Thread: Line between thoughts and dreams

Thats a good point... sometimes, on the morning, I feel like i'm... "losing" the control of my thoughts and my "mental scenarios" are developping by themselves, feeling that I'm entering a dream.

Obviously, you need to perform an RC to check whether or not you're dreaming, but a normal RC forces you to move your body, risking the lucid dream if you're not actually dreaming yet. However, you can try a motionless RC, which is still just as effective without potentially sacrificing the lucid dream.

The most common motionless RC I use is to try to roll over - don't actually move your muscles to do it, just imagine yourself rolling over. Often if you're dreaming, you'll roll right off the bed, and then you'll know for sure that you're dreaming. There's plenty of other possible motionless RCs, such as imagining yourself sinking into the bed, and you'll actually fall through the bed if you're dreaming. Or imagine a force pulling yourself upwards, and you'll start floating if you're dreaming.

Eventually, as you get used to DEILDs and WILDs, you'll be able to recognize the transition into the dream better and won't need the motionless RC nearly as often. But it can still be pretty fun and interesting to do.

I don't know if it qualifies as motionless but the Reverse Blink could be applicable here, where you would blink your eyes from closed to open, if you see like weird stuff instead of ceiling or darkness your probably dreaming (or need to clean up / de-junk your weird ceiling)

also I don't know if it would risk breaking the attempt but what about a Glottal Stop where you close off your throat and see if you can breath, if you can your in a dream, if you can't but you wake / break paralysis your screwed tho (as would be the case in reverse blink breaking out above).

Originally Posted by Dani23

... how do I know when I actually start dreaming and not just imagining the dream?

Who cares?

If your imagination is powerful enough to present a scene that's indiscernible from a dream, then imagine away!

Seriously, this really is one of those things you don't need to consider during a DEILD (not that you should be considering much of anything during a DEILD). As you navigate your DEILD, the separation between your last dream, your next dream, and the very brief time wakefully bridging the two is a very fluid, half-sleepy border; which is a good thing. As you find yourself waking from your dream, let your thoughts move to the next dream, linger on the last one, and simultaneously enjoy the self-awareness of the present moment; all those thoughts will certainly merge, but that's okay, since your mind really is all in one place during a DEILD regardless of your thoughts, and that is the dream. The reward for all of this is that eventually you will be fully immersed in your new dream, and the fact that it is a dream, and not just thoughts about one, will be unmistakable.

Dreams are thoughts; dreams are imaginings; LD's are thoughts and imaginings that occur while you are self-aware; the brief moment of physical wakefulness during a successful DEILD is bathed in all of these thoughts and imaginings. The differences between all these things, cognitively speaking, are minimal and pretty much meaningless during a DEILD. Indeed, the very act of intellectually wondering or worrying about whether or not you are dreaming or just thinking about dreaming is probably enough to fully wake you and trash your DEILD. It might be a good idea, during your DEILD, to simply think about/imagine your next dream and enjoy wherever you are: the dream will come, eventually, and you will know it when it does -- don't rush it!

tl;dr: Don't worry about this. If your DEILD transition goes well, your thoughts and imaginings will become your new dream ... even if you don't know when that dream starts exactly, you will still be in your next dream eventually, and you will definitely know where you are at that point! It is more important to hold onto your last dream, look to your next dream, and stay attached to both than it is to intellectually define what you're thinking about at any given time.