Thread: Fundamentals of Gaining Lucidity?

Forgive me if a thread of similar topic is already posted and have been discussed already. Also forgive me if I present false and/or misleading information that seems to lack research and understanding.

Hello dreamviews! I am gunzblitz (and I wish I could change my name) and I found this forum during 2009. I rarely visit this forum --only whenever my interest in LD sparks up. Last year I decided to create an account because I wanted to take LD seriously at that time, yet sadly my interest in it somehow faded. But because of what happened last week, my interest in LD sparked up again. This time I am really serious in pursuing my LD goals.

Last week, I suddenly had a successful LD out of nowhere. I was not doing anything to induce lucidity nor thinking about lucid dreaming. I never practiced reality checking seriously (because honestly, I developed a habit of doing an RC as if it was mannerism --specifically the 'pinching the nose and trying to breath' RC, without questioning reality) yet somehow, I managed to do a reality check (with the purpose of gaining lucidity, and not as a mannerism) and gain lucidity.

The only thing I did different from my sleeps before is removing the alarm I always use, since I always wake up before the designated time.

This is what happened:

I was going to bed as usual, but decided not to put any alarm since I always wake up before it rings, and slept like usual. But after what 'feels' like a few minutes, I somehow knew that I was dreaming, and decided to perform a reality check. So when I performed a reality check and was able to breath in through my nose, I 'opened' my eyes. I was still lying on my bed and saw my room exactly as how it would look like in the morning. I went out of bed, did another RC just to make sure, and went out through the window to exit the house. I then had 2 more successful lucid dreams that night (a DIELD, if I would say.)

Now before I say something else, I will tell what I know and tell information about me which might be related to LDing (and dreaming in general).

Spoiler for Background:

----- I am always aware of my surroundings. By aware I mean like how Sageous said awareness in rats or something (Correct me if I'm wrong, since I can't seem to find the thread nor remember it clearly).

According to the information I have, A lot of people have bad dream recalls. But I have no problem with dream recall.

Before I learned about lucid dreaming (around 4-5 years ago), I never had any lucid dreams. What I had was a great dream recall. Almost every night I would have at least 1 dream. I don't recall most of them after I wake up though. I recall them after pondering about things after waking up.

For example, when I brush my teeth after waking up, I ponder about things and suddenly recall the dream last night.

Sometimes, the dream recall does not happen after waking up. There are times when I recall my dream in the afternoon. Say for example, when riding a public vehicle (Jeepneys), I let my mind wander about things. And when a thought related to my dream comes, I suddenly recall that dream and go "Ah, so that was a dream."

There were only a few times where I recall a dream exactly after I wake up.

This is probably the only thing I do that I think has a relation with my dream recall.

-----I know about different types of induction and gaining lucidity.
Things like ADA, self-awareness, DILD, DIELD, WILD, and etc.

I myself have tried WILD, DILD, and DIELD. Although I fail at WILD since I have no time to do such things before going to sleep, I had a couple of success with DILD a few years ago, and DIELD seems natural to me (a high success rate of LD) if I ever had the chance to wake up after a dream.

-----I know a handful of RCs
RC such as:
The nose pinching + breathing (which became a mannerism of mine until I started to get serious in LD again last week)
The counting of fingers, checking of clock, reading texts, and looking at my reflection.

In my dreams, the only RC I ever did was the nose pinch whenever I gain dream awareness.

Now, I've been thinking about dream awareness, like in the situation where I was not even trying to get a lucid dream.

How do we gain awareness of a dream?

Spoiler for :

I know about ADA and self-awareness, and have started to practice it 3 days ago. The first day I practiced self-awareness, I had a successful lucid dream. The next day, I only had normal dreams (which is normal for me already), and the day after that, I had another lucid dream.

Supposing that what we do in waking life transmits to the dream life, maintaining self-awareness in real life would mean an increase of self-awareness in the dream life.

In waking life, normally most of the time we are on auto-pilot mode. That means we somehow do things by instinct, or do things routinely. Most of the time we forget things that are done instinctively or routinely, as they are what most people would say "being taken for granted".

If we stop running on auto-pilot (self-awareness), it would mean we are aware of everything in life. This results in knowing that we are aware of everything in the dream world (best case scenario). This would explain the increase of dream recall. But it does not explain how we know we are dreaming. How would someone know that being aware in reality would mean knowing that you are dreaming in the dream world? The only thing you can get out of ADA/self-awareness is you 'existing'. In the dream world, when ADA/Self-awareness manifests, you would simply know you exist, again explaining the increase in dream recall.

Being self-aware and aware of the environment only intensifies the feeling of existence. In the dream world, it is not much different from waking life. There is the environment, there is you, and there is your perception. Most important of all, the dream is on auto-pilot. Snapping out of auto-pilot in the dream world, similar to gaining awareness in real life, would mean you have an idea of what you are doing. But that does not still mean you know you are dreaming. You only know more about what you are doing in the dream (increasing dream recall, and possibly vividness of the dream), just as how you would know more about what you are doing in the real life (which in turn lets us retain those memory for later purposes).

And so, the only concrete results I can get from practicing ADA/self-awareness is that it only improves dream recall or awareness IN the dream. (Take note: Awareness IN the dream does not necessarily mean you are aware OF the dream --that you are dreaming or lucid).

What I would like to know is how we 'know' we are dreaming.

Spoiler for :

I know there is the answer of "Reality Checks". But from what other people said, some are a natural LDers, and some doesn't even need to do a RC to know they are dreaming.

(Correct me if I am wrong. The information I know is quite old, and it might have changed). In the WILD technique which I have not tried yet, you induce lucidity by jumping directly into a dream from the waking state. In DILD, you induce lucidity by training yourself to do a reality check. And in DIELD, it's somehow a mix of DILD and WILD, wherein you have an easier time of slipping into a dream after waking up directly from a dream.

Those are the methods of inducing lucidity. But what is the most basic thing present in all those technique?

In RCs, being aware is one thing, as you would not even know you did an RC (and a success at that) if you do not even know you are dreaming. You train yourself to constantly check for reality after being aware, thus leading to lucidity.

Besides the RCs which rely on awareness and training, all the other methods basically have one thing in common, and that is Sleeping.

Sleeping. We all do that.

With all those things I presented, I think the only way we would know we are dreaming (other than the awareness+RC) is that when we know we are sleeping. In WILD, we know that we sleep in order to enter the dream. In DILD, we know we dream in our sleep, and so we practice Awareness+RC. In DIELD, probably a mix of the WILD and DILD reasons.

Here's what I want to say (TL;DR):

Isn't basically knowing that we are sleeping the reason why we know we are dreaming? ADA/Self-awareness doesn't actually let us know we are dreaming. Is it not the knowledge that we slept the reason we know we dream?

Following that idea, would not autosuggestion be the best way to know you are dreaming? This would explain why a lot of people say that simply knowing that you would lucid dream is important during an attempt.

Assuming what I know about autosuggestion is correct, would not 'suggesting' that "every time you sleep, dreaming follows (essentially WILD? I am not quite sure)", be the best way to know we are dreaming?

As I mentioned earlier, supposing that what we do in real life transmits to the dream world is it possible that the knowledge of knowing that we are sleeping transmits to the dream world?

(Sorry for the lengthy post, and also a very bold first post. I am also sorry if I am not quite clear with what I am trying to convey, or if I presented this topic in a messy way. Either way, I thank you if you took your time to read this.)