Need help becoming lucid

alright. i believe that i have become lucid 3 times already. all i can remember from the dream is thinking “ok im dreaming” then everything becomes black and i stay in this state where i feel like i can move my arms and stuff but cant see for maybe 10 seconds and i then find myself in my bed awake. the first time i became lucid i realized i was dreaming and started running and then i woke up. how do i see in my dreams and this may be a stupid question but how does every one else dream? usually i dream in third person.

Third person? As in you see yourself as if you were an outside observer? I usually dream in first person but I have played around with other perspectives.

Yes, you have been lucid 3 times so first off, nice work! :content:

My first question to you is what is you’re emotional state? Do you started getting a little excited or happy when you realized you were lucid dreaming? It’s a pretty common response and intense emotion almost always destabalizes the dream and results in waking up. The dream going dark seems to indicate the same thing, many times when I am losing the dream my senses start to go, with sound being the first to go followd by sight.

You’re best best if going to be to make sure you get your emotional state under control. Try to get into a really calm and passive state. Like an "O, this is cool state. But in that I don’t give a crap manner. After that, what you want to do is rengage your mind in the dream. There are many techniques for this but one of my favorites is to spin or rub yourhands together. The key herre is to focus on the sensation. Feel the friction between your hands or the dizziness and air rushing past you as you spin. What this does is get your brain invovled in the dream, which keeps you actively dreaming.

I feel like a really weird sensation, its hard to explain, almost like a high feeling then i wake up.

The state you describe when becoming lucid looks like you only just were falling a sleep or almost waking up. It’s harder to stay lucid in this state, then when you’re becoming lucid in the middle of a 1st person dream. My advise would be to focuss more on your dream recall, because I think you’re dreaming in 1st person as well, but your recall is just lacking of those dreams.

so when i feel like that i should just think of a dream that i had?

When you realize you’re dreaming it’s very normal to wake up, especially for beginners. Luckily there are ways to prevent that. Once, long time ago, I wrote an article about that here on LD4all (if you’re too lazy to read the whole article, the bold words might give you a clue on what to do :content: )

You say that you lose your vision, it becomes black for about 10 seconds. When this happens, try to at least keep another sense in your dream. As it might be difficult for you to imagine something straight away in front of your eyes, try to keep your other senses there. You say you can move, try to grab something and from this build up your dreamworld.

Or try to remember where you were when you became lucid to make it easier for your mind to create the scene. Like you ask, think of the dream you just had to remember the scene so it’s easier to get back there.

Good luck!

Edit: you might also want to check this topic which is about “how to stay lucid”.

second edit: oh and I usually dream in first person :content:

for me, I usually dream in first person, but occasionally I dream in 3rd person…
I used to have more 3rd person dreams, but now that they’ve become more realistic…

Yeah, this may help a lot. If you can’t see and focus on the fact that you can’t you are just focusing on nothing. The trick to stay in a LD is to focus on the dream, to keep it alive, so any sense you have can help. And also, sight tends to be the last sense to come, so don’t worry. What I do is I usually start rubbing my hands together or try to reach out and touch the environment. Move gently though and try to use your imagination instead of your muscles (hard to explain, just try it and I’m sure you’ll get what I mean :wink: ) If you succeed just focus on that sense and perhaps try seeing if you can hear something or even smell and taste.

I don’t know if this will help you, but as for me: if everything goes black I simply imagine a door in front of me in the darkness, leading wherever I want to go. Usually I can’t see the door, but all the same I just believe it’s there, grab the doorknob and open it. Then I step into whatever world is beyond. In most cases this seems to get me back into the dream.

I have also been having a hard time LDing. I have had a few times when i realize i am dreaming but unfortunately i immediately wake up.