Hey everyone, Has anyone else had an issue where they wake up immediately after they ask themselves if they're dreaming? Lately whenever I even think about doing a reality check, or if my awareness starts increasing and I start becoming critical of my surroundings I'll just wake up before I can finish going through with the thought. It's not like I'm getting lucid and getting excited, because I don't even get to the point where I am able to say that it's a dream. I'll just tell myself "this would be a good time to reality check," or "be observant of my surroundings in case I'm dreaming" and then I immediately wake up. And I don't think it's because REM is ending either, it seems to be happening during short REM periods where I feel like I was only dreaming for a few minutes. I'm worried that I'm going to be building a bad habit with it, and I'm wondering if there's something I could do during my day practice to help prevent that, though I'm not really sure what since it's not something I feel like I have much control over. Let me know if anyone else has experienced this or has ideas about what I could do to prevent it. I feel like I get so close but then the dream just ends abruptly.
Thanks!
Do you sleep on your back ? I've found it easier to linger in dream awareness even while waking when sleeping on my stomach or side. Realizing you're dreaming is kind of a signifier of how conscious you are and too much brain activity could wake you up. Its quite difficult to do but in these cases I try to not think but just ease into a kind of empty minded observing state. Try to play with your "eyes" and looking at the few things around you. The more you "try" to do stuff, the faster you might get ripped awake.
Even after doing this for a number of years, I find it common for myself to wake up shortly around the point where I start realizing I might be dreaming. In some cases, I wake up before I've had a chance to begin a dream test / reality check, other times I perform the test but then immediately wake up, and other times I get only a quick moment or two and then wake up afterward. Then, when I get lucky, it will last a bit longer than that. :-) Statistically, these almost-instant awakenings seem to happen to roughly 25% of my lucid dreams, even though it subjectively tends to feel quite a bit more frequent than that.
I think we tend to be most likely to become lucid at around the same moments in sleep that we are prone to waking up anyway, so it's probably not too surprising, and nothing to worry about. Give it a bit of a chance; sometimes it can be a bit like a crap shoot and you just have to be patient until you get a good roll.
Stephen , I would only add, don't forget that it is you making a link between thinking to do a Dream Test (reality check) and waking, and it is likely that you are just waking anyway, and the cause is most probably NOT just because you are thinking of doing a test. I would only suggest initially just forget about it and enjoy the dream experiences you do have, lucid or non-lucid. You will soon have a longer dream where you become lucid naturally and doing a dream test won't figure, which will prove the point.
That's interesting. It could be a lot of things, most of them things we have no clue about, just to say there are a lot of factors at play so it would be difficult to pin any one of them down, for certain. It could be, as you mentioned, these moments of pre-lucidity are coming at times when the dream is about to end naturally, in which case there would be nothing one could do. It could also just be an adjustment period. Lucid dreaming is not the normal state of dreams, so it naturally takes some time to adjust to the experience. For most people, it seems there are often body/movement issues in the dream, but your experience is just as likely a suspect for that as any. With these issues, people tend to adjust with time and more experience, so all that needs to be done is to keep pursuing lucid dreams. My recommendations would be to re-evaluate your practices and see if there's anything that you might be doing in your daily life that could cause your dreams to be of a lesser quality. I used to smoke marijuana and, though I was able to toe the line between being a lucid dreamer and a user, my dreams were always of a lesser quality and duration than when I stopped. There are a lot of things that can affect our dream quality, be that just having a bad sleep schedule, or not sleeping long enough each night, for instance. But also things that you put into your body, and how soon you do that before bed. Could be hard to pin down, but it's worth doing some research if you think any supplement or substance might be getting in the way. Otherwise, I think starting a meditation practice would be beneficial for this, as spending more time being aware during waking life tends to transfer to our dreams. You can, essentially, practice being more aware while awake, be that with ADA or other mindfulness techniques, so that you are more equipped to stay aware while lucid, or becoming lucid. The dream, I think, models the waking state of being in a lot of ways and, as such, how we spend our attention while awake can affect our dreams. Edit: I also meant to mention that I hope you don't let yourself get caught up in worry, too much over this. Staying positive and telling yourself that you will be successful counts a lot for lucid dreaming. If you can really find a way to stay lighthearted and expect good things to come from it, you end up much more likely to do so. Lucid dreaming is a mental game and if you let yourself fixate on the negative possibilities and stressors of that, you might be more likely to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. I say, if you're going to set any traps for yourself, unconsciously, let them be good surprises, if at all possible. Just some thoughts, hope it helps.
Firstly, other readers make sure you don't take on an expectation that this could happen to you. Assure yourself that this is not a problem for you and, better yet, when you see a post like this where someone is having a problem and you don't have an answer, ignore it entirely for your own sake.
I recommend rehearsing the scenario you would like to happen during the day and during any wbtb mild. See yourself Reality Checking and continuing on with your lucid dream with no problem.
I also recommend expecting a false awakening whenever you feel like you are waking up and on many times you'll find that you can continue in a false awakening lucid dream (or better yet, expect the void or a transition instead of an awakening), especially if you are right that you may not be at the end of REM for all these occasions.
That's weird, I've never had it, getting excited, sure, but not because I've just asked myself to RC. My only RCs in lucid dreams have come about as I've realised I was dreaming and therefor used an RC to confirm the state, so the opposite way round to this.
My only suggestion would be to set your statement before going to bed or even after an awakening (assuming that happens before) to positively re-enforce the idea that once you think about Reality Checks, you will calmly carry them out and enjoy your dream...or something less naff than that! But that's the only thing I can think of to try to stop your brain snapping out of it, it's as if that's becoming a trigger to wake up which is the last thing you want.