OK, just last night I had a dream where I was walking to my house, and the entire road was paved with thick, soft green grass instead of black asphalt. Turning a corner I saw a large pile of loose change in a gutter beneath a shrub. Kneeling down to scoop some up, I began to wonder if this was a dream (The last lucid dream I had was acheived because in my dream I realised that giant piles of money don’t just appear on the ground anywhere).
So I employed both of my personal reality checks- trying to pass a finger through both my hands and then trying to pinch my nose and blow air through my fingers. Both concluded that this was indeed not a dream, even when it was! I woke up when I was being shot by an old man with a shotgun.
How could this be? I’ve been doing these reality checks for so long, and now that I finally used them in the dream realm they didn’t work. What did I do wrong?
Hi Stanthegarbageman. The sad news is, Rcs don’t have a 100% success rate. There is always a chance that you won’t get lucid when doing Rcs. Heck the last time, i did over 15 Rcs in a dream, and didn’t get lucid! I am seriously not joking!
But don’t get de-motivated. I’ve had 48 LDs, 45 of them thanks to RCs. What you need to do, is make sure that you are REALLY critical of your surroundings when doing an RC. This goes to the dreamworld, and the realworld. When doing an RC, you need to make sure you are seriously acknowledging the possibility of a LD. No matter what circumstance, even when you ‘know’ your not dreaming, always acknowledge the possibility.
When i do an RC in the realworld, I convince myself so much that i could be dreaming, that i start to smile and feel like i’m about to do something exciting…I RC so many times, until i feel there is enough evidence to suggest that i am not dreaming. You need to make sure that you do something like that, since you’ll have the same attitude when doing RCs in the dreamworld.
If you RC IWL, and don’t beleive your dreaming, you will do the same in the dream.
Also, you need to make sure, that you don’t just RC; you look closely at the results and what they mean!
For example, when I look at my watch, look away and look back…even if 3 seconds go by, at a normal rate…I think ‘OMG…could it be!?’
Don’t lose faith in yourself…with high determination, and tips similar to mine, your Rcs will work next time with flying colors!
Maybe you should test other RCs? I did the “check if you’ve got a nose”-RC for like 3 weeks before I finally got to test it in a LD, and it failed! It might not be for me. For example, my hands seem to have become invisible in my dream, which is a damn good RC.
In the past 3/4 dreams where I could have become lucid, I haven’t done so. This is due to the fact that the RCs I performed concluded that I was awake.
I’m going to start trying other methods though, such as MILD.
i had the same problem. i had to find a more reliable RC. i normally wear glasses, but in dreams i dont, so this has become my new RC. altho, i dont really even need them. for the past few weeks, ive become lucid without using any RCs, instead just the sense that i am dreaming. i go with it.
For the longest time I really moved away from doing RCs, but in the past week I’ve really stepped it up and as a result I had the most vivid LD last night thanks to doing a couple of reality checks. This is my strategy:
During the day whenever you find yourself alone, ask yourself: “Is this a dream?” if your answer is no, say to yourself “how can I prove that I’m awake?” Perform two RC’s(not always the same one). If they confirm your belief that you’re awake then say “I am awake since [insert chosen RC].”
After trying many techniques I have found that these are simple and pretty much bulletproof:
-Hold your nose shut with your fingers and attempt to breathe in through your nose. If you can breathe, then you are dreaming (BTW it can just be a quick breath, it should only take a second to reach your conclusion). This is the best RC IMO.
-Hold your hand in front of you(palm towards yourself) so that you can clearly see it, count the number of fingers and look for anything out of the ordinary.
-Try to read something, if you can read something, look away briefly and try to read it again. If you’re dreaming, it should be difficult to read or it will change the next time you read it.
-Close one eye and look at your nose, you should be able to see it(although it will be a little out of focus). If you are dreaming, you won’t be able to see your nose.
Well those are my techniques, be sure to use at least two of them so that you can avoid a false reading. Good luck .
OK, I was dreaming that I was standing on a road by the lake near my town and in the sky was the moon. I looked at the lake, and then at the moon again- but I found that there were at least a dozen moons in the sky, all in a huge circle that stretched across the entire sky. I remembered that this had happened before in a dream and even shouted, “I’M DREAMING!” So then I calmed down and tried to explain what was happening- I guessed that it was the water in the atmosphere that refracted the moon’s image all over the sky. Nodding, I went off and had a normal, non-lucid dream.
My dream self is a real dumbass- I have to remember to keep doing reality checks. It’s hard trying to do it without forcing myself to do it all the time.
