Reality Check Failure

This morning I had a extremely vivid false awakening. My friend phoned me and I thoguht it was a pretty weird situation so I questioned myself if I was dreaming. I did that R.C. where you close one eye and see if you can see your nose. I I sure enough could see my nose. I did it a bunch of times to make sure. About A half hour later I woke up for real. Why didnt it work!!

Some RCs work better for some people than others. I have tried the RC you describe here, and it didn’t work for me. I could see my nose even though i knew i was dreaming. The text RC, watch RC and lightswitch RC won’t work for me either.

I usually use the breathing through closed nose RC and finger RC, as they seem to work all the time for me. You should also do more than one RC whenever you do it, just to make sure that you are in fact awake (or not).

For me the most useful RC is checking to read something, looking away, then looking back and seeing if the letters/numbers are exactly the same.

As long as you remember to look away and look back , you will almost definitely see something different to what you saw before.

never tried the nose RC actually.

good luck,
-stranger

I usually don’t stop RCing untill I am trly sure it isn’t a dream. For example, once I was in a dream all RCs proved I was not. I was still sure it was a dream and punched the wall. Non pain. So I was either in a dream or had somehow managed to get drunk without remembering it.

I tried the close-one-eye RC in a LD and it didn’t work. Fortunately I was lucid already :smile:
I always do RC-combo - fingers, nose and one-eye.

Hey,

Just to add to what everyone else is saying I tried that RC and it failed for me in a dream. I was actually surprised in my dream to see my nose.

ypm.

any RC will work as long as you expect to see what you would not see IRL as you do the RC. When you do your nose check RC and you expect to see your nose everytime during the day, it will do the same in your dream. You are supposed to think before you do the RC, “OK I shouldn’t be able to see my nose. If I can’t then I am dreaming.”

You probably know all this, but as simple as it sounds, that is the the most common cause for RCs not working.

Hey,

Just a thought, most of the time when I become lucid in my dreams (which isn’t that often) it’s not from doing reality checks. I do reality checks throughout the day but if I become lucid in a dream, it’s usually becuase I go “Hey I’m dreaming.” and I don’t have to RC becuase I know.

ypm

It is the same for me. I’ll just say this is a dream. Then I do a RC just to confirm that it is a dream.

The same thing holds for me, but I think it’s why I have LD’s so little lately. It is very rare that I just become aware that I’m dreaming, so RC’s might help me. I just don’t seem to have time to think about LD’ing that much in my busy life. Back when I was obsessed wtih LD’ing, it was simply always in my thoughts so I would think of it while dreaming too and “wake up” :wink: to the fact that I was lucid.

On the other hand, when I do realize that I’m dreaming I don’t need a RC to be sure. Although my LD’s are infrequent, my ability to control the dream world is still very strong. I know it’s cliche, but I make Neo look like a wimp when I’m lucid. :smile: My RC’s consist of things like changing my clothes at will or walking outside to where I expect my McLaren F1 to be parked. That lets me know I’m dreaming in a hurry.

Whose Neo? a DC?
and how do u make him look like a wimp?

-stranger

Neo from “The Matrix”. When I say make him look like a wimp I mean I have more ability to control the dream world than he has to control the Matrix.

Rhodester

I know what it is like to have a busy life but, you can still make time to do a RC. Even though I am practicing WILD right now I still do RC on a regular basis. It helps on nights when WILD does not work. A RC should not take longer than 1 minute, if that long. It can really help you to question your reality in a dream.

Hey Rhodester,

Sounds like you have pretty good control over your lucid dreams. I have no problem performing reality check during the day, I just had trouble transforming them into reality checks at night.

I think that I’ve been doing them so long that I don’t spend enough time on each of them now. But I still think that they are important and I am trying to make then “new” to me again.

ypm.

Ah Milod - I wish this was true for me. My Critical faculty hasn’t come online yet. I do extensve reality checks during the day - i.e. looking at digital clock, reading text, questioning whether or not I am in a dream…and since I started trying to have Lucid Dreams (5 weeks ago) have not had a DILD induced lucid dream where I question my state in the dream.

Hmmmm…
Yeah, what about all of us who do lots o’ RC’s when we’re awake, but not ever when we’re dreaming?
Anyone got any idea of the cause of that?
Peace,
Sruthan

You don’t do them often enough. Truly.

Some people need to do them very often, others… not.

In a dream you have only a selection of your everyday habits, and sometimes even a very strong intention is not enough. It may seem that frequent RC’ing is a large part of your waking life, but so are many other things, for example eating.
And I think in many cases your subconscious fights against your will to have LD’s - by removing from your dreams recurring themes when you notice them.
Best conditions to have LD’s are in the beginning, when you’re novice dreamer, still interested and very excited (I had my first LD after 3 days of practising). Then your motivation starts to fade and you get used to the topic - LD’ing is no longer something new.

Reality checks and dream signs are really a strange thing. (At least for me). I have good list of dream signs in my dream journal that occur in my dreams almost every night. Yet the presents of these dream signs never causes me to realize I am dreaming. (Except one. flying) I had a dream where I was a crocodile and I was talking to a bunch of people about how crocodiles fly to catch birds. Now the fact that I was a talking crocodile and giving a lecture to people about how we fly to catch birds did not cause me to become lucid. Yet the very second I jumped into the air to demonstrate my bird catching techniques, something in the back of my mind said wait crocodiles can’t fly. This is a dream and I was lucid (and human) from that point on and had an awesome lucid dream.

Even though dream signs seldom cause me to become lucid I still believe that doing reality checks and writing my dreams down in the morning does some how wake up my critical reasoning in my dreams.As a result most of my DILD occure because I just get this feeling that this is not real and is a dream. Then I will do my RC just to prove it. Even when I practice WILD I find that my LD 's go down when I don’t do reality checks or write in my dream journal.

Hey milod789,

I agree with you, as I said above most of my lucid dreams just happen, sans RC’s, but part of what my daily RC’s do for my is keep my interest in Lucid Dreaming high and keep me thinking about them throughout the day. Which I think helps me become lucid in my dreams.

ypm.