Magic Gone?

[Casualtie]

When I first got into lucid dreaming it seemed like this magical and unimaginable experience full of vivid and surrealistic adventure. I remember reading about it on another site and simply not believing the words I had just read. I was overjoyed and knew I had found a real, soon to be passion of mine. I couldn't get enough of reading about it, thinking about it, and imagining the possibilities of it. I read about other's first lucid dreams. Most were short and disappointing. When I had my first lucid dream it was so motivated by how much control and how long it was. My second was even better; even longer and even more controlled. Gradually, as real life got more and more demanding and more and more stressful, I started to shy away from lucid dreaming. I slacked on my dream journal and stopped doing reality checks; eventually stopping altogether. Not too long ago, I went back and read a few of my dreams; lucid and non-lucid. This gave me a push back in the direction of dreaming.. ..But I've noticed it isn't the same. It isn't as miraculous and awe-inspiring when I read another's lucid dream. I feel like I've lost motivation and that really disappoints me. I don't know why I suddenly lost interest in such an amazing experience. Quite honestly, I don't want to lose interest. Has anyone felt anything similar at one point or another? How did you overcome it? I'm thinking I need that one amazing lucid dream to really get my interest back into it, but with my slacking in my dream journal/recall and reality checks, it's tough to imagine happening. Does anyone have any suggestions? Comments?

[Tornado Joe]

Gradually, as real life got more and more demanding and more and more stressful, I started to shy away from lucid dreaming. I slacked on my dream journal and stopped doing reality checks; eventually stopping altogether.[/b] I don&#39;t think there&#39;s anyone on this forum that hasn&#39;t gone through this. If there is, it&#39;s likely because they are too young to have entered the mature lifestyle which brings on life&#39;s demands and stresses. The good news, is that it can be "treated". I&#39;m going through somewhat of the same thing myself. I&#39;ve recently had a couple short lucid dreams, but I don&#39;t even count them as lucid dreams unless I feel like I got something from them. Before, when I was new to this, I would jump for joy and post enthusiasticly if so much as thought for a second that I was lucid. Now, I really stopped bothering - much for the simple fact (that you verify) that I don&#39;t think many people would find it as interesting as I did. It was my experience, so to them it just might be a bit amusing, but really nothing more. ..But I&#39;ve noticed it isn&#39;t the same. It isn&#39;t as miraculous and awe-inspiring when I read another&#39;s lucid dream. I feel like I&#39;ve lost motivation and that really disappoints me.[/b] Once you experience something yourself, just reading about someone else&#39;s can&#39;t be as exciting for a couple reasons (in my opinion) <blockquote>1) It&#39;s not YOUR experience. It&#39;s only something you can imagine at that point. As exciting as it was for that person, to you it&#39;s just a story. 2) There is a bit of resentment - not personal - but of accomplishment of something you&#39;re missing out on. It can be (subconsciously) frustrating to read about someone else&#39;s great adventure in dreamland. But you have to keep in mind that you&#39;re just as capable of experiencing a lucid dream yourself. </blockquote> TREATMENTS: <blockquote>Reading your other dreams is a great start to get you "in the mood" again. I&#39;d also suggest renting (or getting from the library) any kind of videos or DVDs with anything related to lucid dreaming. Then, when that&#39;s exhausted, try expanding the search. Look a bit beyond lucid dreaming. OBE&#39;s, metaphysical, mystical, whatever. Sometimes you&#39;ll see some of these areas overlap in ways. It can be enough to renew your interest and enthusiasm. Keep visiting the forum right here. Again, expand your horizons within here - look into other sections you don&#39;t usually frequent. You might just come across something you never thought of before that applied to your situation, or a piece of advice that just sounds like it would work for you.</blockquote>

[folded]

I too have suffered from this. I would suggest that you give yourself some tasks or skills to learn in lucid dreaming. For instance, play a game: attempt to have lucid dreams and look around every corner you come to. What do you see? Learn a skill: can you make an apple appear in your hand? Try something new: taste dream food. What does it taste like? Give yourself a RealWorld and DreamWorld task: try remembering something from the outside world in dream, or if something bothers you in waking life, ask yourself about it in dream ("Why does that bother me so much?") You may get caught in the trap of trying too hard, and maybe you lose lucidity or wake up. You may need to simplify or make the tasks easier to complete so that it isn't stressful enough to wreck the dream state. One task I gave myself once was to ask every dream character "what do you represent?" "who are you really?" or "why are you here?" It failed. I think one of the reasons was because I mistakenly referred to the DCs as "you". They are really ME. My goal is to get back into LDing to refine the question and see what kind of response I get, or what I can learn.

[Casualtie]

I too have suffered from this. I would suggest that you give yourself some tasks or skills to learn in lucid dreaming. For instance, play a game: attempt to have lucid dreams and look around every corner you come to. What do you see? Learn a skill: can you make an apple appear in your hand? Try something new: taste dream food. What does it taste like? Give yourself a RealWorld and DreamWorld task: try remembering something from the outside world in dream, or if something bothers you in waking life, ask yourself about it in dream ("Why does that bother me so much?") You may get caught in the trap of trying too hard, and maybe you lose lucidity or wake up. You may need to simplify or make the tasks easier to complete so that it isn't stressful enough to wreck the dream state. One task I gave myself once was to ask every dream character "what do you represent?" "who are you really?" or "why are you here?" It failed. I think one of the reasons was because I mistakenly referred to the DCs as "you". They are really ME. My goal is to get back into LDing to refine the question and see what kind of response I get, or what I can learn.[/b] My problem isn't that I've run out of things to do while in a lucid dream, it's that I've lost all motivation to strive for lucid dreams. What confuses me is that even though I am ecstatic up finding myself in a lucid dream, I have no desire to pursue it. I might go and get a few books or videos long lucid dreaming like you suggested, Joe.

[Jess]

I don't think the magic ever comes back because things have changed for good: the magic is that first taste. To me, it's like when you have amazing memories of some place or activity or whatever then you go back to repeat the experience. It's not the same anymore because it wasn't the place you wanted to revisit, but the time, which of course is gone though the place remains. Even so, you can still motivate yourself to continue to improve and Joe gave some excellent ideas! On another note, I totally agree with reading other people's dream journals....there is nothing more boring than reading another man's dreams! However, keeping up an online journal is a way of motivating myself. I think simply because now and again someone makes the odd comment on it, whereas in real life I don't talk to anyone about dreaming. Online, I can share. Seems kind of contradictory considering what I just said, I know!

[Casualtie]

I don't think the magic ever comes back because things have changed for good: the magic is that first taste. To me, it's like when you have amazing memories of some place or activity or whatever then you go back to repeat the experience. It's not the same anymore because it wasn't the place you wanted to revisit, but the time, which of course is gone though the place remains.[/b] That must be why. I know exactly what you mean. When I first got into lucid dreaming I expected it to be, like I said before, an endless adventure every night. Since I was so uninformed on the subject, I was eager to learn more and more about it; To get better and better. Now that I know a good deal about it, there is no mystery in it anymore, simply the work I need to put into it to achieve my goal. Just like adults yearn to be children again, I'm yearning to be a lucid dreaming newbie again : P I think I've got the answers I've been looking for more or less. Thanks for the help everyone!

[Ev]

My problem isn't that I've run out of things to do while in a lucid dream, it's that I've lost all motivation to strive for lucid dreams. What confuses me is that even though I am ecstatic up finding myself in a lucid dream, I have no desire to pursue it. I might go and get a few books or videos long lucid dreaming like you suggested, Joe.[/b] YES. This is exactly how I felt. And indeed, that happened after encoutering too much of real life demands. I still feel that way, but i"m on the way to recovery. Pretty much there was NO motivation to try and induce LDs. And even if I tried I gave up after a few days. I came to realize that this is the mental block that my subconscious mind erected. My laziness is also contributing. Before, when I was doing techniques every night, the battle between me and my SC was in my dreams. It tried to confuse me, kick me out, etc etc. Then it stopped, but my motivation was suddenly gone. I figured it found a way to stop me. My advice would be to try to start again, start slowly, dont start with anything demanding. Start with writing down your dreams again, focus on recall, build up your interest. Magic would be still there. It is just with real life interfering it is harder to LD, so the frequency goes down. Once the frequency goes down, the preparation and amount of time spent thinking about it also goes down. With that the quality goes down!

[Jess]

I like this Blake quote which sums up how to never lose the magic! He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sun rise. ~ William Blake

[Spamtek]

I like this Blake quote which sums up how to never lose the magic! He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sun rise. ~ William Blake[/b] I kept on thinking about Blake's songs of innocence and experience going down this topic, and sure enough-! Here he is to save the day. Nobody understands me when I say I want to be a professional amateur. I want to live up to that word's origins - "one who loves" - I don't want to turn the things I appreciate in this world into work, with collections of formulas for success, deadlines and enyclopedic knowledge about the subject at hand. The joy of life is in getting to places, not in having gotten to them. I wish my experience with everything I love could be the first time, every time - but that's not how life works, not unless you have anterograde amnesia. Habituation is the rule we play by, and no matter how enthusiastically anyone on these boards protests, the 100th LD will never be anything like the first, it will be no fraction as beautiful or full of wonder. This isn't to say that LDing ever becomes outright worthless as a pursuit... but as you set yourself into patterns, as you navigate the waters and chart the territory, the mystery vanishes. The boundless potential of what you could do sinks into the dull definition of what you did do. There are still things to see and do, but experience allows you to predict better what they might be - and with that certainty of the territory, you lose your enchantment. Maybe that's a little depressing all told... I don't know. You'd think that of all things, an art that allows you to explore anywhere, do anything at anytime in whatever manner you wish, could never possibly develop boundaries under which the magic sinks away. I very much hope everything I've just said is wrong.

[Jess]

I kept on thinking about Blake's songs of innocence and experience going down this topic, and sure enough-! Here he is to save the day. Nobody understands me when I say I want to be a professional amateur. I want to live up to that word's origins - "one who loves" - I don't want to turn the things I appreciate in this world into work, with collections of formulas for success, deadlines and enyclopedic knowledge about the subject at hand. The joy of life is in getting to places, not in having gotten to them. I wish my experience with everything I love could be the first time, every time - but that's not how life works, not unless you have anterograde amnesia. Habituation is the rule we play by, and no matter how enthusiastically anyone on these boards protests, the 100th LD will never be anything like the first, it will be no fraction as beautiful or full of wonder. This isn't to say that LDing ever becomes outright worthless as a pursuit... but as you set yourself into patterns, as you navigate the waters and chart the territory, the mystery vanishes. The boundless potential of what you could do sinks into the dull definition of what you did do. There are still things to see and do, but experience allows you to predict better what they might be - and with that certainty of the territory, you lose your enchantment. Maybe that's a little depressing all told... I don't know. You'd think that of all things, an art that allows you to explore anywhere, do anything at anytime in whatever manner you wish, could never possibly develop boundaries under which the magic sinks away. I very much hope everything I've just said is wrong.[/b] Yah Blake was superfly, I need to buy his complete works. I think everything you just said is right. Your post reminded me of something I read about meditation, I wish I could remember where and who said it. It was something on the lines of, "Imagine every single breath is your very first and very last.", completely new, free from the past and free from the future. I know whoever it was is Buddhist, and Buddhist philosophy in a nutshell is that we are unsatisfied because we cling to things which are necessarily either in the past or the future, so we never truly experience the true present although we think we do. Our desire to repeat a previous experience or whatever chains us to it, and because it simply can never be repeated in exactly the same way, it no longer exists, we are dissapointed. So yes, it is depressing, because we do this habitually without realising, but Buddhism holds that by getting used to the state of mind that Blake alludes to in the quote, we can let go of the chains that bind us to the ground, spread our wings and soar in eternity's sunrise. The first step of course is to 'simply' recognise the fact that "He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy" because how can we cure the illness without a diagnosis of what it is first. A bit like lucid dreaming really...

[folded]

Nice, Jess. Sometimes poetry concisely hits the mark.

[FishtankHank]

I have gone through this type of thing many times with many different interests. It's actually apart of my personality as I will find my self literally obsessed with a hobby or interest for 1-2 years or some times as short as 1-2 months. After I find that I've accomplished everything I ever wanted to accomplish in the particular hobby I usually lose interest and break away from it for another 1-2 years where I'll be trying something else. My point is, I always come back to previous hobbies even if they are from my childhood. I usually find it helpful if I feel unsatisfied with my own personal interest in a particular subject to take a break from it. Maybe you're just not ready to enjoy your lucid dreams again yet. I would give it some time and just not worry about it, because eventually you will find your excitement again.

[folded]

...interest for 1-2 years or some times as short as 1-2 months. After I find that I've accomplished everything I ever wanted to accomplish in the particular hobby I usually lose interest and break away from it for another 1-2 years where I'll be trying something else....[/b] I completely understand that, and I am coming back to LDing now after such a break. I think the breaks are helpful and necessary to provide a fresh view on old subject matter. My current project in LDing is to stop trying to control the contents of the dream. And to do more exploring -- find what's growing under my dream rocks. Bring fewer expectations into the dream. My prior attempts to gain more control usually ended up in waking or loss of lucidity. So, very simply, I want to exercise more lucidity self-control and more exploration. Maybe I will get bored and come back to it later again.