A False Awakening is simply when we think we have woken up in reality but find out it's another dream. A dream inside of a dream if you will. 'Insert Inception Reference'...same concept. It's thought that false awakenings are common in lucid dreamers or if you have a very big day ahead of you. Oddly enough for me both factors were the case in last night's episodes.
In the past month on more than one occasion I found myself falling asleep in waking life and waking up in my bed on the other side. This was done when I had almost remained consciously aware while falling asleep but not 100% and it took me a couple of minutes after "waking up" in my dream to realize I was dreaming and became lucid.
Last night it began by one lucid dream and false awakening. When I woke up for real and fell back asleep, I was constantly waking up and getting a little bit further just to wake up in the dream again, over and over and over. I find it so amusing because I remember coming across people online who have claimed to be in ten dreams deep before. I just assumed "Well, that just doesn't happen to me." WRONG, haha, I'm no different from anyone else, eh?
One thing I do notice though, when I have lucid dreams in these situations where false awakening usually occur, I usually have a difficult time staying aware and being able to have control. Sometimes I just honestly think my subconscious feels it needs to exert itself over me.
In my experience, it seems to me that false awakenings occur after we perform reality checks on a regular basis. Once we have gotten a pretty good hold on what triggers us to become lucid, it's like our subconscious is throwing a curve ball at us by handing us these false awakenings. Why? Probably because one of our minds main purposes is to "ground" us in to this reality otherwise we just exist in everything all at once (but that's just my opinion).
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Sleep Cycle:
-Bed @ 10:00 pm
-Woke @ 4:15 am, could not recall my dream well and stayed awake for a good hour before falling asleep.
-Woke on and off until 10 am, with repetitive lucid dreams and false awakenings
Method: DILD (Dream Initiated Lucid Dream)
Location: Antique hotel
Characters: Spouse, unknown characters
Intent: "Show me what I need to know"
Downfalls:
-Inability to hold onto awareness/kept awakening
-False Awakening
-Inability to leave story line
"I kept waking in a very old hotel or apartment building. It was fairly dark as it was early morning
and I was just getting out of bed, my spouse next to me. It would only take me a minute or two to realize I was dreaming. After the first time I realized this,
I continued to do things like run around outside
or climb through an antique mirror in the hallway to travel to another dimension.
The first time was so very difficult to keep awareness,
I was confronted with the test of sexual urges that I walked away from,
but when I walked away I woke up next to my spouse. After being intimate I woke up for real.
I fell back asleep a couple of minutes later and the same thing kept reoccurring.
As soon as I would get a little bit far with my explorations
I would wake up again in the dream all over again.
The craziest thing was, at some points I was both conscious
in the waking world and the dream. I could vaguely feel out what
the boys were doing while getting ready while still holding onto the dream."