bks wrote:elfi wrote:
If you think you might be dreaming, try raising both legs off the ground simultaneously ... if you float (defying gravity) you are probably dreaming.
I would say if you can tell yourself to "try" anything in order to determine whether you're
dreaming, then you're not
dreaming.
Dreaming happens to you, kinda like gravity. It's precondition is its seeming reality at the time its occurring. Any awareness one has that one might be
dreaming signals a state other than a dream state. Maybe you're
lucid dreaming, but I think
lucid dreaming is a misnomer. "
Lucid dreaming" is a form of being awake [even though it is
not defined as such];
dreaming is not.
I've been thinking about this because I had the alarm clock dream again the other day.
I've had this dream at least 20 times and probably more like 50. In the alarm clock dream, an alarm clock goes off. I hit snooze. This doesn't work. The alarm keeps ringing, and it's killing me. So I unplug it. I fumble with opening the battery case and finally remove the batteries. I am astonished that it is still ringing. Sometimes, like the other day, I engage in speculation about why this is happening: Does the clock have a transformer that must discharge fully before it stops? Is someone playing a trick on me? Are laws of physics being violated? At times I have submerged the alarm clock in water, hidden it in airtight containers, smashed it, thrown it around the room, asked others to help me, and so on. In all cases it continues to ring.
At this point you probably need not be told that every time I had this dream, a real alarm clock was actually going off, and of course nothing I'd do could stop it short of my actually waking up and stopping it. You've also possibly guessed that I keep alarm clocks on the other side of the room, because anything within arm's reach will never achieve the intended aim of waking me up.
Am I
dreaming is the one obvious question that I've never asked during the alarm clock dream. Which, given how often this has happened, you would think by now would have also happened. I never know it's a dream until it's over. So I have yet to turn this into a
lucid dreaming experience, as Mr. Robert Anton Wilson once recommended to me (in a book, not a person) as the thing to do whenever you realize you're
dreaming.
In the dream I hear the real alarm clock noise, which functions as a metronome in allowing me to judge afterward how long the dream lasted. My alarm clock dreams have definitely exceeded the supposed maximum 10 seconds of dream activity, and have run up to 20 or 30 seconds. Which is a lot of opportunity to create the universe as you would have it, if you can take command of the dream - assuming you can also decide that the alarm clock noise is a beautiful necessity.
I think bks is right, however. What is called
lucid dreaming is a still-waking state of colorful imagining you achieve (in my case, generally by surprise) while drifting off, or in meditation, and is not the same as
dreaming while asleep.
.
