Thread: I am obviously dreaming, why don't I realize it?

Hey guys, pretty new here. What I am currently concerned with right now is the fact that my dreams are obviously dreams (i.e. zombies, random shit that could never possibly happen), but I never have the sense to realize it is fake in my dream. No matter what I take everything for reality, even if it is as ridiculous as me encountering a half man half car or something of similar merit. Any help on this?

Hi, welcome to the forums!

Scientifically, you don't realize it because as you fall asleep, part of your brain is becoming as inactive as other parts are becoming active. What I mean by that is that your brain's sensory functions are working to their max--generating sights and sounds and smells and sensations and all sorts of things in the dream world. But at the same time, a part of your brain--the logical part--has become very inactive.

The trick is to either turn on that logical part of your mind from within the dream (which will sometimes wake you up), or bypass it entirely and just realize your dreaming by fact alone and not by any very logical process. I won't go into exactly how to do that, since it's pretty much up to you--any technique in the tutorials area will help you along with that, and even some techniques developed by users here on the forums will work for you as well.

Best of luck!

What you describe is the huge issue keeping almost everyone on the forum (natural lucid dreamers aside), even the experts, from experiencing every one of their dreams as lucid. For some reason, when we're dreaming, we don't usually consider that we might be dreaming. We treat whatever strange situation we're involved in as though it's real. Some people explain this by saying the logic part of our brains are turned off, while others think the main reason is because in dreams our memories of waking life are mysteriously erased.

So naturally, no matter how strange your dreams are, you aren't going to know that you're dreaming. Most lucid dreaming techniques come down to somehow making yourself more likely to question your reality while dreaming. If you think about lucid dreaming a lot during the day, ask yourself if you're dreaming in real life even when you know you're not, you'll be likely to eventually start questioning if you're dreaming while you really are, too. You might also make your subconscious give you signs that you're dreaming. For example, after thinking about lucid dreaming a lot during the day, you might have a dream that you're talking to someone about lucid dreaming, or your subconscious might make an "Are you dreaming?" sign appear somewhere, in an attempt to 'help' you become lucid. It will help if you have an intention to lucid dream during the day, ask yourself if you're dreaming a few times every day, and try to strongly set your intention to lucid dream before sleeping.

All the above answers are correct and currently I'm having the same problem as you. Your logic center does turn off, but that doesn't matter. If you can get into the habit of doing RCs all the time u will subconsciously achieve lucidity by doing one of those RCs. No matter what anyone says it takes no skill to LD, all you have to do is rail a single RC into your brain deep enough that you will do it every 30 minutes or so. Mines plugging my nose and trying to breathe. Which doesn't take any mental work at all, and it takes luck with timing, I've realized I was dreaming as soon as it was ending(bummer). So I still don't don't it as a LD to be fair

from Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep,

Cortical activity
There are regional differences in cortical activity in REM sleep. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is particularly inactive.

from Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - Psychlopedia - psych-it.com.au

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, together with other connected areas, is assumed to be important in working memory and executive function--including the regulation of thinking and action.

Yea what your experiencing is very normal. I had it happen for a LONG ass time. But as of recently I don't even need to do RC's. I just come to instant realization of dreams by logic and instantly realize I'm dreaming. Like the logic part of my brain just doesn't turn off anymore. I don't know why I just come into instant realizations now but I'm not complaining :p