Intro + Question

Hi everyone. I'm 18 and just registered, after lurking for nearly a year. :cheeky: I got interested in lucid dreaming after Avatar last year (as the name implies:D), with the whole concept of dream walking and Pandora just being an awesome looking place to visit in a dream. Then Inception came out, and that just helped all the more. So far I managed to have about...7 (?) lucid dreams, none of real significance (doing everyday things, realizing it's a dream, then doing something cool like flying before waking up). Then I fell out of it a couple months ago, and am now getting serious about lucid dreaming again. Now, along with Pandora, I wanna take a trip to the Mojave Wasteland, and I have the goal of eventually making those trips.;)

Now my question...how can I overcome self doubt while performing reality checks and self affirmation? When I am doing my reality checks, I keep having a little voice in the back of my head going, "you know you're awake, why do this?", or when I am doing my self affirmations before bed, that little voice is going, "there's no way this'll work." Of course these are big impediments. Any ideas?

TM

Well, ADA helps with noticing you're dreaming but really it's all in the power of your own belief. You have to be willing to doubt reality even if you know otherwise. It will help you question dreams more easily. Even right now, as you're on your computer, laptop, or mobile device, you could be dreaming. Ignore the fact that you know you're not and ask how you got to where you are and if anything looks out of place.

Also, I've read some journals of people going to Pandora. Use that as encouragement!

Tsyal, welcome to DV :).

My advice for doing reality checks would be to do more than one reality check when you do them, and each time you perform a reality check, try not to take your surroundings for granted. Remember as you do your RCs that dreams can be very realistic at times, so you can't be sure that you're not dreaming even if you think you're awake. I would say that the feeling you get before bed is a lack of self confidence, either in yourself, or in your ability to lucid dream. You need to remember that everyone can lucid dream, and that some people just need a little practice and self motivation to get there.

If you have any other questions, feel free to post them! You can also send me a private message if you prefer.

ShockWave.

Have you been surprised by a reality check before? Are you normally correct when that voice in your head already knows you are awake? Maybe you could try to focus on how you know you are already awake. What does it feel like? What about your surroundings and your thought process makes you know you are awake? The very act of stopping for a second or two to question and analyze your state is all it takes to become lucid. Most of the time, it doesn't really matter if the reality check succeeds or fails. By the time you stop to perform the reality check, you probably already know whether or not you are dreaming. Of course, sometimes you can still be fooled and surprised ;)

Welcome!

and with the reality check, start out by assuming you ARE dreaming and the reality check is just confirming you are or are not.
Say I am dream, then reality check and re think it, this is what I do.

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone. It really means a lot. :)

That sounds like good advice about reality checks. Maybe I'm being a bit too...passive with my reality checks. Usually they're just a glance at the hand, or a double check of a clock, or the spelling of a label, and that's it. Maybe I need to step back a bit more, not just glance at an object but examine it. Question it...question myself. What about it's appearance/characteristics indicate I am awake? Know what I mean? As for night time affirmations, yeah, I think ShockWave hit the nail on the head, it is probably a self confidence issue. I've never really been a self confident person, I could use some work on that. Does meditation help?

Meditation helps you become more relaxed and generally less stressed in your life, and this can sometimes help with self confidence. If you're interested in meditation, you should take my meditation class. It just finished, and you can still read the lessons from semester, but I'll be doing another semester at some point in July/August.

Link: http://www.dreamviews.com/f141

ShockWave.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TsyalMakto

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone. It really means a lot. :)

That sounds like good advice about reality checks. Maybe I'm being a bit too...passive with my reality checks. Usually they're just a glance at the hand, or a double check of a clock, or the spelling of a label, and that's it. Maybe I need to step back a bit more, not just glance at an object but examine it. Question it...question myself. What about it's appearance/characteristics indicate I am awake? Know what I mean? ?

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that sounds good :) you have to really focus and think about whats going on.