Quote Originally Posted by Ikkalebob View Post
Therefore, because you have been constantly reinforcing the fact that your RC won't work, your dreams would ensure that whenever you tried to breathe through a plugged nose you would fail.
But that's not how you do a proper RC during day.

When you do any RC during day, you expect it to work, because you expect to be in a dream, unless proven othervise.

RC should start with an awareness question, something like "wow, am I dreaming?" and you believe you are. Examine your surroundings and try to find differences between waking life environment and the one you are in at that moment.

Then you RC and you fully expect it to work. Then you say your mantra about next time when you come to question your reality, you realize you are dreaming.

So it's not really the RC that will get you lucid. It's the question you ask yourself. It's the "wow" moment, that makes you stop anything you doing and become aware of where you are. And then this behaviour will start happening in your dreams. You will start questioning your reality in your dreams. Later on, you may even skip the question (automatically, not you will decide) and realize you are in a dream just out of the blue. You still may do RC to confirm (also automatically).

That's how I see why RCs (+awareness) work.