Non-real-time Dreams :S

Moved from the Quest for Lucidity forum

Hey everybody!

I’ve been reading, journaling, and doing everything in my power to become actively lucid for about 6 days (nights) now. I know that’s not a terribly long time, but I’m somewhat discouraged at the fact that when I remember my dreams, I don’t remember actually experiencing them real-time. Let me just point out that before now, I barely ever remembered my dreams (except when I was very young).

The fact that I can’t experience my dreams in real-time (whether they be lucid or not, that doesn’t matter) discourages me and makes me feel like since I can’t know what’s happening WHEN it’s happening, I can’t do reality checks, which means I can’t lucid dream. I’m really curious to know if this happened to other people in their learning stages, and if they got past it fairly quickly or not. Please give your entire story! :smile:

Thank you, I appreciate it!

P.S. - To clear up the idea, I can’t experience the dreams in real-time, but I remember them fairly distinctly in the morning. They’re remembered as a “past memory” if you will, rather than me experiencing the dream while I slept. If you need more clarification, feel free to ask.

Thats just called Normal Dreaming :wink: Everyone has it. ND’s are not in real-time, they are like memories you know that happened last night as dreams, but you dont actually “experience them” at THAT time. I thought that was abnormal too at first, but everyone has that, thats just normal dreaming. Lucid Dreams though, are real time. When you become lucid, you will actually experience the dreams lucid, real-time, consiously.

Yes, you can not do RCs “consiously” because you are not experiencing the dreams while they are happening, you have to make a habit or autosuggest RCing.

I think it depends when you wake up. If I wake up straight from a dream then I will remember actually experiencing the dream, but otherwise I might just vaguely remember certain details about it, like I had heard about it from someone else and not actually experienced it.

Thanks guys, that reassures me. Now I understand the importance of RC’s in real life.

Sorry for the double post, but it’s necessary.

If ND’s are “like memories you know that happened last night as dreams, but you dont actually ‘experience them’ at THAT time”, then when you become lucid you ALL OF THE SUDDEN become concious? Because when I reached low-level lucidity once, I still remembered it as a dream, I didn’t remember experiencing it real-time (even though it only lasted a few seconds lucidly)…can anyone clarify?

Here’s a question: If you remember a dream, how would you know that you didn’t experience it “in real-time”? I don’t understand how you could make that judgment. Of course, I’m not in your head, and there are some things that words really can’t describe.

I’m going to guess that it’s a function of when you wake up, as Confused mentioned. I know that if I wake up right after a dream, it seems clear as day to me–as if I’d really just done everything in the dream. But if I don’t wake up afterwards and try to remember it in the morning, the memory is very vague. In essence, I feel detached from the dream. Maybe that’s what you’re talking about?

Datameister, that is exactly what I am talking about, thank you for putting it in an essence.

Now my problem is…if I’m unable to rationally do RCs in real time, how am I supposed to do them at all? Dreams are just my subconcious rambling on, so how am I supposed to make a rational decision to do a RC? I don’t understand…:sad:

That sense of non-real-time-ness is an illusion. It seems like the dream is totally detached from your waking-life experiences, but it actually wasn’t while you were having it. Try to remember something trivial that happened a few days ago in real life, and you’ll find that your memories are probably quite vague and…well, dreamlike. Important and/or recent events stick out much more in our memories. Our brains subconsciously consider dreams to be quite unimportant (since they’re not real), and so they try to wipe out the memories.

Bottom line: if you feel like a dream was very vague and disconnected, it actually wasn’t. It just seems that way now. (A notable exception is dreams during early REM stages, or while you’re sick. These can be totally random.)

In answer to your question, the way you force yourself to do RCs in dreams is through habit-forming. If you are in a habit of doing them very frequently and they’re important to you, you should begin doing them in dreams. Some people can’t seem to do this, and that’s okay. You could alternatively try WILD (which negates the need for RCs) or try simply recognizing your personal dream signs.

For example: I’ve found that I can dream about my deceased dog almost on command. If I focus on my memories of her as I fall asleep, I’m practically guaranteed to dream about her. She’s a major dream sign for me. If I remind myself that anytime I see her I must be dreaming, I’m sure I’ll achieve lucidity sooner or later. (So far, it’s only actually worked once. But I’ve had close calls on numerous occasions. I’m feeling lucky tonight…:wink:)

Good luck!

EDIT: Just a small follow-up: no, I wasn’t successful last night. Still working on it…

It’s exactly what you describe: when you become lucid, you all of sudden become conscious and experience the dream at THAT time.

It may happen when you have a lucid dream, say, half an hour before you wake up then you sometimes don’t remember very well this dream; or when you have fuzzy LD’s, what can happen as all the LD’s are not automatically very vivid.

Autosuggestion and repeated stuff makes your subconscious remember to do those things. Suppose you learn golf. Your subconscious will “think”: “OK, the body is repeating those movements during day life, thus it must be important, I’ll do the same during the night” then you’re likely to have a dream about golf. It’s the same with realizing you’re dreaming or performing RC’s. Intending to become aware in dreams, performing RC’s during real life will ask to your subconscious to take this in account. Of course, it’s very caricatured but I think it works almost like this.

I’ll move your questions into the First Steps forum cause it may interest beginners who often have the same questioning. :smile:

That’s an interesting point. NDs maybe memories when you remember them but when I do, I remember also what I was thinking at a certain point, I know that point existed in a dream and so I could have acted differently there. It’s a memory now, but I know I took place in it. Hmm…

Thanks. I finally understand about RC’s (the fact that I have to do them in real life).

For me I think the same like you. Dream are just past memory we can’t believe them in real time.

But when youre lucid its usually another feeling and you know you are dreaming and take complete control and know your there . So its more like normal life.

You experience every dream in real time, your memory of that is just not good enough. The more conscious you are in a dream (doesn’t matter if you are lucid or not) the more vivid your memory of experiencing the dream will be.

When I think really hard about something in a dream, even a normal dream, I remember that dream almost as good as I remember events in my real life.I think thats because my brain gets more active and therefore I remember that dream better.

We do experience dreams in real time, at least as much as we experience real life in real time. Sure, there’s a split-second delay while the neurons fire…but bottom line, it’s basically real time.

It’s your memory that makes things seem like the dream never really happened. Very common.

I think I recall reading somewhere that there is .03 (or .3) seconds lag between the visual information we receive and our perception of it.

I often wonder if a memory you have about dreaming is a memory of a dream that happened during the night or simply thoughts implanted by your mind when you wake up or something along those lines… How can you tell then if a dream-memory you had is a memory of a real dream that happened during the night or a memory made up by your mind?

Because we have LD’s and because the brain is functioning the same way during LD’s and ND’s. Thus we can see dreams are not false memories created in the morning. By the way, this urban legend came from one dream of Alfred Maury and was spread by Freud.

Bottom line: you can never be absolutely positive that a dream is not simply a false memory created by your own brain upon awakening. After all, how would you know? If this occurred, it would be possible to have a false memory of a lucid dream, too.

But more importantly…who cares? All we have left over from dreams is our memories of them, anyway. Whether if those are “false” memories or “true” ones, we still have them in our heads, which is where they originate from in any case.

In my way of thinking, a memory of a dream that was created as I awoke is as good as a memory of a dream that “really happened” while I was asleep.

In the same way, you can never be absolutely positive that your real life is not simply a false memory that has been created by your own brain just now. Thus I find it’s clearer to use the same hypothesis for ND’s and LD’s. :grin: