Hey everyone, I've been lurking around these boards for a while and reading some of the general information about lucid dreaming. I became interested in lucid dreaming back in July and I was wondering if any of you could help me out a little bit. I had been doing my own research and at the end of July I had my first lucid dream. It wasn't very significant and didn't last very long but just having one encouraged me to keep trying to have more.
I haven't had any form of a lucid dream since July and although I still want to try, I'm getting very discourged. I have had dreams where I have made connections between the dream and the real world but I don't go any further than that. For example, in my dream I will mention my desire to lucid dream, or recognize something as being similar to one of my dreamsigns, but i don't realize it is a dream.
When I get to bed now instead of relaxing my mind and preparing myself to lucid dream, my mind just goes blank. I find it much harder now than it was before to focus on lucid dreaming. I have began to think that maybe lucid dreaming has just been a waste of my time. I have been trying to lucid dream to help me with a problem, and when I heard about this, I just assumed that a lucid dream could help. But now I realize I never actually found out how much lucid dreaming tells us about ourselves.
So basically I'm asking how can lucid dreaming help, if it can at all. Also if anyone has any advice about how to make deeper connections between dreams and the real world that would be great. Thanks!