False Awakenings

Dear LDers,


What are some good ways to prevent false awakenings?

So far with all my LD's, I have had major problems with false awakenings. My last one ended terribly- where I "woke up", I found two drug dealer type people had broken into my apartment, and they beat me for like an hour! It sucked! And the whole time I totally thought I had woken up to my real life- especially because all the details of my life that I could recall at the time were all the exact same facts of my real waking life, and my surrounding were my exact bedroom, house, neighbourhood...

This presents a problem to me- if you judge whether or not you are dreaming based on how likely it is that what you are currently doing is part of your real life, than that wouldn't help in the case of this dream I had. Should I maybe start doing some kind of reality checks every time I wake up? If so, what are some good reality checks that have helped you guys?


Sincerely,

G.H.f.a.R.

You already kind of answered your first question. Do a RC whenever you wake up, especially if you continually have FAs. There are quite a few RCs you can try and I would recommend doing at least two, just in case one of them doesn't work (which has happened to me).

You can try pushing a finger through the opposite hand. My most realiable RC is plugging my nose and trying to breathe through it. If you can still breathe, you're dreaming. Also, look at a digital watch and note the time. Then look back and see if it's changed. If it has, you're dreaming. Look at text to see if it's changed. Look at your hands. Are they deformed or look different in any way? Look at objects around you critically. Are they where they should be? Are they different in appearance than in real life? Finally, try to think of what you've been doing at the time and work backwards. Did your actions make sense? Are there any sudden changes to the things that happened to you?

One last piece of advice, don't just do the RCs as if they're routine and you're expecting to be awake. One thing I heard that's been helpful is that you should try to convince yourself that you're not dreaming, rather than automatically assuming.

Hope this helped :D

-Amé

Wow what a scary FA!!!!

I think it is a great idea to do a reality check when you first wake up. You will have to find the reality check that works best for you. You may even want to do a series of checks in the same order every day. That way if one check fails then another my catch the fact that you are dreaming. You may try -

-Sticking your finger through your palm
-looking at a clock and checking the time then looking back again to see if the time has changed drastically.
-wiggling your toes
-putting your hand through a mirror...

A reality check can be almost anything... It is best if you check with something that you are really familiar with. I hope this helps. Good luck and let us know how it works out

Sweet Dreams :dreaming:

I've herd one way of escaping the FA problem is understanding why it is happening.
For example, when dreams are fading. Usually you are expecting to wake up. So that is what you dream about waking up. Maybe it could help when your dreams are fading when lucid, or you wake up, Do not expect to be awake, Expect it to be a dream. And RC will really help too. This way many false awakenings you will be ready for when they happen because you will expect them and your expectation will trigger lucidity. hehe....
good luck !! 8)

Honestly, you people exasperate me.

WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE YOUR DREAM SELF IS TRYING TO SHAKE YOU OFF?

This one Poster's Dream did not even mind beating up and torturing the Dreamer. The Dream Mind takes this quite seriously.

I read a post from one Dreamer who reported he had been great with Lucid Dreaming until he ran into a series of False Awakenings, and then he lost the ability to dream. COMPLETELY!

You don't want to defeat the mechanism of False Awakening. You Higher Self is sending you a message called I PREPARED A DREAM FOR YOU AND DAMN IT YOU ARE GOING TO PAY ATTENTION!

Now, one can benefit from Lucidity without overcontroling and destroying the Dreams that have been prepared for our benefit. Lucidity tells us that we have at our avail all the Powers of Dreaming. But instead we have all the faddists tossing away their dreams in order to practice inconsequential lucid parlor tricks or to masterbate. So Of Course the Higher Self will attempt to recover the Dreamer rather than to allow the dreamer to continue to defeat the only mechanism of communication we have between this world and the Next, and that is Dreams.

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Originally posted by Leo Volont
Honestly, you people exasperate me.

WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE YOUR DREAM SELF IS TRYING TO SHAKE YOU OFF?

This one Poster's Dream did not even mind beating up and torturing the Dreamer. The Dream Mind takes this quite seriously.

I read a post from one Dreamer who reported he had been great with Lucid Dreaming until he ran into a series of False Awakenings, and then he lost the ability to dream. *COMPLETELY!

You don't want to defeat the mechanism of False Awakening. *You Higher Self is sending you a message called I PREPARED A DREAM FOR YOU AND DAMN IT YOU ARE GOING TO PAY ATTENTION!

Now, one can benefit from Lucidity without overcontroling and destroying the Dreams that have been prepared for our benefit. *Lucidity tells us that we have at our avail all the Powers of Dreaming. *But instead we have all the faddists tossing away their dreams in order to practice inconsequential lucid parlor tricks or to masterbate. *So Of Course the Higher Self will attempt to recover the Dreamer rather than to allow the dreamer to continue to defeat the only mechanism of communication we have between this world and the Next, and that is Dreams.

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Mr. Volont, you never cease to impress me with your Elizabethen monologues!

He's got a point, 616er: if you concentrated more on becoming lucid in your dreams -- not necessarily trying to control them, but just being lucid, being aware of them -- then it is likely you will not have so many FAs, if any.

The mind, and the subconscious, are powerful entities -- not just things, but real beings; a part of you, yet almost a separate consciousness entirely.

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Originally posted by Leo Volont
Honestly, you people exasperate me.

WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE YOUR DREAM SELF IS TRYING TO SHAKE YOU OFF?

But instead we have all the faddists tossing away their dreams in order to practice inconsequential lucid parlor tricks or to masterbate.

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Now this upsets me. What makes you think that your ideology is the only one with relevance here. Maybe he's having these FAs due to a lucidity overload, but maybe he's not. Just maybe there might be more than one reason. If my mind has "prepared dreams for me", why do they never apply to my waking life, except to reflect what's happened over the past days/months/etc? I'm not saying there's no reason we dream, but who's to say what our dreams mean but ourselves?

Sorry to interject this, 616, in your post :P It's entirely possible that since you've managed to get lucid by these other methods, your mind is trying to mix things up by having you figure out how to get back into it. Hope things get better!

-Amé

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(\\\"Amethyst Star\\\")</div>

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If my mind has \"prepared dreams for me\", why do they never apply to my waking life...?[/b]

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Even when you use a dream dictionary, you find the symbols don't really apply to your real life? I always, always find that dream dictionaries give explanations for symbols that are totally accurate, and it basically makes translating a dream like decoding a message from God. The message is always a good one and provides the best advice possible, or gives me deeper insight into myself and who I am, etc.

And on the topic of the dreams "only" applying to the last few days and weeks of your life, that's all my dreams really apply to as well, what else should they apply to? I don't really think dreams regularily cover topics from several years in the past or future...at least they don't for me. Especially when you consider that the organization of your dreams is always based on what you did in your waking life in the hours before your dream. I like the currentness of my dream advice.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(\\\"Leo Volont\\\")</div>

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I read a post from one Dreamer who reported he had been great with Lucid Dreaming until he ran into a series of False Awakenings, and then he lost the ability to dream. *COMPLETELY![/b]

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Sucks to be them! I'm sure that person is just a quitter, obviously, if they can't simply get themselves to remember their dreams when they wake up. And I certainly hope this person wasn't so misinformed that he literally thought he stopped dreaming at night.

That sucks that my brain would do that to me, I was having the greatest lucid dream ever- being a hot tub and getting it on with 6 really hot girls (one second I'm in a mall and then a DC takes me to this backroom- I didn't put up a fight). Why would my brain make me pay more attention to that? What deeper message is there to get from a dream like that?
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Okay, I think I answered that question, lol. The DC led me to the heaven-room after I made my first ever interaction with a random DC who was walking down the street, I was just gonna screw around with the person, knowing that they were a fictional person in my dream. The second I said "hello" to this random person who was walking by, she said "follow me" and kept walking without even stopping. I followed, and look at where it took me.

So maybe the message of that dream that I'm supposed to be paying attention to is that being more social and friendly with strangers is a good idea, because it can lead to getting more chicks. I take the interpretation literally because as far as I understand, sex symbolizes itself, or one's openness to it. Or maybe that room really did symbolize heaven or pure goodness, which being more social can lead to. And then the purpose of the beating is, as you point out Leo, to really make me pay attention- pay attention to the underlying message.

Yep, that is totally it, no question. That is a very relavent message, and it makes complete sense that the beating was intended to make me look deeper for the message of the dream, because without it I would not have thought the dream was meant to symbolize anything. Thanks for the reply Leo, very helpful!


|616|G.H.f.a.R.