Are you dreaming? Are you sure you're not dreaming?
Another question: How often do you ask yourself whether you're dreaming during the day?
Once, twice, four times? Not at all?
If you don't ask yourself during the day, you won't during a dream.
Daytime habits are also nighttime habits, in our dreams.
You might have explanations for new things that appear.
Ok, there's a new invention, or if your buddy looks a bit strange, you say, OK, it's Halloween.
If you have explanations while awake, you'll have them while asleep and you won't realize you're dreaming.
It's better to ask yourself if you're in a dream.
If you think about whether you're dreaming, look for signs, and notice that you're dreaming, you can lucid dream.
Then you can do cool things like flying.
To have lucid dreams, it's important to do reality checks.
What is a reality check? There are a couple of things you can check to see if you're dreaming.
One of the better known ones is looking at your hands. Are there five fingers?
One, two, three, four, five. I seem to be awake.
You might be satisfied with one check, but you can also do a second, third, or fourth check.
For example, find an object with writing on it. Look away, and look back. Ok, it's still the same.
Look away, and look back. If it's still the same and the letters haven’t changed, reality check two indicates I’m still awake.
There’s another thing I like to do. You can do it inconspicuously anywhere.
Throw something in the air. Sometimes you can’t jump to see if you stay in the air, glide down slowly, or fly.
If you don’t want to jump because you’re in a crowd, throw something in the air and see if it stays up.
Do this thinking it should stay up.
I want it to stay up. Check.
If that doesn’t work, it’s probably a sign that I'm not dreaming.
What other reality checks are there? Someone told me to breath while holding my nose and closing my mouth.
I don’t like it, it’s not that cool.
Something that I like doing as a reality test is changing objects at will.
There’s a bottle. If I can somehow move it with my thoughts, I know I’m dreaming.
Ok, doesn’t work, so probably... I’ll try again... No, it’s not moving, this bottle.
I’m probably awake. That's a reality check. You can train during the day.
If you do it regularly, you’ll be in some dream situation and suddenly you'll be able to shift the bottle at will,
or the pen will stay in the air. If you then think, ‘I’m dreaming!’, you can have a lucid dream.
I made a six-point reality check for myself.
I made it a year ago out of various things in books.
I go through the six points, and then I know that I’ve checked everything out.
For point one I look right, then 180 degrees left, and see if everything turns in the opposite direction.
I stopped doing this, because once I did it in a dream and I didn’t notice that I was dreaming.
I only noticed with points two and three. So, point one is pausing, and taking time to do all the points correctly.
Point two: Look to see if my field of view is complete. Can I hear right? Can I see right?
Go through the five senses. Vision, hearing, I breath in quick and smell, but my nose isn't so good.
Taste and touch. I do a little bit of ‘slap slap slap’ to feel out my body, my sense of touch. That’s point two.
Point three: What did I just do? How'd I get here? I account for the past hour.
What was my last walking route or bus route or whatever?
Point four: It’s all somehow logical. I just observe my surroundings.
I check out people or objects, and look for signs of dreaming.
Point five goes like this: I ask myself how I’m doing.
Am I alright? If not, why? Suppose I’m in a dream and I notice that I don’t feel alright.
Am I looking for a key? Locked in? How can I solve the problem?
Point six is also important. If this were a dream, what would I want to do?
Suppose I go through the points during the day: not a dream, not a dream, not a dream...
Still, I go to point six. If it were a dream, what would I want to do?
I’d like to practice somersaults. I’d like to get in touch with a couple dream characters,
or I'd want to change my surroundings with the spinning method.
I always had this problem - I would become lucid in a dream, and say, 'Cool, lucid dream!'
then ‘What am I doing?’ I looked around and forgot what I meant to do.
So, point six - what would I do if it were a dream? That’s my six-point check.
