Lucid Dreaming

There's an interesting thread on vivid dreams in which the subject of lucid dreams was mentioned. So as not to interfere with that thread I'm starting this one to ask people these things:-

Do you have lucid dreams?

If so, how do you do it?

I rarely do, and I can't explain it... I just occassionally realize I'm dreaming.

90% of the time it happens, I wake up.

10% of the time... I manage to stay asleep. I can influence small bits but I can't change the whole plot. Just subtle things, like changing colors of things, or altering perspective of things. Even if I know I'm dreaming, I don't realize that I can break the laws of physics there. So I won't go jumping off a roof.

The only time I can recall Lucid dreaming is when I was a kid. I would fly everywhere. I knew I was dreaming so I would make myself fly. Just like I do now in SL.

MJ

Books have been written on this subject. Here's what I had to do:

Every morning as soon as you wake up write down your dreams. This helps you to remember your dreams over a period of time. It was the hardest thing for me to do.
Next I picked five random things that I would have to notice during the day. Example: the first time I heard a telephone ring that day I would stop and ask myself if I were awake. Sounds dumb right? Well you drive that home enough times and when you hear a phone ring in your dream you will ask yourself if you are dreaming. Also this helps you to question your surroundings if anything doesn't seem right it usually isn't and that's what helped me realize I was dreaming.

The first time I purposely lucid dreamed I was standing on a railway platform and looking down the tracks I saw the body of a 747 coming at me. I knew this wasn't right and it then dawned on me what was going on. I looked at a man next to me and I excitedly said to him " I'm dreaming!!!!" I was so excited that I did it. However in 3 seconds I felt myself rushing upwards extremely fast and I woke up. I was disappointed it ended so quickly.

I got those techniques above from a book. They seemed to work for me. I've had some amazing dreams.

Me too! In mine, the gangsters were out to get me but I would just flap my arms and soar into the air (like I fly in SL with Abramination's cool men's AO) and get away from them.

Looking back, I don't know why they didn't just pull out their guns and shoot me down like it was duck season.



P2

This happens for me regularly. I don't think it's anything in particular that I "do," but it happens more often when I have had a long time to sleep, longer than usual, and it seems to come at the tail-end of that. Fun stuff!

I haven't remembered a dream in years. However when I used to remember them I had extremely realistic dreams but I'm not sure I knew I was dreaming. For instance my flying dreams actually had lift and aerodynamics laws and I had to get it just right to get off the ground. When I'd have dreams where I could run fast I had to fight wind resistance and lean over really far to turn. I hated it when I slipped .

Only once or twice have I realized that I am dreaming and can in turn decide how I wanted the dream to go. For instance, I didn't like the way a dream was ending (kinda sounds like a movie) and I said oh no, I don't like this I want to change it to blah, blah, blah and I did. I have a tendency to be able to focus on a person while drifting off to sleep and dream about them, but I do not know if that is considered lucid dreaming or not.

I had one this weekend as a matter of fact. I've done it several times throughout my life.

When I first started having lucid dreams, I would usually get so excited at the realization that I'd wake myself up almost immediately. Over the years I've gotten a little better at not getting so worked up and managed to stay in it a little longer. For me however it's a tough balancing act between full consciousness and losing lucidity.

For a couple weeks once I tried an exercise where you'd focus on an object, stare at it and question if I was asleep or awake. For me, I used a pen to make a tiny dot of ink on the back of my hand. I then got in the habit of checking for that dot to see if I was dreaming. Finally in the middle of a dream I checked, only there was no dot. At that point I realized it was a dream. Unfortunately I was so bolstered by that success I quit the entire exercise.

The best time for lucid dreaming seems for me right after waking up in the morning. If I get up and mess around for about 15 minutes, then get back in bed they appear more frequent and I remember more. I think it has to do with being fully awake for a short time and then going back to bed.

Initially I could only direct myself around in a dream. For example I could make myself go to a a certain location, or behave within the boundaries of my environment. I used to have pretty vivid nightmares, the whole wake up in bed sweating bit. Eventually I have gotten where I could recognize an irrational nightmare for what it was, and this would usually allow me to take control of the dream. At that point I could usually do away with whatever the aggressive influence in the dream was and move on without waking. The best part is that instead of awaking from a bad dream very distraught, once I've defeated the "thing" the dream continues, only now instead of being the victim I get to be the hero. This makes for a very fulfilling night of sleep. Now I tend to recognize wildly unlikely events in a dream (flying, unusual location, unlikely people, bizarre situations) and that cues me that I'm dreaming.

After reading about lucid dreaming and making half-hearted attempts at it in over the last ten years I now have one about every couple months. I'm able to do minor physics-impossible tricks. Mostly just flying, but it's very cool. One dream had been about six months after my grandfather died, and when I dreamt about being on vacation with him, it was a bittersweet experience. I was able to stand beside him and hug his neck again, but I realized it wasn't real.

I've never had a negative experience lucid dreaming. I do not have the clarity or control that I would like when it happens, but I don't exactly try that hard at it either.

/end chapter one. sheesh I gotta get a blog

This tecnique works well, also make sure you have plenty of time to sleep.

I've been really slacking in my Lucid Dreaming attempts really. The thing that works best for me is just being aware of it, reading about it etc. As mentioned above, dream journals work really well too, and they're worth keeping anyway, the more you do it, the more dreams you remember, and more vividly and for longer. Why let that third of your life you spend asleep be completely wasted when you can reclaim some of it by remembering your dreams? I never could discipline myself well enough to do reality checks all the time though.

LD4all is probably the best resource on the net for information on lucid dreaming (Don't be put off by the New Age look to it, most of the techniques on there are scientific). I think lucid dreaming is something that would especially interest Essellians, as they generally tend to creative, pioneering types (And trust me, if you think exploring the grid is fun, try exploring a world your own pysche generates for you as you go, and flying is much more fun in a dream). Those that have never heard of lucid dreaming, I would urge to check it out.

Thank you all for your insights and suggestions. I'll give it a try for a week and let you know what happens