Hello dreamers, 👽
I wanted to open a discussion on how expectations influence reality checks in the dream state.
It's well known that dreams and dream characters will behave how you expect them to. When it comes to reality checks, however, I feel the answer is not as clear. Some people in the lucid dreaming community think that your expectations play a huge role in the success or failure of a reality check in a dream. I don't necessarily agree with this (although I'm always open to being corrected). I was under the impression that the reason the nose-pinch test and the digital watch test are so reliable is because they don't rely so heavily on expectation (like the finger through palm reality test). To clarify;
👃The principle behind the nose-pinch test is that your real nose is in bed and is not being held shut. Regardless of your expectations then, the test *should* result in the dreamer being able to breathe still. In my own practice, I don't "expect" anything. I simply pinch my nose and notice if I can breathe. Either I can or I can't. I simply observe the result and how it feels when I do it.
⏰The principle behind the digital clock test is that dreams tend to be unstable, especially clocks. Regardless of whether you "believe" the test will work or not, the numbers on a clock should still act strange or the numbers will change. Daniel mentions often how you should "will" the numbers to change and by thinking of a different time. Is this the same as "expecting" them to change? I'm not sure.
I understand there is not much research into this subject, but I feel this is something worth learning more about as a community. Accurate information in this area of lucid dreaming will obviously influence how we perform our reality checks in waking life. I remember Daniel discussing on a live-stream a while ago about an experiment he did in a lucid dream. He performed the nose-pinch test at different intervals throughout the dream to see how reliable it is. I believe he said that it worked about 80% of the time. I would love to hear more about this and if he experimented with his expectations while he was doing this. For example, did he sometimes attempt to get the test NOT to work to see what would happen? Is it possible to restrict the flow of air in a dream if you attempted to? I haven't personally experimented with this much myself, and I'm looking forward to hearing all of your thoughts and experiences!
Enjoy your dream adventures, Oneironauts!
It has never occurred to me to question the results of a “state test”
I use the term state test to avoid the popular misconception that dreams are not “real”. As William James said , for the moment, what you attend to is real
i have used the passing through a “solid “ object. Test since I first backed through a dream wall to escape a threat, and believe in picking 1 test and sticking with to built confidence. I can walk through a wall not because I believe I can, but because I KNOW I can. It has worked many hundreds of times
i test by pressing my fingers against any “solid” dream object, and if my hand passes through, I KNOW im dreaming. It would seem to me that introducing multiple state tests into the dream would invite doubt into the process
Had a long lucid dream last night and passed through a mirror,
something I’ve wanted to do for a while, as I consider Alice in wonderland and through the looking glass as the best books on dreaming out there! Sweet dreams!
Interesting and very important topic!!
I can fully identify with @Mikka Liest's experiences. To my recollection, I have discussed with Mikka the success of the nose pinch test, but the difficulty of believing it to be true. At least I don't remember any failed reality tests either, but I remember many times that I haven't believed the test result to be true and I've even done the test so many times again that it's ultimately failed. For example, once I did a digital watch test and the time changed every time I looked away. I could not believe it to be true and I wanted the watch to show the same time twice in a row and I finally succeeded on my sixth try and just continued my normal potato dream as if everything had been normal. I think this could be the reason why it is important to expect something to happen so that a “reverse effect” like this does not happen.
Despite all the advice given, I have used the finger through palm test this whole time to some extent and now as an alternative I have put to use the finger stretch test that I read about some lucid dreaming study (which I think was by no means a quality study because if the researcher doesn't even understand the basics and uses initiated and induced in a wrong context, I can't even take the results for real, but if you want I can try to find it and link it here if you are interested).
So here I'm not recommending this to others and I have my own reasons for this, mainly because of my profession as a nurse. At work, I can barely touch my nose for hygiene reasons. Also, I can't wear a watch on my wrist for the same reason and I don't always find texts and numbers to morph when in operating room or when dreaming. The hands I always have with me and so far the finger trough palm and finger stretch test have never failed me, probably just because I'm already skeptical of being awake and I'm able to expect it to happen. I use these tests throughout the day and also do watch tests and nose pinch tests whenever possible and I have found this to be a good combo. I always verify the result with a so called more reliable test if possible. Counting fingers wouldn't work for me because I always have the right amount of fingers when dreaming and my hands always look just normal. Sure it could be a different situation too if I expected that I have extra fingers and that my hands look weird, but I haven't seen it necessary. In addition, I do finger trough palm and finger stretch tests so that they cause a certain kind of pain that I don't feel while dreaming so the test also has that aspect. In dream "the pain" is much blunter for me and I can't even say that it is pain like feeling.
So, I think expectation has a great role in reality testing and no matter what test you do, it can kind of fail with false expectations. Finger trough palm and finger stretch tests have not yet failed me but they might if I expect them to, so I try hard not to care about claims that they might. The same goes for other implanted claims that produce the effects expected in dreams. So far digital watch test has kind of failed me at least once (can't remember other cases) although the test itself was successful. Nose pinch test is always a long test for me where I need to be patient for a relatively long time compared to a couple of seconds of finger tests. I need to wait the autonomic nervous system to make me inhale and exhale for a couple of times so I can be sure it is a dream or at least I haven't been able to speed up my breathing while dreaming. And, because I don't want to plant any kind of expectations, the following is blurred but you can read it if you are not afraid of such thing: nose pinch test...could also fail if done too rapidly because you inhale / exhale about every 4-6 seconds when sleeping so if you do the test just when you are at the end of an exhale you might not realize that you are dreaming.
Wouldn't it just be best to believe that all reality tests CAN succeed and wouldn't it be good to be open about them so that they also WILL succeed? Isn’t it specifically harmful to plant in your mind the belief that a certain test can never succeed or even that it can fail sometimes? For me, it has worked best to do at least three tests in a row, one that is easy and fast but maybe not so reliable in somehow, the other is a little longer but probably more reliable, and the third is long, demanding, and very reliable when successful. With these three tests, which I am talking about here, I also affect several senses / several parts of my nervous system and not just one:
finger+pain is visual+kinesthetic
digital watch is visual
nose pinch is a test that tries to win over the autonomic nervous system and there you can also include pain (kinesthetic) if you squeeze harder
Phew 💨 that was a long one! Remember that these are only my thoughts on the subject and I do not advise anyone to copy my strategies. We are indeed individuals and this is just how it works best for me.
The reason that RTs have not failed me yet might be that by the time I do one, I'm already pretty certain that I'm in a dream and just want to confirm it. But that's backfiring, I think, because I've trained myself to believe that RTs are confirmation of lucidity, not cause for lucidity. This might be why my dreams are practically waving dream signs in my face and I do not think to do an RT – even though I'd most likely do one in waking life!
I'd be interested to hear people's experiences with this as well.
For me personally, the nose pinch test is a fickle beast, in the sense that it has failed me on multiple occasions -- and I have also had a very hard time determining whether or not I have actually been able to breathe on a few occasions. So far, I've placed the blame for this squarely on my hayfever and general allergies, which tend to get worse when I'm lying down.
The very first time I performed a nose pinch test before the digital watch and/or text test in a dream (I almost always start with one of those in waking life), I had to do it three or four times, and really pay close attention, before I was able to conclude that yes, goodness -- I could actually breathe. I have a theory that this may partly have been a combination of the sensation being entirely new and unfamiliar to me, and the aforementioned allergies -- or, in other words, I think I may have had some sort of expectation that I wouldn't be able to breathe, and then didn't pay close enough attention at first because the airflow felt "restricted, as usual".
Recently, in an attempt to have some sort of failsafe for this, I've started blowing out through my nose and onto my hand as well as the usual nose pinch test. This is because, for some reason, it's much easier for me to feel the air against my hand than it is to notice whether I can breathe with an undisturbed airflow when breathing in -- because the airflow tends to be so restricted in waking life as well a lot of the time. That said, I must stress that this is something I've only recently started doing every single time, and I have no results to report back yet!
That is a very interesting topic! I have never experienced a reality test not working in a dream, per se, but I often find myself not easily believing the results. Hence, I sometimes perform a successful nose pinch, but don't believe it until I've repeated it a few times and confirmed it with other reality tests.