One happens when you sleep. The other happens when you’re awake.
Slow down there, Jimmy Neutron. Can you use simpler terms?
You + bed = dream
You - bed = reality
Me scrolling in my bed right now: Guess I’m dreaming.
Well, according to Waking Life, if you flip a light switch and nothing changes, you might be dreaming.
On a similar note, one technique I use while lucid dreaming is to try to pass my right hands index finger through my left hands palm. If I feel and see the resistance to my skin, I know I’m awake.
I heard that reading text is another method. If you can read text then you probably aren’t dreaming. Because if you are dreaming the text gets all weird and unreadable.
Waking Life - 2001 Film is an amazing film about lucid dreaming, reality, and the consequences of such. It really is a must watch til the end, it has one of those endings that everyone draws their own conclusions about.
If you’re talking about lucid dreaming, try looking at your hands or to read some text.
I can read text in games. But games are dreams. So that’s something.
The fuck?
Not OP but games aren’t real life, they’re often a power fantasy or a simplification of the world.
If the two categories we’re considering are dream or reality, I’d put games into dream.
I dunno, the comment made perfect sense to me.
Our so called reality contains lots of dream stuff. Movies, stories, abstractions… even science. Some dreams are “mere entertainment”. Some are useful (science, abstract description).
And there are links between sensation and dream. Look at a cat and your brain automatically, with no conscious effort on your part, refers to to the term “cat” and a bundle of associated thoughts.
So the line between dream and reality is fuzzier then people think.
Most cultural institutions exist in imaginary space but have incredible power over people. The state, god, heirarchy, status, identity. I definitely think the unreal is way more present in our lives than people normally accept.
I’m in art.
Almost invariably, you show them a piece, they ask “what is it?”, “what does it mean?”.
(Sometimes they even want an explanatory essay pinned to the wall next to the frame)
Because the meaning, the dream-manifestation, is more important to them than the actual experience.
For most of us, dreams are realer than reality.
Entirely a guess, but maybe they’re implying they believe dreaming is a simulation is the same way a game is?
A game is a guided dream.
Or they meant to say “games aren’t dreams?”
He means you wouldn’t be able to in a dream. Same for counting your fingers, most people end up having more than five when they are dreaming.
There are things your brain on dreams doesn’t do well and you can take advantage of that fact.
Read something. You won’t be able to get more than a few words in a dream. Doesn’t matter what it is: billboard, menu, homework, whatever. It’s one of the easier ways to tell if you’re dreaming.
I’ve also heard that if you read something, look away, look back and read it again, and it’s different, then you’re dreaming. You can practice this experiment when you’re awake; this will condition your brain to do that reflexively, and eventually you’ll do it in a dream.
One of the possible outcomes of this kind of dream-testing is lucid dreaming. When you’re dreaming, knowing you’re dreaming inside the dream can give you some semi-conscious control of the entire dream universe. Wanna fly? BAM you can fly. Enemies need smiting? SMITE. Done.
Now I’m wondering if the “real me” that, you know is actually real … doesn’t just entirely believe that I’m really real, but is really just a dream of the next level up. Same thing goes for the other direction, with innumerable layers to the onion. How could I possibly know?
fuck
And then wake up before you can do cool shit because you get way too excited about realizing you’re lucid dreaming.
Probably unhelpful, but I do not dream with enough clarity for that to be an issue. The more vivid ones I’ve had seem to be shorter (I’ve had a dream once that was basically just a still picture with moving colors), everything else is usually just weird and at-best might be mistaken for a cheesy movie. I also cannot recall any from my own (or any) 1st-person perspective, even if the dreams might have details or themes from my own life.
Lack-of-detail/vividness may be related to me having aphantasia, but it also might be an issue with REM sleep due to health issues particularly if I don’t remember having a dream even long before I’ve woken up.
I’m getting laid.
I check a clock, works pretty much every time. Could be wall, alarm, wrist watch. Dunno what it is about dreams, they are bad with time, minutes and hours won’t make sense if you look for it
Clocks and Text in general. It’s like a bad ai image in my dreams.
I hardly dream so I guess I would say “it’s a dream when I wake up afterwards”
I only remember them if I wake up in the middle. I bet I’m missing out on some good stories.
There’s something called the “doorway effect”. Passing through doorways can break your memory. It’s a common phenomenon.
Now why did I come in here?..
The passage from dream to wake may be such a door, and the forgetfulness such an effect.
A very big door, very big effect.
Meh, don’t worry about it… whatever environment you find yourself in, navigate it the best you can. Reality might be real to someone experiencing it, but it’s irrelevant to someone who isn’t.
Carry a totem, like, say, a top.
Check your cell phone. If it works normally, that’s reality. If it’s fuzzy or does crazy things then you’re in Dreamland baby!
Last time I looked at my phone in a dream, the screen turned red and it started blaring the Amber alert tone, but like… in G-Major. Scared me awake, and then like 2 minutes later my alarm went off and re-scared me.
Hah. Whenever I am aware that I am dreaming, I try to look in a mirror. It always does something weird. Like one time my reflection’s eyes were shut. Another time the mirror was like a window to the real world where I could see myself sleeping in bed. That was trippy.
I’ll have to try looking at my phone.
Anecdotal, but I once dreamed an entire Wednesday. Got up went to work, a few hours in realised it was Wednesday all over again.
I suspect that one’s mind can differentiate a dream from reality because dreams are not a simulation, they are not internally consistent or even generally comprehensible, while reality is.
In the high stress times of college, on multiple occasions I dreamed my entire morning routine and walk to class, only to wake up and do it all again.
One time I dreamed the whole thing, “woke up” and did it again, but THAT one was also a dream, woke up for real and did it all again a 3rd time.
Had the same shit happen to me in college too. College is one hell of a time…
It was in the midst of my 4000 level classes, maybe 3 hours of sleep for several days in a row, not eating right, all that shit will ruin your mind
- pinch your nose and try to breathe through it
- Count your fingers
- Check a clock
- Read text
Reading text works really well for me.
When you realise that you can choose the text before you read it, you’re on the road to lucid dreaming!
- Ask how you got here.
- Ask where/what/why.
- Try to observe stillness.
- Stare at one item for way too long and watch it gain detail.
- Ask strangers impossible questions about your self.
- Close your eyes and see if you remember opening them.
- Check if text and numbers change or fail to stay tell a coherent idea.
- Do not disturb the second ones as it just wakes you up.
- Just confidently Harry Potter your ass though a wall, it will work if you convince yourself.
- Stare at your hand for too long, 5 is hard to keep track of.
- Look in a mirror and watch your brain short out a bit.
- Hit a light switch a few times, see if lights break reality.
Adding to this:
- Phones/computers never work correctly
Gosh, I have that recurring theme that I want/need to call 112 (European 911) but mistype every time… Three digits. But I will fail every time.
Trust me, you won’t fuck up if you ever need to.
How do I know? Have called multiple times.
That first one is the only one that almost never fails me.
There’s only been 3 or 4 times out of hundreds where I was like, yep, that’s normal, and didn’t become lucid.
if it looks ai generated, its probably a dream.
Do many people have trouble with that?
My dreams are all repetitive nonsense that doesn’t even have the quality of feeling like reality. During them I almost never think to wonder if it’s a dream, but if I do then either I wouldn’t be able to hold onto that as a coherent thought, or the dream would just end.
I’ve had a few cases where something made me remember something I experienced and I couldn’t immediately tell whether I was remembering something from a dream or reality.
