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Let me start off by saying that I think lucid dreaming is extremely cool. No...even before that. For anyone that doesn't know, lucid dreaming is when you are aware(during your dream) that you are dreaming. You become conscious of your sleeping state, while still asleep. And are able to control your dream from then on consciously, rather than unconsciously.
Some people learn how to bring about a state of Lucid Dreaming through instruction and practice. I'm sure if I put the effort in I could lucid dream more often. But without all that I've had less than a handful of Lucid Dreams in my life. And they've all been very interesting and fun experiences. Having that sort of power while dreaming is something truly remarkable.
But I'm curious, do you think lucid dreaming is better than regular dreaming? Because what I can say from personal experience, no matter how fun the lucid dreams were that I had, they don't compare even a little bit to some of my crazier dreams. To me, lucid dreams seem to take away some of the excitement and adventure of dreaming. The craziness, the randomness, the exhilaration, the excitement, the fear. The unknown. Like you're on a ride, or a journey. I don't see all those possibilities available with lucid dreaming.
Did you ever wake up from a dream and try to fall back asleep really quickly to continue the dream? to see what happens? To try to get back in that world that you briefly visited.
So thoughts? anyone here lucid dream regularly? I'd love to hear some opinions from people that have experimented with lucid dreaming more and might have some insights that i don't have. I do appreciate what can be done with lucid dreaming. But not having that control is almost more exciting for me.
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You have a good memory for dreams. I know I've had that feeling before that I know I'm dreaming, but it usually comes just before the end of a nightmare or one of those frustrating dreams where you can't move or run or something. It would be fun to remember good dreams well enough to get back into them after waking up, can you really do that?
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i've been able to get back into dreams seemlessly sometimes when i'm sort of in and out of sleep. like during afternoon naps. or mornings when you keep waking up, looking at the alarm clock and falling back asleep quickly.
but when i wake up, and "try" to get back into the dream my success rate drops much lower. sometimes it works. sometimes it partly works but everything is different. and sometimes i fail miserably and wake myself up in frustration. Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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but yes, usually if i realize i'm dreaming in a dream, it's right before or as i wake up. Only about 3 or 4 times have i realized i'm dreaming during a dream, and been able to continue dreaming in a conscious state.
i've also had a couple times where i've realized i've been dreaming, and had a minor level of control for a bit, and then slowly slipped back into unconscious dreaming. those i can't really explain. i find that odd.
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Yes, it is cool! I've had two in my life. The first one was really amazing. I didn't do anything all that interesting, all I did was fly around the K-Mart parking lot and eat a whole chocolate cake. (I was (as usual) on a very restricted diet at the time - dream food, along with virtual food, is a sort of food I'm allowed to eat. ) Indeed, after waking, when I stopped to think about it, I was disappointed at how mundane were the things I decided to do when I realized I was dreaming lucidly. But the thing that was so great about it was the feeling of enormous power. I felt as though there was absolutely nothing I couldn't accomplish. It was a glorious feeling of potentialiaty, and of potency. If I wanted to change the laws of physics, I could do that. If I wanted to fly around the craters of the moon, or discuss philosophy with the wise men among the aboriginal Australians (who understand this stuff far better than do we, since the dreamtime is an essential part of their whole culture, and to them we dream as children, willy nilly with no sense or understanding.)
And it carried over into the waking universe. For all that day and for some time afterward, I felt as though there was nothing I couldn't do if I tried. I felt like a creator.
A long time later I had one more. Again after waking I was disappointed in myself for the paltriness of the things I decided to change and do. This time I had no feeling of great potentiality as I had before. I quickly drifted back into unconscious dreaming.
Since then, no more. But I think there is huge potential to be explored in lucid dreaming, just as there is in meditation, and self-hypnosis. You are what you think. And what you dream. Choose carefully.
And read "The Lathe of Heaven" by Ursula K. LeGuin. A great novel involving dreaming that touches on these themes.
[ May 20, 2004, 06:30 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
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I have had lucid dreams since I was very very young--well before I had ever heard the term. In fact, I was so young that when I heard about the ability on GI Joe (having already done it for years) I believed it was a reliable source....Well, it did more or less turn out to be, that one time. Sometimes I can get back into a dream if I'm not fully awake; otherwise I'm out of luck.
The degree of control I have varies, and often if I do something too outrageous the dream will end...kind of like crashing a computer because you're taking up too much memory. (I once ended a dream in which I kept "waking up" that way, by making a tree grow out of the carpet. The next time I woke up it was real, though I wasn't sure for a bit.) I only recently flew for the first time; I have never had natural flying dreams the way some people do. Sometimes things resist; the weirdest of those was when I was walking down the street and encountered some kids. I attempted to make them do what I wanted and couldn't, and after several attempts they told me I couldn't tell them what to do--because they were "from outside"! Whatever that meant.
The worst part is that I can't induce it. I have tried techniques I found online, but they give me insomnia instead. Maybe I'm normally too close to waking as it is, and that's why I have them spontaneously. I've had them less frequently as I've gotten older, too--they used to be very very common.
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Maybe they were real people, and not under your control? I never thought of trying to make people do anything. It seems like that would be cheating somehow, or maybe just not all that interesting. If you are controlling them, they aren't being themselves but just you, maybe. Something like that. Anyway, in my regular dreams people always seem to act in ways they would want to act, not as I would hope they would act.
What I am curious about is what sort of information one can access in dreams. I keep wanting to do things like go places I've never been and see what they're like, or talk to people on other planets and learn what they know, and stuff. I feel sure you can learn in the dreamtime things you don't know. Are they really things you don't know? Or just things you don't know you know? I am not sure but either way they are very interesting.
The guy who discovered the form of the benzene molecule had been working very hard on the problem, then took a nap in which he dreamed of snakes eating their tails. When he woke he realized it was in the form of a ring.
What I hope I will do, next time I have a lucid dream, is fly to Australia and ask someone who knows what it's all about. But most likely I'll just do something stupid again like flying around the K-mart parking lot. <laughs>
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I lucid dream on occasion--probably about once a year, sometimes more. I wouldn't want to lucid dream all the time--like you said, the dreams I remember most fondly are those where I wasn't in conscious control of what was going on--but they are tremendously fun.
The one time I've sufferred from sleep paralysis I was also able to get into a limited lucid dreaming state, which helped a lot.
I've tried using one of those sleep masks with the LED lights and the alarms as an aid for inducing lucid dreaming, but it never worked for me--I'd always wake up in the morning and realize that I'd torn off the mask and hurled it across the room during the night. Apparently I don't like being half woken by LEDs flashing in my eyes.
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Yes, Ann Kate, that did occur to me, and it was the reason the dream was so freaky. I'm a skeptic about psychic phenomena, and although it would be great for them to be real, the idea makes me nervous.
I don't know that I believe one can find real information in dreams (other than what's already been encountered in conscious life and slipped unnoticed into your subconscious). But now that you've suggested checking out Australia, maybe I can remember and try it next time. Someone once told me, several years ago, that I might be able to get inside other people's dreams.
Some of the strangest dreams I've had have been of being someone else entirely. The notion that there might be some reality to those...well, that's just bizarre.
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I've had a very differnet experience with a similar type of phenominon. THis happens to me on a regular basis. I'll be asleep and my concious mind wakes up but my body stays a sleep. I don't have anyfun controlling my dreams. I go into a state of panic. Because I can hear the things going on around me. I am aware of the factthat I'm a sleep but can't move and I just freak. And this happens often enough thatyou'd think I'd get used to it and recognize the signs and relax so I could drift back to sleep. But I always end up jerking myself out of sleep and waking up out of breath from the struggle.
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I think there has to be some sort of reality to it, but it's a different reality. The dreamtime as opposed to the worldtime. In it, things are not always themselves. Sometimes they're disguised as something else. And maybe some things are from outside and others from inside. When a baby is learning how to get around in the worldtime, it has to first figure out what is self and what is other. Maybe people who are developed beyond the infant stage in the dreamtime can always tell which is which.
I've dreamed stories in which the first person character is not me lots of times. Sometimes I wake and think they'd make great novels. My mind tends to inhabit other characters as easily as it does my own self. I think maybe this just reflects the fact that I read too much.
All writers seem to report that their characters come to life and refuse to do what they're told. They have minds of their own. I wonder if this is related to your people in your dream. I wonder if the characters in good writers' stories are also from outside?
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Oh, but if I do that I won't get busy and do all the things I need to do, that I am procrastinating instead of doing.
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And the rest of us won't get to benefit from the conversation! I vote for continuing to talk about it here!
You know, I'd say that I'm the 1st person character in my dreams only about 60% of the time these days, far less than when I was younger. Have you found yourself having such dreams more often as you get older Anne Kate?
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Noemon - Not really sure. All I know is that it sucks and I freak the crap out. SOmething along the line of "I can't move but I want to move, why won't my freaking body move? AHHHHH!!! MOVE!" I always end up jerking my head around until I snap out of it. My wife has said that I look like I'm having a seizure or something. All I know is that I hate it. It is one of the more unpleasent feeling I've ever encountered.
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I have to admit that your concepts are bending my mind in weird ways, AK....it'd be easier, but if you have to stay off AIM I'll survive. Maybe later?
I often find myself transitioning between characters, especially when I read or watch television in a dream--I go from being myself to the character I'm watching or reading about. (Sometimes it works the other way too, with no apparent cause.) The transition is like nothing easily described--like being in two places and two people at once--and in relatively recent years it's begun happening occasionally when there's no transition going on. I simply find myself dreaming two perspectives at once. Very twisted.
I have experienced brief sleep paralysis recently, but not to the extent described here...Just for a few seconds before I wake. It's not frightening, though perhaps that has to do with never having it till I had known what it was for years.
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I've never heard of sleep paralysis before and have always wondered if there was an actual medical term and condition for my experiences. I doubt it will make me any more comfortable with it but it is nice to know I'm not the only freak out there. Fortunately it's been a while since I've had an episode. Of course now that it's been discussed I'll go through it tonight.
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I started a thread about it after my experience with it, but I expect that it's been deleted by now. I'll go and look though.
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I don't think I've noticed any difference over time. 60% me and 40% someone else sounds about right for me too.
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I find that I often play dreams in forward, then sometimes back up and pick up at an earlier point and make a different choice. I may do this again and again in the course of playing out the whole dream. It's similar to when I'm working on a difficult piece on the piano, say. There is the music time in my head, which can be interrupted and replayed from any point, and I hear that time mainly, rather than noticing how it is sounding in real time, which I imagine is pretty bad. There's a reason it's so maddening to have to listen to someone learning a piece, or working something out. Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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Unfortunately I can't do that. It'd be nice, but the only dreams I've had repeat did so involuntarily.
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Yes--I do exactly that same thing Anne Kate! In fact, that's an everyday feature of almost all of my dreams.
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The guy who supposedly dreamed about the benzene molecule was Kekule, and he wrote an awesome poetic bit about it. Aparrently while his colleagues admitted he was brilliant, they were skeptical of his "dream" story because he was known for being a bit over the top and full of manure at times.
Anyway, if I'm lucid dreaming I don't sleep as soundly or wake as rested. I put one of my childhood lucid dreams in Bob's big book of dreams thread about a year ago and he thought it was cool. It was about a translucent castle built by the sea that the waves washed up underneath and into it. In my lucid dreams even though I'm aware of the fact I'm dreaming, I don't have much control over what happens in the dream.
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Look at the ads google has chosen for this thread. Do they think we're nuts or something?
I've had that sleep paralysis a few times, and it was terrifying. Especially in the cases where I thought I was awake. Sometimes very frightening things happen in that state that I am actually dreaming though it seems to me as though I'm awake, which makes them a lot scarier. Only once have I been able to wake myself up from sheer terror, and then the sleeping person was like "oh, i'm sleepy, let me sleep" completely unconcerned, while the dreaming person was like "NOOOOOO!!!!!!!! Stay awake! Don't fall asleep again! Help help!" <laughs>
I wonder if the real illusory state is the waking one, in which we dream our selves to be a coherent whole. Maybe dreams are a closer reflection of actual reality.
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I've wondered about that AJ--if dreaming is an essential part of sleep, as it clearly is, does lucid dreaming fulfill the same function as non-controlled dreaming? It'd be interesting to see a study on it, but conducting such a study would be enormously difficult, I think.
beatnix, sure, glad to help!
My local public radio station carries a weekly show called Sound and Spirit, whose program this week is going to focus on dreams. I really can't wait to hear it. I'm probably most looking forward to the host interviewing Neil Gaiman, but the whole program looks interesting.
Looks like there is a transcript of the Gaiman interview available on the show's site. Very cool.
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quote:I wonder if the real illusory state is the waking one, in which we dream our selves to be a coherent whole. Maybe dreams are a closer reflection of actual reality.
Yeah, I think about this a lot too. The thing is, in my dreams, no matter how disjointed or incoherent they appear to me after waking, they feel completely coherent and reasonable to me ]i]when I'm having them[/i]. Who is to say that what I think of as the waking state is really any more coherent, or real, than my dreams. When I'm dreaming I'm rarely aware of the waking world; what if there is another plane of existance from which what I think of as the real world is as obviously illusary and transitory as my dream world appears from here?
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Wow, i'm glad this thread spurred some discussion. and cool discussion at that>
quote: I keep wanting to do things like go places I've never been and see what they're like, or talk to people on other planets and learn what they know, and stuff.
That's a really great idea ak. And something i definitely want to try next time i lucid dream. Go places i haven't been, talk to people i haven't met, ask questions i don't know the answers to, etc... And see what my mind comes up with. maybe go back in time and wach the big bang!
quote: I'll be asleep and my concious mind wakes up but my body stays a sleep. I don't have anyfun controlling my dreams. I go into a state of panic
-Beatnix
beatnix, what you're describing sounds a lot like what I was referring to as sleep paralysis. It's pretty unplesant, isn't it?
Do you get the whole "ominous presence" thing when you experience this? It's a not-uncommon element in many people's experiences with it.
-Noemon
I was going to comment on this, but i just checked out Noemon's thread and realized I already did comment on this, while i was still posting as Shonuff. But check out some of those links i posted in that thread Beatnix, they contain some good information about sleep paralysis. And all i can say otherwise, is just try to relax when it happens. I don't know if that's a conscious thing you can attempt to do while it's happening, but I think the fact that i'm always intrigued by the experience, or create some sort of game or story out of it while it's happening, helps me to never be scared during it.
quote: Sometimes I wake and think they'd make great novels.
Same here, but i usually think they'd make great movies.
I found some interesting links about lucid dreaming last night.
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