Lucid Dreaming

[Hachi86]

Ive been trying this for a while. Its when you train yourself during the day to ask yourself, "Am i dreaming?". Then when you fall asleep and actually are dreaming, you ask the question again. If you can determine that you are in fact dreaming, you can do whatever you want to in the dream. Ive done it only once, and of all things i wrecked cars. Has anyone else heard of/done this?

[jamuko]

Re: Lucid Dreaming

Man, you make it sound so easy. Determining whether or not you are in a dream is really hard, and even if you do manage to do it, it's still very hard to make it into what someone would call a "lucid dream". Our minds are just so hectic, you have to be very disciplined to be able to accomplish this kind of thing while asleep. And sadly, chances are if you are that disciplined with it, your dreams tend to end up stale and uninteresting.

I have realized my dreams are dreams on occasion, but I can't do it on cue. I have to get lucky and hope my mind works itself out in this way one day, and even when it does, my dream still tends to flow as usual - I have some thought like "Oh cool, this is a dream and I know it lol" and then continue as normal. Either that or I enter a really useless kind of lucid dream where you control EVERYTHING, including the results of your actions and everyone's reactions... not fun at all. Might as well be daydreaming.

Anyway, simply training yourself to think about whether or not you are in a dream is a flawed plan. You are not actually training yourself to prove whether or not you are in a dream - you're really training yourself to think "Am I dreaming? Heh, not this time!" You will continue to think that even when you are actually in a dream after all. In order for it to work, you would really have to PROVE to yourself that what you are experiencing is only a dream. How do you do this? While in a dream, even though it often makes little logical sense, your mind has tricked itself into believing that it does... and no matter what you try to do to prove it to yourself, it is quite easy for your mind to keep tricking you into thinking you're still in reality.

For example... a dream feels real, right? And you also feel like reading this post right now is real too, correct? How are you to know the difference? For all you know, everything you are doing this very second could be a dream. How do you prove that it's not? You can't, because you fully believe that you are in reality. The same thing happens in a dream. I had a dream recently where I questioned several times whether or not the situation was real. I came to the conclusion "of course it's real, it feels real and I am unable to do anything to disprove it." Just like reality.

How do you prove to yourself that your current, very real-seeming experience isn't in fact real? Any experiment you try to do to prove that it is a dream will only work out in such a way that will continue the perception of reality.

[Hachi86]

Re: Lucid Dreaming

I didnt take the time to explain it throughly. In order to determine if you are dreaming, you can either read something in the dream and see if it changes because text changes in dreams alot; or you could check the time once or twice.

Once you actually do it, youll probably be so excited that you wake yourself up. I did that a couple times before i actually had a full lucid dream. Its a weird feeling, really hard to describe. Its like there are two of you, one in real life, and the other in the dream. You have to have extreme patience to do this because it will take you a LONG time to actually have a lucid dream unless you are a "natural".

[Kekiz]

Re: Lucid Dreaming

I have come to the conclusion i was dreaming before but i usually wake up soon after that because i know im dreaming.

[Reach]

Re: Lucid Dreaming

Well, most dreams happen during REM sleep, and during such the brain is highly awake and active, so it is probably possible to more conciously tap into this world. How you go about doing this, however...I would not be the one to tell you.

I have had some experiences where I have been able to manipulate what is happening in the dream, or could force myself to wake up. I could argue that the waking up part might not actually be a concious decision, though manipulating the dream seems like it is.

I suppose a problem with this though is that a lot of my dreams don't make a lot of sense to begin with. Sometimes they're set in familiar settings, but a lot of the time they're not and none of it makes any logical sense or looks familiar aside from the fact I will randomly recognize certain people in this dream, or places I do know are mixed into this hodgepodge of other things.

So, it is hard to say wether or not that dream manipulation is actually a concious process of mine or if it is just what happened. It seemed to me like I was able to manipulate the dream freely in these cases, but looks can be trickery.

Regardless, I seem to be able to force certain dreams, I.E. I can think about something very deeply before going to bed and I usually dream about it. Contextually the dream can change subjects rapidly without control though, and most of the time the dream is forgotten if I do not immediately put into effect eleborate and procedural memory techniques. I would say my memory of it only lasts 20-60 seconds without recall. I assume this is because the dream is probably, for the most part, sensory imagery and most of it won't make it into your working memory unless you immedately start thinking about it. That could also explain while most of it is all ravaged and rather random, but I am not a dream expert. It would be interesting to see exactly what your frontal cortex is actively doing during the dream, which would probably point to wether or not you can consciously control your dream or not. (though, I don't think anyone has 'proven' the frontal cortex is responsible for conscious decisions)

[xjohnieboyx]

Re: Lucid Dreaming

I've come to realize that lucid dreams, so to speak, can occur. I don't know to which extent one could control it, however.

I've experienced a self-manipulated dream several times before, but it's not like I was planning on it. It kind of just happened. However, I've gotten the feeling of deja-vu quite a few times during the day, and when I get this feeling, I remember that I saw this in my dream, or something similar to.

I don't know how to explain it otherwise, but basically what I'm trying to say is that I've experienced something pretty weird. I would be going through daily life, then suddenly something would happen that would make me remember my entire dream that night.

It's quite complicated, I assume. The process of sleep is what i call a "mini death" in a sense. Personally, I find it quite hard to explain. Reach said that dreaming occurs in the REM stage of sleep, that's basically all I know

[jewpinthethird]

Re: Lucid Dreaming

My friends were big into lucid dreaming and likewise, I was influenced to give it a try. I have been aware that I am dreaming only to wake up shortly afterwards. I know that if you wake up you can attempt to "spin" in your sleep, which supposedly puts you back under, but it never lasts long.

[xjohnieboyx]

Re: Lucid Dreaming

What I'm wondering is something like this (referring to the OP, who said he can control his dreams basically): Would you be able to wake up after a dream, fall back asleep, and dream the rest/continuation of the dream you had just dreamt?

[Tokzic]

Re: Lucid Dreaming

I once tried to become a lucid dreamer. I asked myself, once an hour, whether or not I was dreaming or not and checked whether or not to see if it was reality. Yes, it was obvious when I was not dreaming, but the idea is to make it so that it was integrated in your life so much that you would do it in your dreams. Once you realize that you are dreaming, it's supposedly easy to manipulate your dream world to a really cool extent. You can create entire worlds, talk to imaginary characters, or even question your subconscious.

I tried to do it for a month, got one lucid dream, woke up upon realizing I was in it, then gave up after another week of nothing.

[slipstrike0159]

Re: Lucid Dreaming

An easy way we distinguish reality from a dream is that when we are in this one state (what we call reality) one thing affects another and then the next day things always pick up where you left off the last day. Dreams dont continue, at least not as often as what we call reality and since we all experience it together and the things that happen here affect other people as well as yourself we call it reality.

[Tokzic]

Re: Lucid Dreaming

An easy way we distinguish reality from a dream is that when we are in this one state (what we call reality) one thing affects another and then the next day things always pick up where you left off the last day. Dreams dont continue, at least not as often as what we call reality and since we all experience it together and the things that happen here affect other people as well as yourself we call it reality.

I said that it was pathetically effortless to differentiate reality from a dream while conscious. What's difficult is remembering to consider whether or not you are in reality while in a dream.

[waffydude]

Re: Lucid Dreaming

I've only had a handful of lucid dreams in my life, but they were always pretty cool experiences.

Apparently, some people have been able to train themselves to have the dreams very often. I remember reading about some professor who consistently had 2-3 lucid dreams a night, or something along those lines. I sometimes tell myself that I'll delve further into the topic and try some stuff for myself, but I never really have the motivation to, unfortunately. Maybe some day.

[Hachi86]

Re: Lucid Dreaming

I wanna get really big into it, because there is so much you can do. Ive had failed attempts that have been really weird though. For instance, once i realized i was doing it and woke up, only to realize that i couldnt move and i had an intense feeling of fear.

Another one i had was i was half awake, half dreaming, and i was slipping between the dream world and the real world. There were times where both seemed real, and i was in "two places at once".

[JasonKey]

Re: Lucid Dreaming

consistently failed at this for years ..

Simply put, unless I wake up while dreaming .. I don't remember them, so I always thought that had something to do with it.

[talisman]

Re: Lucid Dreaming

I have dreams regularly where I have some degree of control over what happens, but they are far from what I would call "lucid". Also, I suspect that they aren't REM dreams but are more stage one/stage two hallucinatory type stuff, because I've found that I can move somewhat during them (and you can't move during REM sleep unless you're messed up). And like others here, if I try to control them too much, I will eventually wake up (which is another reason I suspect they aren't REM dreams).

And reach, my understanding is that the frontal lobes, particularly the ventromedial sections, play a large role in decision making as it regards personal and social situations. But that does not necessarily involve consciousness, or limit consciousness to that area. From what I've studied, consciousness is just whatever is being attended to on the cortex, while some degree of awareness persists for those things that are not being attended to.