The Polar Express?

Just watching The Polar Express and I'm at the part where the main character is convinced he's dreaming. Got me thinking about something...

In the film, he says "this has got to be a dream" and then tries to wake himself up by giving himself a facewash in the snow. But it only makes the dream elements stronger, or at least does weaken the dream. Would something like this be accurate? If a person were to lucid dream and commanded themselves to wake up, would they? Or could the dream simply continue?

A real lucid dreamer would not want to wake up :P

I saw this movie too a few days ago for the first time. What I think happened is that he realized he was dreaming, but then go distracted by the guy in the skis that he lost lucidity and went back into the dream. And yes, an in LD you can wake up whenever youd like.

Oh I love this movie!

To answer your question... it depends. Personally I find it dangerous to even think about waking up when I'm in a LD. Because I'm so conscious already I'm very close to being awake and it doesn't take much to tip the balance. Also, if the character closed his eyes for the snow facewash that too is very likely to cause him to wake up. However, it is still plausable that he stayed asleep because sometimes a dream is so stable that you can't even wake up when you try. I've only experienced this a few times in my life and it was actually quite scary on one occasion because I started to wonder if perhaps I had actually died in RL.

Basically what the character did in Polar Express was a reality check and that RC failed, which is not an unusual occurence. In fact, I'm having real trouble at the moment finding reliable RCs. My brain has learned to construct a perfect visual of my hand when dreaming so that RC is now as useless as tits on a bull for me.:dancingcow: