Thread: Lucid Tools.

First of all I need to point out that I have never been a very powerful lucid dreamer. As in the LD's I have had havn't been very lucid or under my control. I have studied the tools that other people have used to accomplish these things in waking life but they have never come to mind while I've been dreaming and so during LD's I often get half results or wake up prematurely. Last night I had two LD's. The first one started when I awoke in a hospital bed that was placed alongside the highway near where I was sleeping, about 120 feet away actually. I looked around and up at the moon and everything didn't quite feel right so I grabbed my nose and discovered I could breath through it. Cool! I'm dreaming! So I woke up... Now, here is where it gets kind of interesting. I didn't let myself wake up entirely, I tried to stay as relaxed as possible. I think the washing machine was on because an image of it flashed into my mind, so rather than fight it I just focused on it. I knew I was still kind of half dreaming so I tried the spinning technique, imagining myself spinning around the washing machine over and over again. The next thing I remember is waking up in the same hospital bed on the side of the highway in the same place I was before. It took me a few moments, and another nose RC, to realize I was dreaming again, but I went back into the same dream again. This is the first time I can remember ever doing this. I've tried many times by focusing on the dream I was having but I always lost track and went into some other random dream. I think that not really caring about the same dream but just focusing on the dream state itself is the major contributing factor here. Because every other time when my mind would wander from the dream I would forcibly stop it and start back at the beginning. The forced stop I think was my biggest mistake.

Now, in the lucid dreams that I have had before, and I have had quite a few, the lucid tools that I have heard others talk about being very useful in dreams have never come to mind while I've been dreaming(other than RC's). I've always just blindly tried to will things to happen and they never do. This time, however, when an idea for something to do came to mind a lucid tool to make it happen came with it. In the dream I started carrying around a notebook and whenever I needed something I would simply open the notebook expecting to find it. Or I would send a dream character to another room to retrieve it. At one point I wanted my dog so I just simply called out her name rather than looking all over for her and in the room she came running. So, the point I'm trying to make is that I seem to have made a breakthrough with my dream self. He got smarter it seems and I'm very glad. Now comes the hard part of figuring out why this suddenly happened so others might benefit as well.

It looks like you are on the right track. As for figuring out why this happened I can offer you this advise:
You focused on an object as you entered sleep again. If you focus on a clear image right after awakening or during this half asleep state and try to calmly reenter the dream you will find yourself in the image you were thinking about. The fact that you are in the setting you imagined works as a RC, instantly making you lucid.

The trick here is to focus on one image, otherwise like you said you will enter some random dream. Thinking about a specific setting will make you enter a dream about that setting.

I use the image of two particular classrooms that are also my dreamsigns - I simply reenter them fully lucid.