Lucid Dreaming

[Abid]

It's basically being conscious in your dreams, and know that you are dreaming, as well as having the ability to change your dreams as you please. I came across this site while trying to figure out how dreams can manipulated.

 

LD4all - the lucid dreamers community. Guide on lucid dreams, dream control, conscious dreaming.

[Moontanman]

I lucid dream a lot, most of my dreams are under my control to some extent, I place my friends in interesting situations in my dreams, my enemies in even more interesting situations, lucid dreaming rules!

[modest]

In lucid dreams I find TVs and radios fascinating. Creating a news broadcast, for example, at first the TV makes noise like TVs should, and if I'm not paying close attention to what the news broadcaster is saying I realize it may not be saying anything significant—it may not even be saying words. I'd have to pay attention to be sure.

 

So, I listen close to the story and the sound increases in resolution until the noise of 'a TV' turns into the noise of 'something specific on TV'. Listening closer I realize the broadcast is coherent, and the broadcaster is speaking quickly and relaying an interesting story that I've never heard before.

 

I then realize that as fast as a news broadcaster can read a teleprompter, I am, myself, inventing this story. I ask myself if I could impersonate a news broadcaster and invent news stories on the spot in real life like this fella is doing in my dream... I'm quite sure I could not.

 

I listen closer... Every noun, adjective, and preposition that he says makes sense and fits perfectly in the story. He has his own accent and way of speaking and his own distinctive look, but I've never seen this person before. He gives statistics which seem to make sense... 56% of poll respondents say they approve of their State legislature and 41% say they disapprove. After he says it I analyze, 56+41=97 and there are usually about 3% that say they don't know to a poll question—it makes perfect sense. Did I do that?

 

It fascinates me. As far as I can tell, I am writing, producing, and performing a news program in real time all in my head, flawlessly! How on earth is this possible?

 

Eventually, I decide to take control of the broadcaster and make him say what I want him to say and the program comes to a screeching and very ugly halt as I utter "uh... uh... uh... War broke out in China today" ;)

 

Music is also something that fascinates me in Lucid dreams. I wouldn't think that I know every note and every lyric to the songs which are performed flawlessly in my dreams—yet, who is performing them if not me?

 

~modest :QuestionM

[SamSpeedo]

:rotfl:I lucid dream when I fantasize and, well, you know. It feels REALLY good!

[CraigD]

One of many things I find interesting about lucid dreaming is that many people experience it from their earliest memories of dreaming, with no effort or training whatever, while some people despite much effort and guidance can barely or not at all master its most basic “being aware that you are dreaming” technique.

 

LD4All’s main page states:

Don't take your dreams for granted. It is possible to 'wake up' inside your dream and realize that you are dreaming. This is called

lucid dreaming

. In a lucid dream you can do

anything

you want!

The first 3 sentences are a good definition of the usual meaning of lucid dreaming.

 

I disagree with the last. As someone who’s dreamed lucidly as long as I can remember, I can attest that one can “wake up” to an awareness that one is dreaming, exert control over a dream varying from merely avoiding frightening or unpleasant experiences to practically directing/dictating every perceived event, yet not be able to do some easily imagined thing, or do it as well as you’d like.

 

Something I commonly can’t do as well as I’d like in my dreams is fly. Try as I might, I can rarely fly very high, or much faster than a running pace. I really like flying very high and/or fast in my dreams, and fairly consistently try to, but have only had a few tens of dreams in which I succeeded. These dreams were intensely pleasant (a favorite involved flying, with nothing between my hair and the air, yet comfortably, from Washington DC to Oakland CA, at a couple of hundred meters altitude, in less than a minute – about Mach 210, as aircraft recon it) and I’d like to have them regularly, but with rare exceptions, simply can’t. As a rule, if I want, I can always fly in my dreams, but fly less well than the typical bird.

 

Another chronic dream problem of mine, and others with whom I’ve spoken about it, is find your way around in dreams, in particular leaving some place, and finding your way back to it. Once I’ve left a place in a dream, with rare exceptions, no matter how much I want and try to return there, I either can’t find it, or find it, but find it much changed.

 

These and other dream problems actually constitute for me one of those differences-between-waking-and-dreaming-experience awarenesses of which are so important in lucid dreaming. Commonly in my dreams, a character asks me to go somewhere and get something, to which I usually reply “we both know we can’t do that in dreams.”

 

PS: There’ve been a lot of discussion of lucid dreaming at hypography. Our search function’s somewhat limited – it’s often better to use a search such as google: lucid dream site:hypography.com – so here are a few, in rough order of their creation, that I found:

1433

2138

3968

5070

5401

5497

5670

8584

11624

21850

Edited February 12, 2012 by CraigD
Added titles stripped out of thread links by forum move

[belovelife]

ever practice remembering dreams?

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

Hmmm....somewhere round here Orby (I think) had a pretty good thread bout this Or was it DripCurlMagik...

 

Anywho...all dreams are manipulateable (sorry spelling) what sux is your environment can add some wierd crap (I love it when my mrs leaves zombie flicks on...at least when I realise I'm dreaming things get fun).

 

Ever tried programing your dreams?

[belovelife]

actually i did once, wel, in a way, i logged on to my supercomputer to tell it we were in a spacecraft, in the background i heard, it should be alright as long as he doesn't shut off the liquid nitrogen cooling system

:ebay:

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

Actually I was serious.

 

I've found that you can to some extent pick what you dream about (at least I can....somehow I doubt I'm the only one).

 

I pick a subject (or what ever you want to call it), keep it in my head till I doze off and when I dream it's a dream about that subject...though sometimes my dreams get hijacked by whatever is on the TV as mentioned above when the mrs forgets to turn it off.

[Moontanman]

I lucid dream regularly, i have a special place i go when I lucid dream... Nice place, lots of interesting things happen there... nice people too...