Yeah. It’s very common to notice anomalies inside of a dream. But the anomalies weave into the dream and feel normal. You don’t have much agency to enter a lucid state from a pre-lucid dream.

So the idea is to develop habits called “reality checks” when you are awake. You look for the broken clock kind of anomalies that the grandparent comment mentioned. You have to be open to the possibility of dreaming, which is hard to do.

Consider this difficulty. Are you dreaming?

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How much time did it take to think “no”? Or did you even take this question seriously? Maybe because you are reading a hn comment about lucid dreams, that question is interpreted as an example instead of a genuine question worth investigating, right? That’s the difficulty. Try it again.

The key is that the habit you’re developing isn’t just the check itself — it’s the thinking that you have during the check, which should lead you to investigate.

You do these checks frequently enough you end up doing it in a dream. Boom.

There’s also an aspect of identifying recurring patterns during prelucidity. That’s why it helps to keep a dream journal for your non-lucid dreams.

There are other methods too.