Thread: Got my dream signs ... Now What ??!!$~#

Hey there,

An interesting question. In all the years I've been lucid dreaming, I feel I still don't have a good grasp on how dream signs work. I have dream signs that always make me lucid and some that never do. I have dream signs that show up almost every night and some that only show up once in a blue moon.

Over time, I've come to believe that the underlying mechanism is one of association. Certain dream signs work because I associate them predominantly with dreams.

A light switch not working. Not managing to get dressed properly. A certain house from my childhood. These things immediately remind me of dreams. When I encounter them in my dreams, they never fail to make me lucid. Other dream signs show up exclusively in my dreams as well, but because they trigger different associations, they never make me lucid. An example is pets I used to have. Although they are long dead and cannot appear in my waking life, they will not make me lucid in my dreams, because they don't remind me of dreams, but rather trigger feelings of affection and caring.

So my hypothesis is that, if you could strengthen your mind's/memory's association between the dream sign and the concept of dreams, you'd increase your chance of the dream sign working.

Doing that is tricky though. In my experience changing associations is difficult, requires trial and error, and is often a lengthy and unpredictable process. I tend to take a moment during my meditation sessions right before going to sleep to go over all my various dream signs, and acknowledge that these can and likely will show up in my dreams. Adding them to reality checks, like you do, could be another way.

However, I believe there's also good news. Failing to recognize a dream sign might still contribute to making you lucid, because it will still trigger a dream association (even if its only a weak one). In itself it may not be strong enough to trigger lucidity, but with enough of these weak associations during the course of your sleep, you may find yourself spontaneously going lucid. To use a metaphor, they're giving your mind lots of weak little jolts during your sleep, until all these little jolts finally causes your mind to realize something is going on and becomes lucid.

So simply knowing all your dream signs and acknowledging them will give you an overall better understanding of your dreams, and increase your dream awareness indirectly.

As for your reality check. It sounds very effective. It also sounds very intense. I think I'd swiftly get burned out if I had to spend fifteen minutes doing reality checks every hour. I applaud your determination

-Redrivertears-