Thread: Lucid dreams feel fake

Hi everyone,

after listening to some Sensei audio I've returned to Dreamviews! However, with that also comes a question that's been on my mind for quite some time now.

I've had a fair few lucid dreams. I've had those where you realize you're dreaming and almost instantly woke up, but far more commonly I get dreams where I very quickly lose lucidity or it feels like even though I think I'm still lucid, I barely have any conscious control over my decisions. Surprisingly I can generally control my dreams very well, but what I do in them feels like it's my brain pretending I'm lucid dreaming. Like I'm watching a VR movie in first person, or like I'm lucid dreaming while in a half sleeping state.

Note that I don't mean I'm losing lucidity (although that tends to happen sooner or later too. Maybe this whole thing is just the early stages of losing lucidity in the dream for me) but it feels like while I'm still lucid, I'm making decisions on autopilot. I'll sort of know I'm dreaming but not feel like I am consciously in control.

Will this feeling pass with practice? The lucid dreams I've had so far were all short and quite muddled, but super interesting. I know duration and vividness increase over time with practice, but I wanted to ask the people here if they've had any experiences like this and if the quality of their dreams picked up after more practice.

Cheers.

Whatever is on your mind at any given time is whatever you are most interested in at that time. So, if you aren't making the decisions you want to make, it is because you are not motivated enough to make those decisions you want to make.

This lack of motivation doesn't necessarily increase on its own over time. Sometimes, you have to do something about it. Duration and vividness also don't necessarily increase on their own over time. I've had over 1500 LDs and my LDs still naturally last a minute or two on average. Increasing dream time also requires motivation. Increasing vividness involves focusing more on what is happening in the dream, which again requires motivation.

I find that telling myself what I want to do in my LDs just before going to sleep helps establish the motivation I need to remember to do these things in the dream.

Most of my LDs are just a few minutes long as well. I don't actively LD anymore, but I get between 8-20 a year naturally. A lot of the time I'll get 2 or 3 in a single night, usually because I realize I'm dreaming suddenly and then I wake up within a minute or two, but having that happen almost guarantees me having a DEILD right after that... and usually the DEILD lasts more like 10-30 minutes. So, at least half my of lucid dreams are only 2 to 3 minutes long, but I'll gladly take those knowing it almost guarantees a 20 minute lucid dream directly afterward.

As far as the dreams seeming fake, I think I know what you mean. A majority of my lucid dreams feel this way. I often find that if I don't actively try and remain aware and mindful during the LDs I feel like this in, it's very easy for me to lose lucidity or to start acting almost unconsciously... usually involving baser desires, like wanting to have sex or do something immediately gratifying/stimulating. Your brain activity is remarkably different while you're asleep, and one of the biggest factors having to do with this is an underactive frontal lobe/prefrontal cortex--the part most responsible for executive functions (being able to control yourself, being aware and attentive, logical reasoning, etc.). You can use this feeling to your advantage, though. If you become lucid enough and learn to recognize the feeling, you might find that you get more lucids from recognizing you're dreaming on an unconscious level. Rather than realizing something crazy happening being what causes most of my random short-lived DILDs that I turn into long DEILDs, I simply become conscious out of nowhere because I subconsciously recognize the feeling being in that state provides.

Originally Posted by snoop

As far as the dreams seeming fake, I think I know what you mean. A majority of my lucid dreams feel this way. I often find that if I don't actively try and remain aware and mindful during the LDs I feel like this in, it's very easy for me to lose lucidity or to start acting almost unconsciously... usually involving baser desires, like wanting to have sex or do something immediately gratifying/stimulating.

That sounds like what I often experience. I've noticed a distinct tendency in my LDs to make decisions quite impulsively, which is practically the polar opposite of how I function in waking life, planning virtually everything I do in advance to some degree. I often find myself automatically defaulting to a particular activity as soon as I discover I'm dreaming, almost before realizing it. It can take a real effort at times to catch myself and try to slow down and think a bit.

It does pass with practice. I remember my lucid dreams 20 years ago were very different from the ones I currently have. With timeyou learn to stabilize and increase your lucidity level fairly fast as soon as you enter a lucid dream. The problem is that most lucid dreams start out at a very low lucidity level, and people think that's all there is to them. With practice, you can expect lucid dreams to feel very very real and last for around 40 min each... I'm actually currently experimenting with time manipulation, so I'm trying to make 20 minutes feel like 3 hours. So it's all possible, don't be discouraged