Thread: Applying lucidty in dream-life to waking-life, and vice versa.

Learning about lucid dreams may be the key to gaining greater lucidity in our waking life as well. If we want to be in charge of what happens in our dreams, don't we in essence want to have greater control over ourselves in general?

I had an interesting experience just now that got me to thinking.

Before I left the house, I was reading a very neat thread about interacting with DC's. And lately I've been visiting the forums alot, reading more about dreams in general...so my waking-life has taken on a sort of dream-like quality recently.

My mind was set to go to a particular gas station that was close to my house, but at the last second I made a turn that took me to another gas station instead. As I was walking in, I saw a plastic set of can-rings on the ground (the kind you see on six-packs of soda and beer). I almost walked past it, but then I decided to pick it up and tear the rings open before putting it in the trash.

As I was doing so, someone walked out of the station past me, and I could tell that they noticed what I was doing, but I didn't look up immediately. But something told me to look up at the last minute. I expected to see the person facing the other way, since they had already walked past me. But as soon as I looked up, they turned their head around simultaneously to look at me. And it happened to be a person I know, and hadn't seen in a long time!

Whats weird about it is that my mind essentially made decisions for me that led to these turns of events. When I made a last minute decision to go to a different gas station, it was because there was a UPS truck ahead of me that was turning (and I had seen something on TV about UPS trucks the day before). And also, I made a last minute decision to pick up the rings (because I was reading recently about the amount of plastic that ends up in the ocean, and how fish get tangled up in it or injest it). Then, I didn't want to look at the person who saw me doing it, because I was looking a bit haggard at the time. But something told me to look up and it just so happened that the person looked back toward me at the same time. And bam! It happened to be someone I knew.

I'm wondering if what I was reading about before I left the house had anything to do with it. In the thread I was reading, I saved a quote that said: "I've been finding that concentrating too much on trying to do something like summoning a DC to talk to tends to end my dream and brings me back into the physical, while just going with the flow of the dream and allowing the dream to dictate where I go while I just observe, allows my lucid state to continue much longer."

By thinking about this concept (as it pertains to dream-life), did I inadvertantly apply it to my waking-life? In a way, I was allowing the free-flowing, wandering state of my mind to dictate what I did, even though I had made conscious decisions to do the opposite. Had I gone with my original intent to go to the closer gas station, I wouldn't have seen the person at all...and perhaps a fish would've gotten tangled in those plastic rings.

I tend to find that by allowing myself to go with the flow, I have interesting or coincidental events as a result. If this concept applies to waking-life, it could theoretically follow that it would apply to dream-life as well. At the very least, it illuminates something about how having too much conscious control over yourself can prevent one from randomly experiencing things that teach you some sort of lesson.

Which brings me to Waking Life (the movie). I've seen it many times, and I always notice something new that gets me to thinking. Considering the experience I just had, I had the thought that, well...its not called Dreaming Life. I always looked at it from the perspective that it is trying to get you to think about your dream-life. But really, all the dreams the main character is experiencing have something to say about the real world. The dream characters seem to go on and on about topics that could be in a real life conversation (like the one where Ethan Hawke is talking about shared memory).

Perhaps the fact that it is called Waking Life reveals the intent of the writers to express the idea that exploring dream-worlds can be a way of becoming more lucid in the waking life? I know that in waking life I can sometimes be on "auto-pilot", when normally I try to be observant as possible (I believe that tiny occurences can teach you big lessons).

If we strive to be lucid in our dreams, shouldn't we try to be equally lucid in our waking state?



I'm sorry about the lengthy phrasing, but any thoughts on this topic would be greatly appreciated.