Yesterday night I dreamt of my late father … it was a long dream … but still i did not realize that I was dreaming…
Every time I do a reality check and ask the question " Am I dreaming ???" the answer is always NO… so how do I do a reality check ???
Here are some of my dreams
Mon, 18 Jul ---- My PC kept near to confession place inside CHURCH…
Sun, 17 Jul — Environment — I was in roaming in a Boat in Kerala
Sat, 16 Jul – A rocket was talking , Earth was covered with snow
Sat, 9 Jul — Crows were Talking in my dreams
These are Few of my dreams where if I had to use a little bit of login in my dreams I would have become LUCID… But my LOGIC does not work in my dreams … I feel I am half conscious so I am not able realize I am dreaming…
How do I proceed ??
What Kind of REALITY CHECK do I do and for HOW LONG should I do reality check ?? 2 weeks ? 1 months ? 3 months ??
I am really disappointed with my progress It seems like it will take me forever to become a Lucid dreamer ??
ANY TIPS/ADVICE/HELP on how I become Lucid in my Dreams ???
Don’t worry, it’s perfectly normal that your logic is not working inside dreams. And that’s probably what you want anyway, if you’re striving for lucid dreams. How else are you going to fly if logic dictates gravity binds you to the ground?
I think there’s a part of your brain responsible for reason that simply mostly shut down during sleep and makes you endure all the nonsense in your dream. So your goal is to make sure that this part is triggered enough to catch the flaw in the matrix anyway. Reality checks are supposed to help you with that but much more important is awareness. You want to maintain a high level of general awareness and pay more attention to your senses, too. And I mean you have to do that in waking life! You can’t just control your dreams to do that without achieving lucidity, so the battle plan is to make this your new way of living your waking life. And please notice that I carefully avoided the phrase “make this your new habit“ here because habits are not what you actually want.
In that sense, asking how long you should be doing RCs and how often is also not the question you need to be asking. It’s individual anyway. What you need to know is what a sufficiently aware waking mind would feel like. I can’t really answer that very specifically either. There should be some kind of aha feeling when you’re questioning whether your current experience is real or made up (i.e. a dream).
I’ve found that as a long term lucid dreamer I’ve kinda had to sacrifice the idea that I could ever really know that I’m not dreaming. You may be approaching your reality checks with the idea that WL is the default. Our WL mindsets are reflected in our dreams, so if you’re assuming you know WL when you’re experiencing it, you’ll find you think you’re experiencing WL in your dreams as well.
If you’re treating your dreams like WL, try treating WL like a dream instead. What I mean by this is try to accept the fact that at any time your experience could be a dream. Use thoughtful reality checks to try and verify a dream (opposed to verifying WL). I find the most consistently helpful reality check is to try and remember how I got to where I am and questioning if what I’m doing actually makes sense; in a dream I can’t really retrace my steps that far back. I also try to change text or clocks within eyesight. I glance to and away from text and try to imagine it saying something else; in dreams it often changes for me.
I often say that a good RC is one you remember to do, but a better RC is triggered by something you encounter in your dreams. Keep a consistent dream journal. Are there reoccurring elements, places, objects, people, situations, emotions? These are the things that you should train to trigger a RC, (for me, Water = RC, Snakes = RC).
Learn the language of your dreams, it’ll be easier to identify when they’re speaking to you.
If my RC doesn’t confirm a dream, I’ve recently tried to continue the exercise by exploring what I would do in my current situation if I had the knowledge that I am dreaming. Sometimes I find that the possibility that I may be experiencing WL doesn’t prevent me from challenging or changing my situation the way I would if I knew I were dreaming, and this has been empowering. It’s also helpful as a way of incubation or reaffirming intentions/goals I set for my lucid dreams.
This is something I also struggled with, I found the “Am I dreaming?” a good RC, but after I failed it a couple of times because I thought: “No i’m not dreaming”. So when I’m awake now I ask myself: “Am I dreaming?” and then answer myself with: “Yes!” and here I sometimes try to do some more usual TC’s with a twist, so thinking about trying to fly, poking through my hand with my fingers open (with in mind thinking my hand goes through by faking it) and/or pinch down my nose and try to breath through it (slowly letting loose, so I try to trick my mind I actually breath through my nose).
I have more succes with the above, then the usual RC’s. I give them a little twist like I’m already dreaming and it usually transfers over into my dream.
I would also suggest some traditional RC techniques what xDexter wrote. For example, for me the nose pinching works the best (I’m always able to breath through the pinched nose when I try it in dreams). You just need to make it habit to do it regularly in RL as well (especially in the situations that seem odd and what might suggest that you are actually dreaming). I pinch my nose IRL assuming that I can breath through it, and if I cannot then it indicates that I’m wake. I believe that this assumption will be with me when I’m sleeping, so it gives me a nice surprise when I actually can breath through pinched nose and then I know that this must be a dream. Good luck!
To recognize I am dreaming I try not to blink. Very soon I realize my vision is not impaired and blinking is not required. I’m in a dream.
I personally find that using what I call a “key” from your everyday sensory system will be more effective than relying on the visuals or characters in your dreams to confirm this for you. It does not break the flow of the dream, you are sure of yourself if you chose a “key” that cannot be denied, and immediately your body, mind, and surrounding are in your control.
These can be hard to think of, but the more you sit with the idea, the more personal your “key” will be, and because you have sat with the idea so much in waking life, it will become second nature in your dreams and often you will be given the opportunities to test for LD early in your dream.