Reality checks for those who can't realize reality?

**monoe96** · 05-05-2022 11:49 PM

What a title! That's three "real"s, count em. There's a lot of reality check threads open but this I feel is a unique enough situation to be considered worthy of a new thread.

Have you ever tried to perform a reality check before and think to yourself "...I really can't tell...".? I have before. May it happen to people by psychospiritual issues or whatever else, you just cannot determine what is "real" and what "isn't real". Most dreamsigns don't work because you see coincidences and events that seem impossible on the daily. Looking at your hands and you sometimes see extra fingers in the "real" world. Text warps sometimes in the "real" world.
This all sucks. So, I ask you all: are there any reality checks you can think of/developed which would help the non-grounded-in-realities? I have a few.

Already known
Nose pinching test
It's hard to emulate fake breathing in the real reality you inhabit. If you pinch your nose in the "real" world, you won't be able to breathe. That is fact. You always have your nose on you and you always are breathing, so this is a very reliable method.

Light switch test
This one is much less reliable because you may not always have access to a light switch, dream or not. If you live your entire life in your room and never leave the house however this should be just fine lol. Just keep switching the lights on and off, in a dream the lights won't change but your "real" ones will. Like all reality checks, make it a habit.

Developed myself (i think)
T2F (Try 2 Fly)
This is pretty straight forward. At any point in the day or dream, ask yourself "Am I dreaming?" as usual, but this time always say "YES"! After that, try and fly. No don't actually jump out of your chair and do it, just see if you can lift yourself up. In dreams for me, at least, basically no physical action is needed for getting up and flying. All you need to do is believe you can and use a little energy in yourself. So this one's actually quite easy in my experience. Again; hard to emulate physically flying in the real world.

With that being said, do any of you have any other suggestions? I'd like to broaden what I can do.

**MadMonkey** · 05-06-2022 06:35 AM

Your T2F method sounds a lot like the gravity reality check which is what I would recommend. I'm this method you simply check if your bodies weight feels like 1g. In dreams it's usually slightly off 1g. You can give yourself even the slightest nudge sort of like how it feels to fly in dreams and you can tell right away if your dreaming. This RC happens to be great for all day awareness because you don't have to actually do anything!

**DarkestDarkness** · 05-06-2022 01:04 PM

Over the years I've found that it's more helpful to think of dream world and waking world as exactly that; waking and not waking, rather than as whether one is "real" or not. In essence the dream world exists on the same perceptual level as the waking world, the only significant difference between the two is that what we perceive, and therefore, the "data" our senses receive, is more external while awake than while we're dreaming, at which point it becomes more internal, depending on a person's sleep and how much bleeds through into dreaming too.

Originally Posted by monoe96

Light switch test
This one is much less reliable because you may not always have access to a light switch, dream or not. If you live your entire life in your room and never leave the house however this should be just fine lol. Just keep switching the lights on and off, in a dream the lights won't change but your "real" ones will. Like all reality checks, make it a habit.

I wouldn't say that this is an entirely reliable check for everyone either although with a different reasoning. It's my observation that a lot of people assume that electricity-based things simply don't work properly in dreams, though as far as I can see it has more to do with a person's biases more than anything, and like anything else there would seem to be some relation to what a person's expectations are in any given context or moment. I help a lot with electronics in waking life and have never had any memorable issues with stuff like this, probably because I have a different outlook on how such things are "supposed to" work.

Even so, I think the best tests are indeed ones like this, because they check against known cause-effect relations of how things are working or how they "should" be working. One reality check that I therefore always pair with other checks is trying to will things differently, because theoretically that should only ever have any significant effect whilst dreaming.