Last night I had my first experience of two dream characters trying to convince me I was having a dream. Has this ever happened to anyone? They were real adament about slowly and point-by-point telling me this was a dream and why. And I just wouldn’t believe them.
Now how frustrating is that?
yes this has happened to me once… and nope i did not go lucid… 
Last night I had a dream where me and my friend ran up a huge amount of stairs (one consectutive staircase) and at the top I was exhausted a little and said ‘damn this is a dream’ and he’s like ‘oh shit it is!’
Was funny, but I woke up immidiately after.
Lots of times, Its ussaly my dream guide that tries to “awake” me. (for real). Next time, ask who they are.
Chiram -
Do you know who it actually was? It was my parents! I was in my childhood home, but it was way different. Everything was decked out in plush white and completely spotless and beautiful. I was flipping out because it was so different.
My parent’s were there. They were giving me serious looks, telling me to “open my eyes” and “look around” that “this is a dream”. Those are all actual things they said.
I awoke with an incredibly strange feeling. It was amazing.
Dont you just hate it 
But at least your sub-conscious is noticing your attempts for lucidity and trying to help you out with your quest. I would suggest trying to place a greater feeling of importance of your dreams. Maybe then because you feel your dreams are really important you will watch what is happening more consciously during your dreams, and if a similar situation arises you will then have a greater chance of becoming lucid. I think. 
Anyway, just to let you know, your not the only one. But this is the best one I’ve heard to date. 
~ceavou~
Yes, I know that, sometimes it seems like everything and everyone is lucid in my dream except the dreamer. I’ve had dreams in which not only persons but also things in environment were giving hints that should have made it obvious that I was dreaming. I HAVE become lucid in some of these dream situations, and when I wake up from those dreams I feel very good not only because I have reached lucidity but also because my “subconscious” was so helpful, it’s a feeling of harmony.
So don’t be too angry, give your subconscious kisses and flowers when you wake up from such a dream even if you didn’t become lucid - maybe if you are too rejecting and negative your subconscious will stop its benevolent efforts that may allow you to get lucid!
At first I was angry at my subconscious, but then I realized how large of a step it is. For those ideas to seep so readily through my dreams is really quite good.
I simply reminded my subconscious that when someone else tells me I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming and there is no other explanation.
All-in-all, it was an excellent experience and I’m very happy about it.
I’ve been noticing oddities in my dreams a lot more lately as well. I’ve done that before, and the amount of times I do it in dreams seems to go in waves. In August and September, I said that something was out of place to myself almost every other dream. It went down in October and now it’s back up again.
of course i know who my dream guide is, very easy. He told me who he was. And nowdays i can just call and there he is 
. Ive noticed that Guides can take any form they wish in dreams. So it could be that your guide took the apperance of your parents for trying to make an entrusting entrance? How could it be if they made a lame ass entrence? you would just dismiss it. grin
I must say in all my experience, never has a dream character even told me I was dreaming. Usually when the topic comes up they seem adamant that I’m not dreaming, if anything. My parents generally go about their business as if it’s perfectly normal to be vacuming a car in the living room.
Never has a dream character told me that I was dreaming either… that I can recall. However, I think I would deffinitely take that as a positive sign that you’re starting on the path to full blown lucidity. Your own mind is helping you out… trying to get you there.
I think its interesting, as a side note, that we all naturally refer to our subconscious as though it were something seperate from ourselves. Could this be why we don’t work with it as often as we could? How else would we refer to it though…
That’s a very good point LostBoy, and one that I was going to raise a few days ago.
People seem to be seperating their subconscious from their conscious, and almost considering it to be an entirely different personality. Maybe even one which is more powerful than their primary ‘confined’ consciousness.
Don’t forget, it’s your subconscious running the entire show, including all those conscious thoughts you have all the time. I suppose it dosn’t help when I refer to it as ‘your subconscious’, rather than simply you.
It dosn’t hold opinions of you (well it does, but you’re in charge of them) and it dosn’t plot to help you, or make fun of you. Essentially, it IS you.
I definitely agree with all of you saying the subconscious is not separate from “us”. It’s like all concepts, to make reality comprehensable we use language and concepts to “organize” this reality with our left brain, and because we are generally “left brain oriented” in the west we give too much reality to the concepts and forget that those concepts focus on a reality that is not the same as the conceptual picture we have of it. So language, which is an extremely valuable tool, becomes a source of separation. There is “consciousness”, the little “top of the mountain” we identify with and there is “subconsciousness” or “unconsciousness”, the huge (limitless?) bottom of the mountain we see as separate from our “self”. If you understand the way we trick ourselves with those words you also understand why for example some zen masters say seemingly crazy things like “consciousness is an illusion”.
Easy said but what to do about it? I agree with Jeff in the thread running about this topic
( slagt.net/ld4all/viewtopic.php?t=1463 )
when he says that it will be easier to bridge this illusionary gap by meditation than by LDs because when we LD the part that identifies the self with thinking and controlling (the ego) wants to rule everything just like we do in waking life. But when we do meditation the way it should be done then slowly there will be more space for the “subconscious”. You really have to “surrender” but ego never wants to surrender so that’s why this is so difficult. Paying attention, concentrate on the moment (without forcing too much), watching the breath will bring you closer. Ego will look for crazy methods that would speeden up the process and will attempt to confuse strange states of consciousness with the real thing but only if you find the guts and patience to meditate regularly (regular schedule extremely important!) there can be surrender…
Nothing stops you from trying meditation IN a lucid dream but I don’t think it is possible for most people to do this regularly. Tibetan dream yoga uses LDing as part of spiritual practice but they also stress the crucial importance of daily meditation in waking life. LDs are nice because there you can see how much “bigger” your mind - you - is than you think it is. But if you only focus on LDs there is too much danger that you will be distracted by all the bliss, special effects and feeling of power and maybe you think you are becoming more “whole” while you are actually learning to fool yourself. And when you wake up from those LDs you still have to wake up in waking life where you don’t have much control and where everything seems separate from you.
There is no shortcut. You have to practice for months to see some initial results, but it can take MANY years to really understand that you are more than the little I you identify with (not just intellectual understanding). I’m not there yet. The people I know who have some understanding after decades (!) of meditation, all stress the importance of daily practice and the abundance of pitfalls that can be encountered during practice. One of them told me about LDs that those are “just like waking life”. He didn’t tell me the reverse, he didn’t tell that life is just a dream and that we should strive to reach “higher” states of consciousness. He said: dreams are just like waking life. He also told me that he gave up on LDing many years ago but that ironically the majority of his dreams are lucid now… I don’t think that’s strange if you practice zazen (zen buddhist meditation exercise) for 20 years, Lucid Living is the most effective LD-technique in the long term…
I said too much, again… please post your comments about this consciousness/subconsciousness discussion in the appropriate thread:
slagt.net/ld4all/viewtopic.php?t=1463
(I will copy and paste this message there).
One time I had a false awakening afer a LD. I was so happy that I succeeded in having LDs that I told a women about it
She answered: “But you are still dreaming”
I went lucid again, but I was really shocked
Traumgänger