I don’t understand how you’re supposed to ask yourself if you’re dreaming and do reality checks in your dreams. My dreams are just like, a TV. I only watch them.
But. I can do something. If I am tired and close my eyes and concentrate for a little while, I think I can go into a “rem stage”. I feel my heart beat wildly, and my eyes start twitching like mad. If I sit there through it, this will happen like 4-7 times each lasting like 2 minutes. But during these “REMs”, all I see is blackness just as you see when your eyes are closed. No dreams.
Is there any way I can take this blackness, and make it into a dream? I have tried telling myself while REMing to “start dream now” or “turn blackness into yellow”, but nothing works.
I’m pretty sure that’s not REM. In REM, you’re asleep and dreaming…
And I realy think we should amek some sort of FAQ on your first question. It’s been asked alot lately.
Really, it’s not that complicated. If you ask yourself if you’re dreaming and take RC’s during the day, then you will take them in your dreams too (after all - you’ll think it’s the day in them). As you can never tell if your dreaming or not (trust me - dreams can be that realistic), you should never be certain that you’re awake.
As for the TV thing - that’s what everyone’s ND’s are like (either from a first person perspectice or occasionaly a third person one).
I’m assuming you are new to lucid dreaming? If not then you probably don’t need to read most of what i’m going to say. But what the hell, I’ll say it anyway, as it’s always good to remind ourselves of the best methods. If you follow these methods and stick with them, you will have lucid dreams, but you have to stick with it!
Reality checks are very important. But doing them in the right way is equally important. If you are just perfoming these checks in a mechanical way throughout the day (without really thinking about what you are doing ) they are unlikely to be effective.
When you do a reality check you need to REALLY question whether you are dreaming or not. REALLY consider the possibility that you may be dreaming , (because as the last post pointed out, when you ARE dreaming it can feel as real as being awake and you will assume in the dream that you are actually awake. This means that whether you are awake or dreaming, you will always assume you are awake unless you can prove it to yourself one way or the other).
Once you have considered the idea that you may be dreaming, find out if you really are or not by checking your watch twice. If the numbers remain stable and the time is the same each time then you have proved you are awake. If the time changes dramatically or the watch behaves in any other strange way, you can be sure that you are in a dream.
Remember also that reality checks alone are unlikely to make you become lucid. They need to be used in combination with other induction methods to get really good results.
Bear in mind that you will probably not get instant results ( it took me two months of using these methods to have my first lucid dream, but for some people it can work on the first night).
The first thing you need to do is learn to recognise your personal dreamsigns. (things that can only happen in dreams). A possible dreamsign could be finding yourself at school if you left school three years ago, or finding yourself driving a car, when you know you never learned to drive. Make a list of these dreamsigns.
The best method (in my opinion) to start with is the MILD method.
You may know all this allready, but in case you don’t here’s a brief description of how to use it effectively.
When you are going to sleep at night, set your intention. Imagine a dream you would like to happen, and consistently keep this dream in mind. Imagine every detail of this dream and go through it in your mind again and again. Tell yourself that the next time you are in a dream, you will realise that you are dreaming, and will then perform a reality check to prove it. You need to believe this will happen, and fall asleep EXPECTING it to happen.
You also need to instruct yourself to wake between each of your dreams.
You may think that this won’t work, but believe me it does.
When you wake from a dream in the night, try to make yourself stay awake for a few minutes. The dream you have just had will still be fresh in your mind and you will be able to remember every detail.
Now put your mind back into the dream and try to re-live it. While you are re-experiencing the dream, introduce a dreamsign into the dream, and imagine yourself recognising that dreamsign and becoming lucid. See yourself doing whatever you would like to do while lucid. Now say to yourself again, “The next time I am dreaming I will remember to realise that I am dreaming.” Let yourself fall back to sleep with this thought in mind.
Do this routine every time you wake in the night, and go back to sleep expecting to recognise a dream when you next have one. This expectation is VERY important. Belief is everything in lucid dreaming. Believe you can do it and it will happen.
You will also benefit from using the sleep/wake/back to bed method. Read up on this if you are not familliar with it. It can greatly increase your chances of lucid dreaming.
There are really no shortcuts to lucid dreaming in my opinion. You need to consistently do the work, and think of WHEN it will happen, not IF.
The only exception to this is the NovaDreamer, which if you can afford one, can give you lucid dreams almost every night if you learn to use it right. ( it gave me five lucid dreams in the first two nights of using it).
So remember the following 3 points and you will have lucid dreams:
Reality checks. The more you do them the better, but make sure you’re doing them right.
The MILD method. It’s very effective in combination with reality checks.
The sleep/wake/back to bed method - Use it with the MILD teqnique. You are 10 times more likely to lucid dream if you use this method.
Make sure you read “Exploring the world of lucid dreaming”. You can find it on Amazon, and it gives a more in-depth explanation of the WILD method (as well as all the other methods!)
If you really want to succeed with it you will, just don’t make the mistake of giving up. It can take time.
Good luck!
I fully agree. I have wrote about this in several threads. While it is good to do as many RC as you can during your waking hours it’s the quality of your RC ‘s that matters most. While mindlessly doing RC’s every few minutes during the day may accidently cause you to do a RC in your dreams that is hardly (for me)a reliable way of inducing LD ‘s.
Now if you seriously question your reality and do the exercise properly (as stated above) you will learn to awaken your critical thinking in your dreams and greatly enhance your chances of inducing a lucid dream.
I know a lot of this may not make a lot of sense to you right now but in time it will. If you practice these techniques seriously you will see success. I mostly do WILD but I still do my RC ‘s every day. On days when I don not do WILD I still sometimes have Lucid dreams because of the RC ‘s.
i have read you should tell yourself over and over again as you are falling asleep “I WILL have a lucid dream tonight”. or similar
problem is, I have a hard time falling asleep. I literally lay in bed for 3 hours before falling asleep. so I would have to repeat that phrase for 3 hours straight. heh, not happening.
Last night I went to bed @ 2am and didn’t fall asleep until 4:30am.
Only times I can fall asleep fast are if I’m extremly tired from doing work, or if I stay up for like 48 hours. See I don’t have a job and I don’t go to school so I don’t do a lot of work during the day that would make me tired. I think maybe that’s why I can never fall asleep. maybe my pillows are in a bad position. Maybe I’m laying wrong?
It sounds like you are talking about a MILD induction. No, it is not necessary to keep repeating your mantra until you fall asleep. You only need to repeat it until your intention is set. By my definition that means until you can repeat the mantra over several times without other thoughts distracting you. Then you can just let go of the thought and fall a sleep.
Meditation or relaxation might help you get to sleep more easily. What you would do is: first use meditation to get into deep relaxation then do your MILD mantra the let go and allow yourself to fall asleep.
No dreams.