Lucid dreaming is dangerous

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

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...

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(?)

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 ;) .

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Originally posted by Death-Wuad
it's like going onto pornography forums and then telling everybody it makes them sick, twisted, psychopaths ;) .

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Oh no. I see a lot of pornography in my lucid dreams. What does that make me. :?: :oops: ;)

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

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Originally posted by Kevyboy
Ok well this has probably been said but hey i'll make sure.

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You realise you sound like some ones mother… actually no you sound less cool :-P

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.

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 :).

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.

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,... :roll: ) 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:

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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]

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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 :P ) 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

I just gotta say, WELL SAID! :fro:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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. :)

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

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.

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!

It's not dangerous.

It's a hobby for the intelligent, at least that's my opinion. It has only helped me.

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?

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

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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

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What? Again? :shakehead2:

;)

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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. [/b]

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Well said Oneironaut, that's an interesting theory. I never really thought about how we forget so many of our dreams each night, having one lucid dream which we remember on night probably is only a fraction of the dream experiences we've had that night but don't remember...

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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?[/b]

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That's an interesting thought, I don't think that we'd have two or more dream processes taking place, mainly because it seems too complicated for the brain to be working on so much while it's trying to relax and have a break at night. Then again, i'm sure it's possible. Why would we need more than one dream process taking place? Would it just be there ready for if the brain suddenly decides to change the dream?

Anyway, great post Oneironaut! It got me thinking, lol.

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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? [/b]

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I agree with sloth, it doesn't make sense to me how we can control dreams if they are just random. I guess it means that maybe science is wrong in that idea? Or maybe dreams are random until we start to control them?

InvaderGarf

Well, I don't really see that claim. The point is if your brain wants to convey a message to you it will. I'm regularly lucid and I had a series of dreams where I was lucid but had no control, simply because my dreams wanted to convey a message to me which I shouldn't toy with.

One may also have failed reality checks, and more, if truly the brain does not want you in control.

Lucid dreaming may be dangerous in other ways, but certainly not in that way.

In addition there are quite a few people, including myself, who have lucids naturally and effortlessly. It's not as if it's an abnormal trait.

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Originally posted by invadergarf
[That's an interesting thought, I don't think that we'd have two or more dream processes taking place, mainly because it seems too complicated for the brain to be working on so much while it's trying to relax and have a break at night. Then again, i'm sure it's possible. Why would we need more than one dream process taking place? Would it just be there ready for if the brain suddenly decides to change the dream?

Anyway, great post Oneironaut! It got me thinking, lol.

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Thankya. :cooler:

As for how I came into the idea, think about it like this:
As LaBerge recognizes, there are tiny conceptual “frames” in our mind called schemas. Which might take a little background for those that aren’t familiar with them:
The shorthand explanation of a schema is something that is used to make relationships between a number of objects or concepts. They sit in our unconscious mind, without constant use, are brought into our subconscious mind when they have the possibility of being used in the near future, and are brought to our conscious mind when we want to actually use the schema as a conscious thought.
For instance: In the back of your mind, there are (probably) hundreds of thousands of words/concepts that are somehow related to the word “Car.” They could be “seat,” “speed,” “road,” “door,” “handle,” “highway,” “sunroof,” “drive,” even “vacation.” Each of those words/concepts is a schema.
If I hadn’t have said “Car,” or another word that you could relate to any of the schemas above, they would be “disarmed,” and float around aimlessly in your unconscious. But, since I said “Car” your mind beings to race through and gather all of the related concepts to the word “Car” that you’re subconsciously aware of, even if you’re not consciously aware that this is happening.
The initial relevance is that I tend to think that this is how dreams are formed, and how they progress through what, at first, seems like a random series of meaningless, unrelated images and scenarios that are constantly changing, usually without notice.
Anyway, every time a schema is activated, on some less-conscious level they activate other schemas that may have a relationship with the first activated schema, but absolutely no known relationship with the initial thought that activated the schema before it. Like say…If I said “Airplane,” in the back of your mind the word “wings” might be activated so you can quickly throw it into the context of our conversation. As that word waits to be used, schemas also related to the word “Wings” such as “Feathers” are also being activated at the same time, which has a lot less to do with “Airplane,” but is still somewhat related. I believe that this is how dreams progress and relationships between dream content can be made upon further analysis.

Now, when it comes to how complicated this may or may not be, consider this. If someone says two completely unrelated words, within seconds of each other, (Like Radio and Hair Brush) I’m thinking your mind is simultaneously developing schemas for both words to be used in the context of the conversation. (Cables, bristles, comb, CD, music, fashion, etc.) If this is true, then I think it’s reasonable to assume that while we are aware of one dream or “area of schematic relationships,” that there may be others going on “somewhere else” (for lack of better terms) in the brain at the same time.

I agree with chainsaw kitten, just because her signature is adorable.

Also, Oneironaut, What does my brain do when you say the word 'the'? It's been associated with a lot of things over the years.


-sloth

i don't think it's dangerous...

and if it is: prove it...










i don't think he's going to answer us anymore...

we've won :evil:

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Originally posted by sloth
Also, Oneironaut, What does my brain do when you say the word 'the'? It's been associated with a lot of things over the years.

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My guess would be that it probably runs through the words that most commonly surround that word. As universal as that word is, it's hard to say, but the mind is good with making associations through context, and without using the word "the" in any sort of context, it probably begins shifting through the context that is most often, in your mind, surrounding the word "the."

Remember that all the associations that the mind makes, as far as we know, are never truely "lost" throughout life. This is why we can dream about things we've consciously forgotten decades ago. The brain stores stuff on a level that even scientists haven't been able to fathom, as of yet. So, even though we may not consciously be able to perceive what all word associations we can make with "the," the brain has most likely kept a pretty good record.

Oh, and on a somewhat related note, check this guy out. :shock:
http://english.pravda.ru/society/stories/77993-0/

Hrm.
Perhaps that is why the F!@# word is considered the worst.
When you hear it, you are hearing everything you've ever heard about it. F@!#ing, as an action, is sometimes an emotional thing, whereas sh@!ing is not. (At least for most people.) That is why sh@! is not considered as strong of a word... because no emotions are involved.

That is interesting.

Ooh! Ooh! If a tree falls in the woods, and nobody is around to hear it, and it lands on President Bush, does anybody care?

-sloth

How could you ask such a question?!! OF COURSE I CARE!!!!

....... that poor tree. :cry:

LMAO!

yes, but its sacrifice would be remember forever in gladness!

anyway, i just got 30/30 in a not-so-easy exam in the middle of a week in which i'm messing with dreams more then ever, and i'm well and happy and so on...
dangerous?
naah!
not until you believe they are at least.

(well, once i had my ass badly kicked by a F+ing DC, and actually wake up sick, but the simple reason is that i was a little naif child that believed in bullshit. even if my pride still hurts :oops: )

Ok acturaly some scientists belive that dreams are there to store your thoughts and memeries. Without dreams we wouldn't be able to stroe them in thr right places and so we could go mental. So Oneironaut is right about the scheme because it puts the words we remeber into those schemes to keep it stored and will forever keep building on those words.
If we don't have dreams then we wouldn't be able to remeber anything and then so we would go mental because our brain wouldn't know on what to do.
Even if we control are dreams, the things we change will, or might, make new connections and give us more thought and space into remebering them. So controling your dreams is more good then not because then your mind will advanse in logic( as we connect things) and creativity(the ways we creat the connections) and we can remeber more. We can even train our dreams to make us remeber like haveing a test in a dream(i don't think anyone would want that but its good as it helps).
So thats what i think anyway.
POP :D :mrgreen: :microwave:

Dreams feel so real when you are lucid they feel like your own little virtual reality with enhanced graphics! 8)

I think that dreams happen because there are little televisions in our heads that we can only see when we are asleep. The angels put them there. Also, there's lots of porn stations. :D

-sloth

I don't think it's dangerous at all. If you think about it, plenty of people are natural Lucid Dreamers, and some of them even have control, yet I doubt they're all phycological damaged. I understand where you're coming from Kevyboy, i was worried for a bit, but I realized if you feel like it is hurting you, if it can, then you can just take a break, and choose not to control your dreams, if you are good enough to take over every dream in the first place, which is hard.

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Originally posted by 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

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I once had a lucid dream where I tried to manipulate the world around me, or try to manipulate the people. but nothing happened. it was frustrating that I had no 'powers' in my lucid dream. and then I tried to fly away from the dream, but I couldn't either. the dream sorta 'forced' me to go along with its silly story

so I think, if there IS an issue or something that needs to be done in a dream, your subconscious mind will still make sure that it is done - even if you are lucid.

If your your sub-con dosn't allow you to control it o get out of it then thats the back up system of some kind and we get the massage knowing that your mind won't be affected. So all in all our sub-con has a back up system and it isn't dangours(unless our sub-con dosn't allow us to leave and we are trapped in our mind forever and never wake up then yes it is dangours but i don't think your sub-con will allow it to do it to us)(wait i mean the sub-con, no i mean us, no i mean the mind because the sub-con is apart of us. Would we stop making it out that the sub-con is a real life being, its only apart of us)(i have had anoth with my similies and personifacation in my english already. Heres a good example of pesonification: the sword gave out a metalic cry as it was being forged.)(that was weird how i got to sub-con to a sword :shakehead2: oh well :banana: )

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Originally posted by Mr.caramel
Ok acturaly some scientists belive that dreams are there to store your thoughts and memeries. Without dreams we wouldn't be able to stroe them in thr right places and so we could go mental. So Oneironaut is right...

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Hold on, chief. Is there actually evidence, or just the belief of several people? I am sure that research has been done on what happens when people "black out". That might give a better explanation of the process of storing short term memory.

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Originally posted by Mr.caramel
Would we stop making it out that the sub-con is a real life being, its only apart of us

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How do you know this? I don't think I agree, but you may have to define "real life being" more carefully. I think that our subconscious is actually us, but from a different point in our life. Of course, I don't think time exists either, making it all possible. What if we cannot actually think at all, we can only decide, you know, free will? That is, every thought of ours is received telepathically from ourselves from different points in life, that we cannot actually think. Unless we actually do telepathy with another individual, and at that point we are receiving from one of their higher selves. Perhaps feelings are just empathy too, we cannot actually feel.

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Originally posted by sloth
Also, Oneironaut, What does my brain do when you say the word 'the'? It's been associated with a lot of things over the years.

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That leaves my thought process hanging, I think "the ... ... ... what???". Besides I feel that association is more of an symbolic experience. When we associate things, we think "something *adjective*". It's like whatever creates our dream has the ability to place emotions within the dreamscape that control it.

For example, I had a repeated dream. At one point in the first dream, I saw a dumb blonde girl sitting on the hill. After watching an episode of Jimmy Kimmel, with Kellie Pickler. I had the dream again, and this time in the dream, it was Kellie sitting on a bouncy pad instead of a dumb blonde girl on a hill. In the first dream I was angry, the second one I was calm.

Sometimes I will have similar dreams in the same night, and may be able to contrast them in order to figure out what they mean. It's like hearing the same story from two perspectives, it makes it easier to understand. The common idea seems to be the feeling more than just the symbols.

That's cool.