Can you dream that you are lucid, when you're not?

Like a false awakening, I wonder if you can have a false lucid dream. I ask because I have had a few lucid dreams recently, but I feel like I’m not especially lucid. I feel “awake” in my dreams like a drunk feels “conscious”, if that makes any sense.

I wonder if it’s possible to dream you are having a lucid dream, but in fact, it’s just a regular dream, and you don’t realize that the realization of dreaming isn’t just a dream (like a false awakening isn’t really being awake).

Thoughts?

:peek:

The Rev

I’m sure this is possible. I had a fake lucid dream a few nights ago… I knew I was in a dream… in my dream but I was half awake and it felt like I was watching myself be lucid but I was not be lucid at all.Sorry if that didn’t make sense :meh:

Yes, those are called False Lucid Dreams, shorting FLD. You are dreaming about doing stuff you’d do in LD. But you don’t know that you are dreaming.

That’s sometimes confusing, but oveally it’s easy to recogenize what was FLD and what was LD. In FLD you simply don’t know that you are dreaming. FLD’s are mostly common for beginners - they’re on good road, closely to lucidicy.

It’s weird we can have these; how can we dream we are aware we are dreaming? weird…

That was a good explaination, Duck. :yes: In a “False Lucid Dream”, you might for example, dream that you are flying. This is something you would normally do in a lucid dream, even though you aren’t lucid. :smile:

Hope I could help! :thumbs:

@Li10
If you dream of being aware that you’re dreaming, you’d have just LD - you would know that you are dreaming. In FLD’s you aren’t aware that you’re dreaming.

yeah, but I meant it would be weird if you knew you were dreaming but weren’t lucid…

kinda like if you remember you forgot to do your geography homework. They’ll literally kill you if you don’t do it. But you act as if you don’t remember you remembered you had to do the geography himework…

That was one of the weirdest metaphors I’ve came up, including one I did with digging up a dead dog.

Ah, never mind.

(please take note of the message above my avatar)

That;s not very hard to undestand. For example, imagine you’ve got some troubles learning to fly in regular LD. But you want to master it so much that you are starting having NDs about “lucid” flying. It’s easy to tell difference between FLD and LD: in FLD you fly easily but unconciously; in LD you are just beginning to learn it but you are aware of your dream state.

I have those a lot - last month I dreamt that I had to fall asleep in a restaurant in order to get an LD, only they wouldn’t allow me to sleep anywhere. Yet I kept falling asleep and getting FLD’s, it was really trippy. The mind can be pretty weird XD In other words, you are indeed dreaming that you’re dreaming lucid, but you’re not lucid. Woa.

Do you get what I mean, Ashvura?

I understand it but I still find it weird…

I know what you mean - and it’s not as weird as you’d first think. When you are not aware you are dreaming, your mind believes that the dream is reality. So, if you dream you are lucid dreaming, what your mind is thinking is that your surroundings are real. That’s why you may not become lucid even if you dream of being lucid - because your mind fully believes the dream is real. You could see it as multiple levels of reality for your mind:

[ waking life ] - this is the real you, sleeping in bed
|
V
[ dream life ] - this is you in the dream
|
V
[ fake lucid dream ] - this is you in the LD in your dream

The normal situation without a FLD or LD is that your mind thinks it’s in the second. With a normal LD, your mind knows about both the first and the second. And in an FLD, your mind is in the last two, whilst thinking it is in the first two.

I hope that makes sense ^^;

I can’t fully agree with it, if I got it right :tongue:.

Let’s say that I fall asleep normally. I dream about for example a long travel. I got bored and I want to take a nap. In that nap (in dream) I dream about being in TV show. I have to throw axes into evil gentically muted food. I realize that it’s so odd that it must be a dream. So I fly out of TV studio and do lucid stuff.

It’s lucidicy, no matter what happens. If I know that I’m dreaming, it’s Lucid Dream. There is no diffrence I dreamt of being asleep before getting lucid or not. I don’t have to know which falling asleep was real. I don’t have even to think about it.

Now let’s say that I fall asleep normally. I dream about for example a long travel. I got bored and I want to take a nap. I decide to do WILD in it. It works unbelieveable fast. In that nap (in dream) I dream being in TV show. I know that it’s dream. So I fly out of TV studio and do lucid stuff.

That’s also LD.

Now let’s say that I fall asleep normally. I dream about for example a long travel. I got bored and I want to take a nap. In that nap (in dream) I dream about flying and doing lucid stuff.

That would be FLD. I didn’t realized that I was dreaming.

In your first two examples you indeed get a real LD, not a fake one, by falling asleep/dreaming inside your first dream. So in that case, the model is [waking life] -> [dream life] -> [real lucid dream]. The moment you get your real lucid dream, you should realize that the nap you were taking that led up to it was also a dream. If not, then you have a really weird mix of lucidity and non-lucidity! Where your mind is aware of one part that is a dream, but doesn’t realize the other part is a dream, too. At that point no theory will be able to tell which one is ‘real’ lucid and which one isn’t; that’s up to your own experience. Generally as soon as you wake up you’d be able to tell which is which; I know my real LD’s differ significantly from my FLD’s. The whole feeling of awareness is different.

With this, I am on Ducks side. If you know that you are dreaming, it is a lucid dream.
Some people get mixed up because they have low level lucid dreams where they know that they are dreaming, but their mind is not working at a high level. These are low level LD’s not FLD’s.
It might be easier to understand if you look at it like a graph.

Dream

ND low control-------------------------------high control
|
| boring ND fun ND
|
|
| low level LD The LD that everyone
LD wants and belives is
an LD

Control is not directly related to LD’ing. You can have very high control in an ND, but you do not know that you are dreaming. It is also common for beginners to have very poor control in LD’s. Their mind is just getting used to LD’s, and when it starts working with all the reality knowledge that it has, it just keeps getting in the way of the LD, by saying “you can’t do that” all the time. This causes you to have poor control with typical LD type things like flying, making things appear etc. These things are nice to be able to do in an LD, but are not a requirement for an LD.
don

The fact that you don’t realise that the part of the dream beforethe WILD was a dream doesn’t mean you don’t knwo that the CURRENT part is. So there is no mix of lucid and non-lucid dreaming there. The fact that you may not realise that the previous part was a dream depends on if you are clear headed enough to recognise any dreamsigns from that time if you indeed think back to that time.

If you dream about flying, that isn’t a FLD, it’s just a flying dream. But if you fly in the dream because the THEME is lucid dreaming, then it’s a FLD. There is a difference between thinking “I’m dreaming” and Knowing that you are dreaming. If you go around calling every dream in wich you do something you COULD do in a LD a FLD, then every dream would be a FLD.
Wether you call a dream Lucid or not relates to you consciousness within the dream and not what happens in the dream.

It still could be good because if you think its an LD then surely you may remember some intentions to do in an LD and do them so its not all bad

I think this better describes my experience, actually. I know I’m in the Dream World, but I’m still involved in my dreams more like they’re part of the Physical “Waking” World.

Thanks for all the input, everyone.

:peek:

The Rev