Thread: I need help realizing that I'm dreaming!

I started on this site about 2 weeks ago, and have kept a dream journal every night. Just in the first week, I noticed a dramatic improvement in my dream recall. Now in my second week, I'm starting to notice more detail in my dreams, such as taste, reading specific texts, and recalling more of each dream. In other words, they are becoming more vivid. However, now that I notice some of the things that go on in these dreams it hard not to find it rediculous that I don't realize that I'm dreaming. For example, people will disappear from right in front of me, the scenes change in the blink of an eye, and I sometimes am flying in an airplane to get to destinations rather than driving.

I do reality checks regularly throughout the day, but I never seem to do it in my dreams......can anybody give me some tips?


I figure this will improve over time, and as I've said before I'm in no rush. However, I just would like to know if I'm doing something wrong so I don't get in the habit of doing that.


Thanks,
OC3220

Are you doing these reality checks randomly or whenever something abnormal happens? I used to do them randomly and only had, I think, 2 lucids off of that. Then I switched to whenever the lighting seems dreamish or something weird happens. I hope I helped.

yeah I should do reactive reality checks but I can't quite distinguish when the time is to do those.. I don't really notice much of the "dreamstate lighting." I'm sure there's more but I'm just not quite sure what.

what do you mean by maintaining awareness?

Hmm. I used to think that there was nothing abnormal I could reality check on until I just started doing it. Then I started to notice things IRL that seem to happen in my dreams, I would also increase my awareness for atleast 5 minutes to keep an eyeout for any dream stuff that might happen. What I mean by dream lighting is (it's probably just for me) that the light seems like it would be if it was 5 or so in the morning were everything seems twilightish except it's the afternoon. It's hard to explain.

Originally Posted by OrangeCrush3220

what do you mean by maintaining awareness?

For me, awareness is cogitating on the state of lucidity, making sure that you're maintaining a knowledge on whether or not you are truly in waking life(or to a lesser extent, just keeping your mind on lucid dreaming). This is the point of reality checking, and to sustain 'awareness' all day would be equivalent to doing reality checks all day long.

Originally Posted by OrangeCrush3220

yeah I should do reactive reality checks but I can't quite distinguish when the time is to do those.. I don't really notice much of the "dreamstate lighting." I'm sure there's more but I'm just not quite sure what.

Every time something happens, however small or unimportant, that just makes you think "hmmm... thats wierd" or "why would that happen?" is your call to do a reality check. Maybe you found your shoes somewhere you wouldn't normally put them, or something fell over seemingly untouched. Subtle things that you normally just forget about and get on with the rest of the day.

Or for me if i forget what i was doing prior to whatever I'm doing at the time, or if i walk into a room then forget the reason I went into the room in the first place (usually the kitchen :/), i usually do a reality check then aswell. Anytime your awareness seems low or you have to question yourself could be a good chance to reality check.

So basically, you're saying that it doesn't matter the quantity of the reality checks I do. Just as long as I train myself to do them when things that are "strange" happen.

So my last question is just out of curiousity......When you do these reactive reality checks... on average, how many do you think you do in a single day?..... Just so I can get an idea.


Thanks again for the help,
OC3220

Hmm, he's right, but no set number really is needed. Just whenever you think about it do a deep, thoughtful RC.

A mantra I like to use that helps me sort of "jolt" my awareness is "Everything is the substance of dreams." Knowing that things can influence your dreams can help you remember what to look for later on as something to be suspicious of.

Originally Posted by OrangeCrush3220

So basically, you're saying that it doesn't matter the quantity of the reality checks I do. Just as long as I train myself to do them when things that are "strange" happen.

So my last question is just out of curiousity......When you do these reactive reality checks... on average, how many do you think you do in a single day?..... Just so I can get an idea.


Thanks again for the help,
OC3220

Yes. I have heard some cases of (and once in my own experiance) people doing RCs, the RC fails, but they still fail to realise they are dreaming (e.g doing the nose RC, being able to breath, but then thinking thats normal.) I think this tends to happen when people do RCs regularly and randomly, meaning they don't put much thought into it, it becomes routine. However, if something happens to provoke the RC, it instantly puts that awareness back into you and makes you really consider that you could be dreaming.

Bulding a habit of RC'ing when something strange happens works because it makes your RCs more thoughtful and in dreams strange things happen so often, your probbably more likely to notice something strange and RC than you are to just do a RC randomly.
(well, thats been the case in my experiance anyway. All of this post is just my personal experiances, but i think what im saying makes sense.)

slighly irrelevant, but just today i had a perfect example of what i was saying earlier about when to do a RC. I went bowling, there were two orange balls running throught the system that people were waiting for. I bowled a little, then I suddenly looked and saw 4 orange balls. I didn't remember seeing any spare and didn't see anyone put them there, they appeared pretty suddenly. I really thought I could ahve been dreaming, but I wasn't :@

Sorry, I don't know if this post needed to be as long as it is since the topic seems pretty rapped up, but hopefully theres something i said in there thats useful to someone.
Damn, now my post is even longer :/

You're doing nothing wrong, but there are things you can do to speed up the process

Something I always suggest is autosuggestion/mantras. For what you're trying to achieve, make sure it includes encouragement of realizing you are dreaming. Alternatively, you could use the MILD technique, which also uses autosuggestion. However, your mantra should include the aspect of remembering to reality check in your dreams.

If you can, maintaining 'awareness' throughout the day for as long as you can/as much as you can is also helpful(I've only just tried this recently, but it had a tremendous effect).