the BIG Reality Check Topic [part II]

I’m a complete amateur so my opinion may be of no consequence at all but i think it’s important when you ask yourself if you’re dreaming to seriously consider the fact that you may be dreaming. If you just ask yourself if your dreaming without really considrening that you may be, you’ll just fall into the routine of telling yourself no i’m not dreaming.

Like I said, i may just be wrong but this seems like a legitimate idea.

[quote=“Mizzzzzzzzo”]
to seriously consider the fact that you may be dreaming. If you just ask yourself if your dreaming without really considrening that you may be, you’ll just fall into the routine of telling yourself no i’m not dreaming.

[quote]

I find it better to actually presume you are dreaming, and then try and disprove it by finding something (or a few things, if you’ve got time) that make sense and wouldn’t be found in a dream. But eah, that’s a good idea.

A Reality Check ive used when everything was soo real!
Even tho i could jump very light… doing acrobatic jumping to check my reality in the dream… still i wasnt convinced that i was dreaming.
I walked out of my house and still even tho the outside was all different from waking life i still couldnt say to myself that i was dreaming because everything was t oo vivid and too real.

Here is what i did.

I closed the door and looked at the door.
I moved my hand to the lock WITHOUT having a key in my hand.
And then i did the locking movement and suddenly it clicked and i locked the door.
This was a real TurnOn, i was like in a total orgasm.
I looked around feeling like a king!

I think I’ve found a couple new reality checks! They seems to work pretty well for me…
Here is the first one; there is one prerequisite: You need to have less-than-perfect vision for this to work.
I noticed that, in real life, when I wake up, my vision is blurry - I can’t see the clock to do a reality check! If this happens, I instantaneously know that I am not dreaming, before I really have to DO the reality check. Similarly, with false awakenings, I realized that I was dreaming due to the fact that I could see so clearly.
Perhaps, if you have less than 20/20 vision, the first question you should ask yourself when you “wake up” is “Can I see clearly?” If you can, ask “Do I have my contacts in/my glasses on?” Hopefully, the answer really is no - you didn’t just forget to take them off! q= - and you can verify your dream state from there. Though this works best with false awakenings, there’s no reason why you couldn’t use the “vividness factor” check anywhere in a dream.
The second reality check has also served me well in the past. First, keep your alarm clock, or a book, or some object that you could use for a reality check in a specific spot, preferably right near your bed. Use it for a reality check every time you awaken for a good while. Make sure you get used to having it in that specific place. Then, one night, move the object to a different place - far away from where it originally was. You’ll find that in false awakenings, the object will still be where it originally was! Your brain hasn’t had time to get used to the change yet. Ask yourself whenever you wake up if the object is really where it is supposed to be, and you might just find you’re dreaming. This is still working for me, and I have moved my object a long time ago.
Sorry that was so long! I really hope it helped. Thanks for reading…good luck!

For the people wearing glasses:

Wouldn’t just putting your glasses off for a moment work? Or is your vision also blurry in a dream? I think it’s not.

Anyone experienced with that?

JJJ

Wow; what a brilliant idea, I hadn’t thought of that! I’ll try it if I get a chance next time…
Come to think of it, I’m not sure if I wear glasses in my dream, though. That’s why I thought of the previous reality check up there. But if I am wearing glasses, and I know I’m dreaming, I’ll tell you what happens when I take them off. Thanks for the idea!

Well my dream-version of my alarm clock worked just fine this morning even when i checked it 3 times when i had a false awakening. Then i went up and through a doorpost wich now has a door in it since a couple of years back… Once through the “door” i was fully dressed and sat down on a chair to have breakfast. I fell asleep on it (or the dream faded) and woke up in my bed one hour earlier than the clock was in my dream. This time the awakening was a real one.

My only lucid dream so far was triggered by a digital watch. I guess i might need the second display for it to get messed up, minutes and hours seems to work fine :eh:

My other RC’s which i perform whenever i have a chance to are to try and put my finger through the bathroom mirror, counting fingers and reading texts in public transportation environments and of course to ‘backtrack’ through my thoughts. Anyone have an idea about other RC’s you can do discretely without people noticing? I often dream of trains, busses, airplanes etc. So i need to be able tio do RC’s in them in real life.

On the other hand my mobile seems to be a good RC even thought it does not have seconds. The whole display got messed up in my dream this night when i looked twice. And the clock display was not even there anymore. Too bad everything faded instantly as i relised it was a dream which freaked me out and then i woke up :grrr:

A little tip for those who uses an alarm clock at night to do RCs in their dreams…

If u have a Cell phone with vibrator, put it under your pillow after you have set it to ring in the middle of the night. Hopefully you will hear the beeps in your dream and do a RC, but if you dont you will probably feel your pillow vibrating. It worked well for me. I also use a hands free ear piece some times. Just plug it in to your cell phone and you will hear the sound louder.

i wear contacts mostly so in my dreams, i’m not wearing glasses, but i have had dreams (non-lucid ones) where i would get poked in the eye or something and my contact would pop out and i’d be trying to put it back in (which never works btw because my contact will grow and get thick) but if i look at the world one eye will be clear and the other eye will be blurry

i had a lucid dream once which was an FA, and i woke up in my bed after trying the spinning technique and was like “it didn’t work” i squinted my eyes at my alarm clock (the world was still blurry but when i squinted it came into just enough focus for me to read my clock) i was pissed when i woke up for real because absolutely no amount of squinting would let me read my clock from my bed (my vision is absolutely awful)

so i dunno if corrective lenses would be good to use for a reality check, cause my dream vision is still blurry w/o them, probably cause i expect it to be

anyway, on to my frustration… i usually don’t even do RCs to become lucid, usually my dreams are so weird that i know i have to be dreaming the second i slightly question reality. but the other day my environment wasn’t too out of the ordinary, and even though i could fly, it wasn’t proof enough for me. i was flying around and nobody was impresssed. come to think of it, my DCs are never impressed with my ability to fly, they act like it’s normal. so i started wondering if i could fly in real life since nobody was impressed

i was sitting there hovering in the air and trying to remember if i could fly IRL. i then decided to do another test so i landed and closed my eyes and tried to conjure something up (i wasn’t sure if flying was normal or not but if i could conjure something up i thought then i definitely would know for sure that i was dreaming)

it didn’t really work (i’m really bad at conjuring stuff up) and i couldn’t open my eyes again after i closed them (i should’ve never closed them in the first place) and i woke up :sad:

why couldn’t i remember that flying is not something that people do IRL?

Would putting a sticky note everywhere you go on your morning routine help to make RC checks. Like, putting a sticky note that says “dreaming?” on all your books, maybe a column in the subway station? on your comptuer at work. Would that help or would you just grow dependant on the notes to make the RCs.

It would certainly be interesting for other people that find them. =D

-Crowe

When I did RCs in the past I just wrote “LD” on my hand and everytime I saw this I did an RC. After a while I did them spontaneously so I guess it rather helps instead of making you dependant. Don’t do them only in the morning; do them the whole day. The most difficult part is to do them a lot without making a mere routine out of it. With routine I mean doing them without really expecting to be in a dream, already assuming you’re not dreaming while doing them. You really have to create a critical reflex, always being open to the possibility you’re dreaming right now. And try to combine RCs with other techniques like WBTB and MILD, don’t just rely on them.

I’ve heard that connecting seeing your hand with doing an RC works well. I’m going to pursue this method… If you make a habit of doing an RC when you see your hand (or anyone else’s!) you’ll do it in your dreams, too, from what I understand. Of course the fact that your hand may look distorted in some way while dreaming also works fine as an RC :wink:

I’ve always had a problem with reality checks because I perceive everything as completely normal in a dream. Blurry clock, messed up text, etc. I think I definitely need more practice in that area. However… during probably the clearest LD I’ve had (which last about 10 to 20 secs), the first thing I did AFTER I realised ‘this is a dream’, was poking my arm through a wall ‘because this is a dream and anything is possible’.

Has anyone here tried the computer beeping programs? My computer is in my room so I could do it, but none of the programs work correctly. :\

Other than that I think I might use my alarm clock. I can see it from my bed when I raise my head since it’s standing a few meters away and not next to my head. So I can always see the bright red numbers when I look up, and I also glance at it pretty often when I’m at the computer or in my room.

I guess my problem is that I’m too accepting of my dreams. I’m very quick to believe stuff so when I dream it’s like everything is perfectly normal to me, even when strange stuff happens. I suppose this is the situation of a normal dreaming person. I hope that through practice with MILD and a dream diary I’ll be more alert when I go to sleep. My mind is lazy, heh. ^^

I’ve been doing RCs for a month or so with my digital watch when I can remember to check. But the one LD that I’ve had didn’t occur by those RCs. I was playing cards in my dream and I looked at two cards another person set down. When I looked a second time, they changed from kings to sevens. Then I knew I was dreaming, and changed my cards. Man, that was the weirdest feeling.

Do any vets have a suggestion on about how many RCs a day you should do? I don’t count them, but it seems like it could be around 10-20…

Now, I´m a real n00b when it comes to RC’s, cuz I never ever ever get the idea in my head when I´m dreaming, cuz I never seem to think anything might be wrong…sorry, digressing

But, wouldn´t it be more effective if, say, instead of using a chime or beep for a RC-“inducer”, you would record an mp3 that would play with regular intervals troughout the night, with a voice that said; “You are dreaming” or “Do a reality check”
I mean that would give the command straight away, instead of just -hinting- it…

Shouldn´t that work better, or am I missing something? :eh:

umm that may work, i have tryed it but it failed for me. i think teh reason that the clock beeping and stuff works is because taht when u hear it u sub con do an rt.

with the recording it might come into your dream like somthing diffrent. ever read the reports on the nova dreamer :happy:

I think I figured out how to make my mobile phone beep with intervals. I’m not sure though if it continues the intervals or if I should hit a button manually. I think I’ll also use it during the day because I really keep forgetting to do reality checks. I’d forget my own head if it weren’t attached to my neck, I swear…

But anyway. If I set the alarm interval during the night to signal me in my REM sleep, how effective would this be? And how long should the intervals be? 90 minutes, 70?

My new RC made me go lucid, try it out. During the day, as long as you are talking to anybody, tell them they might be dreaming. do that to EVERYONE, eventually you’ll say that to a DC, and you’ll realize that you, yourself are dreaming, it rocks =D