There have been times when my dreams have felt so real that I simply dare not trust whether or not they in fact are dreams.
This actually happened last night in a low-level LD:
I was walking around in my house minding my own business, and everything felt VERY realistic - until I saw a shower curtain installed in my kitchen.
“O…k…?” was my first reaction, and then I remembered that I think I’d heard noises in the kitchen “earlier that morning” - basically I assumed that the landlord had entered my house in the middle of the night, without any warning, and installed a shower curtain in my kitchen, and then left - which is obviously complete nonsense in real life, but apparently my brain was making up excuses to keep me from getting fully lucid.
Or something.
Anyway, I got a strange feeling that something didn’t make sense (no really?) so I went away and tried pushing my fingers through a wall.
It actually felt softer than normal the first time, but the second time it was hard as rock again.
Despite all this crap going on I still couldn’t trust it was really a dream - because physically it felt too realistic.
What are your thoughts and personal experience etc on this?
I know just what you mean. Recently I’ve had a couple FAs where I just woke up and simply started getting ready with my day (getting changed, finding something to eat, etc.). And then I would just wake up in my bed. It really messes with me. I honestly think dreams that are the most life-like are the strangest ones, because they really make you think about how ‘real’ anything can really be.
Whenever I get a really realistic dream and I ask myself whether I’m dreaming or not, I simply hold my nose or start floating to check reality. Always works. Don’t give up when your RC didn’t work, just try something else. Something you know you can easily do in your dreams.
I love LD that begin like this, to me the senses are stronger right from the beginning and you’d just have to keep them strong. Usually the case with WILD. But with MILD, for me, senses don’t always start so strong and it’s a bit of work to get to the same level as when doing WILD.
I actually question what is happening around me much more often when the dream is life-like realistic. Sometimes I think about whether this is a dream or not and even consider to do a RC, but then I dismiss the thought and go on like nothing happened. And like Bird said, super realistic ND’s will continue as awesome LD’s.
Never ever conclude that something is real just because it feels real, rather think like: Oh, this is so real! But, I had vivid dreams which felt like this before, so how can I be sure that I’m not dreaming right now? Don’t forget the RC, of course.
Yeah, well actually this happened last night as well:
I attempted the WBTB technique, and it worked fine, however the dream was again so real that I hesitated for a long time.
The first thing I noticed was that my living room had become dramatically bigger and my computer was somewhere else in the room all of a sudden - very obvious dreamsign.
However, I wanted to test the dream again so I tried lifting a table with another computer on it, and it was extremely easy; think of it as if the table and computer were made entirely of styrofoam - that’s how light it was.
Then I did the exactly same thing with another table, with the exactly same result - and still the visual realism of the dream was so overwhelming that not even these ridiculously clear dreamsigns could fully convince me.
I believe the main problem here was that I planned to go outside in my night suit, and this would’ve obviously been extremely embarrassing in real life.
But I’ll make it next time!
Well yeah, at least my dreams seem to work a lot like real life, probably because I’m cognitively a very logical person.
For example, jumping into a TV screen in order to change the landscape feels highly uneasy, because most likely it will just result in me ramming my head against the screen, since that’s what I would expect in real life.
Same with pushing my hand through a wall, by the way - it just presses against the wall and refuses to go through it, just like in real life.
It seems that non-physical reality checks are much easier to make work, because whenever I look at my watch it changes time very easily; the first time I did this test it even span around frantically while I was gazing at it!
Don’t give up when your RC didn’t work, just try something else. Something you know you can easily do in your dreams.
