I know what I need to do now.
Yesterday afternoon, my copy of "Exploring the world of lucid dreaming" finally came in the friggin' mail. After just reading a few chapters, it cleared up TONS of stuff. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is having trouble understanding the process, cuz this book goes into some serious detail about everything.
At first, I assumed I didn't have any dream signs, but then Laberge tells you how to catalogue stuff, so with this I was able to see that ALL of my dream signs full under the category of "context", I'm always in weird situations, with people I never see, or in locations that I've never been.
Now I know that during waking life I need to be aware of where I am, and who I'm with. I also learned that reality checks aren't mandatory for dream signs, they're just another way to induce lucid dreams, they need not be related to your dream signs, sometimes people dont know this and get confused about everything. The way I see it, reality checks are for things that you do BOTH in waking life AND during dreaming. For example, you will ofcourse use the bathroom a lot during the day, and if you're the type to find yourself in a bathroom during your dreams, then you need to make a habit of reality checking when you're in a bathroom in waking life so that habit will carry over. Making a habit of reality checking will mean NOTHING if you never perform the action that triggered it in your dream, so if you perform a RC whenever you see your dog, it will have NO effect if you never look at your dog in your dreams. This isn't the case with dream signs, in the case of dream signs, you focus on what's DIFFERENT, so in waking life you study and be aware of how things are, you see how they act normally, so when you see it act strange in your dream, you can conclude your dreaming. Most people think you HAVE to reality check to see if you're dreaming. That's not true. All of my DILDs I've become lucid BEFORE the reality check, I just did the check for extra fun.
I've always confused these 2 things, now that I understand that dream signs and reality checks are 2 different ways to induce lucid dreaming and need not be combined, I now understand where my efforts need to be focused.
OH and I'm not saying that everything I just wrote is correct, it's just how I see and percieve things, everyone is different. So if there's anyone confused or looking to see things in a different perspective, then take a gander at this thread, lol. Or better yet just buy a copy of EWOLD, it really helps.
