Thread: 1 year, not a single LD

Originally Posted by Iriba

There was 1 dream where i could feel some vividness
the sun was heating my face, that was awesome indeed.
from that one i never had vivid dreams again.

Great tips from everyone here, but I want to draw your attention to this excellent point made by Highlander:

Going from your DV entries for July I feel there are a couple of times where you came really close; namely the 7/8th July entry entitled 'Wildfire near my house' and the 16/17th July entry entitled 'I'm lucid, but I'm not.'
I would take heart and some credit from these.

I think part of the problem comes from the recognition of the dream state. It's pretty easy for people who are natural lucid dreamers to tell when they are lucid, but that's only part of the story.

If you are someone who has never had an ld, or you rightfully believe you have never had one, then how can you tell what a lucid dream feels like. I know you have read a lot about lucid dreaming but then let's review it:

To have a lucid dream means one is aware that one is asleep and dreaming. Now, that awareness can be high or low, it can last a second or say until you wake up. Personally, I think that everyone knows at a deeper level that they are dreaming, we may even become lucid for seconds and then be distracted into dream oblivion.

Therefore, one of the challenges people face is how to increase that awareness so that we are in control of our own actions. Induction techniques provide the starting point, but then it is up to us to drive it up from there.

I am saying this because I believe you might have experienced brief flahses of lucidity, and then continued dreaming. Another important point to consider is that lucidity is not directly related to vividness. With practice, you can learn to enhance both the time spent lucid in a dream, retain your awareness for longer as well as boost dream vividness.

I think you are ready to bring your training one step further:

1. I highly encourage you to post to your dream journal any dreams where you are doing RCs, thinking about dreams, lucidity, having false awakenings, etc. This will make it easier for us to help you, plus you will learn how to distingush varying levels of awareness in your dreams.

2. It is time for you to become task oriented. From personal experience, I know that having a task to complete in a dream will help you achieve lucidity, retain lucidity and prolong dreams. I have spent years having random lds and no task in mind, which basically took me nowhere apart from having random fun (i.e. not always). So, seriously consider doing a simple task in your dream and when you go back to bed, repeat the task along with your realize I'm dreaming mantra. Again, post in your journal any dreams, lucid or not lucid that are associated with your task.

I highly recommend picking something from TOTM basic. Check the tasks here: Task of the Month

3. Forget about the words "I don't" and "I can't".

because Iriba, you can and you will!

Give those things a try and see how it goes.