The few lucid dreams I’ve had, happened by accident. I don’t think I would try to have one. It seems to me that if you focus on that, it would disturb your regular sleep.
I have had a few. But they are very wierd. I know I am lucidly dreaming when I am flying off cliffs. Or performing martial arts flawlessly (I have never taken a class). The reoccurring lucid dream of mine is the one where I am a really gifted bicycle stunt rider able to do amazing flips and spins that defy gravity. I always end up doing one amazing trick. I get balanced on the front wheel of my trick bike and hand stand on the handlebars while the bike frame 360’s round and round under my balanced body. The inverted bunny hops are cool too. These dreams follow me into consciousness too. When i take my dogs on their evening run, I usually ride my mountain bike along side them and sometimes I recall the stunt bike dream and I do a few hops or find something to huck off of and find myself wishing I could do more.
Don’t ask.
There is probably some missed life calling screaming at me somewhere in that.
But I am always so peaceful and confident when I do my tricks.
Nogs
post script: should I add that Vanilla Sky used to be a favorite dream movie of mine? (Once you know the plot, the warm fuzzy from watching it wears thin though)
I have them all the time. They are vividly colorful, and I always find that the dream quickly changes after it begins because my rational mind interferes and begins to control the dream’s path. The more involved I get in the dream, the more likely it is that I’ll wake up here and there and pick up the dream where I left off when I fall back into sleep. It’s like directing my own sleep movies. Once I’m self-aware in a dream, there’s no turning back. I don’t know if it’s a gift, or a symptom of the difficulties I have with insomnia. I can’t imagine how a person would do this on purpose, or “train” themselves to do it. I’ve heard it’s possible though.
I have had more than few during the last 20 years or so. My favorites have been where I’ve experimented. In two, I actually grabbed another person’s shoulders, standing face-to-face, and forcefully said: “I’m dreaming you. How does it feel!?” On both occasions, the other person would not look me in the eyes, and struggled to get away. One of them ended up collapsing in the corner of a room crying.
On another occasion, probably 20 years ago, I decided I wanted to see my own reflection in the mirror, to see what I looked like in a dream. All was normal, except my mirror eyes would not meet my eyes. My reflection wouldn’t look at me! And I moved the mirror (a hand-held) to the right and left, trying to catch my reflection off guard. Finally my reflection’s eyed focused forward, only they were white and glazed, sort of like a cheap horror movie effect. At that point, I decided to wake up.
I just read this topic, think it is long dead, but no thread is ever really dead…
Anyway, I was in my late 20s and had mono and hepatitis and one more thing which I can’t spell. And was basically in bed for 3 months. Anyway, I had nothing better to do and read about controlling your dreams.
And you can do it. It takes a lot of concentration, and it does disturb your sleep, if you were in a regular circumstances. But I would fly and manipulate the contents of my dream to good effects, etc. It was pretty interesting. I have no idea why this is in the paranormal or New Age thread area (though I don’t know where you would put it) except maybe some of them advocate it, but it is pretty straight forward.
I think it has more to do with changing or manipulating consciousness.
I would have two specific recurring dreams. They re-occurred with such regularity that they seemed to be forcing my awareness of them.
They were mildly unpleasant, but not frightening.
In one, I would be in a dark room. I would flip the light switches, but the lights never came on. (Not surprising that I couldn’t turn on the lights, since I was asleep with my eyes closed)
The other was simply being paralyzed. Again, a normal condition of dreaming.
I still can’t turn on the lights or move in those dreams, but now I am aware they are dreams when they occur.
Now I never have any dreams that aren’t lucid. I also discovered another interesting phenomenom. I began remembering dreams from my childhood. Seems my lucid dreams were able to access other dreams.
Dreams within dreams.
I used to play around with lucid dreaming as a kid. The thing that’s hard is keeping up the lucid state. In the normal process of sleeping you enter several dream states – your brain waves vary over time so you go in and out of dreams. In a lucid state I became aware of this process. I could stay lucid and fly around for a while, but then inevitably my brain would move on and I would wake up in a different dream having lost the lucid state.
Another problem arises when you are lucid and happen to wake up. This is when you can start to pull against your body and greater nervous system’s experience of sleep – causing sleep paralysis or night terrors. One time I woke up from a fully lucid state and felt paralyzed, but not in the terrifying reality collapsing hallucination that is sleep paralysis – it was just like I couldn’t move and I was fine with it. It felt like my consciousness was residing in my chest, and I wouldn’t be able to look through my eyes if I opened them. Some people say this is a precursor to an out of body experience, but who knows.
Lucid dreaming is just another natural way to achieve and altered state of consciousness, and in my book attaining any altered state of consciousness is an act of rebellion – the kind of thing religion is suppose to keep you from doing so you don’t to see the truth.
Keeping a dream log also helps immensely. If you write down in your dream log something like, “I am going to have a lucid dream tonight” before you go to bed, you’re already engineering the experience. Anyone whose kept up with this post long enough to actually be reading this sentence may already be setting up a lucid dream.
The paralzed state, in my understanding, is actually because the body produces a paralyzing agent during REM sleep so that you can’t move. Otherwise, you would be walking all over the place. The other possibly is that these dreams were in the pre-wake or pre-sleep state called hypnogogic (and the term escapes me). Anyway it is common to think that you are asleep, when you aren’t entirely or to think you are awake when you aren’t entirely. However, you are also producign these chemicals keeping you from moving.
—alie
[quote author=“Joad”]I began lucid dreaming 20 years ago.
-snipping-
In one, I would be in a dark room. I would flip the light switches, but the lights never came on. (Not surprising that I couldn’t turn on the lights, since I was asleep with my eyes closed)
The other was simply being paralyzed. Again, a normal condition of dreaming.
I never have any dreams that aren’t lucid. I also discovered another interesting phenomenom. I began remembering dreams from my childhood. Seems my lucid dreams were able to access other dreams.
Dreams within dreams.
When I tried the quit smoking patch I had much more vivid dreams. I think increases in nicotine cause them. Opium is well known for the dreams it causes.
[quote author=“Joad”]When I tried the quit smoking patch I had much more vivid dreams. I think increases in nicotine cause them. Opium is well known for the dreams it causes.
I’d forgotten about that…..I managed to quit smoking but no thanks to those little buggers - yuk horrible! Talk about Lucid!
