Someone experienced please advise :)

Hello,
I have been trying to lucid dream for I think five nights now and I had something very weird happen to me last night. Throughout the day yesterday I did multiple different Reality Checks. I know that a normal thing to happen to induce a lucid dream is for people to look at their hands and see their finger being pushed through their hand or also their fingers to look different in some way. Last night I dreamt that my cousin came home from the military. He was going to show me a wound or something that he had on his knee. When he showed me his knee their wasn't a wound there. He then pushed his finger and it painlessly went straight through his leg. Then a little later his fingers got about 10x bigger than normal. I saw these things and I didn't even realize that I was in a dream. Why didn't I?? It just seems like that should've been enough of a sign to tell me that I was dreaming. If someone has any similar experiences or has an idea or anything that could help me for next time thatd be awesome. Thanks!

The thing is that while reality checks and dream signs can help with attaining lucidity, they do not cause lucidity. What causes lucidity is your awareness. If you were aware, you could have recognized what happened in that dream, but you were unaware, and were willing to accept it without questioning it. Your mind did not look at what your cousin was doing and make the comnection that this was unusual and that it was something related to a reality check. Now the fact that you incorporated this into a dream is a sign of progress already because it means that reality checks are on your mind. However, the way reality checks work is because during a reality check you consciously question whether or not you are dreaming, and you evaluate the result of this check. If you were to just on autopilot count your fingers in a reality check for example every time you did it, and then without thinking say "I counted 10 fingers that is correct, moving on," then most likely in a dream you would just count and say "I counted 15 fingers, that is correct, moving on," and then you would wake up and wonder why, but if you were not paying attention and unaware then that's what the result would be.

Very well put, JoannaB.

What happend is, you had a dream with something that you thougth about a lot during day. Same way, as some other dreams that may incorporate in them your normal daily actvities.

That you saw that and remembered it is indeed a good sign. One part of the practice is already paying off.

Now what you need to do is to add awareness.

You can do this in more than one way.

Here is a great explanation in this tutorial. It's for WILD, but daytime awareness is essential for every type of lucid dream induction.

Here you can find a short awareness question, together with RC "looking at hands" and corresponding mantra. http://www.dreamviews.com/dild/13212...ods-dilds.html

And here is a short guide how to RC:

Quote:

---

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).

---

http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...idnt-work.html
http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...ml#post1953139
http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...intervals.html

Good luck, don't hesitate to ask if you have any other question.:alien:

Thanks guys, I will try to become more aware while performing reality checks.