Quote Originally Posted by loulou View Post
What is WBTB?

I know this is an old thread, but I'll add to it and bump it incase someone wants to talk about this again. I'm confused about reality checks.

The way it started happening to me is that all my life, anytime I look in a mirror in a dream, I can tell by the way my eyes look that I'm asleep. Also any time I look at my hands, I can tell if I'm asleep. This didn't start out as a reality check, just somethign that I noticed while dreaming. Then I realized that any time I wonder if I'm dreaming, that automatically means I am. What I mean is, if you are awake then you never wonder if you are asleep. So if you are starting to wonder if you are asleep, then you are. (Or else there are more serious problems in your mind! lol)

So then a few weeks back, a friend told me about lucid dreaming and that these are reality checks (we were talking about that movie Inception and the spinning top, I guess you are hearing that a lot from newbies) and I realized that all this time I'd been doing reality checks without knowing it. So my friend told me that this was the first step to lucid dreaming and that after doing the reality check, I could control the course of the dream. So far that has not been the case.

I've always been aware off and on when I'm dreaming. Doesn't mean I can do anything about it!
WBTB, is the practice of sleeping around 4-6 hours, waking up for an hour or so, and then going back to bed. this has been proven to greatly increase your chances of having an LD.

You seem to have naturally come into LDing. Once you are aware you are dreaming you should try doing some fun things like flying or altering the dream. Have you tried this? Dream control is indeed separate from lucidity, and there are various paths to both.

You should try some indirect dream control methods:
-when i walk around this corner, there will be a beautiful girl waiting for me
-when i reach into my pocket, i will have a remote control that will let me change scenes
-when i turn around, i will be on a lovely beach

And some direct methods:
-when i wish it to happen, my friend will appear out of thin air
-there is a wall i want to go through. i will look away and then back and there will be a door