Thread: Sometimes we just barely miss becoming lucid.

The most recent time this happened to me, I was in line buying something. When I got to the front of the line there was a man standing behind a window, and after I made my purchase he asked, "would you like a body bag with that?" I just said no thanks and was on my way, but someone in line stopped me. He said something along the lines of "Now, wasn't there something weird about that? That wasn't normal was that?" I knew he was right, something was off, but I disregarded it.

I just joined the forum yesterday and thought this excerpt from my introductory post might be relevant to the topic here regarding near lucidity..

Interestingly, in the past week I have had two experiences which might be called "near lucid" dreams in which I questioned whether or not I was dreaming in the dream, but failed to achieve full lucidity.

The first happened near the end of a lengthy non-lucid dream. During the dream, I suspected I might be dreaming and even went so far as to walk up behind my wife, tap her on the shoulder and ask her "am I dreaming or is this real?" She replied "You're not dreaming". I believed her and continued in a non-lucid state - despite the fact her hair was an entirely different color than she has in real life.

The second experience happened last night. I have been frequently performing reality checks throughout the waking day in hopes I would do so during a dream and hence achieve lucidity. In the past, this has worked well for me. My typical reality check is to look closely at my hands and poke each palm with the opposing index finger, then pinch my nose to see if I can still breathe through it. If my hands appear deformed, or if I can poke a finger entirely through my palm, I know I'm dreaming. Likewise, if I can breathe through my nose with it pinched shut, I know I'm dreaming. Last night, I had an apparent false awakening. I looked at my hands and they appeared normal. I could not poke a finger through my palms, but when I attempted to do so my hands deformed. This SHOULD have been a tip off that I was dreaming, but I failed to recognize it. I forgot to do the nose pinch check, but did decide to rub my hands together to see if it generated friction. It did, so I assumed I was not dreaming and went back to sleep. It was only when I woke up for real this morning right at dawn, that it occurred to me that I had performed the above mentioned reality checks in full daylight (during the middle of the night!)

Obviously I need to do some more work on reality check recognition!