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I had a peculiar experience of heuristically testing a dream not long ago: I had determined I was dreaming, because my field of vision felt too incomplete, that the balance of what I was seeing was titled too far toward interpolation versus observation. That is to say, if waking experience were interpolated from 100% throughput of the visual cortex, I was working on something like 8% (though still interpolating a complete scene from it).

Looking at a wall, I thought "ha, I can't see what color it is", only to realize it was actually a vivid shade of golden-yellow, feeling the color on my retinas. Impressed, I walked over toward a door with a crash bar on it, challenging once again "ok, I can never really feel anything in dreams, so I'll just have a vague sense of touching the crash bar", only to actually feel the heft of the door, and the cast steel on my fingertips.

But as I felt the crash bar, my visual sense of the scene collapsed again, as if all the processing power had just been redirected to haptic from visual. The room and the hallway were just vague ideas drawn once again from a trickle of sensory information. This was amusing enough to wake me up.

Now of course, I don't know if this was actually an insight into how the mind dreams – it's entirely possible that the mechanics themselves were something I dreamed.

I used to be quite good at this. In a similar vein as asking "am I dreaming?" I got into the habit of slapping my hand palm up on a table and saying "apple!" while willing an apple to appear. One day, it did. I realized I was dreaming and simply started bicycling my legs into the air, and I proceeded to fly around my city (Boston at the time.) The first time, it was exhilarating, but my excitement kept me from easily falling asleep, and I'd wake from dreams really easily. Then, few months later during a period of high stress, I did it again and managed to stay asleep while swimming above my neighborhood. I found when under high stress, I'll get these aware dreams where I can just imagine whatever and it manifests. However, its sorta boring after a bit, you can't surprise yourself, and my life is not so stressed anymore, so I have not had such a dream in a few years.

> For example, jump with the intention of levitating, expecting to just hover in the air.

The following quotes neatly sum up how flying in a lucid dream feels to me:

> There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. [...] Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that presents the difficulties. [...]

> Do not listen to what anybody says to you at this point because they are unlikely to say anything helpful.

> They are most likely to say something along the lines of "Good God, man, you can't possibly be flying!" It is vitally important not to believe them or they will suddenly be right.

Conversely it is impossible in dreams to read the same thing twice. Take a book, newspaper and read a sentence. Look away. Try read again, the text/meaning will have changed.

Ha, I've found printed text in dreams (or at least in semi-lucid ones) to be the most amusing source of random words, almost as if whatever level of consciousness is awake is sampling them in transit from some less-conscous level.

The book Art of Dreaming has some good tips... Such as remembering to look at your hands. That action for some reason if performed in a dream will help you realize you're dreaming. The other thing is there's two factors of realization (according to the book), the first is realizing you're dreaming. The second is realizing you are asleep in your bed right now. Surprisingly, it helps to realize and acknowledge these independently for the lucid state to properly kick in.

Once all that happens, the next challenge is of course holding it together without waking up. That just takes practice, but some people are naturals at it I hear.

Looking at your hands doesn't seem like enough a test to me. I think you need something more convincing. My reality test when I was interested in lucid dreaming was to count my fingers, and one day I happened to count to 6, and was then pretty sure it was normal and went on with my day. When I woke up, I couldn't believe how easily I convinced myself that I wasn't dreaming

I guess it's a personal thing. For me, the reminder to look at hands worked. Perhaps when you did it, the activity of counting was enough to distract you and prevent you from realizing. Above all, the recommendation is to keep reminding yourself during your normal waking day to look at hands (or whatever routine you prefer). That's the key, to keep the technique in recent memory, which your dreaming self with any luck, will access.

My first ever lucid dream I was about 17, and the week before read about lucid dreaming for the first time. I don't think that's a coincidence. I read about lucid dreaming, then had one. This supports the theory of thinking about lucid dreaming in everyday life in order to trigger them.

Best tests. Easily done in the waking world (which is which?) Without looking like an idiot. 1. Lightswitches, they dont work right in dreams, shading is hard. 2. Clocks, or digital readouts. Time has no refrence and displays are oddly hard. 3. Hands. You do not know the back of your hand. Might be why so many people stare at their hands on psychedelics.

Written text is non-persistent too. If you're dreaming and look away and back at a sign, newspaper, whatever, the words all change.

I've used the light switch thing to trigger a number of lucid dreams too, I always assumed that your brain just doesn't bother wiring things like that up, rather than the complexity of shading being an issue.

Right, "complex scenes" are never completely static; spaces and textures changes if you move around. I find that particularly interesting because I can perceive and remember details (for instance the pattern of a mosaic), but whenever you check again, it change, so it seems like the buffer were this images are coming from is separated from the region of my brain in charge of remembering my current dream.

> For example, jump with the intention of levitating, expecting to just hover in the air. Dreams work on anticipation

Yep, either you're dreaming or you're now dead.