The problem is mirrors don’t have a certain appearance, they change texture based on what’s in front of them and because of that the brain doesn’t have a static model of it so the brain just mixes everything you’ve ever seen in a mirror together while trying to render it
Some people see just normal things some people see nothing and some see real fucked up shit like their face getting torn apart or something. If you panic while looking at a mirror in a dream, your brain knows what you fear way more than you
Another thing to consider is the human brain being also able to render really high quality images and animations.
I did this but with the number of fingers on my hand. I counted 12 fingers and just said oh that’s nice. Never realized it was a dream until long after I had woken up.
I know I’m not dreaming simply from the fact I can even ask if I am dreaming. When I’m actually dreaming the most random stuff can happen and I don’t even question the fact that it must be real
I think the idea is to form a habit or a tick that is so strong it carries over to your dream. So like, if you commit to wearing a watch everyday, and check it every 5 minutes, eventually you’ll do it in your dreams too. Then, you don’t have to intentionally check whether you’re in a dream, hoprfully you’ll just catch the time being wildly different and be like “holy crap this was a dream??”
Yes, that is correct. It’s one of the strategies you learn when you start diving in to lucid dreaming. Another is to look at some writing (maybe even this sign) and look away and look back, it will say something else if it’s a dream.
I got really into lucid dreaming when I was younger, but I couldn’t fly because I guess I just have no imagination, so I gave up.
Whenever dreams take a turn for the fucky, I just close my eyes in the dream and just…imagine going back in time for a “redo”. Often, the same thing will happen, so if it’s more stubborn, I’ll close my eyes and imagine something else happening. I don’t know how else to describe it, but…I mean, it’s really just that simple. And it’s not like I’m always lucid dreaming when I do it, either.
I remember one time, I actually experienced sleep paralysis. My eyes were cracked open, I could see the chair I was sleeping in, and the person at the receptionist’s desk (was waiting for some appointment), but I couldn’t move. I didn’t see any freaky demon shit or panic, I just went “Oh, shit, this is sleep paralysis, huh?”
I tried moving my limbs, but the best I could do was a weak finger twitch…until I “imagined” myself lifting my arm. I just thought of the action, the motion of my hand moving from it’s resting place on my leg to a spot in the air, and it worked. But I was still asleep. Wack.
I can lucid dream. Not always. And to varying degrees of success. The dream still has some control over me sometimes I and I can only do some things, like fly from danger, or decide to erase something that went wrong and do it again. Or just choose to wake up, that’s quite odd.
But there are times where I have full control and it’s god damn amazing. The ability to control space, time and narrative to my will and know there are no consequences, yet still feel like it’s real, emotions, senses.
Though often the more I have control, the closer I get to waking up, so it can be short lived, plus it has led to sleep paralysis, so tread carefully. However a weird thing that sometimes happens is I know I’m about to wake up, so decide not to and just continue dream, it’s very hard to achieve, but it’s possible.
Strangely I don’t have any techniques to lucid dream though, it’s just an innate sense I developed as a child to combat frequent bad dreams.
I can get that “wait, this makes no sense, I must be dreaming!” vibe a fair few times a week, but I never know what to do once I reach that state, because then it just feels like…thinking, lol. And I prefer the random bullshit my brain comes up with by itself.
Exactly why I supported your stance on kumquats, Mr President. Now hurry, the pterodactyls need you for this year’s cotton ball festival. I’ll pack the dental floss, you get on the Komodo dragon and let’s show them how a couple of old school icecreams party.
But if you’re in control enough to pinch and inhale, are you asleep enough to be really dreaming? Or is your mind just wandering half-awake?
Personally, if I can get to “I think/hope this is a dream” I’m already starting to wake up.
And it’s usually because I suddenly recognize a familiar dream-trope, like “the reason I’m wandering this disgusting public bathroom looking for a toilet that’s not overflowing with X-crements is because I need to wake up and go pee.”
Or the one where I know I’m drowning and I can only hope it’s a dream because I’m trapped and the only way out is to die and wake up gasping.
But I can’t change my actions in the dream itself unless I’m already coming to the end of the natural sleep cycle, and then it’s basically do I wrap this up or extend it a little?
Or sometimes I haven’t fully fallen asleep and maybe I realize this scenario is at a beach or on a cruise ship or in a dock house or a half-lit indoor pool and I’m like, NOPE!
But pinch my nose, check my watch, look in a mirror? I might as well try to run.
You pinch your nose while awake as well, let’s say whenever I stop at a red light, I pinch my nose, can’t breathe, if I dream and see a red light, I’ll remember to pinch my nose based off the prior habit. The marker you leave to remind you while asleep is a habit built while awake.
I Google stuff in my dreams all the time and it legible. But then when I submit the query it wakes me up because my brain is all like “dude you are the computer simulating this entire dream world you ain’t connected to the internet. Googling is just asking yourself the same question again”. That kind of breaks the immersion
Please wake up! We don’t know what to do anymore. If you receive this message, please wake up! Also, whatever you are dreaming right now, look behind you NOW!
But how do I learn to start checking if I'm dreaming while I'm dreaming? I have an embarrasing and frustrating reoccurring theme in my dreams and I'd love to know how to stop it when it happens
By doing the above actually. Frequently. The idea is you do that kind of thing (a “reality check”) so often in your waking life that the checks begin to transfer over to your dreams
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