Thread: Here's my puzzle

Hey everyone,

I'm new here and just wanted to say hi. I think I first started lucid dreaming about 10 years ago (am 31 now) and I was able to have very detailed long dreams with amazing clarity in all the senses. In fact my vision was far better than in real life.
However now it has changed, I have maybe one dream per month, sometimes more. They are mostly DILD, I have developed my own sign for some reason- I always dream that I look in the sky and see 2 or more moons on the horizon and think- oh, 2 moons, that's not real, must be dreaming. Then I usually do the hand check.
However for the past few months as soon as I realize I am dreaming, the visual changes into a 2d drawing/ painting that almost seems like a theatre prop. Then it kind of crumples up, I get dizzy and fall back into darkness into my body (always from above and have a buzzing feeling all over my body).
I never even have time to start spinning, shout anything or perform any similar control techniques.
Anyone else had a similar experience or some words of wisdom?

Hello, and welcome to DV!

Ah, you use a dream sign. There a many other induction methods available in this website!

Darkness? Happened once in my 3rd LD. I got into a darkness, but I stayed aware and lucid.

Welcome to Dreamviews!

Hrm, I have not encountered what yo are describing. I will ask someone to check out your post maybe he can help.

In the meantime, happy dreams
Welcome
Induction Methods and Techniques

Thanks Gab.

Here is one main difference between 10 year olds and 31 year olds, intoxicants. I do not know if you use any recreational substances, but they all can seriously impact your dreaming experience. I have no solution for anyone who wants to smoke pot and LD. It handicaps you big time. The same can be true for drinking and even large amounts of caffeine. I will go on assuming that this is not the case for you, or that even if it is, you may still want to LD and keep waking life as it is.

The way you need to deal with a crumbling dream or one with dangerously shaky aspects is to reduce all the data your brain needs to process. This is my go to stabilization for collapsing dreams. I may use other methods for routine stabilization, but for a collapsing dream sensory reduction is what you need. To do this you stay very calm and pretend something that will reduce all the needed virtual rendering to a minimum. This includes thinking.

Here is an example from one of my dreams. I was walking through a crowd and a naked woman tries to get my attention. She says she is angry that I did not see her. I look at her in an intimate way and the dream starts to fall apart. I feel it happening just like you describe. Things become two dimensional and the color fades, I saved it by suddenly looking at her ankle and deciding all I can see is her ankle and the ankle bracelet. I say "oh look, your clasp came loose." I focus just on the clasp now and my fingers tips holding the clasp. I do not think about anything but the simple little clasp. I casually look at it and try to picture what the clasp would look like. This is a close up view of just her ankle, the clasp and my finger tips. It is so focused on limited rendering that there is no foot or body or crowd. I just examine the little clasp. I do this for about 45 seconds and the feeling of collapsing has gone away. I test the dream by now trying to use my fingers and work the clasp. The details come in and I can work the clasp plus her ankle is now 3 dimensional. I then resume my adventure until the next time I need to stabilize.

This is the idea: at these points when the dream is collapsing your brain is not processing information fast enough. The worst thing you can do is spin around or anything that increases the amount of virtual rendering needing. I hope that helps. It is a little advanced perhaps, in that it requires you have control over what you are seeing and doing. However, you have past experience, so maybe it will work for you.

Originally Posted by sivason

Thanks Gab.

Here is one main difference between 10 year olds and 31 year olds, intoxicants. I do not know if you use any recreational substances, but they all can seriously impact your dreaming experience. I have no solution for anyone who wants to smoke pot and LD. It handicaps you big time. The same can be true for drinking and even large amounts of caffeine. I will go on assuming that this is not the case for you, or that even if it is, you may still want to LD and keep waking life as it is.

The way you need to deal with a crumbling dream or one with dangerously shaky aspects is to reduce all the data your brain needs to process. This is my go to stabilization for collapsing dreams. I may use other methods for routine stabilization, but for a collapsing dream sensory reduction is what you need. To do this you stay very calm and pretend something that will reduce all the needed virtual rendering to a minimum. This includes thinking.

Here is an example from one of my dreams. I was walking through a crowd and a naked woman tries to get my attention. She says she is angry that I did not see her. I look at her in an intimate way and the dream starts to fall apart. I feel it happening just like you describe. Things become two dimensional and the colour fades, I saved it by suddenly looking at her ankle and deciding all I can see is her ankle and the ankle bracelet. I say "oh look, your clasp came loose." I focus just on the clasp now and my fingers tips holding the clasp. I do not think about anything but the simple little clasp. I casually look at it and try to picture what the clasp would look like. This is a close up view of just her ankle, the clasp and my finger tips. It is so focused on limited rendering that there is no foot or body or crowd. I just examine the little clasp. I do this for about 45 seconds and the feeling of collapsing has gone away. I test the dream by now trying to use my fingers and work the clasp. The details come in and I can work the clasp plus her ankle is now 3 dimensional. I then resume my adventure until the next time I need to stabilize.

This is the idea: at these points when the dream is collapsing your brain is not processing information fast enough. The worst thing you can do is spin around or anything that increases the amount of virtual rendering needing. I hope that helps. It is a little advanced perhaps, in that it requires you have control over what you are seeing and doing. However, you have past experience, so maybe it will work for you.

Thank you all,

Sivason, I totally understand what you mean about the intoxicants, although I am one of those neardy girls who has never tried any type of drug or ever smoked. I don't drink either now, I have an 11 month old baby and can't be in any sort of unclear state of mind. I do drink a cup of coffee a day but nothing crazy. Funny thing is that when I was pregnant, I had lots of LDs that were very vivid and real feeling. Perhaps the fact that my mind is too "half-awake" cause it's trained to be ready to wake up fast whenever the baby cries is what is messing it all up for me

I first got into LD because of Castaneda and spent most of my dreamtime marvelling the dream world. How real it was, so I was just going around touching everything, moving things to hear if they sound lifelike and I just kept thinking that no wonder I never realize in my dreams that I am dreaming- it is so real, I mean SO real! As I said all my senses were super-senses. I could see further and clearer than ever, touch, hear everything better than in reality. The only problem I had was forgetting soon enough that I had to stay aware of the fact that I am dreaming.

The first time I experienced falling into darkness I had a dream I was lying on a wet gravel road in front of my childhood home, with my right fist full of gravel. I then fell into darkness into my body from above. My real body was squeezing the blanket corner so I felt the warmness and softness of that, next moment I lifted up back to the dream and felt the wetness and structure of the gravel and then fell into darkness and back to the body. This kept repeating a few times until I eventually woke up and every time my "astral body" entered my physical body I felt buzzing all over.

I never had a control of free will in LDs, I remember I had a LD where I was desperately trying to turn the dark night sky into sunny day and nothing. I could never move to a different location just by "willing" myself there either.
After that I have mostly started to use the LD world to do the cool stuff, mostly fly or find a high place to jump off, or have sex... but the last one is really REALLY annoying. I have this overwhelming urge to have sex and when I wake up I am annoyed that I wasted a good LD again for some nonsense whereas I could have been training myself to have better dream control etc. If anyone knows of any tips how to stop that urge, would be great

Oh, and I will definitely try out your stabilization techniques, just usually it happens so fast I don't have much time to react. But I'll try to remember

Thank you, sivason.

A belated welcome to you, Darksideofmoon!

I think I might have figured out your problem -- you have an 11-month-old baby! I could think of nothing more consciousness-shifting than that! A little more "adjustment" time might be all you need to regain your lucid legs.

Welcome Darksideofmoon!

Woohoo! Thank you guys! I finally had a looong clear LD with some great dream control after such a long time