What's the point of "Am I dreaming?"

Hello all,
Ok, I’ve been interested in getting into lucid dreaming for a little while now and I’ve been diligently (trying to) journal the dreams I can remember and periodically asking myself, “Am I dreaming?” I even popped myself out of a dream by asking myself, “Am I dreaming?” (a proto-lucid dream? :razz:)

The question I have is what’s the point of the question? I’ve been reading LaBerge and I think I understand his reasons, but I’m curious what you all think.

The point is to question your reality, so that you can realize wether you are dreaming or not.

The reason why you ask it while you’re awake is to make it a habit that will carry over into your dreams. You’re not likely to start that habit in your dreams so you start it while awake. If you ask yourself that every time you open a door then it’s likely you will find that one of those times will be a dream.

It’s so you don’t just absentmindedly perform an RC and ignore the results.

With an RC you’re trying to genuinly question reality, when this becomes habitual it will start to carry over into your sleep and result in lucid dreams, however RC’s won’t enable you to LD at will.

Also, if you perform RC’s mindlessly or not seriously they will be of no real benefit because you will absentminedly ask yourself the question in dreams.

Does it really matter ? In the dreams youre truly convinced that you’re not dreaming. Especially if nothing extraordinary happens at all.

You just have to expect the RCs to work (or should I say ‘fail’, since it’s a reality check?) each time you perform them. The RCs will then make you lucid when you perform them in your dreams.

… And when you ask yourself whether you’re dreaming or not, really mean it! Don’t ever think “well, of course I’m not dreaming!”, because then you’ll do the same in your dreams :wink:

You could always put your faith in WILD, VILD, FILD, rhytm napping or other methods, but remember: every LD is a good LD :cool:

Thanks all. This is good stuff. I think it’s the sort of thing that seems to get overlooked for novices getting into it. We keep hearing that you should ask if you’re dreaming, but it seems to get left at that.

Absolutley it matters. The purpose of an RC is to stimulate your critical faculty, also an RC essentially forces you to notice the oddities of the dream state. Finally doing RC’s thoroughly IRL trains you to ask the question “Am I Dreaming?”, when you start asking this question in a dream, good things happen.

Yes that is the point. To actually remember to do a RC if you understand what im trying to say. I dont have the words to say it though .