Thread: are you always lucid?

To be aware consistently throughout waking life and dreams, is clearly more healthy.

Originally Posted by MadMonkey

What would be unhealthy about only having lucid dreams?

She says it causes her insomnia.

I really have no idea if it is unhealthy or not. Some of my profound lucids have no plot or DCs unless I decide that it should, basically like being a minor God. If all the dreams were that way, I assume I would be missing something important. I assume your brain needs to run through certain things. However, I really do not know. It just seems intuitive that some random dream stuff beyond my control is somehow important.

Originally Posted by sivason

It just seems intuitive that some random dream stuff beyond my control is somehow important.

I agree with that.

I agree also, to a point, Tibetan yogas of dream and sleep say it is natural to have dreams of ignorance and lucid dreams, until liberation is achieved, no dualistic ego - no need for those random dreams for the mind to process. It's said when this state is reached the dreamer has dreams of clarity, pure white light of awareness, no dream, just awareness. And that is the highest goal for them, clarity in dreams and waking life, to achieve liberation.

Uh, if your brain is going to tell you something it will happen regardless of lucidity, if it is something beyond your control lucidity won't change that fact since its so important <.<

Hmm, so maybe someone could be healthy and always lucid, as long as they only had very limited control, when the body needed to do whatever it does in non-lucids? Maybe.

Back when I was a small child(7-11ish) I got to the point where I was always lucid. I had a bit of control, but not full-on control. I didn't even know such control was possible. Nowadays, I'm not anymore. However, if I ever question if I'm dreaming(and nothing happens in the dream that immediately and fully distracts me as I've recently learned) I always know that I am. IRL, I still do awareness exercises, but I just know what being in a dream feels like. If I question reality, and look for that feeling, I always find it in a dream. IRL, I've done reality check after reality check because I'm not logically sure if I'm dreaming, but my lucidity always comes from knowing that feeling.

Oh, and I didn't have insomnia or any other health problems. Shortly after I stopped(and a few months ago), I had some really weird SP syncing issues, but not when I was practicing LDing.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

She says it causes her insomnia.

How can lucid dreaming cause insomnia? :S

Originally Posted by fOrceez

How can lucid dreaming cause insomnia? :S

If you WILD when first going to bed, it can cause pretty bad insomnia in my experience. That's not lucid dreaming that's causing the problem though.

Originally Posted by lazerblade

If you WILD when first going to bed, it can cause pretty bad insomnia in my experience. That's not lucid dreaming that's causing the problem though.

Well, since %99 is trying WILD after 3-4 sleep, and other %1 say after 15 min "Fuck that! I'm going back to sleep"

Originally Posted by fOrceez

How can lucid dreaming cause insomnia? :S

My theory is that she has some kind of parasomnic sleep disorder that causes her lucid dreaming, it's not a cause it's a symptom of her sleeplessness.

Dreams are obviously important to our health otherwise we wouldn't have them. No one has definitively figured out what roll they actually play though. Lucid dreams and non-lucid dreams function exactly the same in almost every way except for an added sense of awareness. In waking life our eyes take in light and our brain interprets them and constructs the world we see. By being aware of this process does that make it any harder to see? No, in fact it might even make it easier. In a lucid dream if you pick up a news paper and you read the headline would it be any different than if you did the same thing but were not lucid? What I mean to say is what ever health benefits dreams have should not be effected by weather we are aware of the dream or not.

When studied in a sleep lab, many people with insomnia are found to really be sleeping through the entire night. They just don't feel like they are asleep. They are aware through more stages of sleep than is normal. The racing thoughts and nrem dreams are mistaken for wakefulness. In this case, lucidity is a bad thing. If you have ever waited through an hour of nrem sleep during a WILD, you will know it is a frustrating state of mind to be in without training. This is why most people with insomnia can still function day to day, and are even still alive. Real insomnia quickly takes a huge toll on your health. (Picture your stereotypical meth-head)

I have found that most people who claim to always be lucid do it out of habit. After grilling them about it, it seems they know it is a dream, but don't really think anything of it, or do anything about it. Whenever I take a long break from lucid dreaming, I get a lot of dreams like this. I know it is a dream, but it doesn't really fully register as being remarkable. My mind is still not fully logical, and I don't have all my waking memories. I may exert some dream control at times, but it is always in the context of the dream. The people I've talked to still need to make some effort to achieve full lucidity and logical thought.

Much of this comes down to terminology. I've heard people claim that all their dreams are lucid, but they work to astral project, or have an OBE. It sounds like what they are describing as astral projection is what I describe as a "good" lucid dream. What they describe as OBE is what I would call a WILD. Their full-time lucid dreams sounds juts like my low level / normal dreams. It is all subjective, so you have to dig to find out where people are coming from.

Originally Posted by Robot_Butler

I have found that most people who claim to always be lucid do it out of habit. After grilling them about it, it seems they know it is a dream, but don't really think anything of it, or do anything about it. Whenever I take a long break from lucid dreaming, I get a lot of dreams like this. I know it is a dream, but it doesn't really fully register as being remarkable. My mind is still not fully logical, and I don't have all my waking memories. I may exert some dream control at times, but it is always in the context of the dream. .

Yeah, that is how most of my non-lucid dreams are. Just exactly what the dreams you describe are like. But, thats not really what I would consider me being always lucid.

I will be honest, this is my first time going on a website like this and I am a little surprised by the hostility towards differing views of lucid dreaming, the process and personal meaning taken from the experience (this is directly related to other forum threads I have looked at). I came on here out of curiousity but I don't really know if I have active interest to do more with my dreams at this time.

I have always lucid dreamed (ie: actively aware of myself sleeping/dreaming while experiencing sleep) and though I had never met anyone in person who told me they could as well, I assumed it wasn't that odd as that's not a normal topic of everyday conversation. I was never all that interested in "playing with my dreams", as I put it, unless I didn't like something that was going on. It is more enjoyable to be a passive participant after a long day of living. It's like sitting back and watching a movie where you are engaged with the characters but know that once the movie is over you go back to your eveyday life. I usually make little tweeks like if it's night and I want it to take place in the day or a character looks like an ex... well you get rid of that character or change their face...little things. Big things like changing the core story line or forcing something to happen (or stop happening) will wake me up. I have had reoccuring dreams that I will go back to and this has happened accidentally and on purpose. If I really like a dream I have to actively think about it before going to bed and I can go back to it. Either relive it like watching your favorite movie or add on to it like turning your favorite movie into a series... but again this takes effort that just isn't worth it very often as I view sleep as an enjoyable passive past time.

As I said before I have always lucid dreamed everynight for as far back as I can remember (I am 30 now). I can't recall a nightmare that would have triggered it but then again I can only remember so far back lol! I realized that other people could not remember or change their dreams after a discussion with my mother at age 7-8. I have no idea what it would be like to wake up from a dream and realizing at that moment that I had been sleeping...It's a terrifying thought actually. The only nightmares I have had were lucid and the scary part was the inability to actively change them without waking myself up. I had a period between age 14-19 that I was an insomniac (3hrs sleep per night max)and it didn't change the lucid dreams in my case, I just slept less and it was due to going through and ending puberty.

I know this doen't help others to find ways to lucid dream but I want you to know there are people who lucid dream and know no other way. Because it isn't a novelty, it just doesn't seem that important to try to get better at playing with the dream. Please don't be so hard on those people. It makes it more difficult to want to be open about the experience.

I believe anything is possible. I believe some people are naturally lucid all the time in dreams, or at least in every dream they can remember. I am pretty sure Tibetan monks are lucid 100% of the time. It seems like most people that are lucid most or all of the time don't exert much dream control.

I'm lucid about 75% of the time, and have been for as long as I can remember. It can feel pretty exhausting because it feels like I'm not asleep "enough" Perhaps the right brain is too busy trying to control things, when it should just be asleep? I find myself trying to "let go" of the dream. While alseep, I experience a feeling of agitation; like I don't want to be bothered. Some times this is the case with non lucid dreams as well. I should mention, my dreams always include all the senses, including emotions (I just recently learned that some people dream in black and white, trippy!)

Lucid most of the time, some normal dreams do occur but most of the time if the dream is annoying I wipe everything and sleep in the pitch black void, other times I just go along with the dream having fun on the way.

I don't really have any set goals just have fun in my own possible way and erase everything not fun in my own fun manner and for this, going along with the dream is how I roll

In 99% of the nightmares I have I always have a gut feeling of being able to escape if I need to. It's not complete lucidity but if someone in the dream is trying to catch me, zombie hoards are about to break down the door, or something else extremely unpleasant is about to happen I instinctively press the palms of my hands into my eyes to hold them closed and then try to open them as hard as I can. It takes a second or two to transition back into real life but usually my real eyelids will open and by then I've made a swift getaway. Usually in the seconds before I transition out I'll realise I'm in a nightmare but I've always been too scared to stick around and just wake up instead. Once I get better at controlling dreams I'll definitely use this as a trigger. It doesn't really make me a natural lucid dreamer but I thought it was worth mentioning.