I've read the chapter about hypnagogia in "Are you Dreaming?", but I'm still not quite sure how to interpret my experiences.
1) Sometimes I have "dream snippets" right at the first border between waking and sleep – which makes them hypnagogic hallucinations, I suppose? Thinking of Daniel's childhood experiences with "catching the butterfly", I often try to catch the exact moment those hypnagogic hallucinations turn into sleep. But usually, I eventually lose my grip and fall into oblivion.
2) I can often trigger several bouts of hypgnagogia by visualizing a scene or listening to music while I wait for sleep, which is why I feel drawn to the Anchor method. Sometimes, I'm vaguely aware that something is off or even not real, but it's not a clear "Hey, I am dreaming!"
3) WBTB seems to damage my dream recall, so I've switched to trying to achieve lucidity after waking up naturally.
Last night, I first had one "dream" that I'm pretty sure was just hypnagogia and nothing more. At around 4am, I awoke from a regular dream, stayed awake for about 15 minutes and then decided to put on some soothing instrumental music to try the anchor technique. I don't think it took long before hypnagogia started, and I got the feeling that I was starting to slip from hypnagogia into real sleep. A scene formed: I found myself walking from the living room to the kitchen, where I looked through a brochure by the local supermarket.All very real and normal.Then the ads I looked at were projected as holograms, hovering over the page. One of them was for dog food, a hologram of a happy cartoon dog wagging his tail. He reminded me of a friend's dog, which at that moment I really wanted to be able to see again and pet (which is not possible due to Corona), so I willed the cartoon dog to turn into the real dog. It was odd, I knew that it was a dream but I also did NOT know it was a dream – I was aware just enough to know that I could change things, but not enough to do a RC and go fully lucid. So I sort of ran my fingers through the hologram and wherever I touched it, the vibrant colors melted away to show real fur underneath, which felt very soft to the touch.
It felt more lucid than the usual hypnagogia, but it lacked the clear, absolute certainty of lucidity Daniel desribes in the chapter "Did I experience a lucid dream?" I did understand that I could change the cartoon dog into the real dog, but there was no feeling of "OMG I am dreaming!" revelation.
Would you say this was still hypnagogia or already a dream with a very low-level form of lucidity?
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Edited: Jan 17, 2021
Hypnagogia or low-level lucidity?
Hypnagogia or low-level lucidity?
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This is interesting as I have also had dreams where I knew it was a dream but also didn't lol. I'm not really sure what to make of those experiences. However, what you had sounds like a fully fledged dream and not simply hypnagogia. I don't have much experience with hypnagogia and I have yet to read about that in Daniels book, but I do believe that you aren't able to interact much with hypnagogic imagery. In your experience you were able to interact with the scene.
But the dream you had was not a "normal" dream. This is a very good sign. Any dreams you start having that aren't like normal dreams is a solid step towards lucidity. Keep going!
Although I don't know how long the experience lasted, it seems to me like sort of a tipping point. Like when you still just "find yourself" in the middle of hypnagogic "scene" and an actual dream. I wouldn't say it was quite lucid dream, because the important realization wasn't probably present 🤔 but you were definitely really close and full lucidity is around the corner! Good luck ;)