Skipping Reality Checks because the dream felt "too realistic"

**Laurelindo** · 08-20-2014 10:12 PM

I felt like I should share my last night's experience with novice lucid dreamers, who might feel like it is pointless to perform Reality Checks in waking life when you "know" that you are awake, just because everything "feels" like waking life.
This dream was quite interesting, it started out with me being on a clear-cut area in a forest where I was supposed to plant trees (not sure how common this kind of summer job is in other parts of the world, but basically you are with a team and you stay at a bunch of locations and plant a crapload of trees all day), and then I noticed to my dismay that I had lost or forgotten almost all my equipment and belongings - I had no water bottles and no working equipment, and I had got lost for some reason.
Of course, this caused a lot of stress to me, and I wished I could be somewhere else and get away from all the mess - and all of a sudden I was in a house I used to live in two years ago - so basically I got three dreamsigns at the same time: the unusually stressful situation, the teleporting to another place, and the fact that the place happened to be a house that I don't even live in anymore.
At this point I started to feel very bizarre, it's hard to explain but it felt sort of like I was losing grip of the whole dreamworld, and tried to hold tight to it and stay in it;
almost like the kind of concentration you have when you try to stay awake while being extremely sleepy.
And suddenly I started to have thoughts like "what's going on here? I don't trust my current state at all, there is something weird about all this - could it possibly be a dream...? but everything looks so realistic...! it must be waking life...!".
So I lost an excellent opportunity to become lucid right there, only because the dream felt almost exactly as vivid as waking life - although I don't see this as a failure, on the contrary I see it as a very great success in my quest to start having lucid dreams again, which was about five months ago (I haven't bothered much with lucid dreaming in a while, though)
Anyway, this is exactly why it is worth to take Reality Checks seriously - especially when you have just woken up in the morning.
There is always the chance that you might be dreaming if you ever find yourself in a groggy "autopilot" state in everyday life, and it's best to double-check just to make sure, because dreams can be treacherously vivid and convincing.

**OneUp** · 08-20-2014 10:19 PM

This used to be an obstacle for me alot, my dreams would are always as vivid as real life and sometimes even more real. I still struggle with this a little bit, but now I have my own solution- to pay more attention. Now, every night, Im highly aware and almost lucid in 50% or more of my REM state dreams. Thing is, I still need to pay more attention. That being said I am still working on it

**Hilary** · 08-21-2014 12:14 AM

Nice post. I have this problem too, so so many almost lucid dreams.

Have you also noticed when you do get lucid, if you feel really tired right before the lucidity kicks in?

**Hilary** · 08-21-2014 12:17 AM

Originally Posted by OneUp

This used to be an obstacle for me alot, my dreams would are always as vivid as real life and sometimes even more real. I still struggle with this a little bit, but now I have my own solution- to pay more attention. Now, every night, Im highly aware and almost lucid in 50% or more of my REM state dreams. Thing is, I still need to pay more attention. That being said I am still working on it

What's your secret?

All day awareness? I want 50% lucid dreams!

**OneUp** · 08-21-2014 12:44 AM

Originally Posted by MoonageDaydream

What's your secret?

All day awareness? I want 50% lucid dreams!

Haha close, my secret is Self Awareness. But both mindsets produce the same results, I just prefer Self Awareness over All Day Awareness. I've noticed that in every one of my dreams there is a part of me that is self aware, but only in my REM dreams will that self awareness really show and take effect. With more practice, soon I should be even more self aware in my dreams.

**martakartus** · 08-21-2014 02:23 PM

Tonight I also had a dream which contained a very common dream sign for me and a whole bunch of clues to realise I was dreaming, and this, added to the fact that the dream was very long, should've made me become lucid. I was suspicious at some points, but the vividness of the dream, the feelings and everything was so realistic I didn't even think of asking myself whether I was dreaming. Our mind has a huge power to trick us, we have to be watching at all times.

**JadeGreen** · 08-26-2014 03:16 PM

At this point I started to feel very bizarre, it's hard to explain but it felt sort of like I was losing grip of the whole dreamworld, and tried to hold tight to it and stay in it;
almost like the kind of concentration you have when you try to stay awake while being extremely sleepy.
And suddenly I started to have thoughts like "what's going on here? I don't trust my current state at all, there is something weird about all this - could it possibly be a dream...? but everything looks so realistic...! it must be waking life...!".

I've had this happen to me before. It's a very frustrating and disappointing thing to have happen to you, and I'm not sure why the mind goes so far to convince you that you are awake.

This makes me recall a dream where I false-awoke on a school bus in a strange district. I immediately went into a panic having arrived at the wrong school; not knowing if I was truant at my actual school, or was going to be lost forever. The stressful situation got me thinking that it might be a dream.
So a Nose-Pinch RC was not far behind that thought. And (to this day, I have little understanding of how or why) but the Nose Pinch, the undisputed king of reality checks failed. I couldn't breathe when I plugged my nose.
But I still could not identify where I was or what had happened. The failure of the nose pinch was convincing evidence that what I was experiencing was waking reality, and I was honestly convinced for a few minutes. But the more I explored the world I was in, and the more I thought about it, even with the failed Nose Pinch, there was no logical way I could find myself in this situation.
I disregarded the nose pinch and realized that me dreaming was the only logical explanation for the situation.

Sometimes lucidity comes to you naturally. Other times, you have to fight past false memories, failing reality checks, distractions and a whole plethora of other obstacles to become lucid.

**FryingMan** · 08-26-2014 05:15 PM

...There is always the chance that you might be dreaming...

PERIOD! *That's* the reason to do constant RCs during the day. Dreams seem to always be experienced vividly like life, I'm fairly convinced of that (at least mine), although the memory of them decays quickly and so isn't always remembered vividly. We dream about 10% of our conscious existence (REM + waking), so there's a good chance at any time you feel conscious that you're dreaming!

And yet, spending so much time thinking about dreaming during the day, doing frequent RCs, etc., yields relatively few lucid moments...or, it just takes a really long time to get over the threshold to that "turning point" where lucidity comes more and more often.