How is it that we miss such obvious clues?

[MartinB]

Here's a dream that I had recently: I awoke in my bedroom at my parent's house, where I noticed my brother at the other side of the room acting strange. I asked him what was going on, and he tells me that he has become lucid. He proceeds to demonstrate this to me by using his control of the dream to grow a third leg, and starts walking around the room on three legs. I just thought how lucky he was to be having a lucid dream whilst I was awake in reality. Damnit.

[RedfishBluefish]

Maybe it's because we can do a RC during the day and that carries on into dream life, whereas people never come up to us in real life and say "this is a dream" (or at least sane people don't) so when that happens in a dream you assume it's normal, or something...

[mylucidworld]

u have got to train yourself to realise things that would only happen in a dream. Before i used to accept everything in a dream, but now i am more aware, but stuff still happens that when i wake up i think how the f**** did i not realise that was a dream!

[Adam]

I think initially without knowing what lucid dreaming is, you are not likely to question the dream. But the more you read and learn about lucid dreaming them more it indents itself within your subconscious, this is when whilst dreaming you will remember to question it. In my opinion.

[RooJ]

From what i've read Its all to do with chemical balances in the brain, Ill quote someone elses work: The dream gets accepted uncritically as reflecting reality because the dreamer's critical faculties lack the serotonin and norepinephrine they need for proper judgment. And the dream is mostly or entirely forgotten because this same chemical shortfall disables memory. So sadly for most of us, we need to reality check in order to defeat our lack of judgement. With reality checks we dont need to look at the world and figure out whether we're dreaming, we can simply recieve a yes or no answer pretty quickly from the result of the check. Edit:The strange thing is that after you reality check for a while you begin to get lucid dreams but dont seem to use the checks (in my experience), Not sure what goes on chemically in the brain of a lucid dreamer as they begin to get more and more natural lucid dreams.

[Carôusoul]

If it doesn't seem weird in the dream that someone has 3 legs, how do we notice when an RC is different which is often far less weird, eg. Writing changing.

[tekkendreams]

u have got to train yourself to realise things that would only happen in a dream. Before i used to accept everything in a dream, but now i am more aware, but stuff still happens that when i wake up i think how the f**** did i not realise that was a dream! ahah me to , i have some of the weirdest shit happen in my dreams which cant possibly be real and i still dont raelise it

[RooJ]

If it doesn't seem weird in the dream that someone has 3 legs, how do we notice when an RC is different which is often far less weird, eg. Writing changing. Because we're looking specifically for that change, we arn't observing the world looking for what we believe should or should not be there, we look for specific changes, can we push our fingers through our hand, can we breath through blocked nostrils etc. In most reality checks we either can or can't do something, or something does or doesn't happen/change. I suppose because of this we dont need alot of judgement.

[DreamscapeExplorer]

I HATE THIS!!!! This happened to me the other night and you are going to laugh when i tell you what my missed "clues" were...In my dream i had just somehow come into a nice Ferarri Enzo. The first clue I should have realized was it was a dark blue-grey, not the red (only color the car comes in). Then i got in the car and saw that the interior (of a TINY Ferarri) was set up like a MINIVAN!!!!!!! I even remember thinking "wow...wonder how all those seats fit into this small car? Huh, oh well it just means i can carry more people in it. =D " I woke up and was like DAMMIT!!!!! How could i miss something so obvious...after questioning it??? ughhh...i have stupid things like that happen to me all the time and i'm trying to work on it but its a real tough thing to do. lolz. feel free to laugh at my stupidity on that one. =P

[Puffin]

Everyone misses obvious clues every once in a while. No one can become lucid every single dream, and some are just stranger than others. My guess as to why people don't become lucid even though there's an obvious dream sign is because they're just not aware enough.

[louie54]

So sadly for most of us, we need to reality check in order to defeat our lack of judgement. With reality checks we dont need to look at the world and figure out whether we're dreaming, we can simply recieve a yes or no answer pretty quickly from the result of the check. Edit:The strange thing is that after you reality check for a while you begin to get lucid dreams but dont seem to use the checks (in my experience), Not sure what goes on chemically in the brain of a lucid dreamer as they begin to get more and more natural lucid dreams. Yeah speaking of judgment issues, I have a tutorial in my signature called "Dream Logic". The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is a little area in your brain that plays a role in governing your awareness, and your ability to think clearly, which is inactive during REM sleep. I know there's much more to it than that though. But it's like, partly because this little area is inactive, to see something like a flying elephant would mean nothing unusual. Btw, RooJ, do you have a link to this article?

[Mancon]

Yeah speaking of judgment issues, I have a tutorial in my signature called "Dream Logic". The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is a little area in your brain that plays a role in governing your awareness, and your ability to think clearly, which is inactive during REM sleep. aww you beat me to it.

[Zannak]

Your unconscious dreaming mind is very accustomed to seeing weird stuff. Furthermore, the mind isn't usually trying to determine if you are dreaming or not it is only mindlessly following the images like watching a movie. That is the only thing different with the RCs, despite their often being less strange, the work because the mind associates them with the question, "Am I Dreaming?" because you have trained it to do so with the conscious mind. I used to get kind of frustrated and wonder about this too and decided to start asking myself, "Am I Dreaming?" ALL day long no matter whats going on, especially if something really really ordinary occurred. I tried to really feel appalled by everything and ask myself, "Am I Dreaming?" constantly. I started to feel kind of crazy, but it did seem to have an effect and I eventually noticed myself asking myself the question randomly in my dreams. Its all about setting new thought patterns, making the habitual and get them rooted deep in the mind so they come up unconsciously.

[Razeth]

Basically, our dream selves are dumb and have no clue they're dreaming even if a giant octopus emerged from the sky and sang showtunes. Which is why we train .

[Onieronaut]

I think it's interesting, MartinB, that you dreamed about your brother talking about being Lucid and demonstrating a talent of his based on having control of his dreams! I've never had the subject of Lucidity broached to me by any of the charcters in my dreams but have repeatedly told other people that I know in my dreams, after achieving Lucidity, that, "we're dreaming right now!" The last couple times I've been in an LD, my dad has been present, and I've mentioned that we are dreaming to him, and have hoped that upon waking I could talk to him and see if he had a dream of me last night. So far, he hasn't remembered me and so I think it's just a character of him produced by me. One thing that's weird is that in the last one he turned and said, is there somebody there? and I saw my dog whose been dead for several years come up to me and I pet her and told her I missed her (2nd time that's happened in the last couple of months, the last time made me cry when I woke up b/c it was like being with her again for a few precious moments, also a LD but a WILD) and then I noticed my Dad (dream dad) petting the dog too and referring to it as "a good boy." His dog is a male in real life and is still alive, and I asked him do you see L__? And he said, "yeah, I've gotta see a really good dog." I realized in the dream that he saw a different dog than I did. He saw his dog, and I saw mine.