Many times throughout the years I’ve questioned whether or not my few lucid moments were actual lucid dreams or just false lucid dreams. The typical response was something like, “Regardless if you had control, if you were aware that you were dreaming, you had a lucid dream.” In these dreams my dream self was aware that he was in a dream. So of course they were lucid, right? After thinking about it for a while, I realized that they might not be lucid dreams, but instead false lucid dreams. The reason being that although my dream self was aware he was in a dream, but I wasn’t aware. I acted like I was still in a normal dream, and had the same foggy mental state of a normal dreamer. My mental state simply wasn’t… LUCID in the non-dreaming definition. I never accomplished anything but walking around and losing lucidity I believe I never had in the first place. The reason is because I never had any control because I never had any awareness. It was like I was in a play, playing the role of a lucid dreamer but I was not actually aware. I’ve had confirmed FLD’s in the past that felt just like these “lucid” moments. I’ve been wanting to succeed in WILD or a similar technique for a long time, not only because it’s just cool, but also because WILD produces confirmed lucid dreams for comparison.
So anyways… what exactly is the line between a FLD and a LD? Is lucidity simply stating “I’m dreaming!” in the dream, or is it actual true awareness? The definition of a FLD on #ld4all states, “you are NOT realizing that you’re dreaming but still you act like a lucid dreamer and do everything you want to do - you have the behaviour of a lucid dreamer, not the consciousness.” But is it that a good definition?
Anyways, sorry for kind of rambling, I’m just confused.
I think it is a hard distinction to make. In my opinion, having a LD means that you are aware that you’re dreaming in your dream. I think this implies that you have some kind of control, even if slightly minor, like the ability to direct your thoughts even if they are irrational because of a low level of lucidity. Ultimately, I think you have to “feel” the difference between a LD and a FLD. If it feels like a LD, then it was one. If it doesn’t, then it was a FLD. I don’t know about others, but I can just feel a difference most of the time between a LD and a ND, so it is easy for me to detect whether I was lucid. This probably only confuses you further, but maybe it will bring some clarity as to the difference between a FLD and a LD.
I think being fully lucid means that you understand that you are lying in bed, and that you are capable of making conscious decisions.
Basically, if you can stop and tell yourself “I’m dreaming, and right now I’m lying in bed in real life” and actually understand what you are saying then it is a lucid dream.
The system I use to identify them is that a Lucid dream means I am aware I’m dreaming at that moment and that awareness is in a way separate or aside from the dream. In a false lucid dream the awareness is merely part of the storyline. As HeadInTheClouds said, there is a difference between how these dreams ‘feel.’
I think the difficulty in dividing them is because being aware and therefore lucid isn’t a boolean value. For those who aren’t programmers, that means you aren’t either aware or not aware, it’s something of a scale. At one end there is Normal dreams, then further along you would have False Lucid Dreams, then further still you would have lucid dreams. I think the term ‘false’ comes in because the dream on first retelling sounds a lot like it was a much higher level of awareness therefore lucidity than it actually was, but really the things you did during that dream were part of the storyline of the dream and not because you were aware.
We really can dream about anything, and that’s where the crux comes, in a false lucid dream, you are dreaming about lucid dreaming and not actually lucid dreaming. Your awareness on the scale is very low, perhaps even at the ‘normal dream’ level, but the dream is almost like a “what if I was lucid” situation. The same way you might have a dream about “what if I was an Olympic runner in the 2012 Olympics.” The only difference is, you actually could be lucid dreaming at that moment and now need to figure out if it was a ‘what if’ dream, or a lucid dream. If you aren’t sure, don’t fret, write it down as whichever you think it was and keep going, as you have more LDs it will become much clearer whether you were actually lucid. If you weren’t think of it as a preview.
I didn’t know that definition was there, but I have to agree that it sums up the difference pretty well.
It’s hard to explain the difference, but once you experience both, it’s easy to tell. After a solid lucid dream you’ll wake up feeling good about it and even a sense of achievement. However, a false lucid dream will leave you wondering and you will (one way or another) come to the realization that “damn, I wasn’t actually lucid.” That your behaviour was simply part of the dream.
