Thread: How often do your dream signs show up?

My most common dream sign is a false awakening. The amount this dream sign occurs varies for me. Its occurrence can be very random and streaky! It can occur as much as 7 times in a night and as little as once in a couple of weeks. If I had to guess a percentage overall, I would guess about 5-10% of my dreams are false awakenings. I'm usually aware of around 5 dreams a night so that would come out to one FA every 2 or 4 nights on average.

I have kept track of how many FAs I caught before. I haven't kept track of how many I've missed so I can only roughly estimate that amount. This month, I've caught 3 FAs through the first 13 nights this month. I guess I catch about half my FAs at best, so I must have had about 6 or more this month so far through 13 nights.

Last time I kept track for a whole month, I caught 18 FAs so I guess I had about 36 FAs or more that month. Another month I kept track, I caught 11 FAs so I guess I had about 22 FAs or more that month. Another month I kept track I caught 18 FAs. Another half month I kept track, I caught 7 FAs. I like statistics

Originally Posted by dolphin

I would guess about 5-10% of my dreams are false awakenings. I'm usually aware of around 5 dreams a night so that would come out to one FA every 2 or 4 nights on average.

Thanks, thats exactly what i was wondering. I couldn't really find a dream sign that showed up in every single dream.

It kind of varies for me. Often the "location" dream signs (my old high school, my old college, my current place of employment) occur pretty frequently (usually one of them will show up every 2-3 nights). Meanwhile, my "situation" dream signs (driving, late for class) only show up about once a week or two. And even then, both of those rates can fluctuate quite a bit.

Probably 95% of my dreams have at least one of my dream signs in them. But there's no one single dream sign that shows up in 95% of my dreams.

Good question!

Unfortuantely I don't have any great dream signs that turn up every dream - nothing like.

Similar to Spellbee2 its location that's the most frequent - I have a whole dream land that has been slowly reinforced and expanded over the years. Trouble is its soooo familiar that I often don't question it. Theres some specific places within it, a particular roofscape, a derelict amphitheatre, that are like "Ahhhh I'm here, therefor I'm dreaming." Result! Maybe once a fortnight.

Flying is possibly more common - once a week say. But again not a guaranteed RC - I know I'm dreaming but don't always become lucid.

I have a rather adult dreamsign that is 100% effective as an RC - only once every few of months (unfortunately ;-p )

Finding a secret room in my house, or an old house, that doesn't exist, is a good sign - every 2 months?

Driving or sailing through impossibly tight spaces, or at crazy angles, or very tall cars and boats. Monthly?

Finding it hard to walk - like through treacle, and teeth falling out. For a while they were good signs - but not for years.

Nakedness - monthly? But again not a reliable RC.

Funny thing is how the dreams are sometimes more exciting if I don't know I'm dreaming - like there really is a secret room in my house which will add £1000s to its value... Or a flying dream where I'm convinced I'm not dreaming AND REALLY CAN F*CKING FLY!!!

My brother is in 95% of my dreams and I rarely see him in waking life. I guess I need to visualize seeing him and RCing. Starting that now. But yeah, he shows up everywhere, no matter what universe I believe to be in. In one fantasy dream a dragon burned my brother to death, afterwards a village held a really touching ceremony for their hero. I've never felt as sad in my life.

Anyway, I'm getting off-topic. Other dream signs would be the myriad of monsters I encounter nearly every night. Monsters are in about 50% of my dreams. Other dream signs are significantly rarer, but include things like always being able to open a map of the dream world, shifting gravity, being on another planet and bullets not killing things.

Forgot to mention... UNREALITY - the best and most frequent dreamsign!
It happens in all my dreams - but noticing only happens as frequently as I DILD :-) once a week perhaps. But more if actively wanting them and not too stressed and busy first thing to remember them!
I guess that's the key to DILDs rather than the dream sign per se - i.e. being aware, self aware, present-centred, mindful enough to notice you are dreaming?

My dreams are almost entirely inconsistent at this point. When I was in highschool they almost all involved school or some social setting. When I got out of the military, for the next two years they involved either still being in the military or for some reason I had enlisted again. Now there's nothing really in common with my dreams, as most of my dreams are very abstract, bizarre, random, and/or nonsensical. I will rarely get another military dream and even more rarely get one about school or some function related to school, but usually I'm in random places doing random things with random people (if other people are even in the dream), and at times I'm not even in the dream and just happen to be an sort of omniscient camera that's just observing.

As you could probably imagine, it makes using reality checks based on dream signs all but useless as a tactic. More often than not, if I actually realize I'm dreaming, I wind up recognizing the feeling of dreaming or otherwise being in a strange altered state of consciousness and realize I'm dreaming out of nowhere. In fact, when that happens, I usually get the feeling that I've known all along that I was dreaming but simply was not interested enough in lucid dreaming or interfering with what was going on to care or do anything.

I also very often dream about fictional places and people, rather than waking life related stuff. I also find myself being a DO, disembodied observer, sometimes. Even when I have no physical form in the dream, if I wish to see my hands they will appear before me.

And that is still a reality check, checking your state and bringing awareness to where you are. But weird feelings, weird things happening can all be your dream sign at once. All your subconscious need to do is to connect "That's weird." to "Am I dreaming?". Most of my DILDs are from having this mindset.