memory

I’ve been trying to become fully lucid for 6 mos… dream journal, meditation, all sorts of reccomended ways, and unconventional methods. I feel like much of my problems all come down to not being able to remember. I think I may have been lucid before- but I’m not sure. Even when I say I’m dreaming in my dreams- I can’t remember to become lucid, or what to do. This extreme lack of memory thing is pretty central in the rest of my life, and I think that’s why it’s such an issue in my dreams… any tips? Experiences? HELP?

It’s normal that you don’t rememeber everything in a LD. Don’t even try to remember too much, instead set one goal before sleeping (“Tonight I will fly”).
It’s important to have strong motivation (and strong intention). If you have bad memory, try exercising it. LaBerge suggest to set for every day another list of occasions in which you have to do RC.

If you have a bad memory, then try exercising one of those memory-improving exercises. It really does help me with my memory. You could try doing some kind of exercises where you have to look at random objects for 30 seconds then after being taken away, you could try rename all of them. It could help you with dream’s memory where you can memorize instantly and remember them upon your awakening.

Also, don’t try too hard. Just keep up with your journal and take it slowly. If you try too hard, you will only end up being more frustrated anyways.

Good luck!

A variation in how well we remember things also leads to differences in what occurs in dreams, lucid or otherwise. It may not be obvious, but levels of consciousness and memory are connected. The low level of consciousness of the usual dream state is accompanied by the dreamer’s forgetting that he or she has recently gone to sleep. Questions concerning recent happenings are apt to be met with “confabulation”—a likely story mistaken for memory—rather than actual memory. For example, if someone were to ask you in a dream where you found all the money you had in your hand, you might answer, “I found it lying in a gutter,” instead of remembering that you actually found it in a dream! In contrast, the full emergence of self-consciousness in the lucid dream brings with it continuous memory access; for example, the lucid dreamer can recall where he or she is sleeping at the moment—a useful fact when in the sleep laboratory.

                                       -Stephen Laberge - Lucid dreaming

A variation in how well we remember things also leads to differences in what occurs in dreams, lucid or otherwise. It may not be obvious, but levels of consciousness and memory are connected. The low level of consciousness of the usual dream state is accompanied by the dreamer’s forgetting that he or she has recently gone to sleep. Questions concerning recent happenings are apt to be met with “confabulation”—a likely story mistaken for memory—rather than actual memory. For example, if someone were to ask you in a dream where you found all the money you had in your hand, you might answer, “I found it lying in a gutter,” instead of remembering that you actually found it in a dream! In contrast, the full emergence of self-consciousness in the lucid dream brings with it continuous memory access; for example, the lucid dreamer can recall where he or she is sleeping at the moment—a useful fact when in the sleep laboratory.

                                       -Stephen Laberge - Lucid dreaming