Dreamsign Issues

i'm new to lucid dreaming, but i've been keeping a dream journal for a couple of weeks now. i've always had fairly decent dream recall, usually remembering a couple of dreams a night. however, i haven't started trying to dream lucidly yet.

i've been having some issues with finding out what my dreamsigns are. i've been trying to catalog my dreamsigns according to leberge's "exploring the world of dreaming," but i haven't really recognized anything that's consistent in my dream journal.

any suggestions?

Welcome to Dreamviews! :content:

The first piece of advice I can give is to never rely on dream signs to become lucid; the same goes with reality checks. You have to be aware of what's around you, and question if you could be in a dream right now. You can't accept that you're actually awake at this moment, because you haven't tested it by looking at yourself in a mirror to see if you look different, plugging your nose to see if you could breathe through it, etc. Dreams feel very real and we don't question them. But reality feels real too, and so we don't question it either! Get into the habit of questioning reality in waking life and it'll be easier to have an LD.

Dream signs can help if you've suddenly become aware in a dream, but aren't sure if you're awake or not. Have you tried looking for locations, or metaphorical dream signs? For instance, is there a lot of water in your dreams (it might specify that you always go to bed thirsty), or animals (you had a childhood pet or something)? Another type of dream sign is your emotions - often in dreams, we do things that we might not do in waking life, and our feelings can be more powerful. We might get angrier more easily, or suddenly feel very sad.

If you don't have an obvious dream sign, you can always just do a reality check.

Another thing to think about is that there may not always be a dream sign in your dreams, anyways. Things may seem normal. So if you specify that your dream sign is a dog, for instance, the dog probably won't always be in your dreams - this removes a whole lot of opportunities to become lucid.