Hello folks!
I and others have been talking about this quite a bit in the Telegram chat but I thought I'd post it up on the new Forum to see how people convince themselves to take Reality Checking seriously, how do you install that sense of doubt about your surroundings and your senses to get the best from your Checks? Any tips, or experiences and breakthroughs would be cool.
Thanks
Dan
I'm trying to construct a daydream type thought process to get me in the best state of mind to be susceptible to the thought I could be dreaming.
I read once about a natural lucid dreamer who was always looking over their shoulder due to having terrifying nightmares. That was what made them a natural Lucid Dreamer because they were always looking out for the dream world because that's where these nightmares occured. I experimented with a sense of dread or looking over my shoulder when doing reality checks and this proved to be effective but probably not something I would recommend doing long-term.
My best natural LDs have been a very strange event where I've said "hang on! that's not right" and got lucid, but often it's right at the end of the REM period and I wake up almost immediately. Somehow need to trigger lucidity earlier on when there's plenty of REM time left!
Yup, can't be a bad thing in the whole LD practice and Living Lucid state of mind.
You mean you get that "hold on... this feels strange" in waking life which you use to reality check or you mean in dreams when you have been lucid in the past? Because generally, that's what has caused me to become lucid. I don't think I've ever done it as a dream sign triggered 'awakening'.
That's exactly what I've started doing since you mentioned it again in the streams (although I think I only started using the 10% yesterday so I might have been going back over one of the videos), it's certainly helping.
I like the mental game, I used to pretend, when I was a kid I might add, that I was an alien and if I blinked many times in a row, I was sending images back to my mothership...so I have a little experience in this field!! haha
A few thoughts:
Remember that roughly 10% of your "active" brain activity is spent in dreams. So there is a 1 in 10 chance that you are dreaming whenever the thought arises. Remind yourself that you're wrong 10% of the time, that's why you're not lucid in all your dreams.
Try to see your experience of the world for what it is, namely a mental model. Both dreams and waking experiences are mental models based on different inputs. A little mental game I play is to imagine I'm an alien visiting the earth for the very first time, I try and engage in a playful "intergalactic tourist/scientist" mentality.