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Lucid Dreaming
glithert
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Does anyone have any experience with it? I've been doing it more and more frequently, but when I realize I am dreaming I can't actually control what's happening. The only difference between it and a regular dream is that it feels like playing a video game instead of watching a movie. What can I do to change this?
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try to recognize certain recurring themes in your dreams and keep repeating them to yourself when you wake up in the morning. the one that I rely on most is anything involving letters or text. if you are reading a book you will notice that if you look away and look back the words will have changed. same thing with digital clocks sometimes. for instance if you are reading an instruction manual or something you might not understand it, and then when you look back it will make perfect sense, as if its just a reflection of what you are thinking.
other than that every morning just try to remember what happened in your dream, write it down if you want to and keep a journal. Often I won't be able to remember everything right when I wake up but then later in the day I will see something that will remind me of the dream I had the night before. For instance I was talking to someone about metabolic rates, and this triggered me to think of the 'metabolic boost' upgrade for zerglings from the game starcraft, which then made me remember that I had a dream about playing a 4v4 match in starcraft and building lots of mutalisks and stuff, hah.
the explanation of this isn't much different from what is explained in the movie Inception. I'm sure people who are very good at this can use the totem technique. I remember reading an interview with Nolan where he explained that the only thing in that movie that is fictitious is the dream space sharing machine.
I hear a dream journal helps.
but they're listening to every word I say
I have had dreams where I am aware that I am dreaming, but since I am just observing from outside myself instead of participating, I can't do anything.
Funny you should mention that. I don't know if anyone here is a member of Grand St. Basically it is a "members only" curated daily deals site for tech products. I have been a member for a few months but have never been remotely tempted to purchase anything; usually it's worthless overpriced twaddle, sort of Sharper Image/Brookstone type stuff. Anyway, a couple days ago one of the products they featured was some sort of sleep mask which supposedly promotes lucid dreaming. Let me see if I can find it.
Ah, this was it. http://sleepwithremee.com/ And it can be yours in a variety of colors for just $95! (Grand St had it for $90, which is their idea of a great bargain).
Per my doctor, he said once in a while if you really need to sleep, it's ok to take 25mg of diphenhydramine, which is the stuff in Benadryl or Tylenol PM. Tends to put me in a deep sleep with no dreams whatsoever. YMMV.
this.
The active ingredient in ZzzQuil, for instance, is one adult dose of diphenhydramine-- but it's in liquid form, so my experience has been that it seems to be faster acting.
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i would start by saying to myself, or thinking to myself, when i turn around then ___ will be there. see if it happens.
The difference between my doing that, and lucid dreaming was that realistic imaginations were completely effortless, took no concentration to maintain, and I could feel the environment. So like air current and texture. It was a little weird, though, because if I tried to move things or run I didn't feel any resistance. Took a lot of the fun out of attempting lucid dream magic.
Confidence. It sounds cheesy, but it actually is like that bit in the Matrix. You can't think you can do something, you have to know you can. I lucid dream often. I watched that Nightmare on Elm Street movie that was all about lucid dreaming as a kid, and so I guess I started early. If you have doubts, then things don't go well. This is especially true if you're actually afraid of the consequences. Like, if you want to fly but you're afraid of falling? It either won't happen or it will and then you will fall.
Interesting things start to happen when you get to that point. There are certain things that dreaming me is totally willing to accept, and other things are harder (to the point that I'll wake up if I try to force it). Example: Flying. I can low altitude fly, which generally translates to a jump that never has to end. Straight up Superman type flying is much harder for me, but it does happen sometimes. I can also pull almost anyone into my dreams, but just creating something like a wall or a building is very difficult.
I haven't tried to lucid dream in years, but the last few times I tried to bring something into the dream (or an entire scene, which I'd been able to do previously) I would end up accidentally waking myself up...despite my best attempts to avoid it when I could feel myself slipping back into wakefulness. :P I think I might've been concentrating too hard or something.
If you can start small (like, imagine a red ball in your dream, or tell yourself "there will be a tree over this hill when I run over it") that may help you tackle larger challenges later on. I've found it's much easier to "actively" call something in (like having to go somewhere to find the thing you've called to the dream) rather than have something "pop" in front of you, or change your immediate surroundings completely.
For me it just sorta the norm. I'll be in a dream and just want to do something and do it. One of the things I've "mastered" past couple years is a force pull thing. See an object away from me and I will do the motion to have it come to me. There has been a couple times where I showed someone in the dream how I can manipulate objects telepathically in a way so I know for sure I am consciously active in the dream world. There were times when things didn't work cause it just doesn't work in real life. I couldn't wall crawl like Spider-Man and basically paw at walls like I would in real life. Now I know what I want to do in the dream can't happen but will happen in the dream and can stick to walls and hang up side down with a web line. Trying to figure out how jump really high now.
One of the big changes in my late teens was not having scary monster nightmares anymore. I would have dreams where I'll be in a scary dark house or something is coming after me but I don't know what or the rare actually seeing the monster and trying my hardest to wake up cause I am scared. Now when they occur I know I am feeling scared and I'll stand my ground in the dream. Usually go into Wolverine mode where I snikt snikt my claws out and roar at whatever fear maybe there in the dream. Then I fight it. Other things I can do in scary times is call for evac usually on a wristwatch communicator and then a spaceship or something will come in to my aid.
Now my true nightmares is suddenly being in a class room and not knowing the curriculum cause I haven't been in the class for a long time. So usually I can just realize I don't like the situation and leave to bad environment and have fun.
On of the other problems I've had was where I can have a very real dream world similar to normal day life and just live in it for awhile. These may not be lucid cause I know in these I am not playing around in them. Thing is in the real world I'll have either deja vu or think I have told a person a thing or remember a little event but they never really happened but did in the dream. Its like fake memories or something.
On the ZzzQuil front, if I can sleep in, then I will always dream pretty lucid or vivid. Been taking for awhile and its usually my weekend rec aid since I know I will be able to sleep a good bit and dream but it could just be me. Also HTP-5 helps out too.
If you are looking for books, LaBerge is probably the book. I read it when I was a young teen and have had lots of lucid dreams ever since.
I don't think what you're reporting is actually that unusual: even when are are fully aware that you're dreaming and feeling very mentally engaged, sometimes you just end up watching passively. Trying to do things which the laws of physics frown on often have a kind of inertia against them, especially if you aren't really concentrating. I've always had trouble changing the environment too drastically or teleporting and only gotten somewhat better over time. I spent a while trying to phase through walls Kitty Pryde-style, but my brain just refuses to "buy" it. One thing I've had luck with lately is closing my eyes in the dream, focusing on the desired outcome, and then opening my eyes. This has done the trick fairly well.
Still though, you may have trouble making huge changes and it just becomes easier over time? Like with flight -- the more you do it and practice it, the more that flight becomes easy and natural. Your brain just starts to sort of accept it over time, in my experience.
I think as long as you are always working on building awareness and recall that special effects will come. Everyone has different strengths and things that are going to come easily when they're inside, and yours might not be in flashy wild stuff. I don't really spend as much time flying or trying to trigger improbable stuff right now because I am trying to remind myself to spend more time closely studying objects and trying to have longer conversations with people. For me, flying is easy but talking to someone without them vanishing after 30 seconds when I look away for just a moment is really tough!
Oh, good luck talking to people in dreams about it being a dream state. In dozens after dozens of times of asking people in dreams pointed questions and proving to them that it's a dream, none of the dream people have ever admitted it point-blank. They are strangely insistent. Having said that, if I ask people in dreams sort of oblique questions like, "I'm not from around here. Are you from around here?" they give me weird looks and glance around. I feel like there must be some interesting research study lurking about why our brains use people so effectively to try to police the ignorance of the dream while it's happening. We're social creatures and we pick up cues from everyone around us without noticing it, I guess?
@creagan -- Hmm. I agree with @Nightdragon's advice: I wonder if you might just try announcing to yourself casually, "Oh, I should go walk through that door into the next room where (desired object) was left." Or maybe even just, "I left my key in my pocket," and reach down to your pocket without looking at it.
Even when I've been working on flight a lot or working on teleporting and stuff, a lot of things seem easier if I build into it a kind of plausible deniability for the dream. Changing locations tends to help me cause other changes to happen. Sometimes when I manage to do big brute force changes to the dream like you're describing, it feels like there's an almost backlash where I have less fine-grained control over the dream immediately after. A lot of random things slip in with the huge scenery rewrite and often they distract me and lessen awareness of whatever my initial intent was. The need to focus and expend a kind of energy to keep going almost seems ingrained into the dream state IME. The weirdness of friction likewise has never really gone away. Might not just be you.
@iowa I love it that you mutalisked someone in a lucid dream. keke gg ^____^