Well, last night (this morning really) I made a couple of discoveries about techniques for Lding. In the dream, I was running down a street, and randomly, or maby because I just thought "this doesn't feel right", I did a reality check. The first thing I did was look down at my hands. When I did, they looked completely normal! I was under the impression that your hands always look strange in dreams, but apparently I was wrong. (I think other people have seen their hands in dreams and nothing looked wrong, but it seemed not to be true for me-until now)
Because I always do multiple RC's, I decided then to do the momory test, to see if everything made sense. It seemed that I remembered the events that led up to this moment, but actually I was just remembering the dream. But at the time it all seemed to make perfect sense. It was as if I was simply remembering earlier parts of the day.
Well, it seemed that it wasn't a dream. But then just to be sure, I tried to fly and it didn't work. So then I thought it must be real. But I know that when you try to fly in a dream, it doesn't always work every time. To be absolutely sure, I tried once more as i was running, and to my amazement I lifted a few feet off the ground. I just want to say I've been flying in dreams for years, so this wasn't amazement at the fact that I could fly. It was profound amazement at the fact that I just did all these tests and still almost failed to know it's a dream!
So I thought ok, the first order of business is to stabilize my environment. The good thing here is that I didn't get too excited. So I focused on this area of the road for a few seconds, then I looked around and focused on this little leafless tree. I kept on looking at it and then suddenly the image began to merge and blend in with the background. At this point I felt the dream slipping, and then I woke up unfortunately.
I guess the moral of this story is that, because of the unpredictable nature of dreams, you can't always count on any given reality check. Some RC's will only work for some people, i.e. the memory test (which didn't work for me due to the fact that I was able to rationalize earlier parts of the dream as just events that happened earlier that day). Having this dream made me aware that some of my RC's I thought would work for me don't.
Also, does anyone understand what might have been going on with that whole thing about focusing too long on that tree and the dream ending because of it? That really baffles me!
