Thread: Wasting Lucidity

Hey everyone, this is my first post in a while, but thought I would share this experience with you all;

So a few nights ago I had a lucid dream. Don't know how, I just thought "Hey look at this, I'm dreaming", which is the only way I seem to get lucid. Anyway, I find myself in a street, which I think was by the house I grew up in through my childhood, and I realise I'm dreaming. Right, now I'm lucid, and here's where it gets frustrating for me, because EVERY time I'm lucid, I freak out a little. For whatever reason my initial thought is "So I could make myself wake up right now?" And that wakes me up.

This time, I try to maintain the dream. My thought process is "Right, stay calm, take a look around, and use as many 'dream senses' as you can". When I say 'dream senses' I mean what I can see, hear, smell etc and this usually makes the dream more vivid. I look around. For whatever reason I see a van and think "Right, I'm going to go touch this van, and I'm going to get so damn involved in this dream" so I walk up to this van and put my hands on the side of it. By this point the dream is damn vivid. But a soon as I stop focusing on using my 'dream senses' the dream disintegrates and I wake up.

It's really frustrating because whenever I get lucid I want to use the time I have to control my dream and try all the things I've wanted to do in dreams, but I always end up wasting all my time maintaining the dream state, and not getting a chance to actually DO anything. So does anyone have any advice or anything they'd like to share on this subject?

no_limits

It happens to the best of us, As you get more lucid dreams you'll get better at staying in them. This happened to me so many times, every week for around a month I would have a lucid dream then it would go black right as I noticed and I'd wake up. It irritated me so much. Just stay calm when you enter the dream and don't have negative thoughts about it.

How often does this happen?

You have the same problem I had in my first lucid dreams

The answer is simple: you are overthinking. You're thinking about waking up, then thinking about not waking up, then thinking about doing something so you don't end up waking up. In the end, you're worrying with something, which disconnects your mind from your dream and puts you in alert mode, which makes you prone to waking up. I used to be like this: any minor lucidity achieved would result in a great deal of anxiety (even if I thought I wasn't anxious), because I was constantly remembering my third lucid dream, which had crumbled apart after a few seconds. After that experience, I'd always feel in a rush and like walking on a thin line when I was lucid: at any point I could wake up! I didn't focus I could let the dream slip! Omg zoth, don't forget to increase that vividness, you sure everything is vivid?!

Eventually, you'll learn what I did: learn to let go of negative thoughts which only harm your experience. The dream is not vivid? Work around it by moving to another place! You're afraid of waking up? Then just follow the dream! Can't perform dream control? Kick that can and you'll see how you controlled it's state. It's all about accepting IT IS a dream, not some weird game that kicks you out if you don't play by the rules. Ignore those doubts and just focus on what you want to do. I used to religiously follow some tutorials that give step by step instructions on how to proceed on the beginning of a lucid. Now I just stabilize with my hands, increase vividness with my hands, take a look around, and I'm good to go, and this process takes less than 20 seconds.

Like Nike says: Just do it

I ran into this problem a lot when I started lucid dreaming. the more experience I gained with LD the more comfortable I got with the situation. If your first thought is waking up, try just thinking of ways to ground yourself. Rub your hands together, spin in a circle, whatever you think will work to ground yourself and calm your nerves. In the end just remember that you are in control of this world and its not about waking up it is about enjoying the time you have there.

Stabilization is nice, but as zoth00 said you are thinking about it too much. Think positive and for example while rubbing hands or stimulating senses think about that the dream will be long and amazing, do not think that stabilization is a must, but think that it is an helpful tool. And don't worry, as going forward, practicing lucid dreaming and getting more aware in dreams, they will more likely be more stable by themselves.

I've always had the same problem, exactly as you described. I stabilize, usually by touching stuff and looking around me at details. Everything then becomes intensely realistic for a few seconds. But as soon as I stop touching whatever I am, or even in the middle of it, the dream will start to fade. At one point (this is like 7 years ago now, when I first started LDing, haven't had frequent success since), I was really successful in getting lucids. For about a month I was having multiple lucid dreams every night. But this same problem persisted. The longest I could stay in a dream was for like 10 seconds. And I didn't have access to internet at the time, so I couldn't even look up any methods and didn't even know about 'stabilizing' at the time.

I wonder if I'd even be able to get rid of that anxiety over waking up that causes me to wake up. I've been in the situation in which I become lucid, and am completely focusing on the dream. I don't feel I'm getting overly excited or anything. I just go along with whatever I was doing before becoming lucid. But there's still this dread in the back of my mind that everything will fade soon... and then it always does, within a few seconds. I don't know if it's even possible for me to get rid of that dread. I'm an anxious person, and it seems like the feeling of inevitability of waking up will never go away, no matter how I consciously choose to focus my attention.

This happened ( and still happens ) to me. it is really frustrating, but as others have said it is more a mindset issue than a stabilization/control one.

As i have been less worried with that and less doubtful of my abilities to stabilize/ control, this problem has improved a lot.

Also, and perhaps the most important thing, i am not so surprised or excited when i get lucid*.

* this is inevitable as experience grows, altough the learning curve may vary. however, by reflecting on nonduality teachings ( like dzogchen and dream yoga ) i got used to reflect on the dreaminess of waking reality and, somehow, lucidity comes in a much more natural and careless way.

I've found that stabilising to much does quite often end a Lucid prematurely because you're inevitably thinking of waking up.
Instead of trying to stabilise, learn a linking technique such as Spinning!
It's very easy and works pretty much all the time, then you don't even have to think about stabilising once the dream becomes Vivid, because you know if/when it fades you can just link into another one or back into the same one.*