Thread: I'm brutally forced into lucid dreams and I have other questions if you will

*tips hat to KingYoshi* I realize you posted a couple months ago, but it's good to see another familiar name since my reappearance. Hope all is well.

Anyway Spunk, I can't really comment on the violent dragging because I've never experienced that but I'm pretty sure Yoshi hit it, my first thought was that it sounded like a WILD also. In my first and only WILD, I kept having random annoyances from my dog and my mother that I thought were actually happening as I was trying to go to sleep, then slowly realized that I had already entered my dream without even knowing it. I was aware of myself the whole time, I just mistakenly thought I was still awake.

As for the reality checks being frustrating, I feel you. When I came back here I started doing them again with the aid of a random alarm on my phone (an app specifically for LD / RC) and it was nice to get back into the habit the first couple weeks but after a while it can be a little aggravating. Also I started to remember from a couple years ago when I was better at all this, that just as you said the reality checks were getting harder because the dream would try to negate them at every point. I remember one of my RCs back then was reading text because I could never read in my dreams, and after a while I would be able to read with perfect clarity in my dreams and it would no longer work. I think part of the problem is taking the reality checks too seriously and viewing them as a chore, as I started to recently. But as for the dreams being resistant, I'm really not sure how to work on that part. I'm struggling right now myself with these stupid "partial lucidity" dreams where I'll realize it's a dream but I just can't fully take control. I just go along with the original plot line and occasionally do something outside the norm "because it's only a dream anyway" and the clarity isn't up to par. I don't get that big rush of consciousness like I used to. Weird thing is, I never really just did a reality check during a dream and became lucid as a result. I would become lucid somewhat randomly, often by just noticing that something didn't feel/look quite right (which is where I think ADA I was practicing at the time helped), then confirm with a reality check and that's when I'd get the "rush." One of my favorite RCs to do was to look at my hand or try to push my finger through my palm, because my hand usually looked pretty funky in a dream.

I have an idea though (I know this isn't new, I've just never tried to USE it), that instead of concentrating so much on RCs maybe you could analyze your dreams for common signs. For example one of my dream signs is that I'm at work and everything that's going on is completely absurd. Or guns / violence. If there's a gun in my hand or I'm fighting, I'm probably dreaming because I generally keep guns put up and have no reason to use them in real life unless I'm out on the range, and I've only been in one or two fights in real life. Revolvers especially because in the dream world the cylinder never quite gets rendered right. Basically I'm wondering if there's a way we can keep in mind these kinds of common inconsistencies and meditate on that and try to remember "if x is happening, THEN do RC". I always did my RCs randomly in real life and not as a response to anything specific because if I only RC'd in response to dream signs I'd never get to RC, it's a catch 22. I'm just not 100% sure how to actually go about using those signs to help me become lucid.

Sorry for being longwinded, but I hope something in there was useful.