Thread: Anchors don't work - any idea why?

Hi there,
I'm so glad I found this forum, hope anyone can help. My problem might be a typical beginner's problem, but I wouldn't know about it.

Here it is: I've started "preparing" for lucid dreams about four weeks ago. I never had problems remembering my dreams in the first place, I easily remember about three dreams from each night. I don't keep a dream diary, but that's my laziness - I remember so much about my dreams, even in detail, that I would have to get up an hour earlier every day just to have the time to write it all down. Honestly, no show-off.

So that seems like good base to start off from.... I paid special attention to dream symbols that keep popping up, to use them as an anchor to remind me that I'm dreaming. I very frequently dream of dogs and musicians or pop stars of some sort. I see a lot of both during the day too (I live in a big city = loads of dogs, and work in the music biz), so I would use that to do reality checks while I'm awake. It didn't work in the beginning, which didn't worry or stress me though. Then all of a sudden, last weekend, my first lucid dream was sparked off by something completely different - I was flying, and totally out of the blue I was like "whooooaaa I'm dreaming"! So I did the odd reality check, played around a bit and then woke up.

Fine, I was happy with that and really thought of it as my breakthrough. So I thought, hm, I don't really care which symbol sparks off lucid dreams, as long as anything does.

But what can I tell you?? I haven't since dreamed of any dogs, pop stars, no flying, no nothing.... I only dream of boring old every day situations like they occur while I'm awake too. Honestly. Like last night - I dreamt absolutely every bit of the way from my house to my working place, like I take it with my bike every day. I have normal conversation with people I see every day and so on. Nothing odd whatsoever.

now that's odd in a different sense though..... would anyone know why my subconscious is doing that? Is it keeping me from having lucid dreams to prevent me from discovering something it's been trying to hide????