Is this even a dream?

I've only had a few lucid dreams so far, all of them while using the WILD technique. However it is very slow going, and the days I try to do it (I naturally wake early in the morning) I end up failing more often than not and so after a few days I am become tired and my dream recall becomes horrible. I tend to spend so much time hovering in the place before dreaming. If I am still enough I feel all my muscles and body get very heavy (maybe sleep paralysis?) but I can be in this state for 2 hours. My mind wanders a lot and I feel like I can't hit that sweet spot between slowing my inner voice down and drifting away into non-lucid sleep.

Last night while in this state, I decided to just let my mind go and drift off into a daydream. I have seen this suggested but when I do it, it actually seems to prevent dreams from forming and I just play the daydream on and on until I finally realize its time to get up. So I was in my daydream, and the weird thing is that while it was going on a part of me kept thinking "am I dreaming, nope still just sitting here waiting for a dream to happen" but when I actually got out of bed and wrote the "daydream" scenario down- it played out exactly like a regular dream. It was random, wandering, and I think one of my dream signs. So then I am thinking it must have been a dream, but meanwhile my conscious mind was still awake and had the potential to become lucid but just sat there thinking it was just a daydream....

Has anything like that ever happened to others? I almost wonder if it was like a really tricky false awakening, but more like a false sense of "this is not a dream, its just your wandering mind before a dream". Good lord, what lengths is my dream-mind going to go through to keep me out??

Quite a few times, I've had these sleeping daydreams that you're referring to. Except when I try to write them down, I forget them like regular dreams!

I think these daydreams are the thoughts that dreams are based on, only without the dream. One time, I woke up from a dream while a DC was talking to me, but when I woke up, the point the DC was making seamlessly continued, only I was daydreaming it rather than hearing it.

Though I'm sure these daydreams occur in the same alternate form of consciousness as dreams I'm pretty sure these day dreams aren't dreams. I still can't be sure though. These daydreams really do blur the line between dream and reality.

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Originally Posted by dolphin

One time, I woke up from a dream while a DC was talking to me, but when I woke up, the point the DC was making seamlessly continued, only I was daydreaming it rather than hearing it.

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I know what you mean, happened to me as well.

Anyway it's important to realize that dream is in your mind so sometimes the boundary is almost invisible. People usually use the word "dream" associated with sleep but what about those half states? I think it's the same, sleeping just helps you to dive more into it since the body is not disturbing you anymore.

I actually believe that a daydream is a dream--just not a dream in the general sense. So yes, it was a dream . . . but first and foremost it was a daydream. When we let our minds wander, they come up with very strange things. I love visualizing (daydreaming) things because I can go on adventures very similar to how I have lucid dreams--it's just that they are much less intense and much harder to focus on (at least right now).

Yep, I experience these all the time. I'll often notice them just before I fall asleep, where random thoughts and scenarios just pop up in my mind on their own. I can even use them as sort of a signal that lets me know that I'm close to sleep: If I'm having trouble sleeping but then notice them, I know that I should hang on a bit longer because I'll likely fall asleep very soon.

As others have said, the line between these “unconscious daydreams” and dreams can be very blurry to the point that I actually can't really tell the difference while they're going on (nor does it seem to matter, as when nonlucid I treat them as though they were reality just as I do normal dreams). They can smoothly blend into one another as well; I've often caught myself in a state partway between one of these “daydreams” and actually seeing it as dream imagery (hard to describe without experiencing it—it's basically like visualizing something but having it be much more vivid than you're used to when fully awake, and you're almost starting to literally see it).

I believe these thoughts are formed by the same mechanism that produces dreams (for me the content and flow is exactly like that of my dreams), so I personally consider them actual dreams in a sense, just a faint, unstable form of them. It's possible to become lucid in them just as during full dreams, though usually when I do they tend to instantly vanish like soap bubbles. (This happens quite frequently to me while I'm falling asleep, where I'll often bounce back and forth between them and lucidity several times before finally losing consciousness and falling asleep.)