Lucid dreaming is dangerous

[Kevyboy]

Ok well this has probably been said but hey i'll make sure. A dream is a way for your Sub-conscious to work through problems, emotions ect. If you obtain lucidity too often and change the way the dream would naturally shape itself then you can (im not saying you always will) you can pull away from what your mind is working on, this would cause emotions to run alot higher, quite often the more negative emotions - anger, depression. Also in this you can lose sense of reason and then you become a danger to yourself and others around you. Its just a warning and im not saying stop doing it, im just saying make sure that if a dream feels like it needs to play out then let it and just follow what the dream wants. Happy dreaming

[Aphius]

Well, I'm sure most of us will never have to worry about that. It would take an enormous amount of skill to contstantly pull your mind completely away from whatever it may be working on, even if you could pull it away. Also there's no real way to tell whether the mind could not keep working in the background anyway...

[Sparky]

Exactly, you really can't stop things your mind is doing(unless you die, or use chloroform or something), I don't think just by controlling dreams it will interupt anything your brain is working on(?)

[Death-Wuad]

There is no evidence whatsoever that lucid dreaming is dangerous, or that manipulating your dreams alters your emotional state. It is true, however, that if we don't dream, we wake up much more tired and very irritable. Even if we aren't lucid in a dream, we still have skewed free will because we are concious, but just not aware of what's actually happening. Anything we know about dreams is pretty much theoretical, and there are a dozen other theories to knock that first theory off the top of the hill. This topic is going to incite a lot of raw of emotion, it's like going onto pornography forums and then telling everybody it makes them sick, twisted, psychopaths .

[dectomax]

Originally posted by Death-Wuad it's like going onto pornography forums and then telling everybody it makes them sick, twisted, psychopaths . Oh no. I see a lot of pornography in my lucid dreams. What does that make me.

[docKnubis]

tell me one thing that is 100% safe there isn't one

[Turkeh]

Originally posted by Kevyboy Ok well this has probably been said but hey i'll make sure. You realise you sound like some ones mother… actually no you sound less cool

[Kevyboy]

I was only talking from a psychological point of veiw. I was just saying that there is a chance, and anyway as is said its pretty hard to pull your mind away from things like that - but some people can and i was just telling them - It would have to be like every night for a week anyway so there is such a small chance - go find some lightning first.

[Replicon]

I thought dreams were just your brain's response to random signals it receives during REM... It tries to interpret them the best it can, but due to the randomness, it'll never look like reality. People should come to terms with their own emotions consciously anyway .

[Kevyboy]

I agree, but the subconscious takes on baggage throught the day and kinda sorts it out but it uses sleep to work everything out properly.

[lord soth]

lol!! 2 things: 1, now i guess i see what all the others are talking about, the "invasion of the n00bs" this is one dumb topic 2, ask ev or LDguy, (who arent NORMALLY insane,... ) if they are mad, or angry, or foaming at the mouth..... because they say that they have lds every other night or so, or EVERY NIGHT.... lucky poopers.... 3, kevyboy said: A dream is a way for your Sub-conscious to work through problems, emotions ect. If you obtain lucidity too often and change the way the dream would naturally shape itself then you can (im not saying you always will) you can pull away from what your mind is working on, this would cause emotions to run alot higher, quite often the more negative emotions - anger, depression. Also in this you can lose sense of reason and then you become a danger to yourself and others around you. Its just a warning and im not saying stop doing it, im just saying make sure that if a dream feels like it needs to play out then let it and just follow what the dream wants. Happy dreaming[/b] do you have any proof that dreaming is a way for it to work through problems? what if you dont have any problems? what if... aha, and this is just a suggestion, BUT I HAVE TO SAY IT! just because, you know, it might have allready been said (just makin sure ) sleep is soley for the purpose of resting one part of the mind because it gets overheated, (or too saturated with one type of chemical, w/e ask onus...) and that during an LD, your conscious is just partaking in the dream, and the SUBC is doing all the work, so it wouldnt matter anyway.... 4, i guess this was more than 2 things

[Sparky]

I just gotta say, WELL SAID!

[Placebo]

I side with lord soth's thoughts on the matter, but not the harshness In my (extremely) humble opinion, dreams are there to 'commit' your thoughts and rearrange associations. And the subconscious does that by running it over in sometimes vivid detail - resulting in REM and dreams.

[Seeker]

Kevyboy has raised a valid point. If it were possible to totally take over your dream life and stop your subconsious from working through some items, then your subconsious would find other ways to let off steam. Maybe something as simple as an eye twitch, or possbly a complete mental breakdown. I think your mind has some built in safety valves and eventually, it would stop you from LDing if it needed to.

[iadr]

Yes, I suppose Lucid dreaming can be dangerous, just like Astral projection can be dangerous for someone with a weak heart as they may experience something so exciting that it could cause their ticker to stop ticking. But for those of us who love to live dangerously, and for the adventureous of heart, bring on the lucid dreams. From the standpoint of being dangeous in that one might stop the subconscious from being able to express itself in ones dreams though I have to disagree, because by becoming aware in ones dream, one does not necessarily have to control those dreams, but can merely learn to be aware and learn from those dreams much more than they would have been able to otherwise if they were not lucid, and couldn't even remember their dreams. So from this standpoint I would say that it is much more dangerous to not learn to become lucid and continue to live in a state of unawareness and ignorance of what ones subconscious mind is trying to convey to the person. Since by becoming lucid and learning to control ones dreams a person will be able to understand themselves much better and evolve into a more spiritual being, the real danger as I see it is for those with closed minds who have no interest in or are afraid to advance spirituallly by learning to control their dreams. Furthermore, anyone who has a reached a state of being in total control of their dreams would probably be a master of some sort anyway so probably would already be living in total awareness and wouldn't need to be told by their subconscious mind what they needed to change as they would already be aware of it.

[TheUnknown]

your subconsious has many levels. If you think you've banished it or overcome it. You are seriously wrong.. I will do what it wants. I find it increasingly annoying that, I have so much randomness going on. Nothing seems connected. One morning I woke up and was convinced I had to go paint the ford pinto.. when first of all, I didn't have a car at the time, and second of all, i didn't know ANYONE with a pinto, and i'd never even thought of painting the cars before. Its like that.. it'll just think up some weird crap that will block you out from LDing, you may overcome it, but its always something new, and potentially annoying. (last night i went on sugar binge in my dreams..) complete randomness.

[invadergarf]

I don't think Lucid Dreaming is dangerous, i've only had 4 lucid dreams so far but I don't see how it could be that dangerous. I think that being lucid helps people pay more attention to what happens in their dreams. A dream whether it is lucid or not is still a dream right? Shouldn't they both relax you? Heaps of people lucid dream all the time now (through practice) and they are all perfectly healthy i'm sure. I think learning to lucid dream would be a healthy thing for a person. If a person is stressed, they could lucid dream to have some time to themselves for relaxing. If they never get time to do a hobby (like golf or bowling) they could always do it in their lucid dream. I can think of heaps of ways in which lucid dreaming could help people, rather than be dangerous. The one thing i'm not sure is safe is shared lucid dreaming (where you go into someone else's dream or they go into yours). I'm not even sure this is possible but I think that changing someone else's dream could be dangerous. It's like going into someone's thoughts and mind, just seems dangerous to me (as fun as it might be). Anyway, those are my thoughts! Basically, I don't think normal lucid dreaming is dangerous, shared dreaming I'm not so sure about (has anyone here experienced shared dreaming? do you think it's dangerous?) InvaderGarf

[Abstract Fire]

Personally, I think lucid dreams help me let off steam. I was a little depressed when I first found out about LDing, and the few long lucids I had, I had so much fun I couldn't help but be happy for a while. Whenever I'm frustrated, I try to have alot of fun to let off the steam. Even if it's short, I feel accomplished.

[sloth]

They are dangerous. I was lucid dreaming one time, and suddenly, blood splurted from my ears and I had a hemmorage. Then my hair burst into flames. Also, my intestines fell out. -sloth

[TygrHawk]

Come on, guys. There's already enough of a problem with people accepting lucid dreaming as something factual, rather than "new-agey". Let's not scare people away with all this talk of it being "dangerous". If anyone can present a documented case of lucid dreaming causing someone harm, then let's hear it. Otherwise, please stop. Personally, I don't see how it could be dangerous at all, unless you become so addicted to it that all you want to do is sleep -- too much of anything can be bad, after all.

[phoenelai]

Dangerous, err no, I seriously doubt it. If anything a week of waking up, doing small task, going back to bed and WILD just may interrupt a normal nights sleep and that may catch up with you at the end of the week but that's what weekends are for!

[PhilipJFry]

It's not dangerous. It's a hobby for the intelligent, at least that's my opinion. It has only helped me.

[Oneironaut Zero]

I think many people are forgetting that, in some areas of Eastern society, lucid dreaming is a lot more than some esoteric fad that people get into once in a while because it's "cool to do every now and then." It's a way of life. In many places it is actually encouraged, psychologically in a way that most of us Westerners have been practically bred to have absolutely no concept of. Show me a person who has been rendered "insane" in their waking life by having too many lucid dreams, and I'll lend a little more credibility to the theory. Not only that, but there is another point being completely overlooked. Compare how often the mind, theoretically, dreams per night, versus how often we actually remember experiencing those dreams. To remember taking part in 1-2 lucid dreams per night, in my opinion, has absolutely no effect on the other 10+ dreams that we don't actually even remember having. Bringing your consciousness in to participate in what's going on around you while dreaming, especially while not actively affecting the content, does not stop the dream from happening. Your surroundings can still change at will, relationships between concepts are still being made outside of your conscious perception, in large quantities. To have complete control over any and all dream processes, for any period of time, is a skill I've not yet seen displayed by anyone on the planet. Which brings me to a question I've been asking myself for quite some time, now: How do we know that, while we are consciously, or unconsciously, experiencing an area of our "dream world," there aren't equal, but parallel, dream processes taking place? In other words; while we are experiencing the dream of being stretched out on a yacht in the meditteranean (sp) with a supermodel, how do we know that some other part of our mind isn't putting together concepts that we would consider a nightmare (if we were to shift over to that thought process) at the Exact Same Time?

[sloth]

Whoh. That's messin' up my head. I liked it better before you started saying these smart things. Actually, it's a fascinating concept. Two different dreams going at once, and you are only 'aware' of one of them. Also, if dreams are, as scientists say, just random jolts of brain activity, how come I can control them? Doesn't that violate some fundamental law of physics? To control something that is random? -sloth

[Abstract Fire]

Originally posted by sloth They are dangerous. I was lucid dreaming one time, and suddenly, blood splurted from my ears and I had a hemmorage. Then my hair burst into flames. Also, my intestines fell out. -sloth What? Again?