I am in need of some guidance

Hey! I am quite new to lucid dreaming and I am in need of some guidance. I have always found the idea of lucid dreaming fascinating and wanted to try for myself. During my attempts I have always encountered the same problem, dreaming about being in a dream where I am lucid. I have heard that this is a good time to do realitychecks but I end up doing them, having fun in the dream then wake up in the dream thinking I had a lucid dream just to wake up once again but this time I am back to reality. Is there a proper way I can deal with this type of scenario? I usually sleep 4-5 hours and wake up to fall asleep again for another 3-4 hours. I log my dreams and try to push my hands through a wall to see if I am dreaming or not.
I also think I have experienced a lucid dream, I found an odd detail in the dream and decided to do a check. Seeing my hands warp through the wall I instantly knew I was in a dream. I was not able to change anything because this was minutes before my alarm. I am still unsure if I actually was conscious or if it was a part of the dream. I am probably missing something about the proper idea of lucid dreaming. I would love some guidance or feedback on how I should proceed.

Hi Sautekh, welcome :blush:

Back a long time ago I remember people calling this a “false lucid dream,” or FLD, although it seems like maybe FLD means something else to most people now judging by the glossary entry. Or maybe the whole LD-within-an-ND thing would be considered a specific type of FLD at this point. I used to get these sometimes when I was a teenager, although I haven’t much as an adult for whatever reason.

Anyway, if you ask me, I’d say you don’t need to do anything in particular. For one, that type of dream is still basically an LD in terms of how you experience it, and isn’t that the most important aspect of an LD? The only thing that makes it “not a real LD” is that what you think is your waking life is actually another dream—but that’s kind of a philosophical difference, instead of a difference in how it feels or what you can do. Remembering your true waking life might help in accomplishing certain goals or using techniques you learned in waking life, but you might take things like that from the ND you went to sleep in as well.

Also, I think having a dream like that is a good sign in general, because it shows that your mind is focused on the process of LDing. In a way, your dream is playing out the whole process of having an LD—going to sleep, starting to dream, doing an RC, becoming lucid, waking up again*—instead of just the LD part. :stuck_out_tongue: Having that process on your mind like that will probably lead to regular LDs as well.

* There are other ways to lucid dream too, of course, that just sounds like the process you’ve been using.

Sounds like an LD to me. :yum: The only thing that really makes an LD “lucid” is the knowledge that you’re dreaming in some sense—even if that knowledge is vague and fuzzy or you don’t really do anything with it.

People talk a lot about the level of their LDs—like, high-level, low-level, etc. Often they’re talking about a few things at once: how heightened their awareness is, how vivid and well-defined the dream is, and how stable it is (i.e. how easy it is for them to stay asleep and stay lucid). These things tend to all go together, which is why people group them all under the concept of “level”.

In a high-level LD, your awareness may be so heightened that you can remember very specific things from your waking life, like what you were doing during that day, your address or phone number, complicated LD goals you came up with, etc. Along with this, the sensory data in such a dream tends to be really vivid—you might be able to see all the individual veins of a leaf on a tree or feel each nook and cranny of a rock in your hands. And the dream tends to proceed fairly effortlessly, almost with the stability of waking life, so you don’t feel that you’re trying to hang tight to the dream and keep it from breaking up.

In contrast, a low-level LD may come with a very fuzzy mindset, almost like the mindset you might have in an ND—you vaguely know that you’re dreaming but it’s not really clear what that means or what you ought to do with that knowledge. In this mindset, you may act very impulsively, or keep playing along with the dream like it’s an ND but with a vague background sense of lucidity. Sensory data is often fuzzy in such a dream, with less fine detail; visuals may look hazy, sounds tend to be more gestural or symbolic, etc. It’s generally easy to wake up on accident from dreams like this.

Of course, these are just generalizations—any specific dream may be higher-level in some ways and lower-level in others. More than anything, I point this out just to show that LDs can be a lot of different ways; there’s nothing more specific to what makes them “proper” beyond some kind of awareness that you’re dreaming.

I really think you’re on the right track; if I were you, I would keep doing what you’re doing. If you’re not already keeping a dream journal, I definitely recommend that, but otherwise it sounds like you’re already getting good results from your approach and you’ll probably get results you’re even happier with if you continue.

Hi Sautekh :smiley:!
Just a thought, the next time you find yourself in your situation of dreaming about being in a lucid dream, try to be super mindful. feel the walls, the bed covers, your clothes and think about how the texture feels. look around and observe things. Listen really carefully to whats around you. Don’t just go straight into an adventure or go straight to talk to a DC etc…This mindfulness will hopefully bring you into a full, clear lucid dream.

This always helps me get the clarity and focus that I want in a lucid dream. It would probably start off like yours, i realise I’m dreaming but I’m not sure if its actually just a dream and I’m not conscious of it. When I observe things and be mindful of the present moment, I gain so much clarity and lucidity! A few years ago when this kept happening, if I walked or ran around straight after realising that I’m dreaming, the lucid dream would not be clear or even near good lucidity at all, and I wouldn’t be sure if it was a real lucid dream when I wake up! :upside_down_face:

Asteria xx

I had a dream like that too, an almost/maybe lucid dream