My usual procedure when thinking I might be dreaming is to pinch the back of my hand and to look at my watch. It works fine most of the time, however one time it failed:
I was inside a dream. Since stuff was going on that seemed unusual to me I decided to do some RCs. I pinched the back of my hand, and expected it not to hurt, but it did! To make sure i was really not dreaming since the stuff happening got stranger and stranger i looked at my watch, looked away, imagined another display and looked back again but it was still the same time. Since i was pretty sure by then that this was a dream even though the RCs failed to do their job, I concentrated on waking up and there i was lying in my bed.
I don’t yet understand how that could happen and what went wrong. If you have experienced similar things or have a possible explanation please don’t hesitate to reply to this topic. I really have no clue how they could fail. I expected those RCs to succeed and usually they do succeed if I am in a dream and expect them to.
I am afraid that this condition might develop further, maybe like some kind of immunity. That would mean that I have to find better checks… is the subconcious so good that it can learn to avoid LDs? Could this be a hidden fear of LDs? (I doubt it) Or could it just have been a coincidence and won’t happen again?
I’m puzzled and confused
– lasty
(some of you may recognize me from the old board a whole while back)
It sounds to me like you need to develop a more reliable way of performing RCs.
Take the watch RC, for example. If you look at the watch, memorize the time it displays and look away, then when you look back your essentially going to put that same time back on the watch, simply because you’re still holding that time in your head. I find the most reliable way is to actually try to change the time while you’re looking at it. You’ll find that by thinking of another time, and concentrating on the display, the time will change.
To be honest though, the important part of any RC isn’t to rely on the test failing, but rather simply to put you into the state of mind where you’re questioning your surroundings. You said that several unusual and unrealistic things were happening in the dream, so you did an RC. Regardless of whether the RC failed or not, you should have been thinking “This might all be a dream”. From there, I find that it’s almost instantly revealed whether I’m dreaming or not, just by the way I feel.
Welcome to the forum. It sounds like you’ve got some experience to share with us.
I agree with Atheist when he said you did have a reality check. I am having similar problems with reality checks, but I know I`m still havimg lucid dreams because I controlled the flow of two dreams I had last night despite remembering any reality checks. I think that over time and with practice and patience we subconciously do reality checks without even thinking about it.
I made a thread about this quite some time ago, you could probably find it if you really wanted to. Most RCs can quite easily fail. People say things like light switches never work in dreams, but they can. So what you need to do is just look round and try to see if you’re in a dream, it should be pretty easy to tell. If you do RCs just out of habit in dreams, then use just use that as a reminder to look round and see if its a dream, rather than relying on the RC to tell you if you’re dreaming or not.
Personally I never use RCs, the second I question whether I’m dreaming or not I know, because I know the feeling now. Once you’ve had a few LDs you should know what its like too, and then theres not much point in RCs, except if you’re using it like I told you.
