Why you need to Reality Check

**tommo** · 04-29-2011 07:55 AM

I've seen two tutorials for attaining lucidity recently, which claim you do not need to do reality checks.

Possibly the key to lucid dreaming?
http://www.dreamviews.com/f32/becomi...reamer-113194/

I'd just like to state why I think this is inaccurate, as well as bad advice.

When one plays with one's subconscious mind, which is what we do when we LD, one needs an anchor to reality. Just like when you meditate you have music playing or focus on your breathing or when you take psychedelics you have a sitter or similarly, music playing. This is simply to make sure you can keep track of, and know that, there is a "solid" reality. Even if the anchor is in your mind, you still need one, it's just that it's harder to keep that anchor in your mind.

In LD's it is sometimes almost impossible for some people to do this.
Our dreams tend to adapt to what we do IRL. So if you're raising your awareness IRL, in all likelihood, it will transfer to your dreams - along with the increased realness of the dreams because you're becoming more aware of what reality is like.

So, I could go on further but I think this sums it up nicely.
You should practice and maintain, as a guess, at least 5 reality checks.
So even if your dreams become completely realistic, you will still be able to check whether you're awake or asleep; have a ground to reality.

I'm sure we've all had times where we're almost completely sure that we're dreaming, but our RC's confirm that we are not. That is why this is important.

Also, the reason I say it is inaccurate regarding the all day awareness technique, is because that in itself is a reality check, it's just that it's not sufficient for grounding yourself to reality - for reasons stated above. I already posted a similar thing in that thread though.

**A_Citrus** · 04-30-2011 03:56 PM

I was going to counter this argument, but counting the ADA technique as a kind of reality check, I guess I would agree with this for DILDs. I would say, however, that you don't need to do a reality check if you're WILDing, because as you go from SP into the dream, you keep your awareness that you're dreaming.

ShockWave.

**Puffin** · 04-30-2011 05:11 PM

RCs are useful, yes. I have my own guide that also says they are not useful for attaining lucidity (and instead awareness), although they -are- vital as a confirmation method. Awareness is needed to induce a DILD, but once you're aware, RCs must be done to make sure you're awake or dreaming. You can't use awareness by itself.