How well do reality checks work for you guys? My reality checks usually work, so I guess reading about failed reality checks last night triggered this dream. I don’t think I’ve had this much trouble before.
This morning I had a dream that my brother’s hamster and my cat both drowned in the toilet. I first saw the hamster in there. He was stuck in the pipes. I don’t know why I couldn’t just fish him out, but I thought I had to flush so the water would go down. He drowned, and then I went back to the toilet and I saw my cat in there. I had to go fix something so I could flush, but by the time I got back, he was already dead. I looked at him and thought, “I sure hope this is a dream.”
I looked at my reflection in the mirror (there really is a mirror there, but I just realized that I was wearing clothes I don’t own) and tried to change my reflection. It didn’t work. I went over to the clock in my room, and it said 11:30. I looked at it about three times, and it didn’t change. I said, “I’m almost POSITIVE this is a dream. Let me see if I can change that clock.” I walked over to the other side of my room. The clock was suddenly there, and it had a word on it. The lucidity faded for a while as I went around trying to make my clock do weird things. Full lucidity returned when I looked at the clock and it had an extra circle intersecting through the top of an 8. Then I realized that the dream was fading. I did the spinning thing and woke up with a start.
I think the point of that is that you should do reality checks with the attitude that you’re looking for things that can’t happen in real life, or making things happen that can’t happen in real life. If you keep failing to defy the laws of reality, you’re probably awake - but you might be wrong. If you’re persistent enough in a dream, the nature of your state will show itself.
The wrong attitude is to try to prove what state you’re in by the premise that something (like clocks staying the same, or light switches working) “can’t” happen in a dream. Anything can happen in a dream, although some things are more likely than others; real life is what has set limitations.