I started wondering if there was a better version of "Are you dreaming?" I though it would be interesting to know the psychological differences between that and "Are you awake?" for example. You might say they're just opposites and you'd simply just get the same psychological process with an inverse answer, but i think there are big differences that lie in the interpretation and context, not the definition of the words.

When i asked myself "Are you dreaming?" I'm usually thinking of the question as "Are you asleep, and experiencing an REM cycle accompanied by random impulses from the brain interpreted as memories / stories / dreams?" ('Western' interpretation) However, it could be interpreted as "Are you walking through your reality unaware of your life and yourself?" ('Eastern' interpretation)

So you could use different phrases like "Are you aware," or simply "Are you lucid?" to get the second interpretation, if thats what you were aiming for.

So my question is, perhaps we could find a different phrase that is easier to relate to in an eastern sense, and see if the eastern question works better than the traditional one. If not, we could find a new 'western' phrase and use that just for the sake of change.

thanks for reading, i hope that made sense.