Dream signs are unique signals and events that will make it clear you are dreaming. If you’ve ever had a dream where something so incredibly bizarre happened to the point that you said to yourself “I must be dreaming…,” the unusual event was your dream sign. If you’ve never had this experience, this section will help you find your dream signs and how to best use them to become lucid.
 

Finding Your Personal Dream Signs

Dream signs that occur frequently in your dreams will be your unique personal dream signs. You can find out what these are by looking through your dream journal entries to find recurring themes, events, objects, etc. One common event you might find is occasionally dreaming your teeth fall out. While it can be very frightening to experience this, you can use it as a dream sign to realize you are dreaming and gain lucidity.

A common dream sign I have revolves around location. As someone who rarely travels, sometimes I’ll find myself across the globe in Egypt, staring blankly at the pyramids – a likely sign that I’m dreaming. In this instance, touring the pyramids is one of my personal dream signs – a recurring, unusual event that likely means I’m dreaming. Another common dream sign I have is when I find myself living in my old apartment – interacting as though I’m still living there today.

If you are having difficulty finding your personal dream signs, you can try expanding your search by looking for signs that aren’t necessarily unusual. An obvious example is if you are an avid tennis player and frequently dream of being on the court, then you’ve likely found a dream sign that is realistic and matches your normal activities. This will make it somewhat harder to realize you are dreaming, but can still serve as an effective dream sign. On the other hand, if you hate golf and frequently dream of being on the green, you will likely have an easier time realizing that you are dreaming because it is so different from what you would normally do.

Using Dream Signs to Gain Lucidity

After you’ve analyzed your dream entries, you should keep note of potential dream signs you discovered, and write them out as a list separate from your entries. Before you sleep, you can look over the list, and intend to realize that you are dreaming if you encounter them. You’re basically training yourself to recognize your potential dream signs moments before you may possibly encounter them.

One of the barriers you will have to deal with is the fact that your mind will rationalize and accept many of the unrealistic experiences you will have while dreaming. We generally lose the ability to question why we’re able to perform supernatural feats and other unlikely tasks, making it extremely difficult to realize that it’s a dream and become lucid.

If you’ve ever realized that you’re dreaming because something stood out as too improbable, you already know it takes a lot of absurd dream signs to get to that point. The good thing is that with training, recognizing dream signs for what they are will become much easier. You’ll spend less time questioning dream signs and more time experiencing lucid dreams.

Before being able to intentionally lucid dream, I would sometimes dream of being a wizard capable of throwing fireballs and lightning bolts, without ever questioning why I could do it. This makes it all the more important to keep a good dream journal that has plenty of details and entries for you to extract potential dream signs from. Be persistent in maintaining a good dream journal and reviewing it before you sleep, and you’ll find that lucid dreaming isn’t as difficult to achieve when you’re well-prepared.