Thread: Brain overload when going lucid

@Kaomea: ZeraCook had a good point, if you gonna tell me how to behave, you should keep yourself to that too

About the staring thing: I frequent the hungarian lucid dreaming site since 2 years now, ever since i started LDing. We had tests about this on there and it turned out that anyone who tried to stare woke up soon. It's not a made up thing.
Maybe before you tell me that it's stupid, try it yourself and see.

People that say they were staring in the dreams and didn't wake up weren't truly staring imo, their eyes were still moving... even if they didn't notice... but i mentioned this already above.


@Mzzkc: I'm gonna just disregard your post, because you are trying to troll me ever since we first argued on here... it would be time to get over it

I'm glad I didn't waste my time, then. ^.^

Lol. Oh well.

Originally Posted by littlezoe

About the staring thing: I frequent the hungarian lucid dreaming site since 2 years now, ever since i started LDing. We had tests about this on there and it turned out that anyone who tried to stare woke up soon. It's not a made up thing.
Maybe before you tell me that it's stupid, try it yourself and see.

I don't see how you can tout the "belief is everything" idea and at the same time say that the act of staring always wakes you up. Did it never occur to you that you're waking up because you believe staring will wake you up? It's the belief, not the actual act of staring, that wakes you up. Why was this test on the Hungarian site being run in the first place? Why was it orchestrated? Did it start because some one said staring in a dream wakes them up? If anyone mentioned that before the test was run then the test was already corrupted and your results are worthless. It doesn't matter how many people were involved.

Never tell a person that doing something specific will wake them up. Never. It does not help them in any way. It can only be harmful. If you really follow the belief is everything idea you should know better.

Damn.

I just found this thread, and am both truly sorry and oddly happy that I missed out in participating it (I'll bet you understand that, Mzzkc).

Can I just throw one small wrench at you, LittleZoe, based on my own possibly fallible experience? One of my tried and true techniques for both maintaining stability in a dream and advancing it to the next level of intensity/awareness is either staring at an object or holding my perception very still and allowing the "objects," or schemata, in my dream to dissipate to nothing (very cool thing to do, BTW). Both of these things involve pretty intense staring, for often a helluva lot longer than ten seconds.

Except that it doesn't.


What you all seem to be missing here is that in dreams we do not have any eyes. We are literally incapable of staring at anything. Everything we see is manufactured perception, and not a physical event, so staring is irrelevant. Indeed, in the high-end LD's where I can do my "staring" exercise, I don't have a dream body at all, so no eyes to speak of.

So in the end it all comes down to beliefs, expectation, and all the other stuff you guys have been batting about. In a sense you're all correct in the things you're arguing so fiercely about, because in the end there is no staring, period, only a concept of staring.

Which I think brings me back to the OP:

LuMikkel: Aside from getting some more RAM for your brain through things like waking-life meditation and self-awareness exercises (which I would recommend), I think this all really comes down to a simple act of expectation.

Next time the dream gets boring, or something you find yourself having to maintain completely by yourself, you might tell yourself something like, "Wait a minute, I'm in full control of my dream, I can do anything I want!" and then do it. This will work better if you go to sleep with a solid intention of expanding your dream world once lucid, maybe with a full plan of where you'd like to go.

Thanks again for all the entertainment, guys!

Originally Posted by dms111

I don't see how you can tout the "belief is everything" idea and at the same time say that the act of staring always wakes you up. Did it never occur to you that you're waking up because you believe staring will wake you up? It's the belief, not the actual act of staring, that wakes you up. Why was this test on the Hungarian site being run in the first place? Why was it orchestrated? Did it start because some one said staring in a dream wakes them up? If anyone mentioned that before the test was run then the test was already corrupted and your results are worthless. It doesn't matter how many people were involved.

Never tell a person that doing something specific will wake them up. Never. It does not help them in any way. It can only be harmful. If you really follow the belief is everything idea you should know better.

I already pointed that out, but I don't think it necessarily makes it so that they would all wake up, especially if they were testing it, and some of them followed the belief system, and were believing that they could stare without waking up, so the results would not be worthless. Even if you knew of the belief system, and at first tried it and woke up, but the next time you could change your belief, just like how the first time someone gets lucid they might have trouble flying, but the next time if they believe they can fly in Lucid Dreams then they (most Likely) would. So the Results would not be worthless really, In fact if you put this kind of thinking to most tests done in LDing then you would say most of them were corrupted, and worthless.

Originally Posted by Sageous

What you all seem to be missing here is that in dreams we do not have any eyes. We are literally incapable of staring at anything. Everything we see is manufactured perception, and not a physical event, so staring is irrelevant. Indeed, in the high-end LD's where I can do my "staring" exercise, I don't have a dream body at all, so no eyes to speak of.

Actually when we are Lucid we gain control of our eyes, and this was in a study I read about when i first got into Lucid Dreams.

What the people were doing while being studied was if they got lucid they would move there eyes in a certain predetermined pattern to communicate with the people in the world that they had gotten Lucid. People were shown to only make the movement if they had got lucid, and if they didn't the pattern was never seen.

Originally Posted by ZeraCook

Actually when we are Lucid we gain control of our eyes, and this was in a study I read about when i first got into Lucid Dreams.

What the people were doing while being studied was if they got lucid they would move there eyes in a certain predetermined pattern to communicate with the people in the world that they had gotten Lucid. People were shown to only make the movement if they had got lucid, and if they didn't the pattern was never seen.

Ah, you were faster than me
That's exactly what i wanted to react with

Originally Posted by Sageous

What you all seem to be missing here is that in dreams we do not have any eyes. We are literally incapable of staring at anything. Everything we see is manufactured perception, and not a physical event, so staring is irrelevant. Indeed, in the high-end LD's where I can do my "staring" exercise, I don't have a dream body at all, so no eyes to speak of.

We don't have eyes in the dream? Not entirely true. If you like to "exist" in the dream as a body-less entity, you still need to look around somehow and your real eyes will move according to that. Even if you believe that you have no eyes in the dream, you can't make your real eyes not follow the way you look around in a dream.
It's really not about whether you have eyes in the dream or not.

Originally Posted by dms111

I don't see how you can tout the "belief is everything" idea and at the same time say that the act of staring always wakes you up. Did it never occur to you that you're waking up because you believe staring will wake you up? It's the belief, not the actual act of staring, that wakes you up. Why was this test on the Hungarian site being run in the first place? Why was it orchestrated? Did it start because some one said staring in a dream wakes them up? If anyone mentioned that before the test was run then the test was already corrupted and your results are worthless. It doesn't matter how many people were involved.

Suddenly the belief "system" makes sense, huh?

Nah. The beliefs affect your control over the dream, not your real body. If you look around in the dream, your real eyes will move the same way, just as i stated above. Whether you believe it or not, your eyes will still move, or well it won't if you decide to stare.

The test involved multiple lucid dreamers and all we asked for is once they get lucid, calm down and the only thing they should do is stare at something in the dream, doesn't matter what, just stare. Maybe you think about staring differently, but what i'm talking about here is staring while your eyes are totally still. Everyone who was able to do it soon woke up because of the staring.

Think about it a little... why is that a lot of lucid dreams just suddenly stop, you wake up and can't explain why? Fixating your eyes is something that can cause this.
I found it weird that there is not much talk about this on DV, while on our site it was a well known thing...

If someone doesn't believe me, then as i already said multiple times: try it, and you'll see for yourself


But yeah, i don't really feel like continuing to argue about this... it's getting really boring saying the exact same things over and over on both sides. If you still don't believe then read what i wrote before... if you still don't, then do it again. I can't say much more than this.

Originally Posted by littlezoe

Suddenly the belief "system" makes sense, huh?

Note that I didn't say anything against the belief system. I...*cough* believe in it. Mostly. Sorry if that's what my post appeared to imply.

Originally Posted by littlezoe

Nah. The beliefs affect your control over the dream, not your real body. If you look around in the dream, your real eyes will move the same way, just as i stated above. Whether you believe it or not, your eyes will still move, or well it won't if you decide to stare.

Yeah I know this and am not disagreeing. Move your eyes in a dream and they move in reality. Nobody has disagreed with this. We disagree with you because you say the physical movement of the eyes some how affects the stability of a dream, but you haven't given any reason for why other than that test you did on the other forum.

Originally Posted by littlezoe

Think about it a little... why is that a lot of lucid dreams just suddenly stop, you wake up and can't explain why? Fixating your eyes is something that can cause this.
I found it weird that there is not much talk about this on DV, while on our site it was a well known thing...

It's not weird. Nobody on this forum discusses that problem because no one here has it.(Although now I'm sure it will show up) It shows up on your forum because people there already believe the problem exists. Don't you see what I'm saying here? It's the belief. There's still no reason to believe holding your physical eyes still will force you to wake up.

Originally Posted by littlezoe

If someone doesn't believe me, then as i already said multiple times: try it, and you'll see for yourself

It's not that simple. If a person were to try and run this test after reading this thread they will already have a predetermined conclusion. You say when we stare in a dream that something will happen (Will wake up). Others in this thread say that when we stare in a dream nothing will happen (Won't wake up). Given the inherent instability of dreams our minds will naturally lean towards the something happening result. This type of test is still worthless unless it's controlled to eliminate any preconceived ideas.

There has already been a couple people say they have been able to stare in a dream without waking up. And they did it before this idea was ever mentioned so there were no preconceived ideas. Their conclusions are already more reliable than yours. But you immediately dismissed them as somehow not staring properly.

If what you say is true, and the stability of a dream is actually tied to the physical movement of our eyes then it should be true for everyone, right? If one person is able to stare in a dream without waking up then your theory is bunk. Your waking up is easily explained by your beliefs and expectations.

Originally Posted by ZeraCook

I already pointed that out, but I don't think it necessarily makes it so that they would all wake up, especially if they were testing it, and some of them followed the belief system, and were believing that they could stare without waking up, so the results would not be worthless. Even if you knew of the belief system, and at first tried it and woke up, but the next time you could change your belief, just like how the first time someone gets lucid they might have trouble flying, but the next time if they believe they can fly in Lucid Dreams then they (most Likely) would. So the Results would not be worthless really, In fact if you put this kind of thinking to most tests done in LDing then you would say most of them were corrupted, and worthless.

This thread is a jumbled mess with a couple different arguments and I'm not really sure what you're referring to. My only issue in this thread is with the idea that keeping your physical eyes motionless will force you to wake up.

I was referring to you saying that maybe its not the staring but the belief system. I also noticed this thread was becoming jumbled and having multiple arguments, in fact this has been happening in a lot of threads i've been in recently.

LittleZoe and ZeraCook:

Yes, your eyes are moving during REM, and might even be following the action. But they are not, by any measure, doing any "seeing" during the dream.

All seeing, staring, etc, is being done by your dreaming mind and, in the case of LD'ing, your conscious input. Not your physical eyes. Yes, when lucid you can bat your dream character eyes around all you want, or hold them still, and yes, your physical eyes will move in concert with the action of the dream. But, given that your physical eyes are sealed behind closed lids in a dark room, and given that your vision receptors have been superseded by dream perception, your physical eyes are not seeing anything, so they are not doing any actual "staring" when you stare in a dream. That is all I was trying to say; sorry it took so many words..

That said, I do tend to agree that if you find yourself concentrating on getting your physical eyes to do anything during a dream, you'll likely either wake up or lose lucidity simply because you've shifted your awareness away from the dream and onto a physical reality-based activity.

ZeraCook, in that experiment the subjects were likely looking around at things in their dream, and thus making their physical eyes follow along because that is what physical eyes do. This has nothing to do with holding a stare, and everything to do with just looking around, or not, in the dream. Again, keep in mind that the subjects in the experiments were looking around in the dream, and not directly trying to move their physical eyes.

Again, LittleZoe, you are never seeing with your physical eyes in a dream. Yes, your physical eyes may follow the "movements" of your dreaming vision reflexively, but they are not looking at anything because there is no light entering them. So it is entirely true that your real eyes are not involved in the dream, not from the dreamer's perspective, anyway. You can believe or not believe that you’re looking around with real eyes all you want, but in the end your real eyes are locked behind closed lids doing nothing but pantomiming sight.

If you're still with me, here's another thought: I think if you can learn to accept during the dream that you are definitely not using eyes to see, you may be able to open new doors to perception and visual discovery that take you to places far different than “looking around.” The opposite of that is also true: as long as you are sure you are looking at things with your eyes and not your mind, your dreamworld is just as visually limited a your physical world. You might want to consider this next time you're in a dream lending "physical" credence to the way you are perceiving your dreamworld.

And finally back to where I came in: LittleZoe, I have done your “prove it for yourself” experiment many, many times and have held my gaze, and no doubt my physical eyes as well, quite still and steady for far longer than a few seconds without losing lucidity, much less waking up; how can that be?

I am already tired of this conversation, I feel like I’m repeating myself into oblivion, and none of this has a thing to do with the very interesting OP, so I think I’ll stop. I hope you guys understand what I was trying to say, and are not offended or (too) annoyed by anything I said -- that was not intended!

I don't see your point at all sageous, everyone knows were just seeing stuff in our mind, and you even stated that we have control over our eyes, I really don't see how you disagree with anything stated or what the first part has to do with anything we said. No one said anything about getting your physical eyes to focus, It was stated as staring at something in your dreams.

Originally Posted by ZeraCook

I don't see your point at all sageous, everyone knows were just seeing stuff in our mind, and you even stated that we have control over our eyes, I really don't see how you disagree with anything stated or what the first part has to do with anything we said. No one said anything about getting your physical eyes to focus, It was stated as staring at something in your dreams.

Maybe then my point was misguided; I did feel like I was losing my way somehow.

I was under the impression that you guys were relating vision in dreams directly to movement of physical eyes, and vise-versa, with the example being that if you stare at something in a dream for more than a few seconds, you'll wake up because you held your physical eyes still too for too long. If I misunderstood and was wrong about that, then I'd be delighted, upset only because I wasted so much of our time, and helped the theme of this thread be forgotten...

So if that's the case, then never mind!

Jesus Christ, last time I checked my thread there were like 3 replies. What have I started?
I skimmed through the posts, but might have skipped a couple on page 2.

To add my cents to the discussion, there are some dreams where I can do and control anything, and some where the most exciting thing I can do is stand around awkwardly trying to make something special happen.

In the ones where I am able to do what I want, for example flying, I have the mindset "Yeah! I've got this. Piece of cake", and in the others, I'm all "How the hell am I going to take off, I don't even have wings".
Not sure if you can call it 'believing', or what you can call it at all, but I get the points of both littlezoe and the people arguing against her. I'm however not sure whether you're arguing against her possibly bad choice of words, or she means something different than what I think she means.

@RebelSeven I read the article you linked, it cleared up a couple things and put them in a different perspective, thanks.

Originally Posted by LuMikkel

Jesus Christ, last time I checked my thread there were like 3 replies. What have I started?

Haha had to wait a couple minutes to read the rest of your post because of how much this made me Laugh.

Woohoo! Since I’m experiencing boredom and finally have a chance to sit down, I just realized I have more I’d like to add

Originally Posted by ZeraCook

Maybe she came up with the conclusion that she did Staring in REM wakes you up, because it happens to here every time, or maybe its because thats her belief, and because she thinks that, in involuntarily makes her wake up.

I love how this first half,

Could be responded to with this half, only by replace Littlezoe with your name, If your gonna tell someone how they should go about something, it usually holds more persuasion and makes more sense if you practice it yourself. In other words I think you should practice what you preach.

True. It does seem to be her experience. This is great! I have no qualms with what she, or others, experience.

In regards to practicing what I preach… if I ever lead others down a path of knowledge which might put them at a disadvantage, I would hope, pray even, that others would step in and tell me so. God forbid I hinder the development of unsuspecting individuals.

Originally Posted by littlezoe

@Kaomea: ZeraCook had a good point, if you gonna tell me how to behave, you should keep yourself to that too

About the staring thing: I frequent the hungarian lucid dreaming site since 2 years now, ever since i started LDing. We had tests about this on there and it turned out that anyone who tried to stare woke up soon. It's not a made up thing.
Maybe before you tell me that it's stupid, try it yourself and see.

People that say they were staring in the dreams and didn't wake up weren't truly staring imo, their eyes were still moving... even if they didn't notice... but i mentioned this already above.


@Mzzkc: I'm gonna just disregard your post, because you are trying to troll me ever since we first argued on here... it would be time to get over it

You’re right! I should behave how I instructed you too; I will do that.

I didn’t say it was a made up thing. What I said was this is not a common occurrence. If you or others experienced this, then you did. Who am I to say what you have or have not experienced. If you say you did, you did.

I also did not say it was stupid. Please forgive me if that is what you assumed.

As for your suggestion of trying it, I have! In fact, I’ve tried it before I managed to read your suggestion you mentioned here. Unfortunately I didn’t experience what you did. That’s ok though because we all experience things differently right? If I thought it would be a helpful skill I might even attempt to develop this further so that I might be able to experience what you have. Except I actually really enjoy not waking up when I stare at things in dreaming.

In any case, thank you for the invitation and suggestion

I notice you mentioned that you didn’t think I was staring properly. Well, not me personally, just anyone who stated they were staring and didn’t wake. I’d like to mention that I was. I’d like to think I know myself better than you, although, I might be wrong? I might not be the smartest but I’m decently sure I’m aware of what staring is and that my assessment of how I experience various sensations would most accurately be judge by myself (or maybe with the introduction of biometrics in some fashion.)

Originally Posted by dms111

I don't see how you can tout the "belief is everything" idea and at the same time say that the act of staring always wakes you up. Did it never occur to you that you're waking up because you believe staring will wake you up? It's the belief, not the actual act of staring, that wakes you up. Why was this test on the Hungarian site being run in the first place? Why was it orchestrated? Did it start because some one said staring in a dream wakes them up? If anyone mentioned that before the test was run then the test was already corrupted and your results are worthless. It doesn't matter how many people were involved.

Never tell a person that doing something specific will wake them up. Never. It does not help them in any way. It can only be harmful. If you really follow the belief is everything idea you should know better.

THANK YOU.

Originally Posted by littlezoe

But yeah, i don't really feel like continuing to argue about this... it's getting really boring saying the exact same things over and over on both sides. If you still don't believe then read what i wrote before... if you still don't, then do it again. I can't say much more than this.

I know, it is boring to say the same thing over and over again and not get the point across.

Originally Posted by dms111

Note that I didn't say anything against the belief system. I...*cough* believe in it. Mostly. Sorry if that's what my post appeared to imply.

Yeah I know this and am not disagreeing. Move your eyes in a dream and they move in reality. Nobody has disagreed with this. We disagree with you because you say the physical movement of the eyes some how affects the stability of a dream, but you haven't given any reason for why other than that test you did on the other forum.

It's not weird. Nobody on this forum discusses that problem because no one here has it.(Although now I'm sure it will show up) It shows up on your forum because people there already believe the problem exists. Don't you see what I'm saying here? It's the belief. There's still no reason to believe holding your physical eyes still will force you to wake up.

It's not that simple. If a person were to try and run this test after reading this thread they will already have a predetermined conclusion. You say when we stare in a dream that something will happen (Will wake up). Others in this thread say that when we stare in a dream nothing will happen (Won't wake up). Given the inherent instability of dreams our minds will naturally lean towards the something happening result. This type of test is still worthless unless it's controlled to eliminate any preconceived ideas.

There has already been a couple people say they have been able to stare in a dream without waking up. And they did it before this idea was ever mentioned so there were no preconceived ideas. Their conclusions are already more reliable than yours. But you immediately dismissed them as somehow not staring properly.

If what you say is true, and the stability of a dream is actually tied to the physical movement of our eyes then it should be true for everyone, right? If one person is able to stare in a dream without waking up then your theory is bunk. Your waking up is easily explained by your beliefs and expectations.

Just… thank you for saying this.

Originally Posted by Sageous

LittleZoe and ZeraCook:

Yes, your eyes are moving during REM, and might even be following the action. But they are not, by any measure, doing any "seeing" during the dream.

All seeing, staring, etc, is being done by your dreaming mind and, in the case of LD'ing, your conscious input. Not your physical eyes. Yes, when lucid you can bat your dream character eyes around all you want, or hold them still, and yes, your physical eyes will move in concert with the action of the dream. But, given that your physical eyes are sealed behind closed lids in a dark room, and given that your vision receptors have been superseded by dream perception, your physical eyes are not seeing anything, so they are not doing any actual "staring" when you stare in a dream. That is all I was trying to say; sorry it took so many words..

That said, I do tend to agree that if you find yourself concentrating on getting your physical eyes to do anything during a dream, you'll likely either wake up or lose lucidity simply because you've shifted your awareness away from the dream and onto a physical reality-based activity.

ZeraCook, in that experiment the subjects were likely looking around at things in their dream, and thus making their physical eyes follow along because that is what physical eyes do. This has nothing to do with holding a stare, and everything to do with just looking around, or not, in the dream. Again, keep in mind that the subjects in the experiments were looking around in the dream, and not directly trying to move their physical eyes.

Again, LittleZoe, you are never seeing with your physical eyes in a dream. Yes, your physical eyes may follow the "movements" of your dreaming vision reflexively, but they are not looking at anything because there is no light entering them. So it is entirely true that your real eyes are not involved in the dream, not from the dreamer's perspective, anyway. You can believe or not believe that you’re looking around with real eyes all you want, but in the end your real eyes are locked behind closed lids doing nothing but pantomiming sight.

If you're still with me, here's another thought: I think if you can learn to accept during the dream that you are definitely not using eyes to see, you may be able to open new doors to perception and visual discovery that take you to places far different than “looking around.” The opposite of that is also true: as long as you are sure you are looking at things with your eyes and not your mind, your dreamworld is just as visually limited a your physical world. You might want to consider this next time you're in a dream lending "physical" credence to the way you are perceiving your dreamworld.

And finally back to where I came in: LittleZoe, I have done your “prove it for yourself” experiment many, many times and have held my gaze, and no doubt my physical eyes as well, quite still and steady for far longer than a few seconds without losing lucidity, much less waking up; how can that be?

I am already tired of this conversation, I feel like I’m repeating myself into oblivion, and none of this has a thing to do with the very interesting OP, so I think I’ll stop. I hope you guys understand what I was trying to say, and are not offended or (too) annoyed by anything I said -- that was not intended!

Awesome.


My final thoughts on the matter are just that everyone will experience whatever they experience. To tell someone that they are not experiencing it correctly or that their experiences are invalid or are being done wrong because they don’t provide a specific response is Pish Posh.

I respect your experiences, Littlezoe. I might not experience things the way you do and I think that alone is awesome. Everyone here is a melting pot of experience… which also means just because we don’t experience things the same way you do, does not mean we are doing it wrong. It means we are doing them differently.

For the sake of putting this discussion to bed, and because I'm a swell guy, if zoe would be so kind as to PM me the link to the experiment she's referencing, I can go about ascertaining its validity with further research and a broader review.

I assume the only reason she didn't provide a link in the first place is because of DV's strict "no publicly linking to other LDing sites" rule. Which is a completely reasonable reason not to provide citations. Not worth getting banned over trying to share information, yeah?

Hello everybody!

I'm certain, that everybody here believes in peoples right to believe anything they please. We don't have to agree with everything, but as long as there is polite conversation about it, and no one tries to present his belief as the only truth, we all can learn something new. So thank you for continuing this conversation in polite manner and with respect to each other. Happy dreams

Originally Posted by ZeraCook

Actually when we are Lucid we gain control of our eyes, and this was in a study I read about when i first got into Lucid Dreams.

What the people were doing while being studied was if they got lucid they would move there eyes in a certain predetermined pattern to communicate with the people in the world that they had gotten Lucid. People were shown to only make the movement if they had got lucid, and if they didn't the pattern was never seen.

I am going to be very bold and say something people may gasp at. This experiment does not show that your real eyes follow your dream eye movements. Gasp!!! What it shows is that the subjects were able to make their eyes move by a concious intent of moving them. The REM movements are fluttery. If our dream eyes reacted to the movement of our real eyes, then the picture would be jumping all around. If our real eyes responded to what our dream eyes were doing, it would make it so that REM movement would be all fouled up.

Here is my point. The subjects reached LDs through WILD (I assume). If they were good enough to reach an LD by WILD often enough to get into the subject pool, then I assume they had a well developed self-awareness. I can do this kind of trick. If you wanted me to move my waking eyes a certain way, I could do it during a WILD, but my normal REM is going on unless I intend on actually moving my eyes. I do not and have not done this experiment, but I know from other experiments that I can stay stable in a vivid LD and still have awareness of my body, and the ability to move my body (say to turn off the alarm) with out waking up or ending the LD.

So, I conclude that your eyes can move in concert with your dream eyes, but that is not what happens most of the time. I also conclude that because of this you can stare as much as you want in a dream, unless you accidentlly get control over your real eyes. Then it could wake someone.

Originally Posted by sivason

I am going to be very bold and say something people may gasp at. This experiment does not show that your real eyes follow your dream eye movements. Gasp!!! What it shows is that the subjects were able to make their eyes move by a concious intent of moving them. The REM movements are fluttery. If our dream eyes reacted to the movement of our real eyes, then the picture would be jumping all around. If our real eyes responded to what our dream eyes were doing, it would make it so that REM movement would be all fouled up.

Here is my point. The subjects reached LDs through WILD (I assume). If they were good enough to reach an LD by WILD often enough to get into the subject pool, then I assume they had a well developed self-awareness. I can do this kind of trick. If you wanted me to move my waking eyes a certain way, I could do it during a WILD, but my normal REM is going on unless I intend on actually moving my eyes. I do not and have not done this experiment, but I know from other experiments that I can stay stable in a vivid LD and still have awareness of my body, and the ability to move my body (say to turn off the alarm) with out waking up or ending the LD.

So, I conclude that your eyes can move in concert with your dream eyes, but that is not what happens most of the time. I also conclude that because of this you can stare as much as you want in a dream, unless you accidentlly get control over your real eyes. Then it could wake someone.

Makes perfect sense. Just because they were moving there dream eyes with the intent of moving there physical eyes, they were able to

Still waiting on that link.

Hello...I'm new here and this thread is very intense, yet informative. I don't want to start off on the wrong foot and offend anyone, so with that out of the way...LuMikkels' original post requested tips on improving the quality of a lucid dream. I'm certainly not well read on the subject, but I have had many lucid dreams and in the beginning I had a similar problem. What seemed to help me: when the dream fades was to simply declare, "I know this is a dream!" And with that it seemed to clear up. I've also had success with spinning around, touching my tongue to the roof of my mouth, and clapping. Although I don't clap unless I really have to because I don't like what my dream hands look like. Anyway, I'm new here...*crickets chirping*

Originally Posted by Barrage

Hello...I'm new here and this thread is very intense, yet informative. I don't want to start off on the wrong foot and offend anyone, so with that out of the way...LuMikkels' original post requested tips on improving the quality of a lucid dream. I'm certainly not well read on the subject, but I have had many lucid dreams and in the beginning I had a similar problem. What seemed to help me: when the dream fades was to simply declare, "I know this is a dream!" And with that it seemed to clear up. I've also had success with spinning around, touching my tongue to the roof of my mouth, and clapping. Although I don't clap unless I really have to because I don't like what my dream hands look like. Anyway, I'm new here...*crickets chirping*

With the crickets having been busy with chirping for a week now, I'll say thanks for the tips. I will try the clapping move, it sounds like it might help.