Umm… well I think a bit of both. Sometimes subconscious is trying hard to make everything look so real so it can fool you into thinking that you’re awake. I have had several experiences where I believe that my subconscious is playing some tricks on me so I can’t become lucid or can’t change from a low-level LD to high-level LD. Who knows?
I have also missed obvious hints in my dreams. After doing many reality checks, some right before bed with hands, I had a very vivid dream of walking in the park holding hands with a girl I know. She even rubbed my hands and rather than knowing it was a dream, the sensation of the hands of emphasized throughout the entire dream. In one dream, I saw my car (red with tan leather interior) parked and when I got to it it was white. I knew my car should be red and wondered what was going on. But it was like the dream was in a rush and I was forced into the car and sort of “forgot about” the mistake. I have to say though, dreams where you become aware or lucid in a car are VERY fun
I think mine takes the cake. Maybe just because its my own experience but . . . 
I was in a dream(obviously) and I was trying on a large brass chain. When I looked in the mirror I was totally covered in acne. I said “I must be dreaming.” So I was doing a reality check. I looked at my digital watch which turned out to be on my left hand(when I go to bed I switch the watch from my right wrist to my left, interestingly enough in my dreams its always on my left arm, its only on my left arm when I’m in bed but back to the main point) I couldn’t make out the numbers on it, it was blurry, nothing else in the dream was blurry but the stupid watch. I looked away then checked it again but I still couldn’t read the time. Stupid me 
This has happend a lot to me too, nowadays even more.
1 I was on the lawn of my grandmothers house and I was looking to a grassfield. Then I saw this gigantic military/spacestation type of thing. I was really wondering when that came there. Then I asked a whole bunch of people about it and everybody just laughed and asked that was I stupid or something. So I missed it 
2 This happend two days back. I was dreaming that I was in my school. Then a girl asked me to get something for my friends bike (no logic at all…) I went to his bike and took some papers. Then when I got back she asked where in the devil did I go because my friends bike was inside the school 
Then we went to class. I read my paper once (bunch of all diagrams and somekind plans). Then I listend what the teacher was telling infront of the class. Then I thought that this was definately something different than what is in my paper. I looked the paper again. New diagrams and some text. Then I looked my friends papers and again my own. Then it looked like my friends paper. 
I hate DC:s. The cheat me real well in almost every dream. 
I don’t think the subconscious is ever trying to ‘trick’ us in any way. That would just be silly. As LostBoy pointed out, we have been dreaming for as long as we have been viewing the world while awake. The subconscious is used to generating experiences that involve all of the senses, and the conscious mind is used to sitting there letting it do just that. Re-training your brain to function differently while sleeping is a long process, as we have all discovered. 
This topic makes entertaining reading. It seems to be something that plagues us all, including some of the more experienced lucid dreamers.
Anyhow, I thought I would share a similar experience from last night. I came soooo close to realising it was a dream.
I was in a lift in a shop and it went down. It then started moving along sideways. This is identical circumstances to when I had a lucid dream a while back. In that dream I realised that I was dreaming using the logic that lifts do not work like this.
In my dream last night I thought ‘Great, a lift. I’ve recognised a dreamsign’ but I totally failed to check whether or not I was dreaming. Doh doh doh 
This was about 3 days after I read that a calculator can be used as a realitycheck
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this was a long dream, but at the end I do my stairhopping thing and halfaway the stair I stop. There is a doorway on my left and I see many breads. There is a counter on my right. I ask how much it is for a bread. I hear something different then I read, so me and shopkeeper decide to use a calculator. Again another number. Oh, I must accidently have pressed the “limit” button (on this ordinary calculator…), I recalculate the number another few times, but I keep pressing the wrong buttons and seeing the wrong numbers
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yesterday I read on the dutch forum about toilets
and at night I dreamed I needed to go urgent. I didn’t make it in time. oops dirty pants. When I sat down on the toilet, I let very noisy farts, my poo looked very weirded with strange colors, there was no toilet paper and people were running in the room, no privacy, … But I didn’t realise that this was a dream.
Soo that is twice I read about dreamsigns and I dream of them shortly afterwards. It almost like my sybconsciousness is trying to tell me I’m dreaming, but my consciousness doesn’t get the message.
- this last dream, also this morning, I dreamed I had a bowl with fishes. There was about 1,3m water in my whole house and the bowl was standing on the ground. So the fish could swim out of the bowl, in my house, like some people let there birds (eg. parakeets) fly in the house. I thought, my friend will never believe this, the water must be leaking under the doors, there can’t be that much water in my house. Soo I started thinking what reason I could give that friend for all that water in my house without leaking. I didn’t even come to my mind that this was a dream.
Last week I dreamt about a company that provided dreams, it was a large house and every room was a different dream.
A few days later I dreamt I was working in a dream shop, we sold books and tapes and even sweaters with slogans on the front like ‘Are you dreaming?’ but I still didn’t go lucid.
Then last night I dreamt I was talking to a friend on the phone and telling him about ‘Waking Life’ (I saw it for the first time a couple of days ago). I told him about the beautiful animation, I told him it was mostly dialogue, I even told him about one of the director’s earlier films, but I forgot to mention it was about lucid dreams
That happens to me alot. A few nights ago, I was dreaming that I was imagining what it would be like to lucid dream. I was happy that I was lucid dreaming, but in the back of my mind I “knew” that I was only imagining it. I even was marveling at how real it felt when I was walking, and it was just like real life, and I’m just like, “Wow, I hope it feels like this when I REALLY have a lucid dream.” Stupid me. I blame my subconcious.
Anyway, there seem to be alot of people who have these kind of problems. And I know it seems like your subconcious tricks you into staying unconcious, but there are arguments that it’s doing it for your own good. But I’m wondering, what good could possibly come of not having lucid dreams? How could you not be ready? I don’t get it.
i had a dream that i was staying up all night watching videos with a surrogate family composed of all of my dark haired friends. i had to tell them i had to go wake up and have an LD.
shucks, no LD again. better lay off the mj.
I had one where I was sitting in a train that was traveling upside down around Mt. Everest, I said “I think I should do a reality check” so I decide to get out… while the train is moving, the rest of the dream is a very long fall untill before I hit the ground, of course I wake up. That was frustrating!
You do need to pay attention to your dreams. They can tell you alot of interesting stuff.
i had a dream that i brought in a lucid dream CD to my computer class and explained how to LD to everyone. then after the CD was over the teacher asked if I had disk 2. I said no and everyone got mad, so instead we played hockey in the room with a guitar pick as a puck.
I also had a dream that I woke up and my clock didn’t display anything. So I grabbed it and it broke into pieces… so I just went back to sleep. Woke up later to the alarm on the clock…
I’m an idiot when I’m unconscious!
ugh… you guys ever think maybe its your conscious thats being the fool and not locking you in that your dreaming? because it should be your conscious that makes you lucid! 
This morning, I had woken many times, and each time I did, had tried MILD while returning to sleep. On one of those occasions, I did not realize that I had actually returned to sleep and began dreaming. The beginning of my dream was about me lying in bed next to my wife (in the same position that I was actually in prior to falling asleep) I was trying to induce lucidity in my dream! My wife was chanting “You will have a lucid dream” over and over. In the dream, I noticed she was wearing a black T-shirt that had the letters MILD printed in large white letters on the front. I was staring at these letters for what seemed like several minutes; however, I thought I was still awake. After several minutes of my dream wife chanting about lucid dreams, I yelled to her, “Be quiet, I can’t fall asleep if you keep talking!” At that point, I actually woke up and had realized that none of it actually happened in waking life! How could it be any more obvious???
haha, thats tooo obvious… most funny miss i eveer read 
I lay on the sofa at my in-laws this afternoon and fell asleep while watching television. Prior to falling asleep, it was agreed that we would be going out for dinner in the evening.
I had 3, yes 3, false awakenings in a row!! Each one of them almost exactly the same. Each FA, I began by sitting up on the sofa and beginning to put my shoes on in preparation for leaving to eat. During the last FA, I looked at the digital clock on the VCR below the TV and noticed that it said 15:36. Each second, the hour increased by one on the display! How could I not have recognized this as an apparent sign of dreaming?
I feel so close, yet so far away!
It happens to the best of us and u wake up kicking yourself
hehehe
oh well at least sometimes u can realise ur dreaming by these things but occasionally it just occurs a times unexpected
I used to have these nightmares all the time where I’m in my room and the light switch wont work. Just no I read that light switches never work in dreams. I’ve been trying to LD for a long time (although I didn’t know that’s what it’s called) and this wouldv’e been very helpful to know. I think these dreams may be starting again, so there’s a chance I’ll figure it out. I feel stupid.
<----Me
tupid: <----Someone else
lol, it would be much fun reading your LD-failures if i did not miss one REALLY obvious hint this morning…
after doing MILD I fell asleep. I dreamt, that some DC told me: “You are in a lucid dream now. You can do and control everything here!” I did not go lucid and even had problems to remember this dream this morning…
I would kick my a** if I could… 