I was going to write this before I noticed your ninja edit:
"Okay. So you are still an amateur and your dreams were only Castaneda-flavoured, don’t worry so much about something that was just a nightmare.
You need to be able to look at your hands (the point of departure) as many times as possible, not 3 times a week.
“He told me that dreamers take quick, deliberate glances at everything present in a dream. If they focus their dreaming attention on something specific, it is only as a point of departure. From there, dreamers move on to look at other items in the dream’s content, returning to the point of departure as many times as possible.”
If you want to make this a practice, you need to do all of the exercises.
You did pretty good to be able to view your hands 3 times a week, but not well enough to reach the third gate of dreaming."
Could you clarify now the difference in scale, please? You went from 3 times a week to all the time.