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10 Mistakes Made by
Beginner Lucid Dreamers


 

Teaching myself how to lucid dream as a teen, I made my fair share of rookie mistakes. I've since taught a lot of other people how to induce conscious dreams, and I've seen many of them make the same novice errors. In fact, just about every day I'm asked about one of these issues or a close variation of them.

So this advice is for anyone struggling to experience long-lasting lucid dreams with full clarity and the ability to take control effectively - particularly if you have been practicing for weeks or months with poor results.

 

Mistake #1 - Failing to commit

The most common question I hear from newbies goes along the lines of: "I've been trying to have a lucid dream for ages but had nothing yet. What should I do?"

The problem here is most people want a magic wand solution. They want a pill or an insider secret that will produce instant lucid dreams.

The reality is that if something is worth having, it's worth working for.

While there are some people who appear to naturally lucid dream since childhood, for others, learning this new skill takes commitment. Studies show it takes on average 3-21 days of regular practice to have your first lucid dream.

In my experience, regular daily practice for a beginner is to:

(Of course, there are plenty of other combinations of routines, this is just one example that I found worked for me in the early days.)

All up that's a decent 40 minutes of practice, and most of that time is spent in meditation and incubation, which I feel is the most powerful route to a lucid dream.

Do this daily, and you are highly likely to experience lucidity.

Once you become an experienced lucid dreamer, all this practice will be unnecessary - lucid dreams will come more easily. But as a beginner this is the mental training that most people need to go through in order to program frequent lucid dreams.

If you honestly do this daily and still don't experience any lucid dreams, then you may be suffering from the next common mistake...

 

Mistake #2 - Trying too hard

"I tried everything last night," I hear from another frustrated beginner. "I did MILD, WILD, meditation, subliminals, and like a hundred reality checks. I even ate loads of cheese just before bed for good measure. Nothing happened. I can't believe it!"

So what's gone wrong here?

To hit a target, the classic approach is: Ready... Aim... Fire!

The person above is making the mistake of: Ready... Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!

Performing every lucid dreaming technique in the book is not going to work if you don't perform them with sufficient skill and accuracy. It's far better to focus on a few techniques that you can perform properly, as per the instructions.

Then go to sleep and RELAX. A lucid dream can never be forced!

There's no sense getting frustrated just because you want a lucid dream so badly - sometimes it just isn't meant to happen. In fact, this kind of must-have-it pressure makes it less likely to happen, in my experience.

Conversely, studies have found that if you deliberately suppress an idea for five minutes before going to sleep, you are more likely to dream about it. So, try NOT thinking about a person you are sexually attracted to before you sleep... and you are more likely to be rewarded with a sexual dream about them.

 

Mistake #3 - Sleep deprivation

If you are a mom with young kids waking you up too early each morning, lucid dreams will probably elude you. Likewise, if you're stuck in the rat race and have to get up at crazy o'clock every day to commute to the city, lucid dreaming will be hard.

Conscious dreaming is a luxury. It's most commonly obtained during those final, blissful few hours of undisturbed dream sleep in the morning. For me this occurs between 7-9am. If I oversleep, I have even greater chances of lucid dreaming. I rarely have a long lucid dream (that I remember) during the first six hours of sleep.

If you wake up to an alarm and feel tired when you get up, you're probably not getting enough shuteye. You could benefit from more sleep which, by morning, invariably contains more Rapid Eye Movement sleep - and potentially lucid dreams.

What if your weekday lifestyle won't accommodate more lie-ins? You have two options: go to bed earlier and/or allow yourself to sleep in at weekends. Your extra few hours of sleep will likely be jam-packed with dreams.

What's more, because of the unusual sleep cycle pattern on weekends (being asleep when you would normally be awake) you are more likely to become conscious in those extra stolen dreams. This is the basis of the Cycle Adjustment Technique.

 

Mistake #4 - Poor dream recall

It's often pointless to practice lucid dreaming if you have poor dream recall. There's no point in having a lucid dream if you don't remember it!

Learning to remember your dreams will kick-start the process of lucidity. It will gradually increase your level of self-awareness in regular dreams, making it more likely for lucidity kick in the next time you dream of something irrational.

Equally, good dream recall will increase the intensity of your dreams. It will teach your subconscious that dreams are an important part of life - to be remembered and actively engaged in. It will even help you program your dreams in advance before heading off to the land of nod.

And no matter what other techniques I'm using at the time, I always have more frequent lucid dreams when I keep a daily dream journal.

If you think you never dream - or you just can't commit them to memory quick enough - see my article on How to Remember Your Dreams.

 

Mistake #5 - Dream stabilization

The first thing I did in my first ever lucid dream was a rookie mistake. Actually, it wasn't - it was a reality check. But the second thing I did spelled disaster: I ran around shouting "I'm dreaming! "I'm dreaming!" and got all excited until I woke up.

It was a cool experience, and that 60 seconds or so blew my mind away. But what a waste! I held lucidity in the palm of my hand - and let it slip away like sand.

This is a common mistake. And yet, all it takes to fix is to have someone warn you that this might happen. So that's what I'm doing now :)

When you have your first lucid dream - just stay calm. Smile, for sure, and let yourself enjoy the experience of lucidity. But don't physically shout or jump for joy or go crazy - not at least until you've stabilized the dream.

This means increasing your conscious awareness until the dream appears in high definition and you're happy you are in control of yourself.

Typically, I rub my hands together, calmly say "I'm dreaming" and do a reality check. If the dream is still blurry or unstable, I demand "Clarity now" and examine it with all my senses. I keep at it until the dream is extremely vivid and clear.

What happens if you don't stabilize your lucid dream early on?

It can go two ways:

  1. You'll wake up after a few seconds - which can be really disappointing especially in your early days as a lucid dreamer. This is why many beginners complain about having lucid dreams that only last 30 seconds.

  2. You'll get stuck in a semi-lucid state - partially able to control yourself, but unable to really control anything else. What's more, you'll find the dream just too blurry to appreciate on a conscious level, and you'll eventually forget you're dreaming and it will descend into a regular non-lucid dream.

So, stabilize that dream! Here are some practical tips on doing so.

 

Mistake #6 - Forgetting to stay lucid

Even after you've stabilized your lucid dream, as a beginner your lucidity can still be quite fragile. You will need to remind yourself that you're dreaming every minute (sometimes more, sometimes less) or risk losing that thread of consciousness.

Do this by re-stabilizing the dream exactly as you did before.

Staying highly lucid will make your experience last much longer; I have had continuous lucid dreams lasting up to an hour this way. It will also enable you to follow your intention and control the dream with ease.

 

Mistake #7 - Trying to run before you can walk

"In my lucid dream, I couldn't fly, fight my boss, or summon up Angelina Jolie naked," moans another frustrated beginner. "Dream control is fallacy!"

Ah, Grasshopper. You're just not there yet, is all.

While some people have an uncanny ability to wield control over their dreams straight away, most people have to discover dream control in baby steps.

I know I did.

In my first few lucid dreams (which were all relatively fuzzy and unstable because I didn't know to increase my lucidity yet) I had virtually no control. It was all I could do to stay conscious through sheer willpower and excitement, exploring the dream exactly as it was presented to me, without any of my conscious influence.

My lucid dreams were still AMAZING - just in terms of the heightened intensity and realization that I was in a virtual reality. But ultimately I felt powerless within them.

Later, when I tried to fly, I just couldn't get off the ground. I just stood there like a lemon wondering, "Why the heck can't I fly?" And that thought pattern only exacerbated the effect of my limiting rational consciousness on the dream world.

Eventually I learned that you have to teach your dreaming mind the laws of the lucid dream world. So instead of trying to fly like Superman straight away, try bouncing along the landscape with a little less gravity than usual.

Like I say, baby steps.

Then extend your bounces into giant leaps. Shoot through the air with your new powers. Test them out, exactly as you would in the real world, slowly but surely. These early experiences will dictate your future understanding of lucid dreams. This is called experiential learning, and it underpins the whole human experience.

Here's another way to look at this. In The Matrix, Neo didn't believe he was The One and that he could warp and manipulate his virtual reality world. And he became bound by this limiting belief.

In the end, when he realized the power was all in his mind, he was able to soar over the city, fight evil agents without any effort, and resurrect Trinity from the dead.

This is a beautiful demonstration of how your personal beliefs (both consciously and unconsciously) dictate your success in the lucid dream world. With boundless confidence, you too can soar. And if you lack that confidence, then you can learn it, one small step (or bounce) at a time.

For more tips on this subject read How to Control Your Dreams.

 

Mistake #8 - Sex on the brain

In the beginning, most people find that sex is their instinctive primary goal of lucid dreaming. And that's no surprise really - in a lucid dream, you can explore this basic human drive on a whole new level, having gratuitous sex with whomever you want.

But there's a catch. Conscious dream sex takes a lot of skill and concentration. For a start, you better be good at stabilizing your dreams, summoning up attractive sexual partners, and keeping your cool when things really hot up. Otherwise it's pretty likely you'll suffer from sensory overload and wake up.

What's more, initiating sex in a lucid dream isn't always that easy. Often, the subconscious mind has a different agenda, and no matter how motivated you are to satiate that physical desire, your dreaming mind just wants something different out of the experience. So don't be at all surprised if, just as you manage to find Scarlett Johansson naked, she morphs into an ugly stranger who you find rather repulsive.

For beginners, seeking lucid dream sex can end up in a wild goose chase. If you go about it the wrong way, you'll end up disappointed. And you can waste so much quality lucid dream time pursuing this one superficial goal.

Ok, so it'll be extremely gratifying in the moment and provide a nice memory when you wake up - IF you can pull it off. But for most inexperienced dream explorers the act itself is just too intense, requiring more advanced dream control skills and the co-operation of the subconscious mind.

My advice is to take what you can get, but don't make sex your sole intention, especially in the early days. There's plenty of time for that later on when your skills are more developed and you don't have to waste the majority of your precious lucid dream time in a fruitless pursuit of intimacy.

For more discussion of this topic see Lucid Dream Sex.

 

Mistake #9 - Dreaming of lucid dreaming

This isn't really a "mistake" but it does seem to bother a lot of beginners.

People get frustrated when they dream about lucid dreaming, but it doesn't trigger a lucid dream in the moment. This is totally normal, even in experienced oneironauts.

For instance, I once dreamed about giving an entire lecture on lucid dreaming without acknowledging that I was dreaming at the time. I only became lucid at the end when the professor came up to me and said "Let's try some lucid dreaming now." The revelation hit me like a brick. "Of course! I'm dreaming now!"

Truth is, in the dreamscape, I rarely associate the words lucid dreaming with questioning my reality or having greater self awareness. It's just words. In order to become lucid, I usually having to think something like "I'm asleep in bed right now" or best of all "This is a dream!" No need to mess about with fancy words like lucid - what does that even mean to most people? Clarity? If someone says the word "conscious" in your dream, or "control", it doesn't mean anything either, right?

So, don't rely on the phrase lucid dreaming to trigger your lucidity. The trigger is a deep realization that, right now, your current environment is a simulation. It is created by your own dreaming mind on a philosophically self-aware level.

 

Mistake #10 - Ignoring the awareness behind the dream

Earlier I talked about pursuing physical goals like dream sex or trying to fly before you understand that your mind controls dream flight - not physics.

But many beginners don't realize that there is much more to lucid dreaming than mere dream control. Indeed, some lucid dream experts shun the idea of dream control, seeing it as an instant gratification tool for the superficially-minded. Instead, they see lucidity at its roots: as the gateway to communication with the inner self.

What does this mean? And could it really offer more than spectacularly realistic flying, sex, teleportation, space travel, time travel, and all the other so-called superficial stuff we indulge in our lucid dreams?

One avid dream researcher in this area is Robert Waggoner, who teaches us that there is an awareness behind the dream that shouldn't be ignored. This awareness can be defined as the subconscious mind, soul or inner self. It is the part of your psyche that acts as a silent observer during the waking day, and plays out its interpretations of your life during all kinds of dreams at night.

So what does this inner self have to say to us?

Now there's an intriguing area of exploration. Unlike non-lucid dreams, which require abstract dream analysis and interpretation, here we have an opportunity for literal dream meaning. It's as simple as this: instead of taking charge of the dream and manipulating it consciously to meet your waking desires, why not step back and ask what it wants to show you? Specifically, why not:

  • Ask a dream figure what part of your subconscious they represent
  • Ask a dream figure if they will take you somewhere interesting
  • Ask the dream itself to show you something amazing
  • Ask the dream itself to let you feel unconditional love
  • Ask the dream itself specific questions like: what is your purpose in life?

The possibilities are endless and you will soon discover a whole deeper side of your psychology that perhaps you never even knew existed. The answers to your questions will come from another place altogether, like a second awareness, completely separate from your own. And you can probe this new perspective in all manner of forms inside the lucid dream world. What an amazing gift!

For step-by-step tutorials in lucidity, check out The Lucid Dreaming Fast Track, my digital course that shows beginners the fastest way to lucid dreams.

 

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