Thread: Failed reality checks :(

yeah...it sounds like you were expecting your RCs to fail.

Yes, but I have no excuse for mine. I was walking down a sidewalk, but I started floating upwards with each step until I was basically flying. I thought, hmmm... perhaps I'm dreaming. So I pinched my nose and tried to breath in. I couldn't, so I concluded I must be awake. ?????? Huh?

Yeah, well... I just started working at this.

I find that my dreaming mind is very crafty and I cannot count on any particular reality check to continue to work over long periods of time. Also, the more sense impressions I have in my dreaming (I tend to have quite a few), the easier it is for my own mind to fake me out. In the end what usually works for me is examining the details of what is going on around me in the dream. Something will eventually jar as not matching my memory of reality as I know it. I just have to be careful to be accessing my memory of waking reality, not the made-up-for-the-dream memory of the self I am in the dream. (Yeah, I have control issues and my subconscious is wrapped around itself like an Escher staircase.)

Originally posted by mongreloctopus
yeah...it sounds like you were expecting your RCs to fail.

This is the biggest problem with RCs - you'll ask yourself, "Am I dreaming?" then you'll automatically answer "No." I do the same thing sometimes.

Are you in the habit of doing RCs during the day? Do you have any common dreamsigns? You can use your dreamsigns to your advantage.

For example, one of my common dreamsigns is not being able to dial a phone properly. So anytime I fumble the numbers during the day, I automatically do a reality check. My RCs are usually comparing the wall clock to my wristwatch - in my dreams they never match. Anyway, you can do this with any common dreamsign that could happen in real life. Obviously with something like flying it wouldn't work (since you can't fly in real life), but I'm sure you have some dreamsigns you could apply this concept to.

The stupidest kind of things happen when I'm sleeping. One time I saw something in a dream that didn't add up and I thought "I'll have to ask someone about that when I wake up". No kidding and I didn't become lucid .

I once checked the light switches, shot a giant beam of light, used telekinesis, and only realized I was dreaming when I started to float

Just last night I heard a radio alarm clock go off, but I don't use the radio so I knew I was dreaming. I tried to put my finger through my palm, and though I knew I was dreaming, I could not get it to go. So it looks like this is not a good RC for me. I'll try breathing through my plugged nose later. But sometimes I just know it is a dream, and RC's don't matter at that point.

Originally posted by Rainbow Werewolf
But sometimes I just know it is a dream, and RC's don't matter at that point.

Exactly - if you already know you're lucid, why do an RC? It's like overstating the obvious. And you run the risk of the RC failing and confusing yourself anyway.

Burns wrote:

Rainbow Werewolf wrote:
But sometimes I just know it is a dream, and RC's don't matter at that point.


Exactly - if you already know you're lucid, why do an RC? It's like overstating the obvious. And you run the risk of the RC failing and confusing yourself anyway.[/b]

Anyways I can totally agree, because I was napping today, when I woke up, and saw my daughter playing on the floor. this being a recurring dreamsign it again triggered to me that I am possibly dreaming. So I decide to do a R/C, and I turn around, and see myself sleeping. So what did I make of it? Yep I am slleeping.... there I am, so I can't be dreaming. Why I decided this, I do not know, but from now on, clocks are my reality check !

For some reason, I thought if I was dreaming, then my bed would be empty, but since I was still there, then I was sleeping, not dreaming! WHAT A DUMB-ASS!

I had a dream where I literally looked away and back at a number SIX times.. it stayed the same. It was absolutely bizzare. The only time this has ever happened as such.

For some reason, I thought if I was dreaming, then my bed would be empty, but since I was still there, then I was sleeping, not dreaming! WHAT A DUMB-ASS! [/b]

ah, don't be hard on yourself...it happens to us all.

hell, a couple times i've been smugly trying to teach dream characters about lucid dreaming, dramatically sweeping my hands around at the dream environment and proclaiming "this could all be a dream, this very moment....you just have to learn to know when that's the case"

Common realtiy checks didn't work for me . I never have digital watches in my dreams and text is very stable. My reality check bases on looking my surroundings heedfully and thinking "Is this a dream? How did I get here? Where was I before?" and imagining feeling like being in dream. All of my LD is trigerred by this thought. When I know I'm dreaming I don't need any other reality check, because actions I'm doing in LD isn't dangerous.

Heh.. i remember wading in a room of water up to my waist, boxes floating everywhere. I laughed with a dream character about how odd this was and said this is probably a dream. We had a good laugh about that....

/stupid >.>