91–99 of 99 posts
- RadioLab is a great podcast, they did a lucid dreaming episode: http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2012/jan/23/wake...
- After hearing said podcast, I wrote a quick twitter hack to occasionally ask if you're in a dream (one of the techniques): https://twitter.com/#!/isdreaming
This is a question that I've had for quite a long time about lucid dreaming : is it possible to use the lucid dream time as a time to think deeply about things that usually require a lot of real world time but don't usually require access to real-world material? For example (this list is completely non-exhaustive): 1. figure out high-level software architectural design 2. write the high-level plot of a novel 3. think…
I've spent most of my attention in my LDs on poking at the nature of the simulation rather than on trying things like those. But somewhat relevant to your question, in my experience, the passage of time can go rather strangely in dreams. As one example of weirdness, if I start to do something like count to twenty, it would be rather easy for me to start counting, then have the dream kind of, almost or perhaps entirel…
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I've spent most of my attention in my LDs on poking at the nature of the simulation rather than on trying things like those. But somewhat relevant to your question, in my experience, the passage of time can go rather strangely in dreams. As one example of weirdness, if I start to do something like count to twenty, it would be rather easy for me to start counting, then have the dream kind of, almost or perhaps entirel…
Memory integrity is definitely an important thing in order to get any decent result out of a supposedly productive lucid dream, but can't it be improved by "training" though? I remember reading through a lucid dreaming thread on Reddit, and they said you can actually train yourself and have increasingly stable lucid dreams overtime; I would think memory integrity is one huge part of the whole dream stability spectrum…
Well, I don't mean to paint anything as a strong defeater of the project. More of a hurdle, and perhaps not one that everyone would have; the nature of dreams is very individualized and varies so much with so many things. Mine are usually very visual, but if I'm doing a lot of programing for a few days, they become abstract and syntactic in ways I find it hard to recall clearly. Maybe I've trained my dream-recall to overuse spatial aspects as a crutch.
And I would think short and mid-term time contiguity amenable to training (one can certainly learn to spot the skips more readily). And the more common, persistent dream-stabilizing methods would be a good place to start (I find having one dream-hand constantly scratching at its palm, or the palm of the other dream-hand to be a pretty good, persistent I'm-in-a-dream-reminder/stabilizer). Apply one to stabilize the dream, and then keep doing it even with the dream largely stable while thinking through the problem. I didn't try that (when I noticed the time skipping, I started trying to figure out how to use them, like control the skipped interval, rather than reduce their frequency).
My worry is that "filling in what you attend to" is a pretty general thing/feature/mechanism across all the senses I've tested in dreams. Along with "one's expectations", it is near to the foundations of what I think dreams are made of (speaking internally that is; speaking externally, they are made of brain region activations and neuron spikes and such). So there may be a limit to how much one can reduce/corral it on each sense modality. Well exercised short-term memory will probably help with that on the memory channel, since it does on the visual/spatial one... like with objects persisting when you turn your back to them and then look again. But then the capacity limit to working memory comes into play.
And there seems to be only so much I can split my in-dream attention between maintaining awareness that I'm in a dream (so as to keep it stable) and giving room in my working memory for new dream developments/updates to take place. Which is somewhat weird, because if I just look out on a dream vista (or just some wood grain), the landscape can be amazingly complex and rich with shape and color. But the more or longer I control my attention and hold fixed the way the dreamworld is allowed to update (no random stuff insertions or location shifts), the less those richly productive, autonomous visual updates seem to even try. The dream gets duller, and the fewer things around the more unstable it gets. I seem to have to allow the dream production mechanisms some free reign of randomness to maintain the sensation-expectation feedback loop going with content.
But maybe all of this is a product of my outlook. I look for the limits of dreams like the rendering limits of a game-engine. So maybe my dreamworlds oblige me and provide all manner of limits built around the kinds of limits I expect our wet-ware simulated worlds to have. If so, sorry to have infected your dream-thinking with these things.
And heck, just thinking for a bit in a dream about the rough shape, the requirements a solution must have so as to setup some very strong expectations, and then skipping forward in time a bit (or expecting to find the solution in a drawer and opening the drawer) and looking over your subconscious' creative "fill it in as I look" solution could very well be a good tool for seeing possibilities you wouldn't arrive at through more straight-forward thinking.
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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…
About the banning, I reckon it would be ok, although considered extremely bad taste. I can't imagine a publisher taking the risk. However, it's forbidden to use the swastika at all, in any context (1), so the image on the title page would have to be changed. The book is also not shown in the German Amazon search. (Yes, I'm German.) Sounds very interesting though!
(1)(there have been left groups with emblems with a crossed-out swastika having problems in court for this)
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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…
But I never struggle with getting to sleep. I just concentrate on "nothing" and try really hard to not think about anything, and soon enough I'm asleep. For me it just takes discipline.
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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 als…
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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 als…
You speak in a manner that seems familiar. One that I took on some time ago and am thankful to have left behind. Please be careful if this describes your current situation: http://www.movementsofgnostics.com/907
I find that for most people including me, it is much more beneficial to learn to meditate since the benefits are more practical. In my case meditation also allows me to have lucid dream with much better quality. I attribute that to the fact that meditation helps control the mind which calms the mind enough to realize that I'm in a dream.
I occasionally have lucid dreams without trying to do so. They're almost always a lot of fun, basically the best sandbox game you can think of. I've been pondering trying to trigger them, but I've been a bit spooked by suggestions that I'd have to try to learn tp distinguish dreams from reality.
I can distinguish any dream from reality, but the problem is that when I'm asleep I don't ask myself "Am I asleep?", I just continue following the dream's story. If I ever ask myself that question, or notice something isn't right (which is difficult in dreams, because what would be bizarre in reality will easily be considered normal by your brain in the dream) I will become lucid. The article talks about flying. I of…
From what you're saying that's not the case, so I should go ahead and try.
I like lucid dreams as I'm waking up, I get to "fix" the ending of whatever dream I'd had until then.