The BIG Reality Check Topic [part III]

The thing about RCs is that in my dreams, I don’t usually get fooled by thinking I’m awake. Hard to explain, but I might be watching a scene like it’s a movie, not questioning it, just getting sucked in. Or it will have the same feeling as when you get carried away by your train of thoughts: You might get lost in thoughts about the day but you know you’re not actually experienceing them at the moment. I don’t know how to explain it better than that. But if anyone else knows what I’m talking about, I was wondering what they do to realize that it’s a dream. LL would be a good practice, but I was wondering if any other specific techniques worked for ppl.
(sorry if this isn’t in the correct topic)

Lark, I think it’s the same for everybody. In dreams, nobody question the reality of what they see, they are just sucked in, as you say. The two main possibilities of avoid this are:
-intending to realize it’s a dream (MILD, autosuggestion)
-taking the habit of questioning reality. That exactly the purpose of the critical question “Am I dreaming or not” Paul Tholey stressed the importance of asking when performing RC’s.

Yes, I suppose you’re right BW. MILD doesn’t seem to be working for me too well so far, but your advie on WILD helped me. I haven’t had a succesful one yet, but I no longer get the anxious feeling. so thanks!

I thought of an interesting RC while reading people’s dream diaries. Sure, there’s the finger-into-palm thing, but what about finger-into-ear? Yeah… It does sound quite… odd… but I want to know what it feels like :lol:

Oh! I should try and poke my eye too! (That would be painful to do in real life :lol:)

sorry if this is all wrong, still getting used to all the terminology.

iirc, someone said you should do a rc when you see a dreamsign. a dreamsign being something commonly associated with one’s dreams? well, what if the dreamsign’s never occur in real life?

e.g. i’ve had velociraptors in my dreams quite a lot, but obviously i’m never going to encounter them in real life other than on screen. is there a way to teach myself ‘okay, raptors simply do not exist in rl, so i must be dreaming’?

read up on the MILD technique. use raptors in the visualization.

The next time you see a raptor KNOW that you are dreaming

An interesting tidbit:
Research shows that rereading a piece of text once has a 75% chance of changing, rereading it twice has a 95% chance of changing. (LaBerge)

So, make sure you’re reading things 3 times if this is a RC of yours.

I’ve been using this RC for a while, and it works great, but… I’m worried. I read this statement and THEN started using this RC. (Like 13 years ago) I’m worried that I may have conditioned myself to not be able to read in dreams!

Making things happen in LD’s is done by believing that it will happen. What if my belief that I can’t read in my LD has made it so that I can’t read in my LD?

Post splitted from the “Helpful hints for Aspiring LD’ers” topic and merged into the “BIG RC topic”

The deam recall has improved after trying to focus myself into remembering. As monday I had no rememberable dreams but after willing myself yesterday I rememered 2 today and 2 dream fragments.

However you know the reality check to check writing/electronic equipment?
It didn’t work at all, I was in a shop in my dream and i was reading the boxes, they were accurate depictions of game boxes but the writing on them didn’t change a bit.

Also the dream after that last night; I was on my PC and I was reading URLs from a programme and they showed up same more than once. Also the computer and stuff was able to be turned off normally.

If the writing stays the same I won’t be able to use it for a RC will I?

I have a question on reality checks…Can RC’s sometimes fail ??

That has happened to me twice :
once where i checked an analog clock and the time didn’t change

and

once when i remember actually being able to read…actually reading the words.

How does this happen?

Sure they can. I don’t think there’s a 100% accurate RC. My use of RC’s is more of a MILD. By doing them throughout the day, I’m more likely to have DS’s that night. It’s these Dreamsigns that I usually pick up on to tell me that I’m lucid.

In fact, I would prefer if RC’s DID fail. It almost seems to mean that you are less lucid, if things are wild enough for RC’s to fail. I think the trick is, during your awake RC’s, do more than the check itself. After the check, consciously observe your environment and logically assess whether you are in a dream. Then, if in a dream and the RC fails, you may get a second chance as you ponder your situation. I suppose that this is similar to LL.

I wonder… is it possible to become so good at RCs, that they’ll work in real life? Can you achieve the same sensation of going from ND to LD in waking life?

@Lucid_Mike
I think that wouldn’t be possible because if you tried diffrent RC’s and they didn’t work in RL then you are obviously not dreaming. However there were times for me when i woke up and my clock told me the time was 2.30!!
I must have done over 7 RC’s to make sure i wasn’t dreaming…then i found out my clock was broken :scream:

Very true, sorry, I wasn’t very clear. I meant that in a dream, it seems that it would be a good thing if a RC failed. That would mean that your dream was cohesive and lucid enough that normal real world logic would apply. But, what fun would THAT be if dreams were as structured and formal as real life?

If a RC worked in real life, that would be messed up. For me, that’d mean not being able to read the same sentence three times in a row. For others, looking at their hand and seeing more than 5 fingers! Other yet would be poking their fingers through their hands/face or breathing while pinching their noses!!!

Although, having the feeling of a LD while awake isn’t that far fetched. That’s part of the idea of Lucid Living.

Hi

From about a week and a half I decided to try something different for me.
When I wake up in the morning, during every hour of the day I do atleast two RCs(digital watch) plus in my mind I tell myself “I have lucid dreams every night and I always remember them!”.
If I havent explained well:
If I get up at seven, from 7.00 to 8.00 I’ll do two RCs and say the sentence at the same time, from 8.00 to 9.00 same, for the whole day.
Well i have had two lds in one night and one the night after.
I’m not able to control my lds yet, so i wake up very soon.
I havent had anymore for atleast four days now.

I’ve noticed that there is no use for me trying to have lds if I dont put as much effort in remembering my dreams as i do in doing RCs during waking life…

What do you people think about it?
Has anyone tried doing the same thing?

Yes indeed, you need to put effort in recalling your dreams first. It’s no use it you manage to have LD’s and can’t recall them. :sad:

Don’t you think it is interesting how RC work any way you expect them to? For example, when i RC by looking at an Ananlog Clock, i don’t focus on the time, i focus on where the hands are. When i look back, i expect the hands to move to another position.
This means when i RC in the Dream World, the time often changes from 11.23 to 4.56.

Others for example, note the exact time which creates the effect that when they get a LD while they are dreaming the time changes from 11.23 to 11.22 back to 11.23.

This means that if i RC by looking at my wrist expecting to see a thumb then it could actually work while someone is Dreaming!

Although I do RC’s randomly through the day, I rarely do RC’s in dreams. Well, last night I did a great RC in my dream with excellent results! (Click Here)

I had pretty much resigned myself to using RC’s as a MILD technique and in order to be aware of absurdities. In dreams, if something really strange happens, I just make the full jump to “I’m Dreaming” This dream was cool because I got lucid without anything REALLY strange occuring.

I look at my hands several times a day. Whenever I wake up, when I feel surprised, when my computer prompts me… but I think I need to add another RC to the routine.

Last night, I was climbing around in a rocky landscape with some interesting caves nearby. Everything was so vivid, I just clued in that I was dreaming. When I checked my hands, I had ten fingers. But that didn’t shake my conviction. I kept climbing around and the next time I looked at my hands holding the rocks, I had six fingers on my right hand. That was reassuring. I thought, Cool! If I’m lucid, that will make this easier to remember.

I stayed lucid for maybe a minute, but I was more interested in continuing to explore the dreamscape than in messing with it. Which meant I slipped back into ND mode and I never did get into those caves I wanted to check out.

In my dreams i have no control over what im doin, im not even sure if its me in them or if im just watching it like a movie. So if i have no control how am i ment to look at my hands and clocks to do RC’s its really annoying.

Hi Bean, welcome to the forum! :wave:

What you describe is absolutely normal. It happens to everybody. In ND’s, we can’t control anything.

By taking the habit of performing RC’s in real life, it will trigger your subconscious to do automatically the same during dreams. In your dreams, the RC will certainly fail, so that you’ll have more chances to realize that you’re dreaming. Good luck! :smile: