Thread: Reality Checking...

I'm not the first to realize this, but I've finally "got it".......I use to do 20-30 reality checks everyday at random to see if I was dreaming, hoping that I would continue this into my dreams. I did, but I would only do a RC in my dream maybe once every week or two. Then, I decided that instead of doing RC's at random multiple times a day that I would do them every time I noticed my dream sign.

For me, my dream sign is a restroom. For some reason, there is almost always a bathroom in everyone of my dreams. So, every time I entered a bathroom, I would do a RC. However, once I had done this for 1 week, I stopped having a bathroom scene in my dreams. The frustration was unbelievable. So, I stopped trying to get lucid for about 3 months; I lost interest. Then, for some reason, I thought that I would try again, but focus my RC's on something else.

It seemed as though, in my dreams, I would do something absolutely unbelievable, but would not notice it as such. For instance, I would talk to a squirrel and it would talk back, no big deal. So, I decided to only do a RC when something strange happened in real life. For instance, the other night at work, the printer printed a report all in mirror image. That has never happened to me before and so I immediately did a reality check. I only do maybe 4 - 7 reality checks a day, mainly because nothing truly out of the ordinary occurs in my life.

And the results?............................

In the past 5 nights, I've had 4 lucid dreams. Now, I'm not the first to suggest doing RC's this way, but I tried it and want to say that this is BY FAR THE BEST WAY OF DOING RC'S (for me) and if your struggling trying to get lucid and the other methods don't work I highly suggest trying this. You do much fewer RC's throughout the day then other methods but like someone else said on this forum: QUALITY IS BETTER THAN QUANTITY.......and it is so very true.

However, the RC that I do is the whole, "plug your nose and try to breathe through it" technique. However, once I do a RC in my dream, I can breathe through my nose and I realize that I can, but I still can't believe that I'm in a dream, because my dreams are so vivid.

So, I will try another RC. I try the finger through the hand (but my finger never goes through my hand) and the whole, "look at some print and see if it changes" technique, but when I look at some print it doesn't change. I can read a sentence, look down, look back up, and read the exact same sentence again. The numbers and letters do not change!!!!!!! I will also try to change the environment by closing my eyes and imaging the place I want to be. The result? The scene does not change so I assume that I must have been mistaken about breathing through my nose and fall back into the dreamscape.

Does anybody have any suggestion on how I can overcome this? I feel that as soon as I can learn to overcome this that I can have a lucid dream almost every night................

Any comments about your experience with only doing a RC when something weird happens?