101 ways your mind can prevent you from having LD.

Quest for Lucidity
1

Hi all
After my first LD I thought that from now on I will be able to have a LD every night. I will just do a RC when I see that something weird is happening. Unfortunatelly it isn’t so simple. Your subconsciousness has a lot of means of convincing you that something impossible is completely normal.
I want to ask you to write some examples. I know that everyone has a great experience in this subject and it can be helpful for others. Maybe next time in a similar situation they won’t be tricked.
I had a dream this night and it inspired me to begin this topic.
So here is my example:
I was watching some girls dancing. There was also a man walking on his hands. Than he started to walk on his fingers, than just jumping on two fingers. Of coarse I should do a reality chect but you know what I thought: “he can’t do all this, they are certainly using some special effects in this video clip”. My subconsciousness suggestion was that I am watching TV and in TV everything is possible. So why should I think that it was a dream.

Adam

2

Once I had a false awakening from a lucid dream, to a standing position in the kitchen. Of course I totally accepted that I must have felt asleep in the kitchen, without even at all wondering why I would manage to fall asleep there! :tongue:

3

Don’t you just hate it! :grin:

I once had a dream where I was in a classroom and the teacher stopped everyone and said, “Okay everyone, time to take down the clocks to make it harder to realise this is a dream”. Those were his exact words!

And would you believe it, I took the freakin clocks down!! :alien:

That was sooooo stuffed! :smile:

~ceavou~

4

I once saw a guy fall from the sky and land in a lake I was sitting by, but I told myself he probably just jumped from an aeroplane…

Also my friend dreamt he saw himself having a lucid dream on a TV show!

5

I know exactly what you guys are talking about - I think it happens to everyone more than enough, and it’s frustrating! :bored: There are MANY levels of lucidity, and I think the lowest level is attained when you or a dream character simply say or mention that you’re dreaming; you then “realize” it, but, at a very low level of awareness. :eh:
In one of Stephen LaBerge’s books on lucidty, they call this very subject “critical faculty” – meaning, different levels of the ability to realize when something is odd in a dream. The example in the book was this: You’re in a bar, and you see an attractive woman, only, she has FOUR eyes.

These are examples of comments you might make in this situation on these different levels…

Level 1: “There’s something odd about that woman over there…oh, duh…that’s it - she has four eyes!” – and you’d think nothing more of it at level 1.

Level 2: “It’s a shame about that woman over there, she’d be really hot if not for that!” – you realize it more, yet, dismiss it’s impossiblity for something like a broken nose, or acne.

Level 3: “Hey that woman over there is very strange, there must be a freak show in town or something…” – you’ve now realized and pinpointed the exact oddness of the situation, yet, you still subconsciously dismiss it’s impossiblity with false rationalization (a freak show).

Level 4: “Hey wait a minute, look at that woman! Even if there were a freak show in town, having four eyes is impossible! I must be dreaming…” – At this level you fully realize the impossibility of the situation, and become lucid.

I think the best way to avoid having your mind dismiss such odd things like that, is to examine your waking life MUCH more carefully. The more you assess the boundaries of reality while you’re awake, the more you’ll be aware of those boundaries while you’re dreaming…this sort of conditioning will help you to easily point out what is real/not real and what is possible/impossible.
That’s another reason why keeping a dream journal is so important, so you can write down these impossible situations that occur in your dreams, and categorize them - start to become familiar with the impossibilities of your dreams so you can more easily notice them to become lucid in future dreams. Don’t JUST ask yourself, “Am I dreaming?” …ask yourself, then jump in the air, or try to shoot a laser from your finger. If you float, and/or shoot a laser from your finger…well, then you’re definitely dreaming! :wink:

6

once i had a dream where i was sitting on the couch watching my dad replace a flourescent light in my house (there are no flourescent lights in my house in WL). the glass was broken in the light and i could see water suspended in the air inside the light. this is the conversation we had:

me: how can there be water just floating there like that?
dad: tyler there are air conditioning vents under this light
me: so, if i were to stand on top of that vent, the water would fall down?
dad: yeah, but don’t do that
me: ok, whatever

so close!!!

7

:cool_laugh: I love these posts, they crack me up.

I used to play hockey back at school quite a lot. In this dream I was playing hockey but there was a swimming pool in the middle of the field. I thought “well it’s going to be tough to keep the ball from getting in the pool all the time,” and started playing.

During the game I noticed that there were some cheerleaders yelling out “Go dream! Go dream!” I just thought “that’s pretty stupid. They should be yelling out ‘go team’” and mentioned this to my coach who agreed with me.

8

i had a dream where my whole family was in a shed on the beach,
i look up at the moon and realize its moving really fast,
i tell my family to get down into the basement because the earth is coming off its axis and is going to get flung out into space. they just ignored me, i looked back up and the stars all start moving, i feel enormouse forces and we all die. i wake up, recall the dream, think "that was wierd, and even wrote it down in my dream journal, i then went back to sleep and i must of been thinking about the dream because i was suddenly back in it, i see my family just sitting there, i said to them “didnt i warn you, the earth is about to be flung out into space” they just looked at me blankly, and i said “oh, dont worry, i remember now, that was just a dream”

god, how can my dream common sence be so goddam stupid

9

lol :rofl: You all make me laugh! Amazing what our subconsious can trick us into believing :eek:

10

This subject is hilarious. :smile:

I’ve experienced something similar to the “TV” thing someone else wrote. I usually think it’s a movie, rather than TV. For example, I once had a dream where I was walking through this house filled with temporarily resurrected dead people. I knew that that was impossible, but I thought it was a movie (despite the fact that I was actually inside it). Actually, I have this fuzzy sense that what I see isn’t reality, and it’s probably a movie, in most of my dreams. I wonder how that rationalization worked before movies existed… maybe people thought it was a book?

I’ve also had reality checks indicate that I was dreaming, and then completely ignored them. Once I dreamed that I was walking into Price Chopper. I thought, “How did I get here?” Then I thought, “I don’t know,” and continued with the dream, oblivious.

11

Indeed it can be quite frustrating to have such a strange dream and not realize mid-way through.

I find most of the time when this happens I begin thinking that it is all a computer game (I play a lot of games) and that somehow the standard control decives were simply not necessary.

Worse than that, whenever this situation occurs, it’s usually my fiends and other people I know that become the enemies :wink:

I find it amusing how frequently people trying to LD dream about having a LD. Oh well, it’s a good sign anyway.

12

lol!

Well today I fell asleep and in my short dream my friend was trying to tell me something in my language, and the words that he said didn’t sound like anything so we both got mad. I woke up and thought “there wasn’t anything unusual in that dream” then I realized in Romanian his voice was all messed up, but in English I could hear him perfectly normal. Even in real life I couldn’t figure that out…for a while.

13

LOL, I’m so glad I’m not the only one who has dreams that are… ‘out there’ :tongue:

I recently had a dream where I was in my boyhood home trying to get my kids to sleep (who are 3 and 5 now, but they were babies in my dream). So I finally get them to doze off when out of the blue all kinds of kids come riding up the street on bicycles and park their bikes in my yard. I was like WTF?! So I march outside to see what’s up and my football coach from back in high school is out there and I ask him what’s going on. He says, “Oh, were just having practice today.” So I reply, “Well that’s okay I guess, but if yall wake up my kids, I’m whippin somebody’s ass!!” We both laugh and the kids go right to practicing football right in the middle of the street.

Gawd, don’t ya just love dreams? LOL

14

ClintB24:

Indeed I do love them :smile:

Sometimes the most inspiration comes from non-Lucid dreams, I find. There’s nothing quite like wondering how the hell your mind came up with that :wink:

15

Yeppers. I find if I really look a lot of the time, I can usually associate lots of the stuff in my dreams to stuff that happened during the day. Like that day I had been watchin football on tv, and I’d had trouble gettin my kids to sleep that night. :grin:

16

It’s fairly common knowledge that dreams are inspired by events that have happened during the day. I guess that’s why thinking about LDs all day helps your mind decide what to dream about :smile:

Of course, we all have those dreams that appear to come from absolutely nowhere, often featureing things we havn’t lent a thought to for many years.

My theory is, if it’s there in memory, then it’s available for tonights dreams. It just works out that the most current memories are usually in the best condition…

17

Yeah. I tend to dream a lot about being at school. I’m just getting to where I can somewhat recognize them as dreams. But I tend to also dream a really wide variety of dreams and really don’t seem to have many patterns that I can get used to. Just school and ones where my teeth are falling out LOL. I’ve never had any recurring dreams that I can remember.

18

One time I walked into my room and my dog was sitting on the end of my bed. I sat down so he could croawl into my lap. Then I thought, “Wait a minute, my dog is dead,” and I was sitting there trying to figure it out, while still petting him!

I narrowed it down to two conclusions, either my dog was a ghost, or I was dreaming. I thought they were both pretty logical. I decided to check if I was dreaming first. I looked around my room, and there was nothing to read (that’s my usual RC) so then I thought, “Hey, in my room, there’s usually lots of stuff to read! I guess I’m not dreaming then.”

It was so weird! Totally opposite of where I wanted to go. Your sub concious can get SO annoying at times. :grrr:

19

Imagine:

That’s right, blame everything on your subconscious :grin:

It’s not terribly common (in my experience) for a LD to occur when something that obvious happens in a standard dream. You can dream about LDs all you want but it probably won’t trigger one to happen.

Dreams are very much a passive thing, and unless something gives the command for your conscious mind to take control, it wont happen. The idea then, is to give your subconscious the idea that at a certain time during a dream, it needs to hand over the keyboard.

20

yeah i had a dream last night where i was waiting in line for a helmet, (for some unknown reason) and i looked in this window, i saw this bag of noodles, i looked away for a second and looked back and the noodles were gone, i then looked around and realized they were higher up in the window than before. i remember thinking, “heh, if this was a dream that would be a great lucid trigger.”

then later on i was at my computer, and i see a few EDO ram sticks, and i could remeber i sold those yesterday to someone, i then looked back at them and it was actaully a sound card, my brain really didnt want me to go lucid. :sad: