Thread: Confusing actual/false awakening

Originally Posted by martakartus

Today, after 6h and something of sleep, I did my usual WBTB+MILD practice. Because I've been having quite a lot of false awakenings lately but no lucids, I set a strong intention to do a RC upon awakening. I had one non-lucid dream and when it finished, I felt unusually aware that I was waking up. Once I had "woken up", I thought I'd spare myself from writing the dream (and so, sit upright) and attempt a DEILD instead. Of course, I didn't do any RC because I avoided moving, but I felt so conscious I took for granted I was awake. While I was waiting for the dream to form, I thought of how I could've become lucid in the previous dream and how I'd be lucid then if I were dreaming. The mental images I was having were strong, they felt more vivid than mere thoughts. Finally, I lost consciousness and had another non-lucid dream.

When I awoke for real, I expected two REM cycles to have taken place, because I "awoke" between them, but to my surprise I had only slept for another 90min. It was unlikely that I had been woken up in the middle of the cycle by some noise because I was wearing ear plugs, so I got confused as to whether that had been an actual or a false awakening. Could I have awoken naturally in the middle of the REM cycle, or is it more likely that was a false awakening?

It can be difficult to know sometimes. I’ve had awakenings which felt convincingly real, and tried to get back to sleep after them. However, later, when I woke up for the day, and reclaimed my full waking-life sense of self, I thought “did I actually wake up that time or was it an FA?” I wasn’t entirely sure, even though at the time I was “sure” I was awake.

If it wasn’t an FA, perhaps you woke yourself up from the LD and lost lucidity somehow during the DEILD, falling back to sleep into the same REM phase. Also, after waking up for good at the end of the night, it’s usually easy to tell that what you experienced a while ago were dreams (usually because it took place somewhere else, perhaps talking to people etc. making it obvious it was a dream), but with a dream about waking up, it’s an exact creation of something which has to happen during the night anyway. So it can be a tricky one.

Because of the vivid mental imagery during the “awakening” it could’ve been an FA; dreams can be convincingly real as well. These are just suggestions, but I’m not so sure. It’s a tough one!

I wanted to share it to know other people's thoughts about this, because out of all FAs I've had, this was the most confusing of all. It is a tricky one indeed, I'll never know for sure I'll have to make it a habit to do a RC every time I wake up.

Thanks for the opinion!

I don't see it being impossible to naturally wake up partway through a REM cycle and go back to sleep. That's how things like DEILD presumably work, after all. Or am I missing something?

Something similar happened to me once. I had a false awakening and tried to perform a WILD in it.
The dream scene just changed (whilst I thought I was beginning to dream) and I became lucid. It was only when I woke up for real when I noticed the WILD attempt had been inside a FA. I felt pretty dumb.

Originally Posted by martakartus

Of course, I didn't do any RC because I avoided moving, but I felt so conscious I took for granted I was awake.

Instead of focus on what happened focus on what you could have done if it was a FA and you were almost lucid. So you didn't want to move because you wanted to DEILD and thought you were close to dream, maybe you were but what if you were dreaming of trying to DIELD? What to DO? Can't move so can't check?

Maybe maybe not, what if you had tried to consciously stop breathing, see what effect it had: effect one you find yourself getting bit woozie, or fall unconscious due to low oxygen, guess your DEILDing for real, or effect two you have been not breathing for what seems like several minutes. Interpretation of effect 2, maybe your dead, maybe your a zombie and don't need to breath anymore, or maybe your DREAMING

you could try that glottal stop thing or just more simply try not breathing at all