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Post by andrewwerdna on Jan 16, 2017 7:41:28 GMT -5
Any practitioners?
This is another thing I'll obsessively pursue for usually a month or so every year. For the amount of thought and energy I put in, I don't have very many lucid dreams, but in trying to achieve lucid dreaming my dream recall has become relatively solid I think. If I'm making an effort to keep a dream journal I can usually recall more than one dream a night, sometimes many more.
In my opinion the coolest thing about lucid dreaming, as hazy as the memories of dreams seem to be, when you're actually there, aware within the dream, it's as real as any reality you've ever known. Every possible detail is accounted for.
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Post by Verminaard on Jan 16, 2017 21:20:58 GMT -5
This has always been an interesting topic to me, as sometimes I get sleep paralysis, which I've often heard described as the lines between being awake and asleep are blurred. Like, I'll be awake, but unable to move, and experience dream like phenomenons for a while, like feeling as if something is in the room with me.
How does one even get started trying to dream lucidly? I have barely any dream recall-- I remember maybe one or two dreams every two months.
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Post by wayfarer on Jan 17, 2017 4:48:46 GMT -5
I was talking about this topic with my girlfriend last weekend. When I was young I frequently had nightmares, and at a certain point I learned to make myself invisible for whatever it was that was chasing me. This was accomplished by repeatedly saying to myself 'I am invisible', and I don't know how and why this worked but it did! From that point on, every time I had a nightmare I could stop it by making myself invisible for the 'evil'. Such a weird thing, and ofcourse at that time I never even heard of the term lucid dreaming, but I guess that was exactly what it was. Nowadays nightmares are practically a thing of the past for me but whenever I do have one this trick still works for me
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Post by Verminaard on Jan 17, 2017 5:04:17 GMT -5
That's interesting -- it seems like whenever I'm dreaming, though, I can't really "tell myself" anything or do anything. Once or twice right when something bad is about to happen in a nightmare I have suddenly realized, "hey, this is a dream," but after that I immediately woke up. How do you teach yourself to stay in the dream and not immediately wake?
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Post by wayfarer on Jan 17, 2017 6:01:54 GMT -5
I guess that's the really tricky part of lucid dreaming, to be able to not only take control of actions but also to control how long the dream lasts. Personally I can't remember how quick after stopping a nightmare I wake up. Could be instantly, could be moments later...but I know pretty sure I've never been able to stay in a dream by my own will.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jan 17, 2017 10:00:28 GMT -5
Lucid dreaming, for those unfamiliar with the term, is simply the state in which you're dreaming and you become consciously aware of the fact you are dreaming. Then you can manipulate the dream. Like you can plan that once you become lucid you'll visit the pyramids of Giza, and then you'll become lucid, and if you're skilled enough, direct your dreaming toward that ancient monolithic scene. If you are interested in your own dreams at all, it is the most incredible thing. Whether you achieve lucidity or not, it's like throwing gasoline on the fire of dreaming. It is a whole new realm you can be exploring every night. It's a lot of work though. I'm terrible at keeping up with the practice, but that doesn't stop me from trying very hard every now and then. Usually whenever I really put my mind into it for a month or so I'll get a handful of solid lucid dreams. If you experience frequent nightmares or sleep paralysis, one fortunate aspect of that is that you have a head start on lucid dreaming practice, because you have concrete experience dealing with dreams, and the intensity of them draws attention to itself. Ok, so here are some tips from my experience: 1. Keep a dream journal. This is the most important step. If you don't keep a dream journal of some sort, you might as well not bother. A dream journal is a journal where you write down your dreams, pretty self-explanatory. The way to do it, especially when first starting off, is to write every possible detail you can remember as immediately as you can. This is time-consuming and will disrupt your sleep schedule, because the idea is that when you wake up periodically throughout the night you should be writing what you remember. It will be hard to fall back asleep after this. You should be willing to lose some sleep early on. You'll probably want to go to bed earlier. After you get into a groove, maybe just jot down a few key words to remind yourself later on when you write the full entry. Often you'll wake up in the middle of the night after a dream so vivid you think to yourself, "psh, I don't have to write that down, how could I forget that?!" only to fall immediately back into slumber, all memory of it drifting back off to the ocean of the forgotten. In my experience all you need to do is jot down one word to find the trail again when you wake up. But when you are really awake, write every detail as soon as you can. The longer you wait, the less you'll remember. The main purpose of this exercise is to improve dream recall, not to read over your journal again. I almost never reread old dream journal entries. As soon as you start jotting down details you'll uncover many more, and maybe even other dreams you had forgotten about in the course of the night. 2. Do reality checks. A reality check is when you do an action that is meant to reveal whether or not you're dreaming. The idea with lucid dreaming practice is that one does reality checks all throughout the day as a habit, and hopefully this habit will carry over into the dream world. So then when you happen to do this reality check in the dream, it will reveal to yourself that you are dreaming. The popular depiction of a reality check is pinching oneself, but this doesn't work. No lucid dreaming person will recommend this. The most common reality check is looking at your hand. You can also just count your fingers as a more specific habit. The thing is, you really want to fully consider "Am I dreaming?" This looking-at-hand reality check has worked for me in the past, but just about as many times I've been in the dream and doing the reality check thinking, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Yep, checks out, 6 fingers, definitely not dreaming," only to kick myself in the morning. A more reliable reality check, which might make you look more silly doing the habit during the day, is to close your nose with your fingers and then attempt to breath in and out of your nose. In reality it will not work at all, when you're dreaming you'll be able to breath in and out of your nose normally, no matter how much you try to stop the airflow. I'll admit, one time I did this reality check in a dream, and even though I could breathe perfectly through my nose with it clenched, I still figured it was just some weird thing, and I was still so obviously awake. However, I think that's the only time I will make that mistake. The hand-check seems a lot more prone to error to me. 3. Don't consume cannabis. It seems like these activities should go hand-in-hand, but unfortunately weed is a dream killer. One cannot pursue dreaming and smoke weed simultaneously. 4. Sleep on your back. Lucid dreaming advocates don't recommend this nearly enough in my opinion. I find it is a reliable way to intensify dreams, and therefore improve recall and chances of lucidity. You'll be more likely to have nightmares and sleep paralysis, and it will be harder to fall asleep in the first place, but it seems to be a way to greatly increase the likelihood of a lucid dream occurring. Sleeping on a couch rather than a bed is a good way to ensure you stay on your back. There's a ton of info about lucid dreaming online, with far better and more experienced advice than I can give. Also I recommend this, the definitive book about lucid dreaming: Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge
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Post by dungeonsnake on Jan 17, 2017 22:49:52 GMT -5
That's interesting -- it seems like whenever I'm dreaming, though, I can't really "tell myself" anything or do anything. Once or twice right when something bad is about to happen in a nightmare I have suddenly realized, "hey, this is a dream," but after that I immediately woke up. How do you teach yourself to stay in the dream and not immediately wake? when i was a small child, i used to have terrible nightmares every single night. i eventually learned to do exactly what you are describing - when the dream became too disturbing, i would force myself to rouse myself. my brain, almost as a survival mechanism, would force itself to consciousness. eventually, this became a reflexive maneuver, and i became able to recognize that i was dreaming without actually waking up. i think because of this, i have always found lucid dreaming very easy and natural. i can lucidly dream without much effort if i properly prepare myself before sleep, and if i am not under the influence of any substances. i have had some pretty lucid dreams, where i am literally myself, in conscious control of myself, able to walk around as i normally would, and cause whatever i wish to appear. it's actually quite unsatisfying after a while, because while i can create any simulacra i want, i am still very much aware that it's all fake and my body is really just lying in bed. some of the more satisfying dreams are the ones in which i allow myself to be partially lucid and partially dreaming, where i can allow my unconscious mind to lead me into bizarre or even terrifying situations but i am still able to alter them to some degree (such as, for example, giving myself the ability to fly). i haven't been dreaming lucidly in some time though. i think it's a combination of factors, mostly the fact that i've become a very light sleeper and i tend to just prefer to sink into my dreams and enjoy them, even the scary parts. i do still have that "failsafe switch" for when my nightmares become too intense, though. i don't think that will ever go away.
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Post by Verminaard on Jan 18, 2017 2:19:46 GMT -5
Oof, the part that you have to sleep on your back is rough. I only sleep on my stomach for exactly what you said -- on your back, you're way more likely to get sleep paralysis. I've never gotten sleep paralysis when lying on my stomach. When I do get it, without fail, is when I roll over in the middle of the night, and when I wake up, I'm on my back. It's a really weird trigger -- I wonder what the reason is that this happens more often when you're on your back. So that would be the biggest barrier of entry for me, because I absolutely hate sleep paralysis, and I think a big reason why I have very poor dream recall is because of steps I take to prevent sleep paralysis. As to reality checks, as I'm doing a bit more research on them, I've also heard that looking at a clock of some sort might be a good idea, because apparently in dreams clocks are odd?
And yeah, what you said, dungeonsnake, might also be problematic too -- it's like when a dream I have gets too frightening, I've trained myself to say "this is not real. Wake up now." So I guess that's kind of a good thing because it's shown that I can recognize when I'm dreaming. The problem is changing yourself from saying "wake up" to "take control of this."
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Post by Ananoriel on Jan 18, 2017 2:38:57 GMT -5
That's interesting -- it seems like whenever I'm dreaming, though, I can't really "tell myself" anything or do anything. Once or twice right when something bad is about to happen in a nightmare I have suddenly realized, "hey, this is a dream," but after that I immediately woke up. How do you teach yourself to stay in the dream and not immediately wake? when i was a small child, i used to have terrible nightmares every single night. i eventually learned to do exactly what you are describing - when the dream became too disturbing, i would force myself to rouse myself. my brain, almost as a survival mechanism, would force itself to consciousness. eventually, this became a reflexive maneuver, and i became able to recognize that i was dreaming without actually waking up. i think because of this, i have always found lucid dreaming very easy and natural. i can lucidly dream without much effort if i properly prepare myself before sleep, and if i am not under the influence of any substances. i have had some pretty lucid dreams, where i am literally myself, in conscious control of myself, able to walk around as i normally would, and cause whatever i wish to appear. it's actually quite unsatisfying after a while, because while i can create any simulacra i want, i am still very much aware that it's all fake and my body is really just lying in bed. some of the more satisfying dreams are the ones in which i allow myself to be partially lucid and partially dreaming, where i can allow my unconscious mind to lead me into bizarre or even terrifying situations but i am still able to alter them to some degree (such as, for example, giving myself the ability to fly). i haven't been dreaming lucidly in some time though. i think it's a combination of factors, mostly the fact that i've become a very light sleeper and i tend to just prefer to sink into my dreams and enjoy them, even the scary parts. i do still have that "failsafe switch" for when my nightmares become too intense, though. i don't think that will ever go away. I have exactly the same. I have nightmares pretty often and it helps me a lot when I know if I am dreaming or not. I can wake myself up at most times. It is way more difficult to steer your dreams, it doesn't occur that often that it succeeds. But at those times I can create people or creatures to interact with and somehow can steer my own actions a bit more. Like escaping from bad things with flying, or running. Or I like to explore the dreamworld a bit. It only works with me when I don't have too bad/scary/shitty nightmares. It also happens once in a while that I wake up but somehow my mind stays a bit in the dream. Mostly with nightmares and it is pretty fucked up tbh.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jan 18, 2017 8:46:25 GMT -5
Dungeonsnake, I'm very jealous that you have frequent lucid dreams effortlessly. There are few other abilities I'd rather have.
Verminaard, Sleeping on your back is not a prerequisite to lucid dreaming, as I said not a lot of people suggest it, but I've found it to be useful. But in my experience and my research, pursuing lucid dreaming tends to increase the frequency of such experiences. I have sleep paralysis probably a few times a year, and when I'm working on lucid dreaming I'll probably have it a few times a month. Thing is, I welcome it, because while it is terrifying, I love nightmares because they're so much more interesting and easy to remember. I love dreams where I feel like I can tell a story to people the next day. I generally wake up from nightmares exhilarated. My most memorable sleep paralysis experience was a black widow crawling on my ceiling above me, and then dropping onto my bed, and it had hundreds of baby black widows on its back which burst out crawling everywhere. I was stoked because in that moment, even though I woke up, I realized I was dreaming. Though I might not have gained control of the dream to continue it, it was progress. I'd suggest, maybe next time you have a nightmare or sleep paralysis, instead of telling yourself to wake up, try to face the thing that frightens you, if it's a monster give it a hug. Then, once that business is over, look forward to being able to explore an alternate, totally untrodden dimension. No person's dreams are going to be the same. Every person has a whole separate reality of their own.
Ananoriel, I agree about it being difficult to steer your dreams. The most frustrating part about trying to have lucid dreams is that once you do get lucky and become lucid, you immediately wake up, or if you manage to keep stability, nothing wants to participate with your plans. I'm still at the skill level where it's best to just go with the flow and try to remember that I'm dreaming. However a few times I've managed to get the spinning trick to work. Some people recommend spinning to change the scene entirely, but I've found that usually just wakes me up. However once I was in a warehouse, did a spin and it became a library, did another spin and it became a sky-high tower library. These changes were done with intention. It's like ceremonial magic that actually works rather than playing make-believe.
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Post by nahadoth on Jan 18, 2017 10:24:06 GMT -5
Interesting stuff. I made a real serious effort to do Lucid dreaming a few times while in high school and college, and then TBH kinda gave it up when I started doing psychedelics. I'm not sure that I've ever achieved a proper lucid dream, but I do have some incredibly vivid dreams, including one in which I basically dreamed a novel and lived in its world for what felt like 6 months. (I have yet to write that novel, of course.) With these vivid dreams, I feel as though I have some agency in them, but almost always end up with the point of encountering the frustrating dream logic - getting stuck on a quest or a task that seems to have no end, or moves seamlessly into another.
I usually recall dreams once or twice a week, with varying frequency. Very rarely do I recall more than one dream a night. I have done a terrible job of keeping a dream journal, but I would like to get better about it.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jan 19, 2017 9:53:13 GMT -5
Psychedelics are powerful, but I think dreaming is the ultimate trip, we just take it for granted because it's so familiar and seemingly irrelevant. It's not just a hallucination over top of a consistent reality, but rather a whole hallucinated realm. And we can explore it at any time without risking health, sanity, finances, or legality. No matter what situation in which we find ourselves, dreaming will always be there.
I'd really like to hear more about this dream that lasted six months. I've noticed in dreams that I often have a thorough memory of past dream experiences, but when I wake up I have no recollection of having those previous dreams, so it was like false dream memories. That's one of the craziest and most philosophically important aspects of dreams imo, that memory seems to be made up on the spot just like the sensory data. Was it like that, where you "remember" the past six months while in the dream? Or upon waking did you remember enough stuff to fill a novel?
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Post by nahadoth on Jan 19, 2017 10:34:58 GMT -5
More the latter - basically, the dream began with my becoming aware of a pocket universe (a la Steven Hawking) being superimposed onto ours, and I was aware of moments in which the world was reacting to/adjusting to that fact over the course of a good span of time after the initial discovery, including the start of a kind of cult surrounding it, where people moved to the site. It was the sort of dream where there was only occasionally a sense of self within it - like, a lot of the time I was just watching events like in a movie, but occasionally had to act/react within that world, too. So it wasn't 6 linear months, really, but I found myself remembering a rough order of events. Suffice to say, I was very tired when I woke up, but still managed to write several pages of rambling nonsense trying to get the ideas down.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jan 19, 2017 10:42:10 GMT -5
That's really cool. I have a lot of dreams where I'm not a direct participant, but usually it's just like third-person.
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Post by thekeeper on Jan 19, 2017 11:03:17 GMT -5
I've tried lucid dreaming off and on, but I've only succeeded once. I always sleep on my back, but the one time I lucid dreamt, I found it easier when laying on my stomach with my face buried into pillows (immersive darkness helps, I guess). It was a very surreal experience. The majority of dreams I have a semi-lucid, where I can realize things that happen and how they relate to other dreams, such as reoccurring places and people, things like that, but the lucid dream was pretty different. I began in a house, not my own but in the dream it was 'my house'. I forget which room I began in, but I walked into one room and where a house show was being held and watched The Doors play live to a small group of people. There was a buffet table with some food laid out, but nothing was vegan (in my own dream, nonetheless). I remember thinking during their set that it's incredible that I'm able to see The Doors actually playing and it's realistic enough dream-wise that I may as well have actually seen them. I left mid-set to go into the living room connected to an open kitchen. My family was at the table just starting to eat dinner. I forget how this thought arises, but I realize that I don't have very much control over the dream, or maybe that I didn't know how to control it. Believe it or not, a hippo suddenly crashes through the roof into the living room. Before things get more awry, I quickly step outside as a limo pulls up and all of my friends pour out. I feel that I have to run, so I sprint down the sidewalk, and remember that I need to have a 'dream tell' to make sure this is a lucid dream. I look down at my watch as it starts to melt off of my wrist. As I'm looking at my melting watch, I trip, waking instantly as I hit the ground. It was an extremely surreal experience. The feeling is difficult to describe, knowing something is simultaneously real and not real, almost.
Aside from this instance of lucidity, most of my dreams are connected, but not sequentially like 'episodes' or anything. I have reoccurring places mostly. Sometimes I'll have a dream, and in the dream I realize or remember another dream that was set in wherever I happen to be, "ah, I remember there's a tunnel here", "I shouldn't do this thing because of what happened last time". It's almost like a dream world, which I kind of love. I'm a big fan of Lovecraft's dream cycle works.
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