Lucid dreams

Just the other morning, I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep, which is a common thing with me. I lay in bed for awhile and eventually became very sleepy, so naturally I went back down into sleep, and of course, into the alternate reality of dreams. This dream I had was pretty lucid. In it, I was out in space, connected by a tether of some kind to a space vehicle of some kind. For some reason I kept doing somersaults in space and looking at all the stars I could see whilst doing it - it was pretty trippy. Then of a sudden, I was in deep space and all around me were galaxies, stars, planets, you know the drill. But the thing was, the actual space between all these objects wasn't black, but dark blue, midnight blue. It was badass; I was flying through space at some mad speed, looking up down and all around. At one point I distinctly remember looking down and was stunned to find myself flying over the plane of a spiral galaxy. Like I said, badass. It was very lucid; I remember thinking to myself I want to keep doing this for years and years, but alas, it was not to be because no sooner had I thought those words then I woke up. Back to boring reality with its laws and restrictions. Bah.
Anyway, share some of your lucid dreams.

Isn't lucid more about control rather than vividness?

Yeah, lucid dreams are more about being aware you're in a dream, and thus able to have a degree of control, than about how vividly you remember it. I've had plenty of very vivid dreams that weren't lucid - and I've had some lucid dreams that weren't particularly vivid. Actually, my most common experience with lucid dreaming is that the more I try to focus on controlling the dream, the more hazy things become - because focusing tends to wake me up.

I've experienced sleep paralysis on more than one occasion and it's even more trippy than lucid dreaming. Thought I was gonna die.

Clonehunter said:

Isn't lucid more about control rather than vividness?

Yeah but still, this was one of those rare dreams where it was both lucid AND vivid. To date, I haven't had another dream where it was both so vivid and lucid at the same time. I wish I could.

baronofheck82 said:

this was one of those rare dreams where it was both lucid AND vivid

You mean like the dreams I can have most nights if I want to? :P

I have no particular individual instances to report because I do it to a greater or lesser extent most nights. I've also been aware of it for a very long time, even before I knew it had a name or that it was regarded as being special. :D

RUSH said:

I've experienced sleep paralysis on more than one occasion and it's even more trippy than lucid dreaming. Thought I was gonna die.

I've had this before too. I felt like the blankets were trying to do my ass in. Scary shit, really.

I do not remember every dream every night, but for many years i know that when i dream something which i can remember, i am in total control. i can do anything in there as long as it is not trying to change the setting, oddly enough.

I especially like this with a nightmare, i know i wanted a chainsaw to mutilate some freak Alien x mutant X zombie, and i turned something odd and disgusting into the chainsaw massacre.

this happens every few months, for the rest my dreams are almost as if they never existed. Usually these controllable dreams are short, probably because thinking leads to waking up.

Fascinating thread,best lusic dream was where I could fly: I started running on highway 500km/h and then I took off and did everything crazy. The sense of speed was tremendous

Some week ago or something, I dreamed about various Doom textures for a week. I remember dreaming about GRAY4, SLADWALL and STARTAN2.

Jimi said:

Some week ago or something, I dreamed about various Doom textures for a week. I remember dreaming about GRAY4, SLADWALL and STARTAN2.

On the topic of Doom dreams, I remember a dream where I was ina submarine fighting Pinky demons (the movie version) by the horde using my bare hands, including what was either a finger gun or a piece of plastic that I punctuated with "pew pew" sounds from my mouth (Which actually worked!). Point is, I remember killing a bunch of them, and then thinking, "That was fun" (or something to that affect) "Lets fight some more." So I more or less summoned another wave. I don't know if I directly controlled that (Lucid) or if that was just how the dream went. The more I think about dreams the more I lose my overall grip on reality.

I typically wake up shortly after a dream becomes lucid. The moment I suspect that I am dreaming, I usually perform an "experiment" of some kind, in the dream, to test whether or not I am dreaming, like flicking a light switch to see whether or not the lights turn on or off like I would expect them to in reality. As soon as one of these tests fails, it's enough to snap me into a state of waking.

Heh, I had a similar dream, time around when the Doom 3 alpha leaked, that I was on a space station and there were Doom 3 zombies, and I had a gun that was actually a pen (but again, it worked). Heck, in my dream, the zombies even got back up again - disappointed me that that wasn't in the final game, I always thought it was a good idea.

Not really lucid, but I once had the same exact dream 2 nights in a row, and it was kind of weird.

Oh, lucid dreams. I've tried this some years ago. Now I gave up, but there was some times I had them.

There is a technique to be aware that you're dreaming that consists in trying to find your hands while dreaming, and look at them.

One night, I was at a party on a room at the second floor of a house, and I noticed one of my fingers was shorter than it should be, so I started staring at my hands. Then, I heard someone whispering to another, "Look, he is looking at his hands". Then I realized that was a dream, and thought it would be cool to fly through the window to the pool outside the house. But I was at the second floor and everything looked so real I decided not to take the risk.

There was another time when a girl climbed a stair in a weird way, almost flying, then I said to her that looked like a dream, and she said: "and who's saying this is not?". Then I remembered the "Waking Life" movie, there is a line that says you can't read small letters while dreaming, so I saw a poster on a wall with small letters and read it, and concluded I was awake. Then I awoke.

Sometimes I think that I was in control of my last dream but how do I know if that is really true or if I was just dreaming about having a control of my dream? So dunno.

When I dream, they are all levels of fucked up!

You ever held off an invasion of mosquito men attacking your old school by eating them alive? Or the one where you are in a platoon of snail men space trooper things and a giant Mr. Potato Head attacks? How about the one where one where you find the Yeti's mobile phone and he hunts you down to get it back? The one where you are playing some unseen Spyro levels that involve things like angry cooked chicken enemies and explosive pork chops chasing after you in a giants kitchen, a purple swamp that has you using blue leaves to cross it and even a climb up a tree that quite surely defies all laws of physics?

The scariest part about all those dreams was that I was in control of them the entire time... They were lucid dreams and very memorable dreams at that.

The only dreams of mine that are lucid are nightmares.
They usually go with something scary happening, me realizing it's a nightmare, me saying "fuck this", and then me waking up before it gets any worse.

Although I rarely have nightmares, the last one consisted of me lying down/going to sleep on my bed in the dark with my arm up and a bell in my hand. Cut to a third-person perspective, and then a bunch of demons silently roll into the room through one of the walls like a wave and wash over me. Then all of them pop out of existence except for one, who stands atop my chest and rings the bell; the only thing in the dream that made a sound. Creepily enough, it looked exactly like this.

My dreams are usually just strange or goofy or plain surreal. In the one I had last night I was some sort of chameleon monster in a tux washing my face in the bathroom.

I LOOKED LIEK --- THIS!

edit: just realized I spelled 'like' wrong.

Memfis said:

Sometimes I think that I was in control of my last dream but how do I know if that is really true or if I was just dreaming about having a control of my dream? So dunno.

This used to be one of larger cruxes of lucid dreaming for me, and it's something I partly outlined it in a blog I did a couple of years ago. I've since gotten around the problem of why one would even want to obtain lucidity, as being "aware" of what your mind has been able to conjure up does not necessarily result in a dumbing down of the chaotic wonderment of dreams. Previously I'd always suspected that when the more rational part of your brain takes hold it reins everything in to a more waking sensibility, but obviously such a suspicion could only come about as a result of not having had a proper lucid dream in the first place, and everyone else attests to the contrary from what I've heard.

When it happens, they say, you'll know it.

The best lucid dreams are the sexy ones, imo (until you go too far and have to wake up to change your underwear).

Last night I had a couple of normal dreams that were the most vivid I've had in the past few months. The first one was getting too real/personal so I woke up and started over. The second one was about a bunch of giant holes appearing in the ground.

I'm always aware I'm dreaming. I start thinking how the fuck did I get here. Then I realize oh I must be dreaming and I wake up.

The second you 'take control of your dreams' its called imagining something.

I have had many a vivid dream before and still do with some frequency. Lucid dreaming is something I've always been interested in but have never been able to really do successfully. In truth I have had lucid dreams before, but in almost every single one I'm treating it as an actual reality until I start realizing I'm actually dreaming. Once the realization happens I automatically start waking up, usually pretty quickly but sometimes it will take a bit longer if I actively try to stay in the dream. I have never began a lucid dream realizing I was in full control and only every figure it out briefly before waking up.

TimeOfDeath said:

The best lucid dreams are the sexy ones, imo (until you go too far and have to wake up to change your underwear).

You know I've never experienced sexual dreams where anything happened except once. And that was the very first sexy dream I ever had (can still vaguely remember it). Every dream after that which pertains to a sexual nature always ends before I get to any actual interaction.

I'm always in control of my actions. Doesn't matter if I've realised I'm dreaming or not. I don't waste my time on reminding myself about the obvious. Try do something while constantly telling yourself that you're doing it.

Jimi said:

Try do something while constantly telling yourself that you're doing it.

I'm writing a post I'm writing a post I'm writing a post

However, I think the best parts of my dreams are when there are new adventures in recurring locations. A number of my dreams include an ever expanding resort and/or a theme park with a Dinosaur-coaster ride that always makes an obligatory appearance.

TimeOfDeath said:

The best lucid dreams are the sexy ones

I think these are the only dreams where I (usually) notice I'm dreaming, and try to make the most of it before it ends.

RUSH said:

I've experienced sleep paralysis on more than one occasion and it's even more trippy than lucid dreaming. Thought I was gonna die.

Aren't you always paralyzed in REM sleep, though? The purpose of that being that you don't act out your dreams (say you dream you're being choked, you don't elbow the wall or the person next to you in bed). There are sleep disorders where people DON'T experience paralysis in REM sleep and therefore act out their dreams with actions (cases of a person attacking another while (s)he is fast asleep).

Regardless, what I think you mean is that you are dreaming that you are trapped somehow, and in a dazzled state of half-consciousness, you're still dreaming but realize you can't move. I've had dreams quite a few times before where I can't breathe (I commonly sleep with my covers pulled over my head) because my covers are asphyxiating me, then in that dazzled, half-conscious state, as I'm waking up, I panic because I think that I'm going to die. Then, when I wake up enough to gain movement again, I yank the covers off me and breathe deeply.. only to realize I was just dreaming and I had plenty of air in the first place.

Sorry to go on and on, but I'm just trying to figure out what you meant.

You can wake up fully before the paralysis wears off. The first time it's scary as hell, and after that it's just kind of neat. I've had it twice. The first time I was 8 and woke up from a nightmare. The second time I was 19 and it was just neat.

OP: The one where you're flying over the arm of a spiral galaxy sounds awesome. We can see them from afar, we can zoom in on them and produce stunning pictures, but to actually be in that position, perhaps just a few thousand light years away from, let's say, Andromeda (far enough to see the whole galaxy but near enough to take up almost your whole field of vision), that would be amazing.

- I've had a lucid dream where I actually thought I was awake (does that make it lucid?). I was lying in bed and suddenly I felt like I was levitating. I couldn't feel the bed anymore and I felt like I was floating upwards and I could actually see it. I realized I was dreaming when I could see strange objects floating around after a while (like table legs) and then, suddenly, I was back in my bed.

- I had a few cases of sleep paralysis, also when I was awake. Sometimes I would scream out of fear but I couldn't open my mouth, so it sounded more like moans and in my ears I sounded super creepy. I never found out if I actually screamed in real life.

- In a few of those cases, I would dream that I'm crawling around on the floor on my elbows while making strange grunting noises, like an animal, and at the same time, feeling immense fear and panic.

- A few years later, I would experience a huge epileptic attack on a plane, and a few more in the ambulance, resulting in three fractures in my back (I'm OK now). I wonder if those were related.

- Speaking of Doom dreams: I once dreamed that I was in a Doom level consisting of only a cyberdemon which teleports to random locations every few seconds. The map was smallish but detailed and consisted of those garden/jungle textures. It was super scary, because I never knew when the cybie would teleport next to me and blast me to bits.

- On a lighter note, I also had one or two flying dreams. In one of those it was pretty vivid. I would fly around and touch down and go up again by just moving my hands and my body kinda like Superman. It felt completely natural and simply awesome.

geekmarine said:

Yeah, lucid dreams are more about being aware you're in a dream, and thus able to have a degree of control, than about how vividly you remember it. I've had plenty of very vivid dreams that weren't lucid - and I've had some lucid dreams that weren't particularly vivid. Actually, my most common experience with lucid dreaming is that the more I try to focus on controlling the dream, the more hazy things become - because focusing tends to wake me up.

That's interesting. My experience - and I think this also tallys with results gleaned from clinical studies - is that lucid dreams tend to be significantly more vivid than their non-lucid counterparts. My guess would be that this is related to the fact that, when lucid dreaming, subjects are generally much more attentive to their apparent surroundings than they would be if they were dreaming normally. It's also well documented that subjects are more likely to lucid dream if they go back to sleep after having completely woken up an hour or two earlier than usual, so no surprise that it happened for you in the way you describe.

Memfis said:

Sometimes I think that I was in control of my last dream but how do I know if that is really true or if I was just dreaming about having a control of my dream? So dunno.

I've had cases in which I dreamt that I was lucid dreaming, but when I woke up it was very obvious to me that that's what had happened. It's very unlike actually lucid dreaming. So, even though there are cases in which you can't tell that you're not lucid dreaming when you're not, there are also cases in which you can tell that you are lucid dreaming when you are - the former possibility doesn't threaten the latter.

Alfonzo said:

When it happens, they say, you'll know it.

This sounds about right.

Concerning why one might want to lucid dream, there are a lot of quite mundane reasons. E.g., it can be a useful skill if you're regularly troubled by nightmares. But aside from all that, you might simply think that the psychological state that we're in when we dream is highly interesting, and lucid dreaming offers one avenue to explore this.

geo said:

The second you 'take control of your dreams' its called imagining something.

Well, you can call it what you like I guess, but I'd venture that the kind of psychological state that you're in when you're lucidly dreaming, differs in some significant and interesting ways from the kind of psychological state that you're in when - whilst awake - you engage in acts of either suppositional or sensory imagining (and this appears to be backed up by studies of the underlying neurological states that are involved in each).

Jimi said:

STARTAN2.

You sure that wasn't a nightmare, mate?

That aside, a lot of people tell me that you can look at your hand or a watch face in order to tell whether you're dreaming or not (because the numbers will make no sense), but the problem with that is that my brain usually accepts whatever crazy rules it sets in whatever dream I happen to be having as reality, so I forget to check the watch or if I do the fact that it makes no sense doesn't actually faze me at all. It seems completely random whether or not I realize that I am dreaming.