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Do you remember the process you used to learn to walk? Speak? Brush your teeth? Negotiate the rules of a backyard game with friends? Get along with those friends? There are by far more functions in life that we have learned without ever considering the process we're using to learn them, much less knowing them, than we will ever learn with an understanding of the process.
I was thinking about that too but to me lucid dreaming is different. From the moment you are able to understand what a lucid dream is shouldn't you be aware, even a little, of how it started? How you felt that day? or What thought was going through your mind before and during that first impacting moment?
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A natural LD'er could certainly have learned to become lucid without ever giving much thought to the process. I for one do not consider myself a natural (I still must struggle to gain the higher levels of lucidity I seek), but I can assure you I had no idea of some official process or technique as I was laying down every night in my teens to have dreams wherein I knew I was dreaming (terms like WILD and DILD, much less their techniques, were decades away from being invented when I was in my teens).
What constitutes higher level of lucidity though? If you are aware it's a dream,are able to find your way around lack of control,and have your waking memories with you what more do you need? What stumbling blocks do you come across? I think I read that part of your past somewhere too. I think its nice that you were able to start that way because its like reading a book but without spoilers. Even though you might get lost more than those who have a guide you find your way around it. Sorry if it sounds confusing but that is the best way i could describe it for now.
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To me LD'ing is literally not natural, because you are attempting to do something that runs thoroughly counter to the basic design for human sleep and dreams. When the truly natural format for dreams pointedly includes a parameter that says we should not be self-aware (aka, awake) while we are dreaming (aka, asleep), I can't help but conclude that trying to do the opposite (be lucid) is natural. All the techniques we learn, the struggles we make, the tiny steps we take over great amounts of time toward being able to do something that seems so simple on paper are indicators that we are swimming upstream against a fairly strong current, that current being the natural rules for sleep and dreams... and even after all that we still have trouble fighting the current.
Sorry, I don't know much about the literal parts of what makes dreams, dreams so you are probably right about it. But if you think about it in the terms of "fighting the current" than why does the current let you ride it at times? I think for me it has been like the waves. (Current's are considered dangerous so I guess that's why I prefer waves too) I can see how lucid dreaming can have more complications but there are times when it feels like its okay to play or do what you want in the waves.(Like calmer waves?) But than again there are those moments when you get thrown off and back to non lucidity...Perhaps it isn't natural that we go against our dreaming mind to stay or get lucid everyday but I think we were mean't to have lucidity because when it became known it became possible and it was fine, even for only a moment. Like we knocked on lucidity's door and it let us in. Other times we knocked on it's door and it kicked us out. Than the last time it let us in, it let us stay longer until we got on it's nerve and it kicked us out again.
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Yes, lucid dreaming is not natural, but there's nothing wrong with that. Just as frequent flying (or driving, or cooking with a microwave, or air conditioning a room, or any of a thousand other things we do as humans that were night wired into our genes) is thoroughly unnatural but not harmful overall, frequent lucid dreaming is certainly not harmful.
^.^ Okay. Guess that has been proven throughout time but just knowing why you saw it that way is helpful.
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Other creatures than us, I think, ought to be permitted to have the potential to rise above their programming and do something unnatural.
That's evolution and that is okay. But I can't imagine furrys living in our world yet.