Thread: LD difficulties

Originally Posted by Raspberry

Remember, you're gonna need to look for a reason to RC. This will increase your overall awareness and you'll be more questioning when in your dreams. This is how RCing works, although it's very misunderstood as "the more I rc the more I'll randomly do it in a dream and become lucid".

No, what you want is a questioning attitude and increased awareness so that you recognise things in your dreams that shouldn't be there or happen, and then RC and get lucid

Are you sure you're 15? This was a pretty lucid (pun intended) and novel clarification of the general RC technique that hadn't occurred to me. My general take on things is that--like many people will explain--awareness is the key, and that reality checking is just a concrete means to bring one's attention back to the present experience. (So technically, reality checking is unnecessary if you have another means of cultivating a lasting high-level awareness throughout the day.) The question then becomes: how do I keep my RC's from becoming a rote, meaningless ritual? And how do I remember to do them in the first place?

Actively SEEKING excuses to RC (e.g. by observing strange phenomena) makes a good point and sounds like solid advice. I tip my hat to that.

-BR

Originally Posted by BrerRabbit

Are you sure you're 15? This was a pretty lucid (pun intended) and novel clarification of the general RC technique that hadn't occurred to me. My general take on things is that--like many people will explain--awareness is the key, and that reality checking is just a concrete means to bring one's attention back to the present experience. (So technically, reality checking is unnecessary if you have another means of cultivating a lasting high-level awareness throughout the day.) The question then becomes: how do I keep my RC's from becoming a rote, meaningless ritual? And how do I remember to do them in the first place?

Actively SEEKING excuses to RC (e.g. by observing strange phenomena) makes a good point and sounds like solid advice. I tip my hat to that.

-BR

I didn't understand this too well, but thank you anyway for the bit I did understand.

Originally Posted by Ryder

I didn't understand this too well, but thank you anyway for the bit I did understand.

My bad, Ryder. Sorry about that, I threw too many ideas out there at once.

For someone just getting into lucid dreaming, simply making the habit of reality checking is sufficient. But for sake of clarity, here's the couple points I was trying to make in the post above:

We first ask ourselves, "What is the purpose of a reality check?" Of course the answer is we want to know whether we're dreaming or not. So, "How does a reality check work?" Well, in the case of the finger-through-the-palm method, if you can stick your finger through your palm, you're probably dreaming. If you can't, you're probably not dreaming.

Now, "Do reality checks always work?" Here the answer is no. Sometimes you'll be in a dream, you'll try to stick your finger through your palm, and it won't work--so you conclude that you're not dreaming. In this case, your reality check failed.

"Why do reality checks sometimes fail?" A big part of the answer is because you have to really be aware of what you're doing when you perform the reality check. You have to really ask yourself, Am I dreaming? You have to really want to know, and to really feel the question. Otherwise reality checks will become things that you do mindlessly. And if you perform a reality check mindlessly in a dream, it's much more likely to fail.

"So what's the take-home message?" It's the awareness and attention you bring to the process of reality checking that helps you to become lucid, not the physical action of the reality check itself.

"Great, so how do I make sure that I'm always aware and attentive when I perform reality checks?" Some people don't have problems with this. I find, however, that if you perform a lot of reality checks on a regular basis, it can be easy to lose that spark of awareness, that deep urge to genuinely pose the question: Am I dreaming? So here's where Raspberry's suggestion really kicks in. If you make it a point to perform reality checks whenever you observe odd things in waking life, you'll have something really peculiar to drive your awareness and attention when conducting the RC.

"That's a crazy looking statue, a man grappling with a mythical beast!?" (I actually saw something like this today.) This kind of thing makes you want to perform the reality check and really feel it.

And this method of seeking out odd things in waking life really takes out two birds with one stone: for not only do you really attentively engage the reality check process, but because odd things happen so frequently in dreams you are training yourself to perform reality checks frequently in dreams, where they really count.

So that's what I was trying to say. I hope this clarifies it a bit. Ask away if you have more questions. And good luck!

-BR

Originally Posted by BrerRabbit

Are you sure you're 15? This was a pretty lucid (pun intended) and novel clarification of the general RC technique that hadn't occurred to me. My general take on things is that--like many people will explain--awareness is the key, and that reality checking is just a concrete means to bring one's attention back to the present experience. (So technically, reality checking is unnecessary if you have another means of cultivating a lasting high-level awareness throughout the day.) The question then becomes: how do I keep my RC's from becoming a rote, meaningless ritual? And how do I remember to do them in the first place?

Actively SEEKING excuses to RC (e.g. by observing strange phenomena) makes a good point and sounds like solid advice. I tip my hat to that.

-BR

Originally Posted by BrerRabbit

Are you sure you're 15? This was a pretty lucid (pun intended) and novel clarification of the general RC technique that hadn't occurred to me. My general take on things is that--like many people will explain--awareness is the key, and that reality checking is just a concrete means to bring one's attention back to the present experience. (So technically, reality checking is unnecessary if you have another means of cultivating a lasting high-level awareness throughout the day.) The question then becomes: how do I keep my RC's from becoming a rote, meaningless ritual? And how do I remember to do them in the first place?

Actively SEEKING excuses to RC (e.g. by observing strange phenomena) makes a good point and sounds like solid advice. I tip my hat to that.

-BR

Yes I'm 15

When I discovered lucid dreaming I went a little research crazy. I used to also find reality checking a chore, so I checked up on it. I found a tutorial (BillyBob's I think it was) that suggested to only RC when something wierd happens. I figured this made more sense.

I'm also a bit of a daydreamer and tend to "zone-out" and then jump back to reality, having no idea what had been going on around me. It's a problem I'm trying to fix because I know how important awareness is to get lucid. I also found that because of this, I didn't actually notice the strange things so done very, very little amounts of reality checks. So I began to look for them, and since it's keeping me focused and helping me to really take things in from the world around me instead of just glancing over things, I thought it would help my awareness too inside and out of dreams