# Lucid Dreaming > General Lucid Discussion >  >  All of my lucid dreams are "blurry", "washed out", and not a bit vivid/realistic at all.

## gndiego

Hello everyone.

It's exactly as the title says. I can't find the right words to describe, but all my lucid dreams so far , which all of them were DILDs, were very blurry, unrealistic and no fun at all. They usually are very pale and dark, and my recall of them isn't always perfect. 

Did this happen to any of you? Did you manage to turn your dreams into a more vivid and realistic experience? I'd love to have an update on this topic.

Thanks!

p.s. I'm not sure I'm posting this in the right forum, if not, sorry mods and please move it to right place please.

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## Linkzelda

If you're lucid, one way you can augment clarity and vividness is to simply shout out "Clarity now!" or "More Clarity!" Rub your hands, try to get as much tactile sensations in as possible to make things more detailed and real.

Sometimes you'll have lucids where things are vivid, some where they're a work in progress from your subconscious getting all the nooks and crannies in for you to experience. Pay attention more to your surroundings, really get into the thought of yourself becoming aware of the small details.

You can look at your hands, and try to fill in the details if they look blurry or bland. Imagine seeing the fingerprints, hand marks, etc. The quality of your lucid dreams depends on many aspects, your mind and intention to make it clearer being the most important in my opinion.

Other factors that may be contributing to the washed out visuals could be that you're probably not hitting the later REM cycles where dreams are more vivid and intense. Could it be that you're not getting enough sleep? Other than that, take advantage that you are lucid to make your dreams look better, you have the willpower, and you'll see your dreams are influenced with how much you focus on thought energy.

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## Sensei

What Link said plus:
You need more vividness and clarity in your normal dreams!!! DJ more, sleep at least 8 hours. pay attention to your dreams, not just your LDs. A little dye in the water will color the whole cup.

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## gab

It's possible you don't have enough daytime awareness, so you also lack details in your dreams.

Try yelling out some commands "Focus now", "Increase clarity", or "Oh look how everything is so detailed", or anything similar. It works. Practice saying these commands out loud during day.

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## mcwillis

Manifest a mirror in your lucid.  For example say to yourself that when you go through a door into a room there will be a mirror in there.  When you get a mirror look into it and clear out any strange looking gunk that is in your eyes.  If this is the cause of your problem your lucids will become more realistic than waking reality!!

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## MasterMind

I used to have this problem and in fact I still have, my solution though was chemistry.  :wink2:  Brain Chemistry!  ::smartie:: 

When you lucid dream there is a system called amingeric system (basically governs critical thinking) that is slightly above the cholinergic system (one explanation to REM dreams).
The aminergic rises when we are awake and the cholinergic rises when we sleep. The mystery however is how we can make the aminergic system rise with just intent, but that is another question.
Anyway when we DILD the aminergic is slightly higher and the more attetention we put in the dream the more it increase, but it's no always as simple as that, since sometimes we are really stupid in dreams and that is because the logic center of the brain is shut off and the aminergic system is really low. 

However if you have a plan of waking yourself up (How crazy that might sound) you can actaully increase the aminergic system automatically and then you return to the dream by using the DEILD, atleast in my experience the cholinergic system seems to increase and is making the dream more vivid, but since the aminergic is almost peaked or well atleast very high, I am still aware and the dream turn out more vivid. 

This is also why people say WILD experiences are more vivid and more real than DILD experiences.

Everything needs balance even the brain itself  ::meditate:: 

By then the dream feels like being plugged in to the matrix, it's not random unstable not hazy or blurry it's perfect stable and like the lucid dream of your dreams ...  ::rolleyes:: 

Here is a perfect moment to start the song Paradise by Coldplay  :Shades wink:  

Sorry got carried away.. But I hope this information helps you  :wink2:

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## gndiego

Thanks a lot everyone!!!! Here are some things I'd like to point out:

- I haven't actually slept well in the past few months. I wake up several times during the night, and have a lot of trouble getting to sleep again. I don't know why this happens, but it's screwing up my sleep pattern and even my waking life. I'm seeing a doctor soon to try and find out why this is happening. That is too, I think, why I can't WILD. If I wake up, I have a lot of trouble getting to sleep again, so whenever I try wild, I just lay there for hours fully awaken, thus not having the opportunity to let my body fall asleep while I'm aware of it.

- MasterMind, that was a very insightful post. I already read somewhere that if you wake up from a dream, and go back straight into a DEILD, it gets more vivid, and that's pretty interesting, because the less I have to "wake up", the easier it is to me to sleep, for the reason I mentioned above. So if I try it, the worst case cenario for me is just falling into regular sleep. Thanks for reminding me about that. *But is there any way to intentionally wake myself up from a lucid dream? What about a non lucid?* 
What I'm trying to do is setting a custom alarm at 7am, as CrazyInsane's tutorial says, but it's not working so far cause I'm setting it too low, and it doesn't wake me up. I'm still trying to find the right volume, that will wake me up without startling me.

- And about the main subject in this thread, vividness: I'll try to combine the "clarity now" method along with the "surroundings awareness" method and see if it gets more detailed and vivid. Those were some real nice advices, thank you. And now that you mention REM dreams, I just noticed tonight that the last dream I had (around 8:30am) was kinda vivid. I dreamed I was in an airplane with some local football players, and the color of the sky were very bright, and when I had a beer with one of them (lol) I could even feel the flavor of it.

- And last, since I'm depending so much in DILDs, at least for now, do you guys have any tips aside from RCs and DJ to have LD's more regularly? I say that because all my DILDs seem to happen at complete random, and I'd like to increase my number of dreams so I can practice more, at least for now, while I'm fixing my sleep pattern.

Thanks again.

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## Linkzelda

You could try a MILD, but with that you'll have to be specific. I would go on in a long explanation, but I'll make it short for you. Sorta.

Generally, people will say "I will have a lucid dream tonight" and repeat it a few times before going to sleep. Then they go with the conviction that they will lucid dream, and stop thinking about it, go to sleep, and wait for results.

Now, in your subconscious' perspective, it's going to get confused because you're giving it something vague. How would it be able to choose when "tonight" exactly is? Try to make a specific mantra that's going to make it less of a pain for your subconscious to work around with.

Examples:

*" In XXX amount of time (hours, minutes, etc.), I will realize that I'm dreaming."*

OR

*"In XXX amount of time (hours, minutes, etc.), I am going to realize that I'm dreaming."* <--- These makes things practical for your subconscious to give you what you want, but the latter makes it that you have been a lucid dreamer all your life, and it's natural to you.

Imagine if you said "At XX amount of time (PM/AM  amount of hours), I will lucid dream."  

That might sound just fine to you, but to your _subconscious_, you might have a non-lucid dream at that time. You see the difference between this and the first two options you could go for? You're making things easier for your subconscious (not making it cram something difficult to do), and giving you what you want.

"I will realize that I'm dreaming," or "I am going to realize I'm dreaming," (with the time extension before this of course) seems something reasonable.

Or, (example), "At 5 AM tomorrow, I will realize that I'm dreaming." OR, "At 5 AM tomorrow, I am going to realize that I'm dreaming."


*So in a nutshell for that question,* if you want to do a MILD, try it out for a few weeks, and make a meaningful and practical mantra that involves something YOU can do, rather than something that would make things hard on your subconscious. Be specific and reasonable in your mantras. 

And also, don't say the mantra too much as you're going to sleep, you want the conviction clear to your subconscious. *Say it a few times, believe in it (making it meaningful), and sleep with the assurance your subconscious will do it for you.* (Autosuggestion).

*So some example mantras (but not the only ones you can use):

"In (so and so amount of hours), I will realize that I'm dreaming."
"In (so and so amount of hours), I am going to realize that I'm dreaming."
*
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To answer your CrazyInsane Tutorial dilemma, yeah, part of the guide's challenge for some people is finding the right alarm, and the right volume to set it in.

Here's something I did that actually worked when I was trying that method for a while,


Find the alarm you feel would be loud enough to wake you up.Then try to listen to it at certain intervals throughout the day, so your mind gets accustomed to the sound.Optional (like I stated with the MILD explanation), You can set a mantra throughout the day where you say (i.e), "When the alarm rings at 5 AM tomorrow, I will keep my eyes closed, stay still, and realize that I'm dreaming."


Here are some sample alarms that I personally used:

CrazyInsane Sample Alarm Sounds by King Wugguls on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free (don't mind the kingwugguls name)

There's a 4 second alarm, 7 second alarm, and 14 second alarm.

If you think you're a heavy sleeper, use the 7 or 14 second alarm.If you think you're a light sleeper, use the 4 second alarm.If you find that all three don't work, change the time accordingly. And don't forget, you have the option of the Mantra that could be a useful supplement in easing tension on yourself.

*Another thing* that I noticed when people perfected waking up with their eyes closed, staying still, etc., the moment you start realizing that you're awake with your eyes closed, and see nothing happening, just a black void or "back of your eyes" show,

*Visual something....anything.* I had a certain WILD attempt where I was aware that I'm awake, and saw an "n_n" emoticon, and focused on it for a while, and before I knew it, I'm warped into a dream scene, became lucid, still did a RC, and had a decent short lucid.

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Now, if you're concerned that you might have too loud of an alarm when attempting a possible solution to your dilemma with the CrazyInsane tutorial, you can try this (I'm trying to perfect this):


(This is based from Beedkin's AP/OBE Induction Guide), but the mechanisms can be applied for lucid dreaming as wellIf you plan to sleep before Midnight (11PM being the limit)Set an alarm, that will make a LOOP, in 1 hour to 90 minutes time. So when you wake up after an hour to 90 minutes (you have to determine how long it takes for you to fall alseep and change accordingly), stay up for an HOUR at least to 2 hours at MOST.When you stay up for 1-2 hours (try to stay within that range), go to sleepOptional (Set a mantra): "The moment I fall asleep, I am going to realize that I'm dreaming."Ignore any audtiorty hallucinations, or HI's, they're natural, and they won't do any kind of damage to you. Find something you can concentrate on passively. It sounds contradicting, but like Beedkin stated,





> You may say that’s two opposites, but keep in mind that you do this when playing a video game or when engaged in sport.... you don’t think about what you are doing but you are totally absorbed in the activity. This is part of the mindset of the state.



In theory: You have a lucid dream, or in a deeper aspect, other forms of projection (but I won't state that here, since that would be beyond dreaming terms) 

Beedkin's method takes advantage of pre-napping/pre-sleeping, (1 hour to 90 minutes), so that when you wake up, you'll know your body is relaxed (you'll notice it's hard to get up, but make sure you DO get out of your bed).

Here's the actual guide, I sorta condensed it for you.

http://www.dreamviews.com/f19/fantas...-method-98062/

EDIT:

 In Step 2 of the condensed version of how I viewed Beedkin's guide, if you plan to sleep *AFTER* midnight (example 1AM), sleep until 2AM-2:30AM) wake up, and this time *stay up for 30 minutes instead*, and go with rest of the steps.

I know it sounds like a lot of information, but trust me, read through it, take your time reading it. If you want results, you have to learn the *meaning* behind each method.

It will be worth the extra 5-10 minutes reading this, so that the general overview I gave you will make sense if you choose to read Beedkin's method.

I'm honestly still trying to perfect this method, but it's optional. And like anything I've stated here, these aren't the only ways you can become lucid and have vivid dreams, there are many, don't take what I say to absolute law.

Good luck, and happy lucids.  :smiley:

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## MasterMind

WOW Linkzelda!  ::shock::  I am glad that I am not alone with writing lengthy posts  :wink2:  Great post though  :smiley: 

But for your question gndiego: How does one wake up intentionally from a lucid dream or a non-lucid dream.

Well intention needs awareness, so if you want to wake up from a non-lucid dream I guess you need to use the intention whilel awake to wake up from a dream by using autosuggestion.

By waking up from a lucid dream you can begin by asking yourself, how do you usually wake up from a dream? Which are the very actions that you try to prevent while lucid?

Getting too excited - Falling from an height perhaps - Thinking of the physyical body etc.

Now we have, by changing the perspective, suddenly converted what we usually would call a problem to a solution.  :wink2: 

And by learning this you never have to be afraid to wake up from a lucid dream again! Because you know that you can return whenever you want.

Unless the REM-period is ended though, I am only saying this so you don't have to blame yourself if you can't transition at a time.

I guess that's our lesson for the day, if you have a problem, change the perspective and it might even be a solution!

Haha I think too much I need to meditate lol  ::meditate::  Sweet dreams!  ::content::

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## gndiego

LinkZelda:

When I first heard about lucid dreaming, and started reading about it, MILD/DILD was the first thing that popped up for me. At that time, I tried MILD a few times, but to no avail so far. So, my question is: have you had any success with it? Is it really a reliable technique? Sorry to ask you that after everything you wrote about it but I'm just a little skeptical about it. I'll now take my time and read that guide you posted (and by the say what does OBE stand for? I'm not sure what that means). But thanks a LOT for taking your time and help me get better at lucid dreaming.

Mastermind:

Now that you mentioned "getting too excited", I don't remember if I already said that in this thread, but rushing and getting excited is what I always do whenever I get lucid. All the moments I achieved lucidity, I rushed down to everything with barely any looking around: running, flying, beating up people, raping women (lol) that sure contributed to the blurriness and bad recall of those dreams. I hardly ever took a second to look around.

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## Sensei

> LinkZelda:
> 
> When I first heard about lucid dreaming, and started reading about it, MILD/DILD was the first thing that popped up for me. At that time, I tried MILD a few times, but to no avail so far. So, my question is: have you had any success with it? Is it really a reliable technique? Sorry to ask you that after everything you wrote about it but I'm just a little skeptical about it. I'll now take my time and read that guide you posted (and by the say what does OBE stand for? I'm not sure what that means). But thanks a LOT for taking your time and help me get better at lucid dreaming.
> 
> Mastermind:
> 
> Now that you mentioned "getting too excited", I don't remember if I already said that in this thread, but rushing and getting excited is what I always do whenever I get lucid. All the moments I achieved lucidity, I rushed down to everything with barely any looking around: running, flying, beating up people, raping women (lol) that sure contributed to the blurriness and bad recall of those dreams. I hardly ever took a second to look around.



I know neither of these are to me.  :tongue2:  but I know that DILD vs WILD really seems to depend on the person. I personally know a guy that any time he goes to sleep he can WILD. Someone that used to come to this site (Hukif) has an average of 4 LDs a night through MILD/DILD. Depends on the person.

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## Linkzelda

> LinkZelda:
> 
> At that time, I tried MILD a few times, but to no avail so far.



Yeah, it really takes some time for the effect to develop, especially sustaining your belief that the mantra has meaning in it, which is why it's a turn-off for newcomers, because I admit, the majority of people just getting their feet wet into the topic of lucid dreaming want a quick-go, non-tl;dr method to have a lucid dream.

I was like that too, but I started to read more guides that went to greater lengths, and learned more than just instructions.





> (and by the say what does OBE stand for? I'm not sure what that means)



OBE means Out Of Body Experience, but if you want to find more information on that, you can check out the Beyond Dreaming section for it. There are many beliefs underneath this concept, so it may not be an enticing endeavor, since you're focused on lucid dreaming more.

I just included the condensed guide because if you omit the words OBE/AP/etc out of it, it can apply to lucid dreaming.





> Is it really a reliable technique? Sorry to ask you that after everything you wrote about it but I'm just a little skeptical about it.



No no, it's perfectly fine! It's good that you're skeptical about it, that's what you need when you go about analyzing the pros and cons of each induction method. Yes, I'd say it's a reliable technique, BUT you do have to acknowledge its cons, just with any other technique.

The pros with MILD (this isn't all of it):

-If you combine it with a WBTB, and have high motivation and assurance, a really strong drive to put meaning into the mantra, you will most likely get a lucid dream.

Cons

-You are limited of that belief, and sometimes if you don't choose a reasonable mantra, you might fail.

-If you don't put meaning in it, it'll just be another rambling phrase that would make your mind imply you aren't really into it.

---





> So, my question is: have you had any success with it?




*Spoiler* for _My experience_: 




My first lucid dream was based from a MILD, or a V-MILD (Visual Mantra Induced Lucid Dream) where I would write with a black sharpie "I have lucid dream."

I was a complete noob at the time, and was receptive to ANYTHING that could be easy for me. So I basically looked at the paper with the mantra in it occasionally when something went wrong, and just about any time I felt like looking at it.

In the shower. Eating Breakfast. Random Internet Searching. You Name it. I did this for a whole day, and I finally had my first lucid dream! Now the logic behind it, I'm not so sure of, but I did remember myself having a sudden awareness, coming out of a pit, and having an amazingly vivid lucid dream.

It was a short one, because I couldn't contain my excitement, I just wanted to do EVERYTHING at one (forming a Chidori from Shippuden, etc.)

But I haven't used it just for inducing lucid dreams, I used just the mantra aspect for autosuggestion (like when I tried CrazyInsane's tutorial when I was still a newcomer, and used a mantra to keep my eyes closed, body still, and had an AMAZING WILD. 

I literally was shocked at how real it was, you could say that it was like PS3 graphics.


BEST lucid experience in terms of quality so far, despite it's short duration.



---


*Spoiler* for _More stuff on successes/failures_: 



I've only had the MILD work 2 times for a lucid, and the Mantra aspect along for a bunch of times on autosuggestion. 

Part of the reason why I failed in other MILD attempts is simply because I went with other guides that suggested, "I will have a lucid dream" or something that forces my subconscious to do difficult tasks.

I'm implementing the Mantras in a different way, and I'm starting to get decent results in dream recall, which I hope overall will aid me in having more lucids.




It's understandable that WILD would be the desired method, it is the holy grail of lucid dreaming, to newcomers' perspectives, but if a DILD, MILD, FILD, DEILD, etc. gets you a lucid, it's a lucid. That's a concept that's very important if you end up failing a WILD attempt, but still had a DILD, DEILD, or even MILD.

It's about taking each benefit and disadvantages of each technique, appreciate what worked, and what didn't work even, becoming versatile so that if one technique fails (WILD), you have the developed awareness and knowledge of other dreams (example: which means you can still have a DILD, or a become awake with your eyes closed to DEILD).

====

And yeah, like BrandonBoss said, my successes and failures shouldn't be the only grounds for you to try things out, it depends on the person. Some techniques work better for a certain group of people, and so on for other induction techniques, at least in terms of just learning the techniques.

But as you become more aware of each technique and the concepts behind them, you won't be limited to just one preferred method.

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