Questions about State Checks if you please.

Hello all,

For starters thanks for taking the time to read my post.

Edit: I put my to questions at the bottom separated from everything else. Feel free to skip reading everything. If you feel having some background on why I'm asking might help you offer suggestions please do so.

My questions are about state checks. I have been reading EWOLD and found some small steps forward toward lucid dreaming using Intention Techniques. My problem seems to be dismissing state checks I do while sleeping. Now perhaps this is something I'm going to have to work through and figure out my own solution since everyone is different but I thought I'd check and see if anyone had any suggestions.

So let me give you an example of what I am talking about. After reading the chapter on critical state checking and thinking wow this really makes since then going on to read about intention techniques I was able to plant ideas into my dreams. For example one night before bed I concentrated on seeing a turtle (of any kind shape or variety perhaps even a tortoise) but with a very distinctive bright neon pink spot or area, contrasting against a very otherwise normal looking turtle shell. I found in my dream that I indeed saw this turtle but I simply commented "Ah, there's the turtle I intended to see." or something along those lines and went right on along with my dream. I've been able to repeat similar instances of getting myself to dream about self created dream signs only to dismiss them. I guess it's a mindset thing which is why I said perhaps this isn't a question that can be directly answered and solved.

In EWOLD he stresses when you do state checks not to simply ask yourself are you dreaming and immediately answer no. I find this incredibly hard to do as it always seems so painfully obvious that I am not in fact dreaming. Nevertheless I will stop, do as suggested, look around for oddities and not only will I play back the last several minutes of my day in my head but often even all the way back to when I first woke up. But every step of the way I'm thinking on some level in the back of my head "of course I'm not dreaming everything is as it should be". While this behavior isn't exactly duplicated in my dreams it seems to be affecting my attitudes. "Well of course I saw a turtle with a bright pink spot on it, that's perfectly normal" thinking this because perhaps on some level I know I put it there and it was supposed to show up so I am almost in effect creating a sense of normality instead of sense of abnormality.

So to make my questions more concise I ask:

What kinds of things have people done here to strengthen effectiveness of state checks?

What kinds of things have you done to keep yourself from mindlessly assessing your reality?

And I do apologize if this post was at all confusing I'm not great with composition of my thoughts. I'm not always sure what's relevant what's not and what order to explain things in. Thanks again everyone in advance.

Jogah,

By state checks, I presume you mean Reality Checks.
Here are your answers:
What kinds of things have people done here to strengthen effectiveness of state checks?

To use reality checks more effectively is to do them often. Developing them into a habit will increase the chance of you doing a reality check in your dream, therefore inducing the realization that you are dreaming- resulting in a Lucid state. You can implement different reality checks such as the common "Hold your nose" reality check, where you pinch your nose, and try to breathe through your nose. Obviously if you can breathe through your nose while it is closed, you are dreaming.
Another common reality check is looking at your hand and counting your fingers. In a dream you will usually have more or less than five fingers, or you may not even have fingers at all. There are countless reality checks, and many people have posted very effective ones, but you just gotta look through the forum.

What kinds of things have you done to keep yourself from mindlessly assessing your reality?
Again, basically you do reality checks. However, you can also ask yourself during different times of the day if you are dreaming. Doing so, you are implementing a routine working as a reality check as well, but it is also a way to have your mind question it's reality on a daily basis. The main goal is to accomplish a habit of doing these methods so that you may have more frequent LD's, by realizing you are dreaming.


However, there are different methods that go straight into a Lucid state. Just look around in the tutorial section. Also, if you are interested in the WILDing method as well, please take a look at this thread. It is my personal favorite due to its effectiveness, and that it gets right down to the point. http://dreamviews.com/community/showthread.php?t=30783

Sorry for the quite long post, and I hope it helped. If you have any more questions, I would be more than happy and try to answer them.

Thanks a bunch, and good luck!
-CV