Thread: I don't know if I am lucid?

If you know it's a dream, you're lucid. If you don't you're not. You knew you were dreaming in your dreams so they were lucid. Great job!

Dream control and stabilization are different from lucid dream induction.

With dream control, I find it best to just imagine something happening without worrying about whether it actually happens or not. Inside the dream, imagine the dream coming into focus like a camera and see what happens.

^ My internet crashed before I posted and Dolphin has already said most of this now, but I'll post what I wrote anyway.

A lucid dream, by definition, is a dream in which you are aware that you're dreaming. So yes, it does sound like you were lucid.
However, it sounds like you are confusing other elements of dream quality (dream control, dream clarity, goal memory, etc.) with lucidity itself.
Lucid dreams come in all different shapes and sizes: they can be long or short, vivid or dull; you can have strong memories from waking life (including your goals and details about your life) or you can have virtually no memories from outside the current dream; you can have a high level of control over the dream, or seemingly no control at all.
No two people's experience will be exactly the same, so it's perfectly normal if your experiences don't match those you have read about.
It's actually quite common for lucid dreams to come in waves - this can happen for beginners and veterans alike, so 3 LDs in a night isn't unheard of!

So the good news is, you can expect to get a lot more out of lucid dreaming if you keep practicing. But practicing is vital for improving the quality of your dreams.
Some people get lucky and have a very exciting/memorable lucid dream straight away, but for most people, the more stable lucid dreams and stronger dream control come with time and practice.
I think you will get the most out of lucid dreaming if you remember to enjoy the journey - each lucid dream might not be the best experience of your life, but you are sure to have a lot of fun and interesting experiences if you keep at it!
Good luck, and happy dreaming!

Thank you for taking out time to reply me I appreciate it a lot! It's encouraging for me and of course, cleared my confusion. I'll practice for a fortnight, and if I manage to have another LD experience, I'll go ahead and practice stabilizing and increasing the duration of dream

Quick Question, can a lucid dream be as vivid as real life? I mean, I'm imagining a very vivid lucid dream as something as detailed and clear like reality, only exception being you the God and controlling it.

Yes, lucid dreams can be just as vivid as waking reality! Some people even have lucid experiences that they describe as more vivid than waking life.

Congrats on the progress so far, keep at it!

Thanks again, dolphin and ~Dreamer~ I'm thrilled now The answers will satisfy my curiosity, thanks again!

Yes, you were lucid! if you know it's a dream it means you are having a lucid dream.

BUT, lucid dreams have different ''levels of lucidity''.

When your lucidity level is low the lucid dream is very crappy. the dream is not vivid, it's not clear, it doesn't look real, everything is kinda blurry, you can't control it very well, and you even feel like you're not thinking clearly, you forget to do things you wanted to do, sensations are dull, stuff like that, and many times the LD lasts very little, like less than 2 minutes. It sucks!

When your lucidity level is medium you can see much more clearly like if everything was real, you can control the dream with some effort, you can think clearly like you do when you're awake, maybe you forget to do some stuff but that would be because of too much excitement not because you're not thinking clearly, sensations feel much more intense, like when you fly you feel funny in your stomach. I would say that when your lucidity level is medium everything seems and feels like in real life! and the dream can last 10-30 minutes or even more if you keep calm and consistently stabilize the dream using some stabilization techniques like rubbing your hands together or simply focusing on your senses. This lucidity level can be sooooooooooo cool! It's like being in the real world but you can do anything you want, anything you can imagine and have lots of fun!... but there's another level, harder to reach but completely breathtaking, the high lucidity level!


When your lucidity level is high you will be left absolutely speechless! Everything will look so extremely real you might even freak out at how things seem and feel! and I know this will sound stupid but on this level of lucidity sometimes things look ''more real'' than ''reality'', they look much more detailed and colorful, your vision is perfect, you can look further away and see things more clearly than how you would in real life, and also feels like there was some sort of vibration in the environment that you can feel, something I've never experienced in real life. You can think very clearly and you can control the dream more easily, although controlling the dream like appearing objects, DC, changing the shape of objects or teleporting to another place can still be tricky to do if you don't have much practice.
Experiencing this level of lucidity will be something you will always remember and then you will want to lucid dream every night so badly!

Some things to point out about the high lucidity level are:

- That (at least in my experience) this lucidity level is harder to make it last long than the medium-level, not impossible but simply somewhat harder, it's more fragile, and if you get too excited or forget to stabilize it regularly it will very likely collapse.

- If you are having an LD with medium lucidity level you can use some techniques to increase your lucidity level to reach the high one. But to go from the low level to the high level is very difficult, I have never done it, probably because when your lucidity level is low even thinking straight can be a challenge.

- As you get more experienced in lucid dreaming your lucidity level will improve, and you might get to the point in wich you have more high-lucidity lucid dreams than low-lucidity lucid dreams or at least more medium-lucidity LDs than low ones.


So my conclusion would be: DON'T BE DISCOURAGED, don't be disappointed because from first-hand experience I can tell you that Lucid Dreams CAN be that ''super real virtual world'' you have read about! It's just that, as anything else, to have the cool lucid dreams first you need to gain some experience and improve over time, and that's done by having some very crappy lucid dreams like the ones you had until they get gradually better.

Dream on my friend! (;

Thank you for finding the time to write this for me, bro Beautifully described. I'm determined about learning this thrilling phenomenon that stays with us for lifetime. Hopefully, I will become skilled by this year. I will feel satisfied with myself after learning LDing, and maybe I could die peacefully then !