I practiced becoming lucid in dreams. This was a about five years ago. I was able to do it on a regular basis. I loved it. One of the greatest benefits was solving my 'day' problems in my sleep. Of course, it was fun and surreal. One of the side effects was sleep paralysis. Eventually, I realized my energy level was dropping. Lucid dreaming was taking my rest away. I stopped. I prefer to let my body sleep normally no…
>> "One of the side effects was sleep paralysis"
That's interesting. For me lucid dreaming is more a side effect of sleep paralysis. I usually realise I am dreaming when I experience the symptoms of sleep paralysis and am then able to continue the dream (aware that it is a dream).
I spent some time in college thinking about/wanting to lucid dream. The techniques that I came to use were using a digital watch that I looked at frequently, and making a habit of turning on and off lights. The idea is that in a dream, looking at a watch won't reveal a time; and turning off a light switch won't turn off the light. So you train yourself to do these things habitually with the idea that eventually you w…
I'm the same, without having to do anything. Normally, if I don't like where things are going, I jump back in time and do them differently. But there is another kind of nightmare - those where the things I can find in my mind are.. let's say.. not what I normally perceive myself to be. And I can't say 'It's just a dream', because I'm at least partly concious imagining it, which means it's a part of me.. and you can't…
This mirrors my typical experience with lucid dreaming, it's more exciting to relax whatever control I have and be entertained (or disturbed). A lot of lucid dreamers report flying, that's so boring compared to the rest! Time control of the situation I'm imagining and experimenting with multiple paths concurrently ranks higher on the fun list than flying for me.
Don't be too disturbed by the weird imaginings. If they're particularly weird you could probably write a modestly successful Bizarro genre story. (In my favorites is http://www.amazon.com/Ass-Goblins-Auschwitz-Cameron-Pierce/d... which may be banned in Germany.)
A quote: "We don't have thoughts, we are thoughts. Thoughts are not responsible for the machinery that happens to think them." --John K Clark.
I spent some time in college thinking about/wanting to lucid dream. The techniques that I came to use were using a digital watch that I looked at frequently, and making a habit of turning on and off lights. The idea is that in a dream, looking at a watch won't reveal a time; and turning off a light switch won't turn off the light. So you train yourself to do these things habitually with the idea that eventually you w…
I used to have nightmares. I had died from falling, been injected with deadly painful poison, been shot up by various kinds of projectiles, or simply kept running. I built up a certain confidence in my waking life and my dream life where, rather than run from or be taken out by the enemy, I eagerly hunted them instead when they manifested. I tackle problems head-on and face danger boldly. In the dreamworld, in spite of the initial spark of fear, it is enough that I suddenly start doing the extraordinary, be it shrugging off bullets and lasers, becoming immune to poison, or sending out waves of power to overcome my foes. I once stopped an elevator from crashing on the ground while I was in it (that situation required a replay because something in me did not like how it ended when I started to escape to the waking world). After the first time I turned a situation around, it became easier. In a way, you could compare my attitude/behavior change to the light switch and watch check; it just became a part of my psyche to defy the darkness. I do not bother to actively control the dream, though: I just respond in kind to the events and take as much control as I need in order to succeed. Once success is met, the dream usually changes, and I am adrift again. "Well, we didn't get him this time..."
While I've had a few "lucid" dreams in my life that I can remember, I'm skeptical of anyone who claims they can do this with some regularity. Don't forget, there's a comparable number of people who claim the ability to "astral travel". When you wake up in the morning, how can you tell whether you were lucid dreaming or just dreaming that you were lucid dreaming? I don't mean that distinction as a joke; in one case yo…
You haven't had any lucid dreams then - it's not like wishy-washy pseudo-spiritual nonsense. It's nothing like astral projection. You're just fully awake inside your dream. You know 100% that you're dreaming, and that you are lying in your bed and you can control what happens in your dream (maybe "steer" is a better word than control). The websites I've seen about it make out like there is a spiritual aspect - but th…
Most of the time a dream just like most people, but once in a while I experience being awake in a dream which I also call lucid dreaming. It's very interesting and the level of realism will vary. I find that it varies depending on how I have let my different desires (e.g. lust, hunger, laziness, etc) dictate my behavior during the day. The more control I exercise over them the better the experience is.
But I have also had a complete different kind of experience, one that is more realistic than lucid dreaming. It feels as real as being awake. I believe that this is what many call the astral. I can count the times I had such experiences with one hand. It's very rare for me and it requires such an effort that I fail most of the times. And by effort I mean not acting on the different desires that come during the day and trying to understand what triggers them and dismissing them without emotion.
I tried lucid dreaming and it was quite easy for me to control my dreams. But after I woke up, despite the fact that I had slept 8+ hours, I felt mentally exhausted. Physically I was fine, no yawning or anything, but mentally I felt like I hadn't slept. It was a weird disassociation of physical vs mental exhaustion. I've tried it a few times and it's the same every time. To me the slightly more fun lucid dreams are n…
Fghh45sdfhr3, what did you dream lucidly? When I could control my dreams I would probably just stop whatever my brain is trying to figure out and start a sex dream.
Flying, building a great world - much like creative Minecraft 10 years before it was invented. And yeah sex too, but that kept waking me up.
I tried lucid dreaming and it was quite easy for me to control my dreams. But after I woke up, despite the fact that I had slept 8+ hours, I felt mentally exhausted. Physically I was fine, no yawning or anything, but mentally I felt like I hadn't slept. It was a weird disassociation of physical vs mental exhaustion. I've tried it a few times and it's the same every time. To me the slightly more fun lucid dreams are n…
Care to elaborate on what you mean by "mentally exhausted"?
Physically I felt great. Mentally it was like I had spent a long day memorizing pi numbers, or spent the day in an ice cream store while willfully resisting the temptation to eat any of it.
Hard to put into words, basically like there was a part of me, specifically something like the part responsible for will and motivation that desperately needed rest.
Are the companies pushing the lucid dreaming glasses nowadays the same people that sold them in the old "Johnson-Smith Things You Never Knew Existed" catalogs when I was young? I distinctly remember wanting to buy those, but I always blew my money on the other stuff in the catalog (fake dog poop, a "Hoof Arted" t-shirt)
I've been able to get poor-quality "wake-induced lucid dreams" reasonably regularly lately by waking myself with an alarm 3 or 4 hours before my usual wakeup time, walking around for ten to thirty minutes so I won't immediately fall back to sleep and then getting back to bed and meditating while I wait to fall asleep. More often than not, I go straight into a dream state without the in-between stage of deep unconscious sleep, and remain lucid.
Amusingly, these types of lucid dreams are basically false awakenings with my brain still running on the assumption that I'm lying in my bed in my bedroom, so they kind of resemble the stereotypical astral projection. I'm guessing something like this is what's really going on with the people who claim they can astral project.
I'm not doing the thing all the time since it's hard to keep up a regular sleep cycle while doing it, and the dreams have so far mostly been too short to be much fun. Still, it's a nice proof-of-concept.
While I've had a few "lucid" dreams in my life that I can remember, I'm skeptical of anyone who claims they can do this with some regularity. Don't forget, there's a comparable number of people who claim the ability to "astral travel". When you wake up in the morning, how can you tell whether you were lucid dreaming or just dreaming that you were lucid dreaming? I don't mean that distinction as a joke; in one case yo…
I bet you if you just stubbornly enough decide to lucid dream every night it won't be long before you have lucid dreams semi regularly. But I don't recommend that, see my other posts in this discussion as to why.
While I've had a few "lucid" dreams in my life that I can remember, I'm skeptical of anyone who claims they can do this with some regularity. Don't forget, there's a comparable number of people who claim the ability to "astral travel". When you wake up in the morning, how can you tell whether you were lucid dreaming or just dreaming that you were lucid dreaming? I don't mean that distinction as a joke; in one case yo…
>Don't forget, there's a comparable number of people who claim the ability to "astral travel". That is a rather uncompelling argument. How many people claim to be able to do something has very little to do with whether or not that thing is possible. Many, many people claim to have been helped by homeopathic remedies, and none of them have. Relatively few people claim to be able to walk on their hands, but many of the…
Pretty much any time I've become aware in a dream that I am dreaming, I wake up immediately. The one dream that I remember where I suddenly realized I was dreaming but didn't wake up went pretty awry. I became very confused in the dream trying to figure out if I was awake or not. It was disturbing.