So Frustrating

I can't lucid dream. It isn't that the techniques are not working. I understand that if I do all the methods regularly and consistently I will start lucid dreaming. The problem is that no matter what I do, something seems to get in my way. When I try to WILD, I space out and unthinkingly roll over and ruin it. If I try to do a dream journal, my half-asleep self will decide in the morning that the dream "wasn't important so theres no point recording it". Stuff like this happens every time I think I can make progress. Always, something seems to be working against me attaining lucid dreams. I have only had.. maybe 2, and they were both pretty bad and completely random.

I'm not sure if I am asking for advice or not, I am just so frustrated and it seems like I will never do it. Has anyone encountered this before?

Well, things like the dream journal are your own problem, I mean no one can grab your hand and force you to write down your dreams, you have to find the motivation to do it because you know it's important for lucid dreaming and you want to lucid dream. You don't have to write down everything, only write down a few keywords that will later remind you of the whole dream that you can write down properly on your dream journal when you're fully awake. Or if writing down even a few words is so troublesome, you can use an audio recorder to record those keywords with your voice, you wouldn't even have to open your eyes if you memorize which buttons to press, it would be very simple.

As for WILD, if you're a beginner, don't waste your time with it. It's a very advanced technique that even experienced lucid dreamers have trouble with it sometimes. Sure, WILD can happen for beginners, but it's very rare and not worth the effort on all the attempts required until getting one.
Focus on DILD, important things like reality checks, reverse reality checks, dream recall, awareness or mindfulness of your location and what's going on, etc. Things like this are vital.

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Originally Posted by Avian

If I try to do a dream journal, my half-asleep self will decide in the morning that the dream "wasn't important so theres no point recording it".

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Has anyone encountered this before?

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That's something you're going to have to resolve. I'm a beginner and right now I consider that even more important than awareness and memory. If I don't record dreams when they are fresh in my mind, no matter how trivial, I might as well kiss them goodbye. I also find a dream that might seem like an insignificant fragment might be much more when I start to focus on it. The fragment leads to more and more of the dream. Matter of fact I just had that happen now. One tiny little fragment led to 3 recalled dreams.

I think i understand you position very well. After having a quite a bunch of LD's, and doing a really quick progress i came to two problems. Got tired of a constant day time practice, and things like not gaming late night becouse it may ruin my Ld mindset, or doing lots of RC's, and trying to be very aware of my surroundings throught a day. The second problem i got, is that i am kind of naturally pretty much aware of my surroundings, and kind of noise sensitive when it comes to sleeping. So when i further increased my awareness, i got to a point that it was much harder to fall asleep, becouse even when i was falling more and more into my dream i was still aware of everything around me, and any kind of noise could bring me up from sleeping. And when i really dedicated myself to dream journal, i got to a point that i wrote down 10+ dreams every night, and woke up after every sleeping phase so about every 1,5h, got awake with DJ and then again i had to try hard to fall asleep. And now i'm trying a different kind of approach. I think that all it really takes for LD'ing is a right "technique" of making your intention when going to bed. I found out that some days, when i had really low focus on LD, and was busy with other things to late hours, but managed to hit right mindset when planting the idea to LD, before sleeping i could still get it. Right now my frequency went down pretty much, but i'm not even trying every night, but instead when i do, i try different approches in planting the idea. Of course you still gonna need some kind of dream recall, but when i'm really tired in the middle of the night and don't want to wake myself up by writing, i just try to think about a dream long and intensively enough to remember it still, when i wake up in the morning. The thing with getting my intention right is not to say it in my mind like 20 times or something like that, but rather to think about it with the right mix of emotions and mindset. Right now i'm still at the beggining of my experiment, but it would sure be awesome to be able to LD frequently but effortless, so i think it's worth the try ;)

Change your attitude! What I am going to say might be a little frustrating for you to hear, but every great lesson is.

You have to view the lucid dreaming practise in the same way as you view working out, getting good grades, succeeding in you career or even as the weird social competence journey of picking up chicks that I embarked on.

TOUGHEN UP!

As Rocky said: "I am going to tell you something that you already know, the world ain't all sunshine and rainbows, it's a very mean and nasty place and I do not care how tough you are it will BEAT YOU to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.... It ain't about how hard YOU hit. It's about how hard you can get hit an KEEP MOVING FORWARD, how much you can take and KEEP MOVING FORWARD! That's how winning is done!"

Look at this practise REALISTICALLY. You are trying to learn to become aware of sleeping, do you know how advanced that actually is?

If you believe that you can just come to this forum read a post and suddenly magically know how to do that. You are F*CKING wrong!

But I am going to give you the most sound advice I can think of:

Learn the principles of success and apply it to this practise. Take the SMALL pieces of GOLD of each time you practise. Learn from your misstakes do not get dragged down by them. ALL successful people failed AND got up again, while unsuccessful people just failed. There is no difference between the chances of unsuccessful people and successful people except that the successful people did not gave up!

And be humble! Realize that the masters did not learn by themselves, they studied OTHER successful people and copied what they did.

And read books by these people, BOOKS are their most valuable information condensed into one source. And when you have learned what THEY DID you can continue where they stopped. That is how the human collective knowledge have evolved.

As Isaac Newton said: "If I have seen further it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants."

So do not think you are better and try to develop some new technique without many years of experience, or complain about pitty problems that you believe is personal, because if you didn't you wouldn't be here asking. You would be looking for the answers from people who are 20-30 years of experience ahead of you!

If it sounds like I am attacking you in this message, I am not. I am just ranting how I feel and I am really just ranting on myself. :)
So do not take this personally or anything at all, because nothing ever is.

But to sum up my advice:

- Read books of people who are experienced in the topic you want to learn. (Or inspiring members on this forum)
- Realize that SUCCESS is tough, because if it wasn't it would by definition no longer be success..
- Stop with the self-pitty and complaining and focus on taking right action. If you EVER feel whiny, look at some motivational youtube video on youtube to get in the right mindspace and fill your head with better or more useful thoughts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcPK3y1OtPU

And the advice that I have personally followed ever since joining and which is the reason to why I am still in the game:

Focus on the positive NOT the negative. See each night as an experiment not an attempt. Look at my dream journal, I do videoblogs. In each video I only talk about the positive aspect of my practise and of course use the negative things to focus myself, but I am just happy with the fact that I keep taking action and continue to learn.

http://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/mastermind/

Make that your critera of success: Instead of making the result of having a lucid dream as your definition of success, change it to "If I took the right action that I know is going to take me towards my goal, I am happy". So where other people see failures and give up, you instead see lessons and get motivated and keep moving forward.

I hope this helps you and good luck! ;)