Thread: Hello

Hello all. This is my first post after lurking for a bit, so I'm introducing myself and sharing a word or two.

I found this forum while randomly wandering about the internet on the subject of lucid dreaming and decided to sign up, so I could share my experiences beyond reading those of others. I hope you like stories, because I always tend to write quite a strenuous chunk on blank forms.

This is how I started on lucid dreaming.

My childhood and early adulthood encompassed cases of sleep problems, like sleep paralysis and systemic nightmares, due to stress among other things. Long before these many problems rose up to a point of becoming unbearable, I've always been keen to the subject of dreams and when I found out about lucid dreaming, I decided I should have a crack at it.

At first I thought that it would be quite an achievement if I could turn those unpleasant experiences into something more tolerable. Becoming aware that those experiences were just but dreams then taking the reins by putting myself in control of them, seemed exactly what I was looking for.

I began a number of exercises at the very day I started reading on the subject, expecting that it would be days even weeks before I should see some real progress. To my absolute dismay, that same night I experienced a lucid dream. I was so exhilerated about the matter though, that it didn't last long enough. I lost control and woke up. I still have those mixed sensations of happiness and confusion (even slight fear) from that first experience very clear in my mind.

In fact I reckon I was so surprised that maybe I questioned what was happening, triggered my rational mind and woke up almost instantly as I "lost faith" on what was going on ("it can't be lucid dreaming this soon, can it? no wait... I'm waking up... no!").

After some time training and mastering the techniques, I noticed some unusual things about my dreams (lucid or not) that never noticed before. I not always talk about these things because I know how they sound to most people: they sound unlikely, even blatant lies ... but as this is an internet forum and if people don't believe me, I can't be offended at faces that I've never really seen in person for my entire life. Anyway, I really hope to find some people around that could add to my testimony by confirming some of my stories happened to them as well. Not even my shrink seemed to believe me.

The first unusual dream I remind of from those days when I started on LD, was like this: there was this very beautiful scene in black and white. There was a huge sun behind hills, then a vast field in front of it with flowers, birds, furry animals, butterflies and whatnots. Then there was this voice, a "narrator" if you will, not unlike a news radio anchor, and he kept going like this while the (black and white) picture was steady in my mind:

"So people keep telling we all can only dream in black and white... if that's true, what about .... THIS!" - and he stressed "THIS" very enfatically while the black and white picture suddenly came in full colour in a burst. The effect of colour not only revealed a picture that was way beyond beautiful, it was shiny, lively...

When I woke up, I was amazed that my mind could do something like that. Then I remembered I was talking to a friend couple days before that, precisely about my dreams in colour. As he wouldn't believe me and presented many reasonable arguments on why, I began to think I was really imagining things - I remembered people regarding these things as "false memories".

That dream though, confirmed to me that I should be confident on my experiences, contrary to whatever I would hear against then. It wasn't a greyscale dream with random bursts of mediocre colour here and there. The scene became a clear colour picture, plus in the end I was entirely aware I was dreaming.

What happened stroke me as really designed by an uncontrollable and subconscious bit of my mind, yet presented as a rational argument against something that happened while I was awake. Add to that the fact that "the dream knew about itself": the narrator spoke "what about this" like in "this is a dream coming in full colour, so this is proof you really should know we humans don't have dreams just in shades of grey".

This is becoming a long introduction message so I leave you now. I'll be following the thread to read your feedback. Thanks for your time!