hey Squilli0! I'm sorry to hear about the dry spell, but we've all been there at one time or another.

I'm the World's Slowest Learner at DEILDs, so I'll leave the DEILD tips for others to provide. It sounds like you've gone a bit dry with DEILDs but you are having some DILDs occur that just give you some stability issues. DEILD dry spells are pretty much the story of my life, but DILDs alone can provide you with tons of great lucid dreams. I don't know whether you are still bailing out of DILDs intentionally in order to chain back in, but if you are, maybe look at this as an opportunity to work on stabilizing your DILDs.

The good news is that you are still achieving lucid dreams, so that's great in itself. All you have to do now is keep them going. It seems that the first problem is when you "stabilize and fail". Can you describe a bit more what happens here? What sort of failure do you experience and what sort of stabilization do you perform? I find that the biggest factor in stabilization is simply making yourself a part of the dream scene in every way you can. This especially includes your dream body. Rubbing your hands together, studying your hands, feeling the scenery, clinging to dream characters, feeling objects in the scene, licking the wall or floor, whatever! All of this works.

A lot of super-experienced LDers just sort of naturally anchor in and don't need to do any explicit stabilization. OpheliaBlue and paigeyemps have both mentioned that they no longer explicitly stabilize. Believing that you are a part of the dream scene is the crucial factor. I find that interacting aggressively with dream scenery (dream body included) is a great way to enhance this belief if it does not come naturally.

As for forgetting to stabilize, try making it your primary lucid goal when settling down to sleep or for a WBTB. If you commit to yourself that your main goal in the next LD is to study your hands, rub them together, and just feel the dream environment in every way possible, you'll be that much more likely to get right to it. This can be a great deal of fun all by itself! Studying your hands close up, for example, will amaze you. Your mind can generate incredible detail.

Good luck and let us know how things go for you!