Thanks for the thorough answer!!

I just liked to make a further comment on this:

Quote Originally Posted by Abra View Post

4. False awakenings are literally when you dream that you wake up. So if you weren't dreaming, they weren't false awakenings. But how can you be sure you weren't dreaming? I've had some very realistic false awakenings, where I thought "There's no way I could be dreaming!" only to find that I had fooled myself. Hint: If you read the time, look away, and read the time again, you can check to see if you are dreaming by comparing the readouts. Chances are, if the numbers change, you are dreaming!
Its not really a "dream" because i dont have any actual recollection of what the mobile phone looked like, or anything, its just that i have the "knowledge" that i checked the time. In other words, i dont remember how, when, in what situation etc. i checked the time, and i only know that i did check it. So i cant do those things where i try to see if the time changes, because i never actually conciously experience the part where i check the time. I just have the false feeling of that i checked the time.

Compare it to a false awakening where you go to the bathroom. In those cases, as i have understood, you actually "see" yourself getting out of bed, going to the bathroom etc. but imagine that you dont have any actual recollection of being in the bathroom, but you simply "know" that you were there.

And obviously im dreaming, that is evident, but what i meant was that between the several "false time checks", i am awake, or if im not then that is one hell of a dream, where im completely aware of going to work, what im going to do that day, what i ate the day before, how much money i have in the bank etc.

Its hard to explain, because im even contemplating when im awake, whether i did check the time or not, and i know that in the past i have been wrong. Im just so tired, that sometimes i get fooled by several of these "false checks", but nowadays i usually do a real check quite quickly. But because i drift from being awake to sleeping probably once every minute or something, it gets really difficult to know whether ive checked the time for real or not.

The freaky part, is that it may even be possible that sometimes there may be mixtures of real checks and false checks, and if my false checks fit in with the real time, it may be that im completely unaware of this. I mean, i check my time from my mobile probably 50 times every day, so its so routine, that i dont register it. Just like my mom, who takes a lot of pills several time a day for her blood pressure and diabetes, often doesnt remember whether she took the pills or not, just minutes after she had taken them. And she doesnt have any memory problems. Another example is the fear of leaving the coffeemaker plugged or leaving the oven on. But the case with time is, that it changes constantly, so it can get really freaky at times....



The reason you feel so oblivious to that flight scenario is that you've never let thoughts of dreaming enter your mind. In our culture, it is natural to treat everything as 'real.' But once you start considering the possibility that dreams (and nightmares) don't randomly come true, the way you think about dreaming will change.
I hope so. It just makes me worried, because my mind is a champion of twisting reality. I cant recollect ever really thinking during a dream whether it is a dream, but i havent really thought about it when im awake either....


You seem like you'll be a great lucid dreamer, in time. Welcome to Dreamviews!
Thanks. I hope i can become a lucid dreamer, and there are parts in my dreaming history that makes me confident and parts that make me really unsure whether i will reach a lucid dream or not. The part that makes me unsure is the fact that i have never experienced lucidity, ever. I never even think about that i may be dreaming, and im always shocked when i wake up remembering a dream, when i realise that it wasnt real. I never have even the slightest feeling of "i kind of knew i was dreaming".
The thing that makes me confident is that i can control my own actions quite well in all my dreams, and my thought processes seem quite similar when im dreaming to when im awake. If i have some sort of thing that i have been thinking about a lot, they usually show up in my dreams in a fairly "real" way, and not in some cryptic freudian way where i have to interpret stuff to make sense of it. One dream was a month ago, when i needed money to borrow, and i "felt ashamed" that i had to ask a friend for a 100 euro loan. The night before i was going to ask him, i had a dream that i asked him for the loan, and it was fairly realistic, only with minor discrepancies. He agreed in the dream, and you can believe that i was a bit disappointed when i woke up Well, i got it sorted out in real life as well, so that was good....
I also remember dreams almost every time i wake up in the morning and fall back asleep. I just hope that i can incorporate the idea of it possibly being a dream into my dreams, and i think that will be the biggest obstacle. As i have been reading this and other similar sites, ive noticed that many people find it easy to consider whether they are dreaming, but find it tough to convince themselves. For me, it is totally foreign to even think that im dreaming, in the first place.....I mean, in most of dreams i do think about stuff like "this seems weird" or "why is this happening?", but never does the possibility of dreaming come into it. I think that the next week is hugely crucial in determining whether i will be able to LD, because now that i have used a lot of time to think about this, i hope i will see a change, and see that i may start to contemplate the possibility of dreaming soon. My mind is a tough SOB though, so im sure it will convince me several times before the possibility of lucidity will even become a realistic possibility...
But, im quite unsure, because i cant even imagine what being lucid during a dream is like, and i cant even fathom the idea of it, as i have never even come close as far as i can remember, that is....

I find your dreams pretty interesting
They are, and that flying dream is my favourite. Most of my recurring dreams happen quite often, and they sometimes differ quite heavily, but that "showing off my flying skills to my friends" dream is too rare. It was more frequent before, but i think it was because i didnt really have a "best friend" type person in my life back then, and maybe i felt unappreciated. Now i have really good friends, and i see that dream only once a year or so....
The high school theme happens quite often, as well as a military theme. Im from Finland, and we have a compulsory military service here, and i also sometimes see dreams where im being told to return to the army for 6 months due to some technicality. I was in the military back in 2004, and i kind of liked it, but still it sometimes pops up in my dreams that i have to return to the life of the tough finnish soldier, that spends his days cleaning the barracks, sucking up to officers, and crawling in the woods right beside a highway, or guarding a camp from elderly people returning home from "bingo night"