Lucid Dreaming -- Ever done it? Can you do it at will?

by AlmostAtheist 19 Replies latest jw friends

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  AlmostAtheist

  You've probably had a dream where you came to realize you were dreaming. Something tipped you off; a guy with a hat made of dead fish, your mom complimenting your clothing choice, wording on billboards change each time you look at them -- something that you know wouldn't happen in real life.

  Sometimes in dreams you just buy it, like it's perfectly normal to wear a fish hat. But some lucky times you catch it, and then all bets are off! Fly, eat like a pig, kick puppies -- the sky's the limit!

  These types of dreams are called lucid dreams, and they have got to be the Holy Grail of personal entertainment. The few times I've both had them and remembered them, they were awesome. Like a free vacation.

  So I'm trying to get to where they happen more often, preferably at will. I'm reading a book on it, but it's more of a workbook. Reading it straight through doesn't get you anywhere. You have to read to point A, do the exercises, get to the goal state of Point A, then move on. Right now I'm working on just remembering my dreams at all. Remembering my awake life is practically out of my grasp, so my dream life is that much harder! But I'm going to give it a go.

  Meanwhile, I'm working on an exercise designed to give you a fighting chance to catch yourself while dreaming. Throughout the day I ask myself, "Am I dreaming right now?" I really consider it carefully. I try to recall events of the past hour or so and see if I can account for myself during that time. I also look at my watch, then look away, then look back to see if both readings make sense. If I can recall an hour of time, and my watch makes sense, then I conclude I'm not dreaming. The point of the exercise isn't to establish awake versus dreaming, but rather to get you in the habit of asking the question. That way you'll tend to ask the same question in your dreams. Asking gives you a chance to realize you ARE dreaming, then you're on your way.

  Anybody else working on this? Have you gotten good at it? What do you use your dreams for? I'm looking forward to flying, fighting a dog, and going into space.

  Dave
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  coolhandluke

  This is going to sound stupid but for a time I could do this at will. The "skill" came from watching an episode of Voyager. One of the characters would implant something into his dreams that signaled that he was dreaming. He used the full moon. I have been able to use that same imagery before in my dreams. At one point in my life I was dying a lot in dreams. I would awake in physical pain. I hated it. So with this, I was always looking for the moon even in awake time. Sometimes it would appear for a split second and I'd hold onto it and then reform the dream as I saw fit.

  Once I demolished an entire landscape and reformed it as I saw fit. It was the ultimate feeling of power.

  CHL
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  TopHat

  Nope! kicking puppies does not appeal to me!
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  gumby

  If you don't remember your dreams......wear a nicotine patch when you go to bed.....I swear to god you'll see Elvis and other stuff.

  Gumby
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  vitty

  
  

  Actually Id be interested in this. I have really bad night terrors and wake up screaming, im exhausted and sometimes afraid to go to sleep. Can you control what you dream ?

  Dave the bit about the dog, Why do you want to fight one????? This made me laugh !
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  oldflame

  Gumby,

  Your right on about the patches. I mean you get some very strange dreams when on those things. So strange that I can still recall some of the dreams I had when using the patch.
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  Cygnus

  Yes, it happens to me all the time. Once I realize I'm dreaming I am amazed at the detail of certain things my mind generates. Last night I dreamt I was in a small parlor that my dad owned, and I played guitar while having pizza for lunch. Then I went outside and had to walk home and went through some of the craziest ghetto neighborhoods, meeting all sorts of people along the way, including two well dressed middle-aged black dudes who had a yellow Porsche and were complaining how they got pulled over all the time in Italy. Right about then is when I knew I was dreaming so, like the other dude, I completely changed the landscape and I found myself on train tracks near a beach. I could go on and on but yeah, I experience lucid dreaming practically every night and it's way cool. What's NOT cool is sleep paralysis - which is very frightening and occurs to me maybe once a week. I am half in and half out of sleep, and I can see people in my bedroom or in the hallway outside, but I can't move or talk. That's a simple one... they get really nasty. Very scary. If you ever wanna yakk about this on the phone, gimme a call Dave.
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  AlmostAtheist

  Can you control what you dream ?

  Dave the bit about the dog, Why do you want to fight one????? This made me laugh !

  Hey Vitty,

  Yeah, that's the plan. The basic idea is that you are dreaming, and you don't know it. For you, reality is defined by the dream. But if you can just get yourself to become aware that you're dreaming, then you suddenly have all the power. In that moment, you become God for the world of that dream. As Luke mentioned, you can even restructure the landscape.

  There's lots of info on the internet about it, you can probably find enough to get you started. Google "lucid dreaming"

  On the dog.. well, there's an animalistic side of me that would love to be a life-or-death battle. I don't so much need to kill the opponent, I just need him to want to kill me. A wild dog would fit the bill, since he would prolly like to kill me and I have a sliver of chance of defeating him. This is as opposed to fighting a bear where I stand zero chance, or fighting a hamster where I stand too high of a chance.

  Thanks for the info everybody, this is great! Nicotine patches, etc? Huh, wouldn't guessed that. Smoking before bed won't do it since it's a single hit, whereas the patch is a slow release? If that's the deal, that makes sense.

  Dave
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  IP_SEC

  Actually Id be interested in this. I have really bad night terrors

  
  

  
  Vitty, you can condition your subcon on how to react to night terrors by thinking about how you want to react to them before going to bed. By night terrors do you mean nightmares/bad dreams, or do you have sleep paralysis? If you do have sleep paralysis that is an excellent op for lucid dreaming or OBEs. Your body is basically still asleep but your mind is wakeful.

  I have a lot of lucid dreams. Mostly by telling myself before bed that at such and such time I want to become lucid. If I happen to be dreaming at that time I can usually go lucid or semi lucid for a while.

  Matt

  This is going to sound stupid but for a time I could do this at will.

  Not stupid at all. Very common.
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  Cygnus

  Dave, whenever I die in my dreams I always wake up. It usually involves a car crash, or I'm driving a work truck and drive it off a bridge and fall 500 feet into a lake. Those are the dreams I can't quite control. But the ones I do control, when people treat me badly I tell them "Oh yeah? Well this is MY dream. And when I wake up you'll ALL be gone forever!" Then they get all sad and I try to console them..... sometimes that leads to sex with some hot girl, which Freud would have a field day with.

  I usually have 4 types of lucid dreams: dreams about work, dreams about family, dreams about high school/college, and dreams about JW stuff like meetings or conventions. The work ones suck. The JW ones can be hilarious as I know I'm not supposed to be there and all sorts of craziness ensues to do my behavior. Yeah, we gotta yakk about this on the phone some time.