Question about autosuggestion?

Hi everyone, I don’t know if this question has been asked before, I tried searching on the forums but couldn’t find anything related.

First of all, I’m very new to lucid dreaming and this site as well, and have only been practicing for about a week and a half now. I have been reading that autosuggestion, keeping a dream journal, and maintaining a lucid state throughout the day seem to work in order to attain lucidity in a dream. I’ve been doing all of those consistently (without results) but noticed now recently about some differences when doing autosuggestion.

You see, throughout the day I consistently keep saying to myself that I’m going to attain lucidity in my dreams, that I’m going to see my hands in my dream and realize that I’m dreaming. However, no matter how much I keep repeating it, nothing happens in my dreams that make me attain lucidity and I just wake up, frustrated for having another normal dream.

On the other hand, just when I’m about to go to sleep for the night, I say to myself that I’m going to remember all of my dreams for the night, and recall them. I say this no more than just 5 times before sleeping and proceed then to rest. Now, all of a sudden this specific autosuggestion decided to work! I think it does, because now I seem to wake up in the middle of the night and recall my dreams, then I go back to sleep and awake myself again just a few hours later, before morning. This continues on and on, until I finally wake up at my normal rising time, having recalled many dreams for the night. And this seems to work now for the rest of the days as well, without failure (as of now).

So, long story short, my question is, why the difference in results between both autosuggestion attempts? Why did the first one (and most important one for me), having it repeated throughout the day like a parrot, yielded no results whatsoever? Like if my mind either forgot about it or decided to dismiss it. Then why is the later attempt, having it repeated no more than 5 times before going to sleep, managed to work? I’m rather confused about this and would like to hear your thoughts on this.

Sorry if the post is too long, but I couldn’t find a way to explain my situation. Thanks in advance, happy dreaming y’all.

While I’m sure there’s many reasons, it comes down to lucidity being a harder concept for your mind to grasp than “don’t forget those dreams you’re already having”. Not forgetting things is something you’ve done all your life, while becoming lucid is not. If we could all become lucid so quickly, we wouldn’t need so many different techniques. :razz:

Stick with it, and it will happen.

I had/have exactly this same problem… and I think the previous post hit it squarely on the head. I don’t think that the part of our brain that responds to autosuggestion (subconscious, etc.) knows the definition of “lucid” since it’s a fairly new word to us. I have been attempting to educate that part by reading and concentrating a lot about lucid dreaming and also making an effort to stop and say (in the same way as you say affirmations) “see? This is what lucid means… I want to dream like that! When you are aware of dreaming while dreaming, you are lucid.” and words to that effect. Seems to be working well.

Hope this helps!

I see what both of you mean. I haven’t used the word “lucid” or “lucid dream” when trying to formulate my affirmations for the very same reason which you two have already stated. What I usually do is to just create a simple autosuggestion that somehow nails the point I’m trying to set in my brain. This is why I try using: “Tonight I will see my hands in my dream and realize I’m dreaming,” or something like “Tonight I’ll be aware or conscious that I’m dreaming.” Yet none of those still manage to set in deeply inside my mind.

It seems that consciously I know what lucid dreaming is. I mean, it’s a very simple concept to understand if you think about it, but even then, my subconscious doesn’t seem to grasp the idea as much as my conscious self does. So I guess then, given your responses, I need to focus first on ingraining to my mind what a LD is, and if this works, then my subconscious can have some idea to work on to attain lucidity.

The only problem that I have now is, how do I set in this idea to my subconscious? Being that I haven’t had a single LD purposely, I have no tangible information to use in order to let my subconscious know what a lucid dream is.

Anyway, thanks again for the responses, i appreciate both your help. Now I have something else to work on for the time being.

Allow me to elaborate on my post more. Whether you say “lucidity” or “realizing I’m dreaming”, you’re describing a hollow state — you can do anything with it, but lucidity and normalcy needn’t look or feel different. The idea that your focus is solely on the reality check isn’t exciting to your subconscious, either. Try changing your autosuggestion so that the lucidity is a stepping stone to a larger goal.

Let’s pretend we know a complete novice at lucid dreaming. He’s likely heard that he can do anything he wants, and he’s read many accounts of people’s earliest lucid dreams, so he sees people flying and trying impossible things. What excites him at the moment isn’t the dream state itself, but what it can become. “I realize I am dreaming and sprout wings to fly” is much more exciting for him to dwell on than “I pinch my nose and know I’m dreaming.” The former directly relates to the excitement he wants instead of a rote process, and it’s something that he can picture in his mind’s eye to get even more excited. It’s fun for him to stop and daydream about pinching his nose to become lucid, growing wings, and flapping them to take off into the air, but not so fun for him to daydream just about pinching his nose to become lucid. The higher excitement of the former suggestion will make his subconscious much more receptive.

Focus on what will ultimately satisfy you using lucidity as a necessary step for now. When you’ve really got a good feel for lucidity itself, you can then switch to aiming for it alone. Add a visualization to your suggestion that starts your lucid goal without spoiling the dream’s ending, and no matter what you add to your lucidity techniques, keep that exciting end result in mind.

Right, so what you mean then is to use or create an autosuggestion that isn’t so vague to me (or directly speaking my subconscious), but one which makes it exciting for the subconscious to carry out? To focus less on the notion of becoming lucid or not, and more on what I can achieve once lucid.

Alright, thanks again. I’ll work then on saying an autosuggestion, then visualizing a positive, exciting outcome like flying or doing something I always wanted to do when lucid. Hopefully this brings greater results in this quest.

Wow, good suggestion! Thanks, Thorn!