What the hell do i do?

Hi LD4all. Registered a bunch of months ago, wrote a couple of threads, tried hard to LD - and actually had one only a couple of weeks after i started practising it. Then, loads of schoolwork took over, and eventually lucid dreaming dissappeared out of my life.

Now, I have no school to go to, only a part-time job which gives me plenty of time to take up this interesting “hobby” again. And I decided that I’m not going to follow any specific method, I’m gonna do what I did when I got my first LD. And tonight I did. This is what happened:

I went to sleep around 1pm, set my Sleep Cycle alarm (great app for LDing, google it) for around 4h30 later. And I woke up. I went for some water, read a couple of threads in this forum (for 10 minutes or something) to get the right mindset. Then I went to sleep. Only to get that “holy shit”-feeling you get when you all of a sudden remember a very vivid dream. I remembered every second, it was so clear, (and so weird…) so I sat up again, wrote in my dream journal for another 10 minutes. Then, again, I went to sleep. This time I did the exact thing I did when I had my first LD.

I just count to three, then I say : “i am dreaming” in my head. Then repeat. I did it for what felt like 5 minutes. I saw no HI, I felt nothing. But I got the strangest feeling after a while; I could feel, and move my hands, even though I knew that they did’nt move in real life. I had no clue what was going on, it was so weird. After I while I realised I was wearing a police uniform. And the second I took a look at my uniform, I realised that this is just in my head. And bam, everything went black. I knew that what I was seeing right now was the inside of my eyelids. I was awake, and it felt like I had been awake the whole time.

After a minute or so, i got the feeling again. I could “move” my hands even though they were laying close to my body. And when I started thinking (again) how this could be, the feeling dissapeared.

Why I am making this thread is mainly because of two things; one, is this to be considered HI ? As i said, everything were just, black, until the uniform popped up. It was just a feeling, I could’nt see a thing, I just moved my hands and stretched my fingers.

…and two, what the hell am I supposed to do? Hopefully this is something some of you more experienced guys have experienced. I don’t know what to do, it feels a bit like I am close to a LD, but every time I started thinking about what was happening, the feeling dissapeared and everything were just black again. Everything felt so unreal, It felt like I was awake during the whole time.

Hopefully someone can help me a bit with this. Atleast im feeling very motivated again, getting some (yeah…) progress at all.

Thanks in advance,
Your doctor in control

(pardon the english, I am, as I’ve said before, from Sweden. We are weird.)

You’re looking through the wrong eyelids Try looking in your minds eye, that’s where you was when you saw the police uniform. That’s where the dream scenes will form
Essentially your alertness is what threw you off, you really just have to relax, just observe from a distance, don’t try and analyse the uniform, just think ‘meh’. I know it’s unusual but you have to keep your thoughts to a minimum or it wakes you up. You achieved the correct balance of that with the “1,2,3 i’m dreaming” mantra in your head, but as soon as you was distracted from that your consciousness jolted you awake. It’s difficult but you just have to try and ignore it, this is where I’ve failed so many times before.

Once you get more accustomed with the actual thought that you are dreaming and that all is just a dream, then it’s going to be very interesting and inspiring to think inside the lucid dream… It sure will bring you new way to look on things…

When lucid it’s very important to stabilize your feelings like altheman9993 said, feeling relaxed and determined makes you a king of the dream…

But to achieve that you will have to practice a lot more, not that I’m trying to discourage you but just the opposite, I’m telling you that you already accomplished a lot and you should be proud…

So good luck and I hope you’ll have many LD!

That sounds like an almost successful WILD attempt. You would have succeeded if you didn’t think too much. What you saw was most likely a dream forming right in front of you. Most probably, your excitement/thoughts woke you up. Try to relax and let the dream form around you. Don’t interact with it too early, wait until you can actually see some of the dreamscape. And most important of all - don’t think much, especially about your Real life body. Try to imagine yourself in the dream, try to totally forget that you’re in fact lying on your bed, but don’t lose consciousness. The key to WILD is to believe you are the dream character, you are supposed NOT to think about your body which is lying on the bed in real life. Good luck.

altheman9993:

Thank you for your reply.

I was thinking about just letting it go a bit more, but I was afraid of just letting my consciousness fade away, and let it all become just a ND. I will definietly use your advice though; since I ended up with no dream recall at all after that haha.

dB_FTS

Thanks! I am definietly taking your post as encouragement rather than the opposite. I think I have a pretty decent mindset for LDing in general, my first lucid dream lasted for about 20-30 minutes which I have come to understand is pretty much for a first LD. I’ll just have to let go a bit more when using my mantra.

Paulius

Thank you for your reply. It must’ve been my thoughts, and not excitement that “woke” me up. It just felt so weird moving hands I knew was’nt real and that I could’nt see. It is nice though to hear that this might’ve been a almost successful WILD-attempt; it is, after all, at least in my eyes the most desireable technique to master.

HI right as it’s forming can be really delicate. For me, whenever I have HI (and don’t screw it up, of course ) I usually start seeing something and the first thing I do is stay calm and sort of freeze. If I move my eyes to look at a specific part of the HI, or even try to focus on the image, it can fade away. After a few seconds though, it starts feeling more solid and I can start gently moving my eyes and focusing on different parts of the image. After a while I’m able to slowly move my hands and rub them together. It’s just a little practice and you’ll get the feel for it. You’re doing great, as the others have said above. Keep it up!

Thank you, Mattias.

I tried the same method last night, and I stumbled upon a new problem. After repeating my mantra a while, I could feel how my body went into what I suspect was the first step in sleep paralysis. I did this twice, but as my body “faded” away, and HI started to appear, I couldnt keep my eyes closed. They were flickering fast, and I got a bit angry at the end. They just opened themselves no matter what I did. Suggestions?

Thanks in advance,

Doctorcontrol

Reverse blinking can help keep your eyes closed. Start with them closed, and then quickly open then close them. Do this for a few minutes and it should tire your eyes out and help keep them shut. If all else fails, open your eyes and try to keep them open while blinking when needed. If you are tired, your eyes will want to shut after a while, but force them to stay opened. That can also tire them out, but I would recommend reverse blinking since (for me anyway) it has been more effective and the other way tends to wake me up more.