Lucid Dreaming - A useful skill?
 

I haven't had much of them lately, probably because of exam stress and fatigue, but I sometimes have really cool lucid dreams where I'm able to control so much in my own dream world.

In one of my coolest lucid dreams, my uni friends and I were some agent with telekinetic powers, working for the king in a medieval kingdom. We finished a job (somehow we worked together), and made our way back to the capital city to report to the king, except we found the city under attack by a foreign army (swordsmen and archers). Our own army was pretty shattered since the generals were a little incompetent, so my fellow agents and I decided to command the troops (Total War style). Our troops eventually recovered their morale after the situation improved, so we decided to find the king. Turned out the castle was under attack by a group of necromancers. One friend decided to hold them back while the rest of us head up the tower to the king's chamber. We were in this corridor (which resembled one in my old music school) when we noticed chasing after us was our friend fallen into the control of the evil necromancer. With much regret we put him to eternal rest :naughty: and carried on. We ended up in the soldier's quarters (my old tutor room) when we heard some enemy soldiers coming. We hid inside a storage room. I used my powers to sense where each enemy was and we rushed out and ambushed them. Soon after that I had too much control of what was going on I woke up. :(

The real cool thing was that I had so much control of myself in the dream. It was like a true virtual reality game. I find usually I can easily realise I'm in a dream. Once I know I'm in a dream I can start trying to take control, make myself do things that I can't do in real life, make things that doesn't happen in the real world happen. I think its a really useful skill to be able to control a dream. You are much more likely to remember the dream, and you can really explore the depth of your mind. Whether these bizarre dreams mean something is another question. :P Anyone has any bizarre lucid dreams to share?

Moving to the Quiet Place.

I've had quite a few LDs. I've used them all for obscene and violent activities except one.

I was in some kind of South American valley - it was really beautiful, like the tourist brochures you see for Peru. (This was probably because I'd returned from Argentina the day before, and I was disappointed because it didn't look like Peru and instead resembled a third-world kind of London. I want to go to Peru.) I realised I was in a dream, and proceeded to fly.

A little later, I encountered Jesus in a bar (no joke) and had a discussion with him that lasted about ten minutes. He asked me why I didn't believe in him - I responded that I believed he existed, yet I didn't follow his teachings. He looked sympathetic, and we wound up talking about the internet (turns out Jesus hates Google and ALWAYS used Altavista instead). Towards the end of the conversation, he looked at his watch and apologised, saying he had to leave. He gave me a Bible and tore off his robes to reveal a superman costume (!) and flew out the window.

Things started to get a little weird thereafter. A guy in my design class (who I don't really get on with - I'm not actually violent against him, though, we tend to keep to ourselves) appeared, and I tried to will him away - Didn't work, so I punched him in the face and started hurling German obscenities at him. I immediately realised that I could feel my real lips moving, and I woke up and my roommates were standing over me looking scared. I was all like "hey guys whats happening lol?"

I haven't had another LD for a few months, though. :(

I rarely have LD dreams, but when i do, they are odd...

I was coming out of my bedroom door into the living room at my fathers house. I looked around and realized that my half-sister was watching tv, but it was different, it was a movie, a movie she watched yesterday. I asked her why she was watching it again and she looked at me weird like i was crazy. "I just got this yesterday..." i kinda let out a "huh" as i stared at the TV. I then realized that this was either Dajavoo or something similar. The first thing i did was check the date but it was the yesterday, then i thought...it was yesterday, yesterday right?

It took me a while but i realized that i was dreaming, and instead of just trying to wake up, i wanted to do all the things i couldn't do in RL. So, first i went into the living room and started snapping all the CD's for PS2 games that were my half-sisters since she has like a million more than me. She started to get upset and ran crying then my father came out, i stood, punched him in the face and threw the broken CD's at his unconscious body. Then my step mother came in and i just looked at her smiling and she ran with my half-sister.

I then went outside but the worse part was that it was a floating house, nothing. No lawn, no sidewalk, no street or other houses. So i went back inside, looked at the mess and could hear the sounds of screaming from my step mother and half-sister and i got tired of it so i looked at the black nothingness outside and ran from my living room to outside and jumped off the edge plummeting towards a black pit until i awoke at my bedroom at my fathers house

i walked out and i saw the TV my half-sister was watching, but it was some cartoon, i made a sigh in relief and everyone just looked at me weird, i just said "It was a long night" :D

The only I one I can remember happening to me just occurred last night! I think it was all those Yuu Yuu Hakusho chapters I read through yesterday because I was riding on some kind of mutated broomstick, that held a textbook of mine in some resealable pocket. Total control of my flight and it was like I was just sitting idly on the broomstick showing off in a field in front of a friend. Too bad I never get that kind of control on a nightly basis!

When I was a kid, I had a great dream where I was flying around my hometown. It's been so long that I don't quite remember the plot (if there was one at all) but it was just me, floating around, bouncing off walls and streetlights. I was able to choose what streets I wanted to go down to and I was able to see the rooftops and cars zipping by. I just remember the feeling of flying and how I'd cling myself to a wall before releasing so I got a burst of speed.

But I just recently watched Waking Life by Richard Linklater which has terrified me from sleeping now.

I've been trying to have lucid dreams recently. I had 2 of them 2 nights in a row last week, but have since had no luck. I've been able to find a ton of info about it online. I'm trying to keep a dream journal to increase my ability to remember my dreams, which is supposedly the number one thing that increases chances of lucid dreaming. I should probably get better sleep, that would sure help. Here I am at 4:45 in the morning typing away when I should be asleep! I have tomorrow off so maybe I can sleep in a bit. Lucid dreams are supposed to happen at the end of the dream cycle right?


As far as LD's being useful, well that's arguable. They're useful in the sense that they can be fun to have, but I don't see much use beyond that. I'd like to create some cool worlds and characters in my LD's once I get better at it. I guess they can be useful for exploring creativity and releaving frustration.

Has anyone seen the movie "Waking Life"? I saw it in philosophy class a couple weeks back, that's what got me interested in lucid dreaming in the first place. "360 degree vision" lol. Anybody try that?

If you think about it, when not under alot of stress, or being overlyworked mentally or physically, your dreams seem uncontrollable. They path themselves as if fate were controlling you or telling you where to go, what to do.

But the opposite state of being, where you're stressed, you have overly used your mental capability for the day, your dreams seem so vivid and controllable. It's probably because of how you've grown up since adolescence.

For example, years of mental conditioning, such as learning how to solve a type of math problem, definately can prepare you for such an ability with dreams. You work and work at the problem, getting frustrated at not being able to solve it. FINALLY, at the end of the day, you understand how to solve it. But alas, you're tired, bored, and annoyed by the other problems. However, seeing there's only 15 left to do, you're mind takes control. You can do the math and get it done with some satisfaction for once.

Your ability to control your dream, choose where to go, what to do, may be a product of your struggle in what ever is going on in life. With exams and such taking place, just comming home and going to bed puts your mind to ease, but also gives a sense of dominance as, "Oh, calculuus can't touch me in here! God I'm through with THAT exam. Now for some fun of my own."

In the end, relief. Your mind is letting off pressure and steam from the days work.

That's a pretty in-depth analysis! I haven't really thought of it that way, I certainly don't remember if I worked really hard during any day and had a lucid dream at night. I suppose there is some sense in that.

Also, I was told that it is impossible to see writing in dreams. I swear thats not true, I have had two dreams where I saw writing, and I was reading them out very carefully. I also had one dream where I was writing my own name with a blue pen. my handwriting looked really horrible but it did spell my name!

Funny thing. After I read this post, I had a dream which I kept stopping at different intervals to type up so I could post it here later. The dream would progress, I'd stop it to type, and it would continue again.

What was disappointing was that I really thought I had recorded everything. I woke up later and forgot the first half of the dream but I was pretty much in control of what happened.

I would think it would be a useful skill since you can manipulate your thought patterns to make whatever you want materialize.

I, on the other hand, can never control it. Every time I get in control, I wake up.

It's disappointing. :(

I sometimes have lucid dreams, only I then dream I wake up and so forget I'm dreaming. Lousy brain...

I've been dying to have a lucid dream. Since...before I was born. Well, probably not that long, but something close to that. How do you improve your chances of having a lucid dream at night?

Tako' Medieval, archers, I've yet to come to that. I always wake up realizing that I'm dreaming. The farthest I've ever gone was flying, thats when I was tired as hell from not getting sleep so much that I became semi-conscious. My eyes were open but I was still dreaming, somewhere out of the ordinary. So damn weird I was breathing involuntary and I couldn't control it no matter how hard I tried.

I can't think of Lucid dreaming helping you in real life other than going up to people and saying "HEY I JUST KILLED YOU IN MY DREAM" or relieving the state of mind. Other then that...manipulating dreams to make fiction come true is always fun.

Anyways has anyone heard of Hemi-Sync. And if so, did it work for you?

I did the most traumatize lucid dream just yesterday, it wasn't that long but just the way I act in it totally scared me well it wasn't exactly a lucid dream because i couldn,t really control myself but i was really aware that iw as dreaming so its was more like watching a movie that I was the main actor


It was me and my cousin(its been 2-3 years since I saw her so I really don't know why I dreamed about her) and we were robing a bank, and we were armed, I had a shotgun and her just a pistol. I find myself really crazy in that dream because I was hitting people with my gun and all, shouting at them to shut up hurting them just for fun to scared them, while my cousin was getting the money.

All happen really fast and we got out and we were running on foot to a very far away parking lot (dont ask it's a dream) when we got to the van, there was too women who followed us in a car because they wanted to get our licence plate. My cousin saw them and took one of the women out of the car and point her gun at her face, when I saw that she wasn't moving I took her pistol and immediately shot the women in the face. I saw everything, my finger pull the triger, the bllet go right through her head and her body falling on the ground, dead.

In my head I was like: wtf am I doing but at the same time I could feel me in the gangster who killed her without deeling anything. My true self(the one dreaming) was really horrified by that and in the same time I was the "character" and in was not a big deal for him(but that character was still me not someone else that I know).

After that I turn around and looked at the second women took my shotgun and shot her through the window and that's when I woke up in shock.

Really it was so weird because I woke up really horrified and at the same time I could feel that I did really enjoy that...


on another note I did do another of those dream where it was like matrix and I was totally kicking ass with super fighting move, this was really fun though XD

My lucid dreams are more like a competition between my conscious and subconscious. For example, I will realize it is a dream and I will do something to try to save myself, but then my dream develops something else to bring about trouble. My latest one involved trying to walk along a railing and trying not to fall off. I would try to keep myself on the railing, but it seemed like it was oiled or something because I continued to slip even though I knew it was a dream and that I could try to keep myself from slipping (even though I wouldn't really hurt myself ff I fell).

The closest I've come to a lucid dream is having the knowledge that I am dreaming, within the dream. I just can't control anything.

While lucid dreams used to be rare for me, since about a year ago, every single dream I have is lucid. I am always in complete control of my body and my surroundings.

Oddly enough, I'm the only one I know of who has consistently lucid dreams.

Thanks for the tip. I'm going to start that tomorrow morning.

I've actually noticed a number of recurring themes within all of my dreams:

A) I never, ever look older than seven or eight years old. I've had one dream in my entire lifetime in which I looked like an adult.

B) I'm waiting for something to happen. I'm with a group of people, and we've each done everything we can to prepare for some climactic event that's about to occur. We never know what, just...something is impending and we're sitting around waiting for it to happen. Everyone else in the room is usually silent, and I'm running around asking everybody a lot of questions.

C) I tend to be the single able hero when I have dreams about dangerous situations - the "Chosen One," if you will. The only person who can save everybody from whatever the villain is in the dream. I always know something other people don't, and their fate depends upon me. I had one dream in which saving everybody else required that I sacrifice myself, and I was debating whether I was prepared to do that.

Each of my dreams run on one of those themes, sometimes a combination of two. I've only had one set of dreams that take place in the same location, though. Does anybody else have dreams with themes like those?

I've had numerous (non-lucid) dreams where the images are so vivid I remember them well and I remember what I was thinking during them. I think, the only step I need to take to make them lucid is to think against the natural flow of the dream. You need some kind of desire, some images in the dream that makes you want something or want to do something. If it comes true or if you can make it come true then you realize you are dreaming, and you can then take control. The hard part is to concentrate on what you want without regaining consciousness. It works for me anyway, strange that the little bit of logic stays with me, since most dreams lack any kind of logic and yet I can find them perfectly acceptable (at least when I'm in the dream).

The most important thing I learned about lucid dreaming was on the old thread before the crash.

Everyday, I say aloud, "Am I dreaming right now?"

This alone has made a vast improvement in my lucid dreaming and also increased the frequency at which they occur. I never really knew what a lucid dream was until I learned it here on the forums. Now I have them atleast once a week!

I'm a frequent lucid dreamer, it is rather cool but I wouldn't call it a useful skill. I don't think of dreams as something that are important and that they should be remembered, although it is pretty cool to be able to control dreams and all that.

I wish I could lucid dream more often. I had a really good one the other night. I actually woke up and it was like 6:00 in the morning, so I went to bed again and had an hour long (it seemed) dream. It was so cool. I felt like I was a wizard (in that I could perform 'magic' and all that good stuff!). Oh well, I think it is useful. It's better than no dreams most often.

Joseph

I think It's cool and fun no matter who you are. Controling your dreams, come on who wouldn't want to do that?

Once in a rare while I'll have a lucid dream, usually during some sort of nightmare. It saved me from the zombies in my dream one time.

Sadly, I hardly ever remember my dreams unless they're lucid. It's too bad; I'd like to see what's lurking in my head when I'm not in control.

When I was little, I used to dream that I could fly and that I lived with the Ninja Turtles (usually not in the same dream). They were so vivid that when I woke up, I tried to fly. Over the last year, I've had two that stand out. One was myself watching a guy doing a girl up the butt. I woke up feeling dirty and somewhat depressed because I didnt know where it came from and wondered if I was becoming a pervert and if sex had become merely an animalistic act in my mind. It was disturbing.
The other was myself with a shotgun and trench coat in a room full of guys in black. Suddenly, they wanted to kill me and bullet time kicked in. I killed three of them before I woke up.

Damn, I can't do this Lucid Dreaming stuff! I've been keeping a dream journal and looking for dreamsigns and everything, but it's just not heppening. Am I doing it wrong?

I´m always too excited when I have a lucid dream. I just push me outside again and wake up. ^^

An acquaintance of mine is a very talented lucid dreamer, also wrote a huge essay on her homepage about it. I

I had a lucid dream about my father on monday. Keep in mind that I haven't seen him in well over a year, and I haven't spoken to him since December. All I did was make him damned sure what I thought of him, and I wound up waking up yelling...

I had a very brief LD this morning, too - I woke up and drifted back to sleep, and I was on a raft on a river through some kind of tropical forest. I dipped my hand in the water, and it was dry when I removed it. Was pretty cool.

I've only had one lucid dream in my entire life... But I have had plenty of controllable dreams. As far as I was aware, lucid dreaming allows you to pick and choose everything about your dream (at least, that's the definition I heard), but controllable dreams leave you in random dreamscapes with a basic level of control over your actions. For instance, the other night I dreamt I could fly but no one would believe me. Although I could control when I flew, how high I managed to get and so on, I couldn't make people believe and I couldn't choose who I spoke to or where I was.

I know that http://www.warpmymind.com/ has a couple of MP3 track hypnosis thingies that may help. Some people have reported success on them, others haven't.

Another tip is to read your dream journal before you go to sleep, because you (usually) tend to dream about what's in your mind at that moment, so if you're thinking about dreams, you might have a chance there.

Also I need to get back into trying the lucid dreams thing again. ._>

Also if it helps anyone:

http://www.ld4all.com/

I've had several lucid dreams, but I haven't been able to get them regularly. Mine were usually about flying, and it is a blast. In the most exhiliratiing lucid dream I've ever had, my goal was to build a hot-air balloon. However, I needed to find parts. When I realized it was a dream, I thought, "I don't need to find parts, I'm the boss here!" And I looked down at the ground and created the parts I needed by willpower. It was awesome.

I will continue my quest to regularly LD tonight...though I have had no luck in a long time.

I've had a few lucid dreams but I was never able to stay lucid very long. Probably because I was so nervous that I'd wake up.

I'd either go back to dreaming or wake up. I got frustrated when I'd become lucid but wouldn’t' have full control over the dream. I'd try to materialize things but it wouldn't be what I wanted or nothing would appear. I didn't try for too long though. But the technique I was using was to will yourself to remember all your dreams just before you go to sleep every night. So I did that and it worked, I'd wake up after EVERY dream and remember it. I found I had several dreams a night. The next day I felt like I didn't have any sleep at all. Anyone else experience that? I couldn't stand to do that very long. But I started to have lucid dreams occasionally out of all the dreams I had to wake up to remember. I gave it up soon after. If there's other techniques besides that one that would work I'd try again.

I've had realistic dreams to the point where I could feel the sun on my skin and the sand inbetween my toes. I usually have partial control in those kind of dreams but didn't know I was dreaming. Once I was in the middle of a huge battle with hordes of monsters. I could cast magic and I was blasting them, that was pretty awesome.

Thanks, I'll try it out. I know that one of my dreamsigns is that I'm at work/ seeing people or things from work in my dream. Unfortunately it's hard to recognize that I'm dreaming even when I see work-related stuff because I'm always at work when I'm awake anyway! I can't say to myself: "Hey, I shouldn't be at work right now, I must be dreaming!" because I'm ALWAYS at work.

I think you have to note less common details.

A very popular dreamsign of mine is riding an elevator. Okay, this is nothing to easily notice in a dream, but my elevator always behave strangely. Going sidewards, shooting up at insane speed, falling down, falling apart, stopping between levels or at levels I´m not supposed to be.

Escalator are also strange - going in loops or ending in nowhere. But I didn´t have them in dreams for ages.

Another one is driving a car. The thing to watch out for is that steering is incredibly unexact and the breaks have next to no effect.

Ive had them once or twice, but not much lately. :/

normally if i think about something as i fall asleep i will dream about it, and i will know im dreaming and be able to control it.

I think one of the weirdest lucid dreams I have had, was a dream in a dream in a dream. That had to be the worst morning to wake up, because I woke up and went to school 3 friggin times!

It was really weird, cause I get up and go to school, and then when I get there, it's apparent I'm barely wearing any clothes, and I'm freaking out, so I like, pinch myself or something, and wake up.

Or so I thought, I went out of bedroom and proceeded to get ready for school, get there, and I forget what exactly happened, but it was so friggin weird, I pinched myself, and woke up again!

Finally I was able to get to school for real. I was ruined for the day though, felt so tired lol.

As for how useful they can be, I once had a dream where I found a long lost game in my house. When I woke up I went there to look for it, and holy crap if it wasn't there! I was like, useful!

Now I know when when I'm dreaming these days. I practically dream every night. And when my sleep is interrupted, I fall back and try going back to the last scene of my dream. The funny thing though is that most of my funniest dreams were supposed to be nightmares... which I guess I caused the turning point.

But sadly, I barely remember anything except that the dream existed.

I really would like to have frequent lucid dreams. I can only ever remember having 2 as a child. One was very light-hearted whereas the other one was horrifying. They were both exhilarating.