Let me begin by apologizing for a title that might seem to be disingenuous click-bait. I assure you that it is not. The question I would like to pose in this thread is one that I imagine life long lucid dreamers may have had experience with to varying degrees.
I have been engaged in lucid dreaming for several years. When I was young I thought little of it. As I moved from childhood to adolescence I became aware that it was a skill I could cultivate. Yet, as an adult, there is an aspect to the practice that I have become more aware of. Occasionally, a vague sense of lucidity in the dream-state will prohibit me from entering a fully lucid state of mind. Some examples are as follows.
I set an object down and then become distracted by or engrossed in another aspect of the dream and then when I, having been lucid enough to remember setting down the object, return to look for it and find it missing. At times, I will become frustrated by this and begin to search for an explanation as to why I can not find what I am looking for while I could have taken the lack of continuity as a trigger to notice that I was in a dream state. I could have been flying up in the clouds but instead I am stuck looking for my car keys.
Other times, I will try to engage with a computer or cell phone and the surreality of the display, which should be an enjoyable aspect of the dream state, will frustrate me and leave me preoccupied with concern over diagnosing the problem and finding a way to fix the malfunctioning device. Again, witnessing an impossible display from a computer or cell phone should be a cue that I am dreaming and not in ordinary reality, yet my rationality coupled with a low level of lucidity will prevent me from recognizing the obvious. I could have been traveling to alien worlds and interacting with the inhabitants there of but instead I find myself trying to check the configuration settings of my computer to try and figure out why every other web page loaded appears to have been rendered by a surrealist painter.
What is more, there are times when I experience the dream within a dream trope and upon waking within another dream in an impossible or discontinuous scenario, I become fixated on an explanation for the event. I will question my sobriety or worry about some physical injury that may have caused a temporary state of amnesia when I could be utilizing the discontinuity as evidence of my dreaming. I could be in communion with elder spirits or some such metaphysical construct but instead I'm pacing back and forth, asking myself if I had to much to drink or hit my head and that is why I just awoke in a bed that I did not fall asleep in.
Now, I will admit that it is not necessarily lucidity per say that is causing me to become distracted, hence the apology for click-bait, but a lack of focus that I have become increasingly aware of the longer I have engaged in this practice. I recon that I have fallen into these traps, for lack of a better word, many times throughout my life yet have hitherto failed to repeatedly recognize them. Yet, at times, it will seem as if the conscious attempt to dream lucidly over the years has had the inverse effect of short circuiting the process. I can't help but wonder if my younger self, in childish innocence, could seemingly engage in this practice with more ease? Where are my car keys? Why does my monitor look so glitched out? How did I get here? Who cares? This is all so fantastic and fun! Explore!
Have any other long time lucid dreamers experienced this? Has lucidity ever interfered with your ability to dream lucidly? I'm interested in any input other dreamers may have to offer in regards to this.