Typically in my dreams it feels like normal life, except that for some reason I'm gullible to dream logic. If something strange happens and I try to make sense of it, a bad explanation--one that I wouldn't accept in real life--will perfectly satisfy my dreaming brain.
However, occasionally dream logic totally breaks down and I realize it's a dream. In that instant I gain full control. But it doesn't take long before the control slips away, forgetting the revelation that happened moments ago.
What about you? Are all of your dreams always lucid?
Sometimes there is some sort of realization of being in a dream but it's always at the moment I'm waking up.
I'm pretty jealous of people with lucid dreams, it must be fantastic.
It's crucial that in the time your body falls asleep, you don't make any voluntary movements (just as if you were to fall asleep normally). I've also read about a trick that you can help you stay mentally awake. You have to pretend as if you were tapping with your index and middle finger, but only just so that they don't actually move. This also helps you realize when your body falls asleep. I'd say WBTB (Wake back to bed) is the most reliable method for lucid dreams.
Same here, very well worded. That's the case for me in maybe 3/4 dreams. The more emotionally intense ones have that "now" feeling though.
Search online for some practices to help induce lucid dreams. There are things that could help. For example, creating a habit throughout the day to check if you're dreaming. e.g. look in the mirror and ask if it's a dream, or look at a clock and ask if its a dream.
If you create this habit in normal life, the idea is that it will carry over to your dreams. Just realizing a dream is a dream should propel you into lucidity. Dreams rarely seem to get reflections and clocks right.
I always wonder how "real" do dreams feel for people who dream lucidly, but then I realize that it wouldn't matter for me. The level of realism, details, the feelings - are irrelevant, since it would only be a memory, at no point in time I would ever be experiencing it. It would be just a faint, happy, memory of something that didn't happen.
I researched a little and found this book, may be you find it interesting, so here it is:
Imagine you reading this paragraph at this moment, but in reality you are dreaming of it, it is not real.
How can you tell? can you even ask yourself that question at a moment like that? will it make sense to ask that question since you "think" you are awake?
As I recall it, the major problem was trying to decide which would be the one to go to work, and which would stay home, and whether making the obvious choice was sexist or not. The bodies were not identical. And they could have an argument of sorts. I eventually sent the "wrong" one to work, and I was disappointed when no one noticed that I was a different me that day. I spent most of my day at work playing video games at home.
Even just remembering this one makes my head hurt. Our brains are definitely not designed for that kind of multitasking.
While asleep - no sensation whatsoever just black. Essentially passed out. After waking up there is either no memory (i.e. the time is completely missing) or small fragments of a dream that are more memory than sensation.