I’ve had two or three dreams of this type. I think if there’s a way I can induce this, it might be more convenient for me since every time I figure out that I’m inside a sole dream, I either wake up immediately from excitement or don’t really care for some reason. But whenever I realized I was in a dream that was within another dream (not noticing the second layer), I properly utilized it (kinda).
If you attained lucidity, then it doesn’t matter if it’s a dream within a dream or a straightforward dream. An LD is an LD. And in the end, nobody really cares, that’s the good thing about dreaming: If you felt lucid then that’s what matters.
There are different criteria to evaluate whether a seen was lucid and even lucid dreams come in different shades. The most important feature in my opinion is that you are aware that you are inside a dream and consciously so, so that you can act upon this knowledge inside the dream. For me and many others lucidity comes with a peculiar feeling and nothing else in life feels alike. I personally use this to judge in hindsight whether I consider a dream I had to have been a lucid one or not.
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Dreams within dreams… now that was popular when I was new to the forum thanks to a certain movie that had come out!
A dream within a dream is just a dream. In my experience, there’s no such thing as layers. It’s just part of the dream’s plot. I find this is more common when you’re actively pursuing lucid dreaming. In fact I’ve had dreams about having a lucid dream where I would definitely not consider myself lucid.
Essentially what sounds like happened to you was you dreamt you fell asleep, something made you lucid, and then you had a false awakening. You believed you were awake in the FA and lost lucidity. Here’s the key: train yourself to do a series of reality and awareness checks every single time you wake up from a lucid dream.
I’ve found that about 60% of the time I’m not really awake. Early on it was closer to 90%. FA can be annoying, but also a great way to help you learn to feel what a dream is like. You’ll find the real awakening feels quite different and jarring after 5 or 6 false ones.
Either way, this is good progress!
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Yes!!! I’ve always held this belief/experience but struggled to articulate it as clearly.
@clark If you have clear conscience awareness that you are dreaming, then I wouldn’t worry too much about the conditions around it to validate if it was a lucid dream.
If you had a FA and lost lucidity, that’s quite common. Happens to many dreamers all the time. It doesn’t invalidate the lucidity before the FA.