when you are aware that you're dreaming, how does the 'character' of you become aware that you are existing in a dream?

Lucid dreaming is conscious dreaming, so you are aware that it is a dream and can change the story at will. In my experience you can become so absorbed in the story that you think you are the character. Lucid dreaming is similar to hypnosis in what it feels like, Lucid dreaming feels more realistic though.

Wikipedia has a good wikibook on Lucid dreaming. Thats what I used

How does this character of you know you are posting something that has any relevence?

Well that is easy to answer--if all is relative, then clearly his post has relevence silly~

From Dictionary.com:

relative
...
2. something having, or standing in, some relation to something else.

relevant
bearing upon or connected with the matter in hand ...

If everything is relative, then everything is in relation to something else, thus everything is in some way connected to the matter at hand~Maybe?

So if you are clear with your relationship to reality and the senses, at some point you develop an intrinsic trust in the subtlety of the senses.
If the dream is really lucid, similar to waking activity in sense of perception, and the perception of self awareness of the witnesser (that'd be you) then you can trust it is both taking place and you are experiencing the thought feeling and action just as you would any experience with your eyes open.

Joesus do you differentiate between hallucinations, lucid dreaming, and reality?

I have several key indicators that tell me when I am having a lucid dream, and when I am in the real world. The most obvious indicator is a sudden change of setting. When I am dreaming the instantaneous change of setting does not seem at all strange; however, I still am aware of the change and thus know I am dreaming.

I can also not see my reflection in my dreams (just a blur)...

I've never noticed the reflection thing. I have, oddly enough, actually died while dreaming (I'm not sure I was aware of whether I was dreaming or not), and at the moment of death, reappeared in a completely different setting, like watching a movie and partway through, suddenly you switch to a random location in a different movie.

They are all projections of interpretation.

Hallucinations are distortions created through stress.
Lucid dreaming is a projection of the minds interpretations of thought without the physical limitations of the body.
Reality is a word for the minds interpretation of what is real in form, yet in its purest state it underlies form and function.

Consciousness which is the creator and witnesser of all three in its different aspects is present and can be experienced. It is by its nature aware, yet the ego is not always cognisant of it due to its boundryless presence. Ego is conditioned to limits in interpretation of reality and draws lines in the sand to what is real and where reality and hallucinations begin, and where the Self begins and ends. Its foundation is conditioning, and the Self/consciousness is without the boundaries set by conditions.

Intuition plays a big part in being able to stretch the mind beyond conditioning. For the most part intuitive knowledge is often ignored or doubted.

How do you differentiate between intuitive knowledge which may be correct vs intuitive knowledge which may not be correct?

Since we are on the topic of dreams/imagination might I reccommend Lisey's Story by Stephen King--it was fantastic~

You start using it and like learing to walk you may stumble and fall on occasion but you get better at it with practice. When you don't use it, it atrophies. Like any sense or muscle, it has to be used to be strengthened.

I died in a dream once too. I was machine gunned to death. When the last bullet hit my brain I woke up. What a relief!

I had a similar experience. I woke up before I actually died in my dream. Is it possible to watch yourself die in a dream?

For me it wasn't a third person type (out of body) dream. It was a simulation of normal existence. I recall thinking "I am dead now" and the feeling of the finality of it. It was also associated with a panicky desparation of "I can't let this happen to me!" Hence the relief on awaking.

At the opposite end of the consciousness scale, the psychedelic research literature is full of death-rebirth experience annecdotes.

A few weeks after starting on antidepressants, I dreamt that I was in a coffin and there was the lightest band of paper ribbon tying it along the length and across the width. I did not sense dying at all.
However, on awakening, I felt so different to the way I normally felt ie., for 45 previous years, that I could only conclude that I had died and was in Heaven or Hell - I must say it seemed much more as one might expect Heaven to be, though.

It took a couple of hours for me to realise that nervous signals which had not been 'connecting' previously were now working properly. It took several weeks for me to realise that the change was permanent!
Senses and disposition, though not character or personality, changed dramatically.
I would not like to go back there!!!

Very Intresting

Typically when there is a celebrity in my dream that is an instant queue for me to realize I am dreaming.

I guess I was lucky... I still remeber back when I was 4 and had a dream about being in Mr. Hooper's store in Sesame Street and having a conversation with him... "Hey, wait a minute"

Strangely... doing abnormal things like flying does not normally trigger a lucid response for me when I am dreaming.

eg: I get hit by a Ferrari, knocked 50 feet in the air and suffer no damage... then Bruce Willis gets out of the Ferrari... and then the "Hey wait a minute" response comes.

i have many lucid dreams.. like it is real life... i can touch, taste, smell and see everything like i do when I am awake... and it 85% of the time in 1st person.. when it is really weird i am in 3rd person.
but it is definatly an experience.

Jellybean, lucid dreaming is when you are aware that you are dreaming; it is not simply being aware while in a dream, or being able to remember your dreams. It should be nothing like real life since, when you are aware that you are dreaming, you can instantly make anything happen and materialize that you think of or visualize.

I think it's the strangeness of the dream that alerts me to the fact that it's a dream, which I subsequently test out by seeing whether I can fly straight up into the sky. If I can, then I know I'm dreaming and start experimenting to see what else I can do.

The dream state seems too confining to me, so whenever I discover I am dreaming I try to wake up (always succeeding).

A bit like being on holiday - eventually look forward to going home.

My girlfriends mother is extremely supersticious, at least superficially. She has tainted my girlfriend with this jargon about holding your collar when you see an ambulance until you see a dog! Equally stupid is the rhyme that goes with spotting x number of magpies (One for sorrow, two for joy etc.). Anyway, we were at a dinner once and when talking about dreams she gave this old folk story:

"If you die in your dream then you die in real life".

My reply was fairly logical:

"Who could have died whilst dreaming and then come back to tell you about it?"

I think she'd watched Nightmare on Elm street too many times. She's a teacher too, although only infant grade. Very pleasant woman, but I don't agree on her supersticious behaviour, it borders on mental disorder in my opinion.

One universal and reoccuring dream I had was themed around being unable to act quick enough. For instance I'd be stuck in the middle of a road and a car is hurtling toward me, yet I am running in super slow motion and panicking every second. Its like two separate speed films, one with a fast car and another with me in slow motion. The car never reaches me despite its speed, and I never reach safety, but the whole charade is all about the fear and lack of control. Sometimes I think thats all dreams are, picture emotions. I've never died in a dream, but I did fly in a dream then tried to show my family by jumping off the top of the stairs in my house - woke up on impact. Then I went and did it again because I'd woken up into the same dream - woke up on impact. Luckily I understood this was reality and didnt try it a third time!

I have had dreams that seemed contrived to keep me sleeping. You don't need to wake up, because you're already awake. See how detailed everything is? You wouldn't see that kind of detail if you were dreaming. I know I'm dreaming. No you don't. That sort of thing. It never works. I wake up intentionally then.

In my humble understanding i have a conscious mind and a sub-conscious mind, now they both work together at all times, your sub-conscious being resposible for your heartbeat and most other things in your body that your not in direct control of, and your conscious mind being in control of your thought patterns and planning direction. When i sleep normaly my sub-conscious takes almost full control moderating heartbeat, breathing and the basics while the conscious mind may be mostly at rest causing normal dreams, or fully resting causing no memory of dreams at all. But there is many ways through accident or meditation that your conscious mind can become fully alert during sub-conscious periods allowing one to be fully in control of their sub-conscious reality... Cool hey!

I think the trick is when you realise your dreaming, stay dreaming, then you know your in your dream so you have full control and know you can wake whenever you want. The hard part is not waking.
I have had some fantastic dreams that i consciously created. Ive also found it to be a doorway to
astral-travel (still investigating)
Please note that in my experience when i do wake from a night of this i feel like i haven't slept at all. I think this is due to both the conscious and sub-conscious mind working hard together and not pulling the normal handover takeover deal alowing the other time to rest.
A moment in reality can be hours in a dream and vise-versa.

I've noticed this myself. When I was using nicotine replacement patches I'd have extremely weird dreams and remember most of them. My chances of going lucid also dramatically increased, however it felt mentally tiring as if i'd been awake all night sleepwalking my dreams.

Best lucid experience ever was when i tried some of the apparent tricks to confirm I was lucid (despite knowing anyway). No reflections, cant change light levels, unable to read small text. I tried to read the time on my mobile and couldnt see anything, panicked I would miss work because of the dodgy phone and woke up. I was quite annoyed at not recognising it was a successful test!

So next time I became lucid I crept upto a gangster in a darkened corner of a huge concert hall. I leapt around to see what the newspaper said and saw a large bold headline that said FE FE FA FE FAH! I woke up in a fit of hysterics. Bloody consciousness, who'd have it eh?

Just a quick one on reading in your dreams.. The words you see in your dreams on a sign, a newspaper or whatever, you are creating on the spot at that very moment you see them, therefore they can change as you watch them depending on what your thinking they say at the time. Holding the image together and not have it shift to another altogether totaly is tricky and depends on your level of conscious/sub-conscious imput.

Yeah I can understand that Succubus, but unfortunately my own brain tends to throw me curveballs to either wake me up or totally trick me into believing I'm not testing lucidity. The phone example was annoying because I was having an excellent dream, but when i couldnt read my phone I assumed I had no signal (I was on a cruise), so I panicked I would miss any work calls. The newspaper thing was just hilarious, probing the depths of my own mind and It comes back with a comedy moment like that. It - being appropriate because I felt I was being told to piss off from my own brain

I think thats a common problem. The cause being not quite enough of your conscious mind working in you sub-conscious state, leading to very hard to control semi lucid dreams. The mind does not want to stay on one track for very long naturaly and has many little tricks to throw you off your chosen line of thought, but like training a mussel to lift more weight you can train your mind to perform with more discipline and perform with greater ease the tasks you set it.

One of the most important skills I've gained through lucid dreaming is the ability to alter a negative dream. Often it only works when its a nightmare that repeats even after waking for a minute or so, but when i re-enter the dream I can take control from that point. I used to have quite bad nightmares as a child, usually a witch laughing a clawing at the windows in a menacing way.

I put this down to the Wizard of Oz: As a child I was a evil bastard for sure. My father worked away on oil rigs or laying pipes in the desert so there was only me and my mother, and I used to swear like a trooper. She thinks it was frustration, as do I, because once I could do things for myself I blanked that history and moved on. An example of my behaviour: I once told a photographer in a department store to "watch the f*cking birdie yourself" at the tender age of 4.

Anyway, I used to love the Wizard of Oz and often jeered at the wicked witch. One Christmas my mother took me to see the Wizard of Oz theatre production and this I believe is where the "evil witch coming to get me" nightmare originated. When the wicked witch showed up I began to hurl insults, called her a cow, a bag, jeering til my hearts content. Well she decided to improvise and screeched "Which little BRAT dares taunt the Wicked Witch of the West?!", I couldn't believe it, my world became surreal. I was under the false impression that theatre was just like the TV, and the whole thing was scripted...

She began to close in on my position in the theatre, and I was ill. I almost tried to climb back into the womb! Of course she came within a few feet of me screeching and cackling at the fear on my face. I sat quietly through the rest of the show, and its the only part of it I can remember because I was so young. So kids, don't heckle performers kk?

ROFLMAO! That is experienced stage performing etiquette and poetic justice at its best!
Gees i had a good laugh just now, ty :-)

hehe, I'm glad you had a laugh