July 4

I believe that I am making progress in my journey as a lucid dreamer. The frequency of my LDs these past 3 weeks has been higher than in the past- I have had 4 LDs (all DILDs), including one just last night. I had not had a LD in the 6-week period before this.

It seems that I may have accidently acquired an unwanted schema that lucidity triggers either me waking up or a FA. In the earliest of these 4 recent LDs, I had a FA immediately upon realizing it was a dream, and I lost lucidity.

In the second, I became lucid, recalled my goal, but then had a FA before I had time to carry it out. I "woke up" in my bed, but I became lucid again because the mask I had been wearing over my eyes felt weird and I felt my body floating above the bed. I pulled off the mask, and then immediately woke up for real (did an RC to confirm it).

In the third LD, I became lucid and had a short period of time (maybe about a minute) where I was lucid and was attempting to carry out a preset goal. I somehow lost lucidity, because when I finally woke up for real I recalled the LD and then an unrelated non-lucid dream after it.

And, in the lucid I had last night, I had only a few moments (around 30-45 seconds) of lucidity, where I focused solely on taking in the details of the dream and increasing its vividness by engaging my senses. I then had a FA and lost lucidity.

I plan to combat this problem by doing a RC before I get out of bed upon waking up in the morning. Even if it is in the middle of the night and I am not recording a dream, I will still do a RC. I have been trying to do this the past few weeks, but not very diligently- I will often get out of bed and start my day because I do not want to be late, thinking "I'll do a RC later." From this point onward, I will not get out of bed until I have done a RC and reached a conclusion about whether or not I am dreaming.

My daytime practice these past two weeks up until yesterday has been very poor, with very little thought of LDing during the day. Starting today, I am getting back into my habit of doing a minimum of 10 mindful RCs each day.