Course! 
What I meant is that having only two terms (CD and NCD) is rather poor, 'cause a CD can be either a cool lucid dream or a mild-to-poor lucid dream (low lucidity, as my example on the 1st post on this thread). I suggest another term to specify a “high-lucidity” dream: SCD (super) or UCD (ultra). I’m bad with naming, maybe someone has a better idea for this 3rd name…
Well, the fact is, we had two terms before (LD and ND), and people thought of various levels, such as semi-lucid, low-lucid, high-lucid, etc., for describing their dreams a little better. What I’m suggesting is, we just let the CD and NCD terms follow the same road, to avoid confusion, and let things flow more naturally, letting people using CD in the same way that the term LD was.
You mean, let those terms take the road of a folk saying, having them made more effective and memorable by telling and re-telling ?
I was thinking more among the lines of ease-of-use 
The usage of LD and ND has sedimented with years in various, accepted forms, and it would be a pain if those new terms had completely different rules to follow in order to be used; so I was thinking, let them be just simple synonyms: anytime you would use the term LD, you can use CD instead, since it has the same exact meaning (I effectively want them to mean the same thing here), and the same with ND and NCD.
And of course, ideas are more effective if they’re wider spread, so I was just thinking of ways to make those new terms more easily accepted. 
Ok, I haven’t read all the way through. But I have a few thoughts. First and foremost, I think that you would have no trouble at all being understood if you use the terms Conscious dream and non-conscious dream, because they are already used. Second, you are not suggesting giving up old terms, and you would completely understand what people mean when they say normal dream, so, what are you trying to achieve, actually? If it is to start the use of CD and NCD, it’s already been done a long time ago. Even before LD maybe. If it is not to stop the use of the old terms, what should be done with them? And if it is not to convince others to use your terms, then what is it? Seems a little funny to me.
I see your point, that saying ND compared to LD makes LDs seem more difficult. Psychologically, it might be better to say unlucid dreams or non-lucid dreams in order to not make such a fuss about lucidity as to inhibit them. I don’t see the criticism against its accuracy though. ND are more common, and as such are the norm for most people. LDs are special. There are more features to dreams that can be expressed, such as vividness and lenght and such, but what is our interest really? If you strive for long dreams, you will call some long, and some short, and there will also be a range of regular length dreams. If you are only looking for long dreams, you’d call those NDs. The same goes with all aspects of dreams. If you are looking for zombie-dreams, you will have ZDs and NDs. If the dream has no specific interesting feature on display, why not call them NDs? You can’t call a dream a long dream, just because it’s not a lucid dream because it might be short(, or a normal lenght dream). So in the context of lucid dreaming, NDs is a proper term. You could choose to make it more neutral by saying, perhaps, Other Dreams, but it only works in plural. What you call it just depends on how much you want to say. You could call a dream a Long Vivid Random Strange Lucid False Awakening (Dream).
As for what to call LDs themselves. Choosing the right word depends partly on the euphony and cacophony of the terms, and also on what you are focusing on about the dream. To call a dream a Conscious Dream, highlights the state of consciousness, implied to be high. But consciousness does not guarantee that you know you are dreaming. Take Pre-Lucid Dreams for example, they are just as conscious as a Lucid Dream, only you have not yet aquired the necessary proof that you are dreaming. It would be understood from the context what you mean ofcourse, but I tend to make a difference between high consciousness and knowing that I’m dreaming. Usually they go hand in hand, but they are not the same IMO. And technically, we have a degree of consciousness in all dreams we remember, because you can’t remember if you did not have consciousness. Every experience is conscious or it wouldn’t be experienced. “Lucid Dreaming”, highlights the clariry of thought you are expected to have, in order to realise you are dreaming. That is, to not be distracted by random thoughts. It should be possible though, to be aware that you are dreaming and still not have clarity of thought. But then, those are often called low level LDs. What you focus on is really a matter of what you think is important about the dream. The way you define the terms shows that. And if a different word fits your definition better, go for it!
My final words, might be the ultimate solution to the problem, even if it does not make it easier exactly, it does do away with the problem. The terms in themeselves, can have connotations that don’t do the dream justice. And since people might have different definitions of the same term, misunderstandings can take place. The important thing is not whether your dreams with neatly into a specific category. To obsess about that, will take the fun out of your dreams. If you make it your goal to fulfill the requirements for calling the dream you just had a conscious dream, or lucid dream or whatever, you are forgetting the reason you wanted to hae the dream in the first place. It is not about categorisation and technicality, it is about having the experience. And if you want to do it justice, just describe it without putting a label on it! Does it make you any happier to be able to say: “Yes, this dream fulfils all the requirements, I can call it a lucid dream. I have accomplished my goal”? What about the dream itself? Did you enjoy it? If you did, do you care whether it can be called lucid or not? So why bother with labels at all? just say: “I was quite conscious in the dream, I realized I was dreaming, and I had loads of fun”!
I highly suggest you take a read of the posts beside the first; most of your points have already been discussed.
About the last paragraph, I do agree with your view, and think dreams should enjoyed for themselves nonetheless, and I actively write down all significant dreams i can remember down to treasure them; however, I do find that IWL, i can appreciate way more any experience if i put awareness in it, participating consciously in it, without being simply dragged by the events and thoughts, but being the master of myself and trying to get the most out of any experience this way; I thought I could apply that principle in dreams aswell.
Besides,
I’d say, yes, verily: for I have set an objective the day before, and I have accomplished it; and that means I’m a human being capable of getting what he wanted to reach; and that usually means I’m becoming a better, more balanced, more self-conscious person. Besides, I mostly use LD’s for the same reason (self-growth)
I think this might actually be the best road to take for me, start with just plain “Dream” and if it’s more, label it so
But part of the psychological aspect of labels and such seemed to hit me pretty good yesterday with the word “Reality”… [ND] I was looking at a bowl, that now looked like from my Mother’s set of her favored dishes, instead of how it had looked a few minutes prior. As we were looking at it, and I was trying to explain how it Had looked, it changed even more. I exclaimed, “Hey! It’s changing as if I’m in a Dream!” [com] Great place to gain lucidity, one would think, but… [/com] I continued something along the lines of “But I know I’m in Reality!” as I looked around the dining room, and touched the dining room table, all as ‘Real’ as could be…[/ND]
I’ve been using IWL instead of IRL for awhile now, but just a quick anecdote of how a phrase or a word can impact our efforts… (don’t want to hijack the thread too far off base, but anyone know any used words for the ‘dream reality’ ?)
That makes two of us
Dreamland, the dreaming and astral plane come to mind right now.
i vote for calling them supra-uber-mega-IRL-dreams
Yeah I got used to it too, since dreams are quite “the” reality for the time one spends dreaming.
And mopman, yeah, some dreams really deserve such a title 
but I don’t quite get the IRL part.
Tosxychor. I did read most of the first page, but I got too eager to write. I couldn’t wait any longer!! At that point,I was aware that some posts after might have said what I was going to say, which isn’t strange because I wrote a lot. I figured, maybe my approach was different anyway, so it could provide something. I didn’t think the issues had been adressed satisfactorily. Afterwards, I saw the amount of text and thought. Might come off a little agressive there and thought maybe I should add “don’t take me too seriously”.
I didn’t mean that we should not strive for a hihg level of consciousness in dreams. What I was trying to say was that why should we concentrate on whether we can call them a certain term, it’s the experience we desire. We can still describe he dream using the word consciousness, explaining that we were conscious. And that would still be to accomplish the goal, and you can still say it. But when it comes to accomplishing the goal of having “a dream that corresponds to the description of a certain term” I don’t see why that is interesting. If you simply change the definition, you have no longer accomplished had that type of dream. Then you have to accomplish a different thing to be able to say you did, and the thing you were so happy about, is now a stupid ND. See? But the dream is exactly the same the whole time regardless of whether it fits into the accepted definiton of the term you are pursuing. People ask all the time on this site, “did I have a LD?”. The only thing you can do to verify is to see if it fit the definition, by the requirement of knowing that you were dreaming. This question is a question of labels only. If you find a technicality, you say “no, it seems you did not havea lucid dream, it’s a FLD” or more often the conclusion would be that it was a “low level LD”. How much satisfaction is there really to gain in making the disticntion between a technically unlucid dream and a low level lucid dream? The only thing I care about is the dream itself. Not if I can put a sticker on it.
Did I do it again? Is it too much text?
Phoenyx- The word reality. Would it have affected the conclusion much if you had chosen to say “in waking life”, or “not dreaming” or anything else that means the same thing? Sounded like you had made the conclusion before you said the word. Seems to me the thought behind the sentence is the culprit. It’s funny when you know that you shouldn’t trust the solidity of the surroundings, but still you do. Then you wake up and think " dang it, I should have done a reality test." -That’s another term in this mess. Most people say “reality check”, but (Hello! Reality check!) that commonly means to look at the actual facts of reality, when it is used outside of a lucid dreaming context. “Reality test” is more accurate, but it has been repressed. In the interest of using terms that make lucid dreaming easier, it may be a god idea to use “reality test”, since “check” has a somewhat lazy connotation. “I’ll jsut do a quick check to see if I’m dreaming”, it does not give a clue that one is actually TESTING one’s reality by exploiting the known weaknesses in the reality simulation. It sounds more like you check your e-mail to see if someone has sent a message that you are dreaming. “quick check, not dreaming, ok back to where we were” vs “WOAH! Wait a minute, Stop everything! Let’s not do anything until we can determine for certain whether this is a dream or not.” But then again, we do mean the same thing and know just how to go about it.
When describing my dreams, I seldom say I did a RC, I usually describe what I did. “looked at my hand a few times. There was an extra finger so I knew I was dreaming”.
Such enthusiasm! 
And any amount of text is fine, don’t worry, it was just the fact your points struck me as incredibly similar as Bruno’s in your previous post, so I thought the answers could as well be the same.
About your point in the last post, I see you’re taking the problem on a different level. You are discussing the fact if using “lucid” as a clear connotation to a dream is possible, and if so, if it is a good thing to do. I can see the reasons why you see things this way, and I agree with you on some levels, but that’s not really the point of this topic.
This topic wants to bring an alternative to the terms LD and ND for those who do cut a clear distinction between the two, to the point using a LD count makes sense. For these people, bringing up a different way to call them would be beneficial IMO, but that’s just it, I’m not really debating here whether a particular dream should be called lucid or not, the reasons for it, or the reasons for doing this distinction; on this topic, I’m only bringing out an alternative term for “lucid”: expanding the topic concerns should require a separate topic, given the enormity of the debate
And about the reality test… you know, that does sound a little better. May be novelty factor, or may not. It does follow the spirit of this topic, for sure 
.
So true! Though I don’t think “I” would’ve said IWL or not dreaming, but you bring up the good point of the meaning behind the words; More-so valid I think from being on an international forum where many readers translate first one tongue to another, before ‘feeling’ that ‘meaning’ behind the words. BUT that road is a two-way gambit, whereby we also assign meaning, based on the words, which I think is the heart of this topic.
I’ve also found an immense probability that things/scenarios in the dreams very often hold similarly or symbolically true on more than one level. While illustrating some of the difficulty in achieving Lucidity, that short dream-scene also interprets into (at least) 2 other more personal situations.
I’ve often heard of dreaming as the brain’s ‘filing system’, and I think often the ‘feelings’ associated with different life events are more the core in dreams, and the ‘meanings’ are often ambiguous or poetically similar and all valid.
*Therefore, I think finding, at least personally, a set of words to disambiguously describe some of the concepts we’re working with helps internalize a more precise feeling/meaning associated and essentially gives us better Tools to work with.
As for Reality Test v. Check, I’d have to agree that Test would be more appropriate for the techniques, but in practice, you don’t want it to take over the dream, and you do want it to (at least eventually) be a “quick check”. BUT I suppose it’s different for everyone as far as what’s needed and “better”, as results are what matters.
For me, the whole concept of the RC is just a Trick to get your consciousness aware of it’s surroundings, and though I’ve had minimal success with the nose pinch technique, I’ve also had as many ‘failures’ (another point I don’t like being associated with the RC method, hoping to have an RC Fail seems a reinforcement of a negative to be a positive…) result in a failure to become lucid.
In the past, when I wasn’t often trying to consistently Induce LD’s, most often would come a moment best described as “?” from which I would assess an internal Feeling gauge as to being in a dream.
In practice over the past 2 months, I’ve had some success with many different techniques, but am still searching for what I believe to the core of the matter; Accepting that I can Lucid dream often, and when I choose to. and That, I think I can only overcome through consistent efforts and successes, overcoming decades of inattentive and contrary self-conditioning.
*I think more precise language can help, myself and others; For each new experience, if we have a different word to help describe that particular, we can more consciously influence our dreaming habits. To someone with no Lucid Dreams in their memory, the term itself draws a ?? for their personal meaning; To someone with 1 or 2 “low-level” LD’s, they may know they have lucidly dreamed, but ?? the difference with being in a dream with their reasoning, or a higher degree of awareness, or a stronger means to control themselves, or their environment.
Especially for someone working heavily with phrases like “Tonight I WILL have a Lucid Dream”; repeating that as they fall asleep; If words:“Lucid Dream” = meaning:“Low-Level Lucid Moment followed by FLD with minimal awareness” it may take some experiential retraining, and more importantly, the Knowledge that there IS a difference.
“A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” My man Shakespeare knows what I’m talking about. Words are labels. We take something from the real world, and assign a label. It may as well be “flurgl”. The understanding of the word does not come from it’s parts, it comes from knowing what entity it is a name for. Yes, words can be used to influence what the understanding becomes, by the dilution of interpretation of the terms. Lucid dreaming is not something that one understand just by hearing the word. You have to read about it a bit at least. At that point, the label can be anything. IF we want to analyse the terms thrououghly, there is one word that has not beenadressed, which is of fundamental importance in the analysis. the word “dream”. It by far more important that “lucid” or “conscious” or “flurgl”, yet the word is ambiguous. Should we take the word to mean “sleep hallucination” or “life goal” or “fantasy”? I’m sure that your initioal reacion would be, but we KNOW WHAT WE MEAN. And that is my point. We know what we are refering to, no matter what we call it, because the name is assigned to what we mean. The word is an EXPRESSION. It wouldn’t make a big difference to me, if I had to use the Russian word for it, or the Japanese, or god forbid, the Swedish equivalent. I know what I mean, even if the word I’m using really means “fish-bulb”. So if I tell myself I will “fish-bulb” tonight, my intention is the same as if I say I will “lucid dream” tonight, and my understanding is the same as well, because I decided what it means to me.
BTW, I took a course on the philosophy of language, so if my ideas seem strange, it’s about the same as if I would say that free will is impossibe. I exercise what would be called free will and feel that I have it, whatever it is, but I have concluded that it is not free based on the logical impossibility of it in both deterministic and indeterministic universes, while at the same time accepting that knowledge is impossible so how can I tell if what I’m saying is true?
Sorry for the late reply.
First, I already mentioned how this change would be aimed to inexperienced dreamers, instead of more experienced ones, that are familiar with the true meaning behind a word such as LD;
Secondly, I am meant to disagree with this: words are a powerful thing indeed, and even more so on a online forum, where their percieved meaning isn’t modified or shaped by any other experience, such as voice tone, inflection or face expressions; when you ask for advice here, words is all you’ll get, and as such we’d rather be careful about the choice we make about how to carry our message across.
Would you even imagine a club calling themselves S.T.U.P.I.D., whatever the acronym may mean? Everyone would be laughing at them, and for good reason: words are one way to make a first impression, and as such they are likely to profoundly influence the following experiences regarding such subject; for example, i wouldn’t be taking anything this club does seriously at all, and I would still be biased, should I ever enter it.
Would you be worried more if in an ingredient list something by the name of E300 appeared, or if rather it was listed under its more common naming, that is “vitamin C” ?
And if said rose was called “thorny”, and its smell “awful”, the first time I see one, I would surely avoid it, caring more about not to get punctured, and trying not to smell it. The smell is still there, but my experience torwards the rose was deeply changed. Regardless of how the extrernal world is, the way we think deeply affects the way we percieve it, and words, unlike objects, are always accompanying us, shaping our thoughts with their everpresence.
This is even more true for dreams, where we don’t have an external “rose” that keeps its smell intact, whatever we may call it; instead, thoughts and words are all we have to think about dreams while awake, and in dreams, what our mind thinks is what our mind experiences. So, even if I met said “thorny” in dreams, I would surely think about how the smell is called “awful”, and that rose would smell awful, because of the association I made of the word “awful” with a particular smell, that is not the rose’s.
Plus, should I ever smell a real “thorny” after that, I would go “but it smells sweet! How come it is called awful?” and decide awful is a wrong name for such a smell, since it modified my experience torwards it in a way it shouldn’t have. The same reasoning applies for Lucid Dream.
By this reasoning, calling them by a nonsense would be the best thing, since it carries no misdirecting associations with it; however, that may just make us sound crazy. 
Conscious Dream is the best alternative I have found so far.
Well, in that I agree with you; dreams are a ambigous phenomenon, and their true meaning is still being discussed in some topics; however, this is not the place to continue that discussion, because one thing is the meaning of words, and another are the words themselves, and we are discussing about the latter here. As for the word “dreams”, whatever that means for the individuals, I guess it’s a fine word, with a neutral enough meaning, or even better, with the association with “life goal”, it gets a very positive connotation so I guess it’s fine how it is.
A Sweet-Red Flower and a Non-Sweet-Red Flower, oh the many many types of Flowers we might smell.
Did he say Flour or Flower?
I smelled a flower this morning, unlike any other I’ve smelled before. It wasn’t a Rose Flower, but neither do I wish to group it simply as a Normal Flower.
“I Have A Flour!”
Words on an online forum still exist in a context. If this was not true, it would be impossible for you to know who I am even talking to here. There is much more than words at play here. Your world knowledge plays a huge role in your understanding of what I am writing. Yes, the words are important, because if I suddenly decide to use a term you have never heard before, or use a word in a way never used before, you could get confused. But this is not because of the word itself, it is because of the conventions of using this word. If we sould agree to use a term the same way, we will never be confused. For instance, If I use the term conscious dreaming, you will probably underastand it to mean lucid dreaming, in this context. But I could just as well mean what I have used that term for before, which is having a dream in which you have a high level of consciousness, but do not know you are dreaming. It is impossible to tell by the form, you have to know what I mean by it. This is why we explain things. And once you have settled on a definition, the definition will be your understanding of the word, and it will not be affected at all by the form. You will always understand the word by its assigned meaning. When you are trying to FIGURE OUT what a term means, THEN the individual parts make a difference, and I would agree with you there, that putting a name on lucid dreaming that gives no clue of its meaning is not going to awaken the right associations for people who have never heard of it before. But like I said, that is easily overcome by providing a definition. Luckily, that is usually the first thing people do when introducing people to the subject. So, I still think that a lucid dream by any other name is just as sweet, and as long as one knows what they are the name is arbitrary.
That I completely agree with, explanations and definitions can sure overcome any limitation of a term and give the right directions; however, the name is always seen more often than the definition itself, and as such, it can still influence in little amounts the meaning (and I’m talking about influence on a more unconscious level, when one ordinarily uses the term without thinking too much about it, and just lets the name speak for itself).
For this reason, it would still be a good thing IMHO to provide the community with new terms that some would find useful to express themselves in a way feels better to them.
Plus I’m sure people who have already associated the term “consciousness” with a particular property of dreams will enjoy keeping the use of LD and ND terms. What I’m offering here is a choice, so every dreamer might use the term that’s best for them, for the time they need it in their quest.