Thread: The effect of Reality Checks

Originally Posted by Pegorian

I have been interested in Lucid Dreaming for maybe 5 years or so. I have not been very good with doing the work for it, but now that I am graduating high school I will be able to sleep later, so I'm going to try working on it some more.

Now, I've seen a lot of things like screen savers that ask you if you are dreaming and I wonder if something like this would work. If you are reminded by an outside source to do a reality check, will that still help in training you to do the check while dreaming?

To do a reality check while dreaming you should be able to do them unconscious while being awake. Like being in a certain situation (feeling a bit strange) and without even thinking you start doing a fast reality check.

A bad thing that can happen (it happened to me a few times) is doing a reality check in a dream that will actually work (and you'll think that you're not dreaming).

I had the same thing happen to me... I tried the words changing RC, and it passed, only for me to wake up wondering what the hell happened...

As you're starting out, things like that (screensavers, doors) are good reminders that you should be reality checking. Mostly, this is just to get you into the habit of "Oh yes, I am supposed to be reality checking so I can lucid dream."

As time passes and you no longer requires these crutches to help you with your RCing, you will begin to frequently have reality checking on your mind. You won't have to do them to these screensavers and other things, but you will be doing them in situations that seem odd or dreamlike- "Oh, this is unusual. Is the explanation that I'm dreaming?"

The purpose of the reality check isn't really just to physically do it, but to stop and question the things around you, ask yourself if you are dreaming, where you are, how you got there, etc., and then if you suspect you are dreaming to do the reality check to confirm it. Some people rely on randomly RCing in their dreams, but I have found that the littlest effort during the day to increase awareness and learn to stop and question the things around you makes a huge difference.

The situation that ThunderSS mentioned is fairly common, but easily avoided if you learn to reality check very thoroughly. Instead of simply reality checking once, and leaving your becoming lucid up to one reality check failing (meaning, you tried to push your finger through your palm and couldn't, you could read the text, you couldn't breathe through your plugged nose), you should always do a few reality checks. The first one is that mental one, be a detective in your world- who, what, where, why, when, how, and then follow that up with a few actual testing reality checks. Always do a few, just in case one fails, so that you have some backups to rely on.

If you haven't seen it yet, click on the image in my signature of the grinning teeth and it will link you to the reality check tutorial

i am pretty much the same.

i have really been interested in lucid dreaming for about two years but havnt made any headway because i always fall off my dream journal and dont try to recall anything for a month or two due to schoolwork, actual work, ect ect

im gonna start up again and vow to myself not to fall off