Do you really, absolutely clearly notice that you are lucid?

Hello guys,

I have been a silent reader here for some time and have written a dream journal for about half a year now, with good results as i remember a lot more now from my dreams, and noticed having more dreams.

I had two WILD attemps that yielded somewhat of a result, in one I really witnessed me falling asleep and entering a dream, but I was regularly dreaming then. Still, I clearly noticed the beginning, the falling asleep part. A crazy vibration started and it felt like I was twisted through the floor in a vortex like fashion, then I fell asleep.

The other attempt ended in a similar fashion, I had a solid impression of my body beginning to move violently to the left and right, but sadly I was so excited because of it that I woke up again, slowly but I could net get my temper down again for another try. Cool stuff.

This night I had a dream of me and my wife driving a very familiar road with bicycles on a sunny day. A police helicopter flies straight towards us, very low height, and then passes us (nearly hitting us) without making too much of a sound, that got me wondering... hm that's not feeling right. I then notice we are on the same road but in a car. I say to myself: lets try a RC, and I usually always do the pinch my nose or poke finger through cheek. But I was not able to loosen my hands from the steering wheel, it was just not possible. So I used my tongue and tried to poke it through my cheek, but it didn't work. It felt all soft and mushy, like I poked it inside the tissue, but it did not come through. So I continued to dream. I looked after the helicopter and it flew to a port (that is not there normally, on that road) where I notice two other large flying objects. The port looks bristling with life and action and I want to check it out.

The dream then started to fade, it looked like a low resolution post card moving away from me. I gathered all my will and wanted to get "inside" that post card, so i thrusted my arms forward and flew into it. A great feeling of flying and accomplishment overcame me and I rushed towards the water of the port. Then i woke up, it was only a few seconds.


But now comes my question: this did not feel like a lucid dream. Only the very last part felt different, and I was able to fly in other dreams before this one, but it was more like "oh well, flying is totally normal, so lets just take off, right?" and not like a conscious decision. So is this still my untrained mind not being able to recall all the nice details and I am lucid dreaming already and that's really all there is, or is truly becoming lucid in a dream an unmistakable event, that you just can't miss?

Well sometimes you are lucid but you don't have full access to the state of mind you have when you are awake. There is no thing that when you are lucid, you are fully lucid and can do absolutely everything with full clarity and stuff, it just happens in degrees. Sometimes you are a little more sure that you are dreaming than other times, sometimes you think more clearly and more focused than other times. Being lucid means that you know you are dreaming.

For example, I got a lucid today and I knew I was dreaming and that I could do anything without consequences but I didn't jump through a window to start flying right away. I first did some reality checks, they failed, later on I did jump through a window to try to fly. In another dream, I had a slight feeling I was lucid, very tiny voice that told me I was dreaming and while I was immerged in a complicated situation, I just ran off, sprinted right through the first window I could see, jump out of a 4-5 storey building and started flying. So sometimes you are more sure of it then other times.

There are levels of lucidity, but I don't consider myself lucid until I am fully aware that I am in a dream and that I can do anything I want.

I read on another post on this site that there are multiple factors to determine if you were lucid dreaming
1. Do you know that you are dreaming?
2. Are you aware of the consequences of your actions?
3. Do you know what it means to be dreaming?
4. Do you have a memory of waking life?
5. Do you know that the dream world is entirely safe?

Last night I had a LD where I met all of these criteria. I also had another dream where I understood that I was dreaming and couldn't be hurt, but I wasn't lucid. I knew I couldn't be hurt.

Ok this night I have succeeded at my first WILD (?) attempt. I am not too sure if it was really a WILD because of some strange stuff happening.

First i remember is me dreaming of carrying my cat over my shoulder in my moms old living room. Never happened irl, but still. I hear him meowing and then realize that the sleepless bastard is scratching the door and meowing like a madman. So he woke me up and induced some kind of dream. Nothing special. I shut my bedroom door and went back to bed.

I was very sleepy by then and decided to give it a try. It still seemed to take its time, I first tried it on my back, then on left and right side. I'd guess it took well over half an hour. One of my common problems is that I get too excited when something happens and that sets me back... this night i was so smashed after being violently waked up by that furry guy it didn't seemed like a problem to slip back to being sleepy and relaxed. Still it took ages... and my alarm clock went off. I pushed the snooze button and went back to my WILD attempts.
I was lying on my right side and all the while reciting my mantra in my head when it suddenly happened, I heard a loud noise and felt like being pushed around in some kind of vortex. I kept as calm as possible and tried to cling to my mantra when I suddenly felt the shaking was over, my (normally pitch black) sleeping room was dim but not completely dark and some guy with an alarm clock in his hands told me "hey wake up, it's time" (I am german, and "wake up" and "stand up" has the same word). I look at the clock and try read the numbers and wonder about the strange time. it was a regular time, but not my waking time. I don't remember the exact time. I looked away and then looked another time at the clock and the time was 1 hour and 2 minutes off. I looked another time and it showed completely whacky numbers, not any usual time. And then I knew "I'm dreaming, f*** yeah!" and the guy was gone. I tried to get out of my bed, and since he told me to stand up I rolled out of my bed and tried to stand up. It was very hard to do. It seemed like a tremendous act of will to do so, like some kind of glue formed out of gravity and sound (it was loud, every bit of movement sounded like a windy/sucking sound) was holding me down to bed or my body. I stood up and wanted to see myself sleeping in bed, but I was not there. My wife was sleeping beside me and I suddenly was like "I want to scare/troll her" and tried to wake her up laughing and tickling her and she woke up screaming. That woke me up. And my alarm clock was ringing again... I gave it another try but was not able to enter sleep again in the short time it took to ring again. I double RC

Anyone else acting like a complete imbecile after realising one is dreaming? It feels a bit like wasted effort right now, it was so hard to stand up, like moving through swamp. And then I decide to do utter nonsense, great ;)
Or was I just dreaming that I LD? Inception...

All of that is actually very normal for beginners, Djaxup! Not just for beginners, actually. There's a form of "dream stupidity" that takes over when we are lucid, but not really 100% aware. So you may go through a ton of effort to stabilize your dream, and then not realize that you actually have total freedom to do whatever you want without any consequences... and then this sort of thing happens.

Your dream awareness will definitely improve with practice, and so will your dream control, which is what was holding your back getting out of bed. I used to get that a lot. Feeling drowsy, not being able to keep my eyes open, getting tangled up in my bedlinen. I have learned some good remedies for that here on DV. The first one I tried was simply rolling out of bed, just like do did. A good start, but not great.

Another way - if you can't move at all - is to just scratch your fingertips against your mattress, feeling the fabric, looking at the structure of the wall next to you. That brings you into the dream, and you will be able to move freely. But the best way for me now is to just focus on where I want to go. So I look at or think about the place I want to be, and then start moving towards it. That way I also don't forget what I wanted to do while struggling to get up.

Try to plan these things ahead of time, and also set a specific goal for what you want to do next time you are lucid, and things should begin to get a lot easier for you. :)

Thanks a lot for your answer, this makes me feel very positive :) I will be learning this, I know it. It really seems like a buried talent to me and I am very interested what will come next.
I just read about dream stabilization today and will definitely try this next time I get the chance to do it. The dream world was very dark and blurry, and I was constantly being pulled at from my (invisible) body.

Sometimes it may be helpful to ask the dream to do the work for you. I had a LD a couple of nights ago, where I was lucid, but all I could perceive was myself, a mattres, and two beings which I could not clearly see.

I then commanded the dream "Take me to Xs soul right now!" (X being a particular person ... yes, rather esoteric command, I know :) ), and at first I became immersed in greyish fog, but after a few seconds an HD photo-realistic scene emerged, with glorious colour and crisp details.

Just a thought ...

So this night I had a cool DILD, see DJ here

What I'm now wondering about is... I think this progress has a lot to do with me reading so much stuff about it, doing RCs over the day and basically trying to WILD every other morning for some weeks now. But what if I only dream that I am lucid dreaming? I hope that makes sense to you. My other, regular dreams always feel very real too. But even though flying in some of them etc I never thought inside the dream: hey I'm dreaming! At least not with that degree of sureness like I did this morning. The feeling was a mix of control and not so much control. But I guess all this boils down to "what you expect to happen will happen". Since it surely felt like I was making deliberate choices in that dream and purposely tried to prolong it I guess it was really a lucid dream. But in all reality this might have just been a very vivid dream about, well, lucid dreaming, cluttered with the advice I read here.

Does that make sense?