Lucid dreaming

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/human-biology/lucid-dreaming.htm

So, just out of curiosity, has any of you heard of that magical mumbo-jumbo effect this site is describing? Maybe even invoked and exprerienced? I've never heard of anything like that until recently, although it seems to be a reknown thing for centuries. Interesting stuff.

Lately I've been having dreams which were so ridiculously unrealistic or ideal, that I could deduce they were dreams from inside. But the outcome was always waking out of them, than trying to reshape them. What would be the point to keep dreaming, if I know they're just dreams? Often, they're mild nightmares (unpleasant situations), so I'm rather motivated to wake up.

Lucid dreaming is awesome. Abuse it.

The only lucid dream I remember was one where I was a Lego man in a Lego city walking with another Lego man. At some point during the dream I realized I was dreaming. Unfortunately, instead of doing cool stuff I spent the rest of the dream trying to convince the other guy it was a dream :(

For me, lucid dreams happen maybe once every few years, and I always wake up within seconds of the realization.

Not to be confused with sleep paralysis.

printz said:

What would be the point to keep dreaming, if I know they're just dreams?

So you can spy on girls without getting arrested. :O

TimeOfDeath said:

So you can spy on girls without getting arrested. :O

You could do a lot more to girls without getting arrested in that case ;-)

Reminds me, I once dreamed I was on a castle, then told myself "it looks like Quake 3 dude" and got conscious... to fly around naked then fucking my girlfriend until I woke up.

Seriously, I could think about mounting a T-Rex shooting rockets at UFO but my perverse, compulsive part ruined it. The most ridiculous part is that despite my flying abilities, I was unable to reach a switch behind a moat.

It's not magical mumbo-jumbo. It's quite a common phenomena many people experience.

Though I can't recall having a lucid dream in the sense that I take control of things within a dream, quite often I'm aware that I'm dreaming while I dream but I'm unable to wake up.

DoomUK said:

quite often I'm aware that I'm dreaming while I dream but I'm unable to wake up.

That reminds me of Doctor Destiny's way of making people dream nightmares, and never wake up, until they die of heart failure.

I have them once in a while. Being extremely tired and just falling asleep seems to be a good trigger for me. Back when I had to study for exams late into the night they were a weekly experience.

They usually come in two flavors, unpleasant ones that I wake up from as soon as I realize they're not real and the not-so-unpleasant ones >:)

Belial said:

Back when I had to study for exams late into the night they were a weekly experience.

Usually, two or three days before exams, I have the habit of dreaming myself going to that exam, unprepared, or late. I receive all the necessary criticism and consequences in the dreams, then of course I wake up and realize I still have some days left. This kind of dreams work excellently to get me psyched for the real event.

I have lucid dreams quite often. They're usually stupid. Most of the time I don't have enough control over what's going on to make them an better than they were before I realized what was happening. My thinking is obviously still broken in such dreams or I wouldn't spend so much time trying to convince the various characters they weren't real.

Chasing girls in lucid dreams almost never seems to work either. I seem to have the most interesting dreams about women when I'm not lucid.

Aliotroph? said:

I seem to have the most interesting dreams about women when I'm not lucid.

Or when you're awake? :P

The only time I've ever been able to induce a lucid dream is when I'm dreaming that I'm in my own house doing perfectly normal things.

I'm being serious, by the way. It makes no sense.

Pretty much what everyone else has said. I used to do it a lot when I was younger, mainly to break out of nightmares.

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Quite often I realize when I'm dreaming that whatever's happening around me is too retarded to be real. Seriously. When that happens, I find that I have limited control, for example, I can jump very high but not quite fly. Or I can do other impossible things. The limitation is that if I concentrate too hard on say, flying, I wake up. This can be very useful. For another example, say I'm having a nightmare about a mondo wave about to crash on me. I can say, "this sucks," then wake up on command. So yes, some people can control aspects of their dreams.

Maes said:

You could do a lot more to girls without getting arrested in that case ;-)

The Thought Police would like a word with you. :P

kmxexii said:

I used to do it a lot when I was younger, mainly to break out of nightmares.

Same here, I used to have very unpleasant nightmares.

Well, I recently have dreams where I know I'm dreaming, but they're not lucid dreams. I also had been dreaming that I have lucid dream (but that's REALLY different than actual LD), and I could even save and load once then. I however had only one true LD and it lasted for about 10 seconds only. I managed to... move forward. That was a challenge. Then it ended and I ...dreamt that I woke up to tell my mum about my LD. What a shame.

Where do people draw the line at what is lucid dreaming and what isn't? The linked article seems to name being aware you're dreaming as the defining characteristic. Personally, I have full control in most of my dreams but I rarely realise I'm asleep while it's happening.

Phml said:

Where do people draw the line at what is lucid dreaming and what isn't? The linked article seems to name being aware you're dreaming as the defining characteristic. Personally, I have full control in most of my dreams but I rarely realise I'm asleep while it's happening.

Good question. I'm certainly unable to state whether I'm dreaming lucidly, completely unaware, or conducting my dream in a way similar to yourself. Granted the vagary and nebulous nature of dreams, though, it could easily be all of one and none of the other or completely the other way around.

What I do know is that I have a mighty good ability to recount almost all of what happened within a dream after I wake up, and that such an ability could suggest that there is some committed conscience at play. Many of the divergences, segues and "pit stops" that occur during them do feel more to do with the subtle murmurs of consciousness than anything else.

I never get the impression that dreams are preordained.

I've had many lucid dreams in my day. I used keep track of everything while in college, but once i hit 21/22, i really stopped doing the dream journal thing and slowly grew out if habit. Certainly, it was a neat phenomenon, but certainly not significant enough for me to miss it... though it still happens every couple of months or so.

It's definitely a real phenomenon.

I've often realized I was dreaming. Most of those times though, I seemed to just go with the flow and didn't try to control anything. On about three or four occasions I was actually successful in transforming the sequences of events in my dreams, and only in one of those dreams was I able to refrain from getting too excited and wake up prematurely.

I wish I could do this every night, but it takes a lot of practice to even become lucid, let alone manipulate dreams to your will without waking.

Phml said:

Where do people draw the line at what is lucid dreaming and what isn't?

Lucid dreaming is simply knowing that you're dreaming. Controlling the dream is just taking it to the next level.

EarthQuake said:

I wish I could do this every night, but it takes a lot of practice to even become lucid, let alone manipulate dreams to your will without waking.

Hell, sometimes I wish we had the same headsets than in Paprika. I've read somewhere that Inception's director was a daily lucid dreamer since he was a teenager. Never checked the validity of this information though (it may as well be a publicity stunt).

My girlfriend is all into that stuff. I probably was lucid once or twice, maybe, but nothing that impressive that I can recall.

I have a friend who's told me several stories of it happening to him. He seemed to have it fairly regularly, but he hasn't brought it up recently.

As for me, I can't recall it ever happening before.

I once created a Portal Gun, but couldn't imagine the portals.
I got a working Portal gun in a dream where I was being chased by a cartoonish gang. I think it was because I was also looking for a dog for the reward money.

I had this one lucid dream before of me at a hotel, and I tried waking up (like, the feeling of wanting to) and I could actually shift between sleeping and reality, no bullshitting.

I had my eyes open and could see the ceiling of my room, and if I stopped the need to wake up, I went back into the dream.

I haven't been able to replicate this ever since.