How to seperate an FLD from an LD?

I for one disagrees with Ghosties definition :shy: I have been flying in dreams all my life, long before i heard about LD’s. And I don’t consider those dreams to be FLD’s. I am having dreams today where i still do “lucid stuff” but they are not LD’s. But i still don’t think they are FLD’s.

I have had dreams where I do get lucid, but very low lucidity. Almost as if I can’t control myself within the dream. I may do lucid stuff, i may no non-lucid stuff. It’s those kind of dreams where you get lucid but when you wake up it didn’t quite feel like a lucid dream. That’s what i call an FLD. It’s hard for me to describe.

They are still hard to separate though.

I think we could seperate them by time of recall. If you recall it the second you wake up, its a LD. You were concious of what was happening and you basically continued to be concious, its just like you did something IRL two minutes earlier and recall it happening.

If you need some time to recall it (and when you recall it you say in your mind something like “Ah, yes, that was it”), it was probably a FLD.

This is only for me, I don’t know about you guys. Also, there is this feeling.
https://community.ld4all.com/t/this-feeling/34315/2

I was in a building, looked at my hands, realized I was dreaming (Or think I did)
Was excited and nervous at the same time, I was so happy I was nervous lol
I thought of what to do next, and came the rush
“Mom will wake me up for school oh my god oh my god! What do i do What do i do?!”
Then I started to lose lucidity I guess,
Before it totally drained up, i did mess around a bit, levitating, teleporting, messing around with colours of the background
When it did drain up, i woke up, maybe the drainage started coz imagined it draining
Damn you, school! :razz:
But it was an LD right?

Ye, it was.

I don’t think it’s about recall either. FLD’s generally have less recall, but they are not FLD’s because of the recall.

I agree, bringing in recall will only confuse things in my opinion. A Lucid Dream is a dream where you know you were dreaming, whilst you are in the dream. Recall is unrelated, perhaps trends might happen, but I think it will cause confusion if it is tied to the core definition.

I would define A False Lucid Dream, as a dreaming about what might happen if you Lucid Dreamed. Which is what makes it confusing to identify. It’s like a story playing out where you act like it was a lucid dream, doing what you might have imagined, but you aren’t aware its a dream exactly, its just part of the storyline of the dream. To me a dream where you do lucid stuff like flying, is just an ND, all be it an interesting one, unless you are doing that stuff as part of the storyline of it being an LD.

Somebody might have already said this, but the way you can seperate the two is the question, Did you at any point have that, “I’m dreaming!” moment? If you never clicked, but had powers, it was a FLD, if you did have the click, it was a LD.
After my first LD, I started to question myself too, but I had the click, so it was definately a LD.

I didn’t mean recall by itself, but time of recall. When I wake up from a LD, I actually feel the dream fading, but while waking up from a ND I just feel dream memory fading. And onces I wake up from a LD I remember it instantly.

@madison: That definition does not work for WILD method.

I don’t even think the term “False Lucid Dream” is necessary. It just confuses things and perhaps even have some physiological effect that actually gives us FLD’s. As I said I’ve had lucid dream that could be considered “false”, but I’d rather just call them “less lucid” to avoid confusion.

I also have hard times comparing my FLD with LD cuz its almost the same thing, and i dont know how to know if i was lucid or not.

I agree with what you say about flying, and the whole “powers” = LD is not something I can agree with.
Actually, I disagree with the FLD concept as a whole. Either a LD–whatever degree–or a ND.

In general I am not fond of the term “lucid dream” due to the ambiguity one could (and I sure do) connotate with the semantics of “lucid”. I had preferred if it was called “conscious dream”… anyway I can live with it.

It’s very simple to know if you were lucid or not. At any point in the dream were you aware of the fact you were dreaming?

If yes, then that is a lucid dream, if no then its a normal dream. False lucid dream usually means a dream where the the dreamer acts like they are lucid, but doesn’t actually realize he is dreaming. Basically this is when the dreamer exhibits a high level of control and manipulation of the dreamworld without recognizing it for a dream.

This isn’t always the case, especially if you had the LD earlier in the night…

I’m just wondering why it would matter? If you do the stuff you wanted to do in a lucid dream, and enjoy doing it, why would you need to put a label on it?

Well yeah that is right but it can be used as a indication for progress towards real, frequet lucid dreaming; having some true LD’s might motivate you more to put even more effort into it than some FLD’s. And keeping them appart helps you see where you stand in your quest for lucidity.
Also if you wanna brag about your LD count you’d better have the right number :content:

Yeah, i guess you’re right :smile: I usually just count the good ones haha.

My take is that if you “exibit control in the drea without recognizing it for a dream,” then you are indeed not in control of your dream, you may merely think you are (/were–when you wake up).

Not neccessarily in control of the dream, no, but you can certainly effects aspects of the dream without being in control of the dream in the sense that your guiding whats happening. Leveling a mountain range in a dream is certainly on some level manipulating the dream. I think an aspect of FLD is whether you do it in role or not.

For instance if you had a dream where you were a wizard and conjured fireballs to destroy your foes I’m not sure I would call that a false lucid dream sice you are playing that role within in the dream. However if it is a totally normal dream and yopu jump out of your window, start flying and decide to travel to some fantasy land that would probably fall under the category of FLD. It’s the kind of dream you might wake up from and if your recall was mediocre wonder “was I really luicd there?”

Though I do find if you’re askingthat question 9 times out of 10 you were not at any point lucid.

I believed I understood the difference between the two until I read through this thread… I have alot of dreams where my character does things you would normally think be a part of LD. But they aren’t. My character do these things normally, without the “oh my god I have control” aspect of it. But then again, as I’ve mentioned before, I often play the parts of people who aren’t me. A dream I had about a month ago, I was playing the part of a demi-god, and things LD capable, were just normal to me. I wasn’t lucid at all, to my knowledge.

See this is what confuses me. You say you act like it was an LD, which would imply it was an FLD, but in the same sentence, you say it’s part of the story. There must be a difference between “lucid behavior” and “storyling driven”.

As stated above, in that example. The demi-god. It was just a role as part of the dream.

Flying is a very common thing in my dreams. I often fly to get to places my character is trying to get to as part of the dream, but it is dream-driven. It wasn’t a conscious choice I made, no. But at the same time, my character does not fly as a “hey look I can do what I want” thing. I would not affiliate this flying with any part of LDing.

So where do you draw the line between “normal for the dream”, and “lucid behavior”?

Same for this… How do you know that flying to that fantasy land wasn’t a normal part of the dream sequence?

I would say that the difference lay in if you actually realised it was a dream, during the dream. A dream where you dream you are some sort of demi-god manipulating the world. I would call a Normal Dream. It’s an extraordinary storyline for the dream sure, but I wouldn’t call it a FLD.

The point of a Lucid Dream is not about controlling the dream, or manipulating things. A Lucid Dream is realising it is a dream. A False Lucid Dream, is where you dream about realising its a dream. You can dream about anything, being the king, a demon of some kind, you can even dream that you have realised its a lucid dream. You act like its a lucid dream, with that being a part of the storyline of the dream, but you are not actually aware that it is a dream. There is no, “oh I’m really dreaming right now.” it’s basically acting out a lucid dream in a normal dream. Kinda like you could dream you were playing a computer game, without realising you are playing a game.

It’s like fantasising about how it might be to be lucid.