Free A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming by Dylan Tuccillo, Jared Zeizel, Thomas Peisel

around me,
    smell things, touch and taste the external world. I’m
    sitting here reading this book, dammit!” This is good evidence,
    but we’re afraid it’s not enough. If you were in a dream right now
    it’d feel just as real. All that clever evidence you had—sight, touch,
    taste, smell, sound—all that exists in the dream world too. The
    multisensory experience, the authenticity of emotions, the solidity
    of our surroundings—all these elements are so convincing that it
    doesn’t occur to our brain that we’re in a dream. This is why rec-
    ognizing the dream state takes an inquisitive mind. This chapter is
    about training your mind to be inquisitive.
    = 83 <

    So stop for a moment
    right now and look around
    I’m in a body of water, and I’m following 
    you, really check this time.
    this little cartoon guy as he swims through
    Is it possible that you’re
    the water. I want to continue following
    him under the water, and I think to myself,
    dreaming? Test it to make
    I can breathe underwater in dreams. I
    sure. Can you push your
    abandon the snorkel and continue follow-
    finger through your hand?
    ing the little cartoon guy. —AMY B.
    Can you pass through a
    solid object? If you jump,
    do you float down?
    By asking this question, you’re performing what is called a
    reality check, and the beauty of it is this: by asking yourself the
    question “Am I dreaming?” throughout your day, you will begin to
    ask the same question while in a dream. Your suspicion of reality
    For two days, I asked myself as many times as I could remember,
    whether or not I was dreaming. Of course almost every time I
    was not, and it felt weird to continue asking, but I did like how
    it brought me more presence and awareness in my waking state.
    On the second night, I found myself outside of my house and
    I stopped to ask the same question, “Am I dreaming?” I tested 
    by looking at my hands. Much to my surprise, when I counted
    my fingers I saw that I had eleven fingers. I checked again.
    “I am dreaming!” I shouted. It was the best feeling to have finally 
    answered the question with a “YES! This is a dream!” I ran and 
    jumped into flight, testing my superman skills. —DAVID G.
    = 84 <
    will echo into your sleep, bouncing around your mind until—
    voilà!—you find yourself in the mecca of your own psyche. Reality
    checks are another cornerstone of lucid dreaming.
    If you stop and think about it, you can usually tell if you’re
    dreaming or not: the trick is stopping and thinking about it. It
    may sound crazy to ask this question when you know for sure that
    you’re awake, but your feelings of lunacy will be justified when
    you have your first lucid dream. Soon enough you’ll perform a
    reality check in a dream and realize: “Wait a second, it worked! I
    am dreaming!” This sudden realization will be so amazing that it
    will validate all of your efforts to practice during the waking state.
    Physical Test
    In order to perform a reality check you need not only to ask the
    question “Am I dreaming?” but you also have to answer it. And
    how do you answer your own question, since the dream state likes
    to trick us and disguise itself as “real”? Fortunately, over the years
    the lucid dreaming community has developed some clever double
    checks. Make sure to always perform a physical test as well. Some
    standard physical tests are:
    b The Finger. Can you pass your finger through the palm of
    your hand? In a dream this is possible.
    b The hand. Do your hands look normal? Do they have as many
    fingers as they’re supposed to have?
    = 85 <

    b The Jump. Jumping is not only a hell of a lotta’ fun but a
    great reality check. If you jump, do you float down, is there an
    absence of gravity? In dreams floating is absolutely possible.
    (As a stepping-stone, try floating before you try to fly!)
    b The Nose. When