Hello, I'm relatively new to lucid dreaming. My first one was after I finished reading Art of Dreaming for the second time. I kept nodding off and waking up again, and the last time it happened I awoke in the same room, but it was extremely dark (sinister) and very separate from where I was a second ago. I was moving bits of paper around with my mind and enjoying the experience. I knew very well that I was dreaming and I was 100% awake and aware of everything. It was an amazing experience. I stood up to try to explore and then things started fading.

This has been happening ever since. I can attain lucidity in dreams sometimes, but generally when I do I wake up the same instant into another dream without realizing I'm still dreaming.

Either that happens, which I don't mind so much, or things just get really hazy. It feels like I'm not really there, but watching a TV with bad reception...everything is kind of gray and I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of losing control. It takes a lot of effort to even keep this state. Also, I can walk around and even converse with people, but anything that excites me, like a sexy woman walking by or the idea of going out to the ocean and surfing, will make me lose all concentration.

Am I doing something wrong to have to cling to my dream so much and not have a vivid experience? Or perhaps it's something I create where I think "oh, I'm lucid...whenever I'm lucid things get hazy, so here we go let's get hazy"

Any thoughts? Has anyone been through this? Thanks!