At any given moment you should be able to determine if you are dreaming or awake. You have to be sincere about it, and accept that this could be a dream, otherwise you’ll always assume you are awake, and that makes it difficult to get lucid.
The reality test that Dr. Stephen LaBerge from the Lucidity Institute has proven to be effective is called "text re-reading." To do this test, you just need to find a sentence of text. First you read it, then you look away from it for a moment, then look back at the text to re-read. If it changes, then you know you are dreaming. If the text stays the same, you are awake and aware.
Text is very unstable in dreams, so it makes for a reliable reality test. This is because text is very intricate and symbolic. When you look away from the text, it disappears. When you look back at it again, it has to be re-created very quickly. On rare occasions your mind can recreate the exact same sentence, but most often the sentence says something completely different. If that is the case, you can confidently become fully lucid. But it does require you to be willing to accept the possibility you are dream right now.
Are dreaming you?
