Were these LDs?

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08-02-2012, 06:47 PM
mdspencer68

Were these LDs?

This is going to be a long post, so bear with me. Within the last six days I had what may have been two lucids. Unlike like my last one I didn't really get that 'Holy shit, I'm feeling', except the second one, where I came pretty damn close. Here are the dreams.

Dream 1
7/28/12
1:16 AM

I am in my room, in which part of the room is partitioned off, by glass or something. In this area is where my dresser is IWL, but it is not there in this dream. I somehow drop an object behind the wall (I can't recall what it was). I remove part of the wall at floor level like it was paneling, and find the object. There are other objects there that I don't recognize. The space in the wall is very deep. So deep I see underneath the bathroom sink of my next door neighbor.

I start to replace the 'panel' when I notice a live pigeon. I assume it was left there by the previous owner. I let the pigeon out and replace the 'panel'. I then open the window, which also at ground level, and let the pigeon go free. After I close the window I stand up to return to the main part of the room. As I do I hear soft whispering in my left ear, which I pay no attention to. I then hear it again only louder this time. However, I now hear beeping in my left ear also. It sounds like Morse code.

As I am about to walk out my room I hear the voice even louder, though now I can make out what it's saying. It said, "That was my best friend!" I can only assume it was referring to the pigeon. It is at this point where I begin to question whether or not i'm dreaming. I think to myself, "This can't be right. There's no such thing as ghosts." I should mention that I really don't believe in ghosts IWL. So I can only assume that this was my conscious thinking this.

As I walk out the room I hear the voice again, only it is low and incomprehensible again. And the beeping sound is back. This time I feel, on several spots on my back, like someone is poking me. As I walk down the stairs I do the nose pinch RC and am able to breathe. That was a weird sensation. I try to say, 'I am dreaming," but I can't seem to get it out.

Dream 2
This morning
7 AM

This one is more of a fragment. I'm in another room in my house, and I look at the clock on the wall. It reads 3:05. I think to myself that I hadn't done a reality check in awhile. I go to my room to do this. However, when I arrive, I get strong feeling that I may be dreaming. I say to myself, "I may really be dreaming!" I do the finger through the palm RC. At first it seemed as though it wouldn't go through, but I continued to push and it eventually went through. Like the nose pinch RC, this felt really weird.

At this point I tried to stabilize my dream. This was the first time I did this. The only thing is, I believe I did it wrong. I originally planned, IWL, that if I'd become lucid that I would try to remember to stabilize myself. I read through the stabilization thread and decided that I would look at my hands and repeat, attain lucidity. Instead I closed my eyes. I need to point out that I don't recall ever in my life closing my eyes in a dream.

I could be wrong. After all, I can't remember all my dreams from my whole life. But I am sure of this. Interesting though, the inside of my eyelids looked just how they look IWL. They didn't look completely black. The had the stars and all you typically see.
After I closed my eyes, I tried to stabilize the dream. I repeated attain lucidity about five times. When I opened my eyes I was laying in bed. I don't think this was a false awakening like my near lucids.

My laptop was lying next to me. There was a page from a website about lucid dreaming. It didn't look like Dreamviews. It was on a page about stabilization. I can't remember most of what was on there, but I saw the line 'try the spinning technique'.
So I closed my eyes again. This time the inside of my eyes looked like how they look when you close your eyes during daytime. I spread out my arms and try to do it, but nothing happened. All I felt was my body in bed, in the dream world or IWL I'm not sure. I opened my eyes and I was still in my bed bed. And that's where I woke up.

IMO, I feel the second may have actually been a lucid. The first I'm not so sure about. I'd appreciate any insight.
08-02-2012, 07:05 PM
Kholdstare

In both you realized you were dreaming, therefore they were both lucids. Grats.

Even in the first, you said you tried to get it out; you still realized it, you just couldn't make a verbal statement.
08-02-2012, 07:18 PM
mdspencer68

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kholdstare

In both you realized you were dreaming, therefore they were both lucids. Grats.

Even in the first, you said you tried to get it out; you still realized it, you just couldn't make a verbal statement.

I kinda figured so, especially with the second one. Thanks.:)
08-02-2012, 07:32 PM
SomeDreamer

I would say that when you get a lucid dream where your awareness is so high that you truly know you are dreaming, where you are able to stand in your dream and tell yourself that you know your body is asleep at this moment, and you are inside a dream, a creation of your own mind and nothing is as your waking life, you would not have to question whether or not it really was a lucid dream, you would most certainly know. It is a really strong sensation.

That said however, there are different levels of awareness in your dreams ranging from it being non-existent to being right at the brink of lucidity but not quite making it. Perhaps those can give you some perspective and make the judgement call easier :) After all you are the one who had the dreams; perhaps you left out details that could make it harder for anyone here to tell you whether or not they were indeed lucid dreams or not.

Quote:

I think to myself, "This can't be right. There's no such thing as ghosts." I should mention that I really don't believe in ghosts IWL. So I can only assume that this was my conscious thinking this.

As I walk out the room I hear the voice again, only it is low and incomprehensible again. And the beeping sound is back. This time I feel, on several spots on my back, like someone is poking me. As I walk down the stairs I do the nose pinch RC and am able to breathe. That was a weird sensation. I try to say, 'I am dreaming," but I can't seem to get it out.

From what you have provided this does not sound like a lucid dream to me. A man named Oliver Fox talked about something he liked to call the "Critical Faculty", a part of your mind which is used to realize whether or not your perception comes to something external (our wakening world) or internal (our dreaming world). I doesn't matter what you want to call it, but it's a logical part of your mind which he said is typically asleep during dreams, which is why we usually accept everything - no matter how bizzare - in a dream as real and thus never realize we are dreaming.

Within a dream, you can then experience several levels of awareness. At level 1 you are not aware at all, this is your typical dream. You simply dream and first when you wake up and recall the dream you are able to recognize the odd things which clearly identified it as a dream. At level 2 you do begin to take some sort of notice to oddities within your dream, but you still accept them all as real, you only wonder how they happened but then do not give it much more thought and carry on doing your dreamy business. At level 3 you are at the brink of realization, and I believe this dream might have been around this spot. Here you really start to wonder what's happening around you, and things feel "off", something doesn't feel quite right. I suppose that's what lead you to do a reality check in the dream. But from what you wrote it appears you did not truly realize you were dreaming still? I think you were starting to question the dream without actually accepting the fact it was a dream, so you didn't "tip over" into full awareness. I've had plenty dreams where I talk about lucid dreams and even demonstrate what I would want to do if I were in a lucid dream, like fly around and such, and yet never even come close to realizing I'm dreaming.

Quote:

I say to myself, "I may really be dreaming!" I do the finger through the palm RC. At first it seemed as though it wouldn't go through, but I continued to push and it eventually went through. Like the nose pinch RC, this felt really weird.

At this point I tried to stabilize my dream. This was the first time I did this. The only thing is, I believe I did it wrong. I originally planned, IWL, that if I'd become lucid that I would try to remember to stabilize myself.

The important connection here is between your reality check and the rest of the events after that. Do you remember actually realizing you were dreaming right after performing the reality check? After all, it is actually possible to do tasks you planned to do in a lucid dreaming before going to bed without actually having a lucid dream. That is, you will focus on the things you want to do in a lucid dream, then have an ordinary dream where you proceed to do them, again without ever realizing you are dreaming.

Besides that, from the lucid dreams I've had through the years (not that many lately, I'm coming back from a long break :)), I can say that from all the dreams I've recalled, that I've never once been in doubt about whether I was lucid or not. But perhaps other people here can tell you experiences that suggests otherwise :)

I hope some of it might come to use :)

Point is, you are at the best position to make the call. If you were truly aware that you were dreaming in both situations, then it was lucid dreams. But I've also had dreams that were disguised; where I even told myself I might be in a dream without ever realizing the full idea of the statement and thus never becoming lucid. It all lies on whether or not you went from "something feels odd or not right" to "Aha! It's because all of this is nothing but a dream"
08-02-2012, 07:52 PM
mdspencer68

Hmm, good points. In my first LD I had a really powerful feeling of awareness. It was a 'HOLY SHIT, I"M DREAMING!' moment. However, the second dream did came close to that.