The Paradox of Lucidity- does it exist?

I was having mutual thoughts with the op of the thread "Questioning LD", Suckertrain. Unfortunately, I have yet to read all the replies, but I had my first lucid experience the other night, followed by excitement, followed by disappointment because I now believe our lucid dreams are just indeed, dreams about becoming lucid. Think about it... each preparation we do, from reality checks to interactions with dream characters, they're thought about in our waking lives in order to mimic similar ideas within our dreams. But I ask can anyone truly be spontaneous in a lucid dream? How many of these "spontaneous" thoughts are actually conscious ones? We can shift in and out of dream control. I think dream control is just a measurement of the amount of information we are able to retain from our waking lives. For example, we'll use a hypothetical dreamer- Tony. Tony argues he has better dream control when he can fly to a goal destination set in waking life, while he has a hard time "controlling" a dream if he did not have any set plans, before awareness. He finds his subconscious is deciding what to do for him. Does our subconsious control our memory? I know we all have to make a consious effort to complete reality checks, but only when it became a 2nd nature, did I begin to repeat these reality checks in my dreams.
So if lucid dreaming is just a dream in which you believe you levy the results :roll:, would this matter to you? Or would it all be the same? I guess it boils down to the question what do you enjoy about lucid dreaming? The idea of reality, or the recall/ sharing the adventures of your subconsious....which would actually come down to ...

Which do you prefer reality or dreams?
(for those who argue reality is the state of mind, by "reality I mean waking life ;) )

My answer being the latter is why I am less interested in lucidity than ever before. Even if I can do things I can't necessarily do in waking life,it's only more assorted thoughts that allow me to become lucid. The joy of recalling my dreams is that I never think of dream scenarios in waking life. My lucid recall disables the primary function of dreaming, even if I was able control what I dreamt.

Well, I'll test something. I will keep thinking about l4d and in a few days, we'll see where that takes me.

What? Are you suggesting that lucid dreams are just normal dreams in which we dream about a subject. That subject being lucid dreaming? It sounds like you are saying, maybe lucid dreams do not happen? I have things I would reply, but I am not at all sure I actually understood what you are asking or refering to. Can you simply or clarify, before I answer?

As far as perfering reality or dreaming. I love the heck out of both states. LDing is something I do, in reality. It is one of my real hobbies. I have a fantastic, exciting, wonderful "real life" and it includes a hobby that makes even the time I spend asleep fantastic and wonderful.

Your post is a jumbled mess so I'm having a hard time understanding it. From what I gather you think that all lucid dreams are actually just normal dreams in which you dream about becoming lucid. Whenever people come up with this theory I always am confused as to what the differences is. If I dream that I am lucid I think it is the same as being lucid because both would require you to be aware of the fact you are dreaming which would make it a lucid dream...........do you see where this is going?

You've obviously never been fully lucid.

To me, they are the same as reality except you can do cool things.

Asking what I prefer is the completely wrong question to ask. It's like asking if I prefer breakfast or dinner. I love both, but it depends what I'm doing in each one.

I love doing things I can't do in real life or seeing things I'd never be able to see. You can't buy that for a million bucks, so lucid dreaming will always to special to me. It's like we are all on the same playing field and gods of our dream world.

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Originally Posted by jamiealexander

You've obviously never been fully lucid.

To me, they are the same as reality except you can do cool things.

Asking what I prefer is the completely wrong question to ask. It's like asking if I prefer breakfast or dinner. I love both, but it depends what I'm doing in each one.

I love doing things I can't do in real life or seeing things I'd never be able to see. You can't buy that for a million bucks, so lucid dreaming will always to special to me. It's like we are all on the same playing field and gods of our dream world.

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I didn't ask what you prefer as an ultimatum. But i think preferences will come a long way in reference to the amount of amusement one will garner from a "lucid dream", because we often mimic our conscious imagination.

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Originally Posted by aquanisa

Well, I'll test something. I will keep thinking about l4d and in a few days, we'll see where that takes me.

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What will thinking about l4d do?

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Originally Posted by sivason

What? Are you suggesting that lucid dreams are just normal dreams in which we dream about a subject. That subject being lucid dreaming? It sounds like you are saying, maybe lucid dreams do not happen? I have things I would reply, but I am not at all sure I actually understood what you are asking or refering to. Can you simply or clarify, before I answer?

As far as perfering reality or dreaming. I love the heck out of both states. LDing is something I do, in reality. It is one of my real hobbies. I have a fantastic, exciting, wonderful "real life" and it includes a hobby that makes even the time I spend asleep fantastic and wonderful.

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I'm not saying people who enjoy dreaming DO NOT prefer life, but I'm saying people who lucid dream create a waking life reality, if you will.

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Originally Posted by Yosma

Your post is a jumbled mess so I'm having a hard time understanding it. From what I gather you think that all lucid dreams are actually just normal dreams in which you dream about becoming lucid. Whenever people come up with this theory I always am confused as to what the differences is. If I dream that I am lucid I think it is the same as being lucid because both would require you to be aware of the fact you are dreaming which would make it a lucid dream...........do you see where this is going?

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The difference is we are not experiencing anything uniquely different...from our waking life concoctions, lucidity will only reach as far as our conscious imagination, whereas dreaming "unaware" will not.

Oh!!! Then you just need to reach that special state where you have control but have learned to allow random i teraction with you inner self.

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Originally Posted by vinny

I had my first lucid experience the other night, followed by excitement, followed by disappointment because I now believe our lucid dreams are just indeed, dreams about becoming lucid. Think about it... each preparation we do, from reality checks to interactions with dream characters, they're thought about in our waking lives in order to mimic similar ideas within our dreams. But I ask can anyone truly be spontaneous in a lucid dream?

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I am little confused by your questions as well, so please let me know if I have misunderstood anything.

If lucid dreams were only dreams about lucidity caused by LD preparation, then natural lucid dreamers wouldn't exist. I had my first lucid dream when I was eight. I saw a gigantic butterfly flying through the sky and instantly knew it was a dream. I continued to have lucid dreams (although infrequently) without any preparation or even knowing that anyone else could do this, and slowly taught myself dream control. It was only years later that I learned the term for this and found online communities.

As to whether I prefer reality or dreams, I love both and they are completely intertwined for me. I carry dream goals into my waking life and waking life goals into my dreams. My dreaming practice enriches my waking life and allows me to make use of eight hours that would otherwise by a blank.

It also seems that you think that being lucid means taking complete conscious control of your dream and thus limits it. Unless you are deliberately taking complete conscious control of every aspect or your dream (difficult, but possible), your subconscious is still deciding most aspects of your dream except for your actions. When lucid, I think its great fun to just be an explorer of my dreams, only I am able to deliberately engage DC's and the environment, experience everything in more vivid detail, and remember it with great clarity. Besides, if you enjoy non-lucids, pursuing LDs will only improve your recall of your non-lucids as well. Even if you reach the point of having a lucid every night, you will still likely have 3-4 non-lucids that night as well.

I (as well as many other 'natural' lucid dreamers) became familiar with the lucid state as a child, recognizing nightmares to be nightmares. There was no 'preparation' for this - as you say. It is a simple, natural, realization that one is dreaming, and it often happens before we even 'know' what 'lucid dreaming' is.

Your theory doesn't really account for this, as you are assuming/implying that lucidity is something that has to be 'learned'.

Vinny,

I thought the same thing about lucid dreaming until recently. I used to think that when we LD, we are just following a script that we made up in real life. My first couple of lucids felt like this. With practice they get better. As for planning what you will do in the dream, I just plan the first action I will perform to get lucid. After that my actions are as free as they are in waking life. You may not have been fully lucid yet. Keep practicing and you'll start to see a difference.

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Originally Posted by hermine_hesse

I am little confused by your questions as well, so please let me know if I have misunderstood anything.

If lucid dreams were only dreams about lucidity caused by LD preparation, then natural lucid dreamers wouldn't exist. I had my first lucid dream when I was eight. I saw a gigantic butterfly flying through the sky and instantly knew it was a dream. I continued to have lucid dreams (although infrequently) without any preparation or even knowing that anyone else could do this, and slowly taught myself dream control. It was only years later that I learned the term for this and found online communities.

As to whether I prefer reality or dreams, I love both and they are completely intertwined for me. I carry dream goals into my waking life and waking life goals into my dreams. My dreaming practice enriches my waking life and allows me to make use of eight hours that would otherwise by a blank.

It also seems that you think that being lucid means taking complete conscious control of your dream and thus limits it. Unless you are deliberately taking complete conscious control of every aspect or your dream (difficult, but possible), your subconscious is still deciding most aspects of your dream except for your actions. When lucid, I think its great fun to just be an explorer of my dreams, only I am able to deliberately engage DC's and the environment, experience everything in more vivid detail, and remember it with great clarity. Besides, if you enjoy non-lucids, pursuing LDs will only improve your recall of your non-lucids as well. Even if you reach the point of having a lucid every night, you will still likely have 3-4 non-lucids that night as well.

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You're not confused at all =) You understood my logic entirely. From the conscious control to my LD preparation argument.
I didn't really think about the positives of lucid dreaming, or "natural lucidity"...I want to continue a debate ,but in the future so I have more on this.

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Originally Posted by Chung

Vinny,

I thought the same thing about lucid dreaming until recently. I used to think that when we LD, we are just following a script that we made up in real life. My first couple of lucids felt like this. With practice they get better. As for planning what you will do in the dream, I just plan the first action I will perform to get lucid. After that my actions are as free as they are in waking life. You may not have been fully lucid yet. Keep practicing and you'll start to see a difference.

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Yea , this was my "first" lucid in duration, but maybe not in quality. If that makes any sense...But I plan on using your advice to continue w/experiments

I think when you dream you are lucid you wake up and remember being lucid. When you are properly lucid you are in the moment, in the dream. I do dicing sometimes in real life (Dicing is where you write down six options and roll a dice to choose which one you will do) and I'm trying to work out a way to use the environment of a dream to choose my option for me (rather than a dream dice). I think that will help me to be more "in the moment" in dreams.

Hi Vinny, I think you will need to experience it for yourself, but I assure you that the lucid state can exist as a very real experience totally unrelated to a normal dream about lucidity. I have LDs all the time where I am more or less fully aware and using my concious mind and contenplating what is going on and what I would like to do next. I feel just like I am in a virtual reality device. I think things like "Oh cool, here I am in a dream state, I wonder if I can remember where I went to sleep, yes, ok lets look at our hands and bring this into focus, There, nice and solid now, lets see, did I have any ream goals, well is Matte running a competition, what about the goal of the month," and so on. So it clearly is me being concious in a dream, not just dreaming of lucidity.

As others have said above, unless you are very skilled and do it on purpose the dream will be a mix of random subconcious dream stuff (like most dreams) and things you conciously choose to do. I have developed enough control that sometimes I need to kick start random events, because it can get boring to create every aspect of the dream. I just lighten up a bit and try things like exploring with no expectation of what I will find. My subconcious is usually happy to throw some random weirdness and fun my way. In other dreams I am less in control and my subconcious mind takes me on an adventure full of crazy things that randomly present themselves. The method of inducing seems to make a difference. In WILDs I tend to be in complete control, while in DILDs I have lots of random dream stuff happen.

It sounds to me as if you're implying that lucidity is just believing you're conscious when you aren't, correct? It is possible to have full control/consciousness within a lucid dream. To question whether or not the dreamer really is in control or not would require you to question whether free will in waking life is real or simply an illusion, leading into a far deeper discussion that involves a lot more than just dreaming.

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Originally Posted by fennecgirl

It sounds to me as if you're implying that lucidity is just believing you're conscious when you aren't, correct? It is possible to have full control/consciousness within a lucid dream. To question whether or not the dreamer really is in control or not would require you to question whether free will in waking life is real or simply an illusion, leading into a far deeper discussion that involves a lot more than just dreaming.

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Very well said :)