Lucid dreaming is becoming more popular...

**rockonguy** · 02-28-2013 03:34 PM

Lucid dreaming seems to become more and more popular, and there are lots of people out there who have no idea how to perform it.
I have heard quite some stories of people who think it will magically happen once you don't move for 30 minutes.
I am not going to influence you guys with my opinion, but what are your thoughts on this?

(I am sorry if this is posted in the wrong section)

**Savsal14** · 02-28-2013 03:53 PM

Originally Posted by rockonguy

Lucid dreaming seems to become more and more popular, and there are lots of people out there who have no idea how to perform it.
I have heard quite some stories of people who think it will magically happen once you don't move for 30 minutes.
I am not going to influence you guys with my opinion, but what are your thoughts on this?

(I am sorry if this is posted in the wrong section)

I believe making more famous is a good thing until an extend.

I wouldn't like if the whole world was lucid dreaming all the time, but i would like it if many people lucid dream.

Anyway, people should learn how to lucid dream properly so it is also could cause this forum will become more popular

**JoannaB** · 02-28-2013 04:21 PM

I think it is not unexpected that lucid dreaming is becoming popular: So many of us lead busy lives, and wish we had more free time. Also self-improvement in general is becoming more popular (excercise, dieting, etc.), and lucid dreaming is a form of self-improvement. Another aspect of it is that some parts of our lives are very restrictive: we need to work long hours and others are unemployed, our budgets are limited, we have so many responsibilities and obligations; we cannot do whatever we want, we cannot travel wherever we want whenever we want it. Lucid dreaming can be a great solution for so many such issues!

I think that misconception is also bound to happen when new people hear about a phenomenon that is not popularly well understood yet. On the other hand, in the case of this hobby there is also some misconception which is not misconception after all. What works for some people may not work for others. For some people lucid dreaming is magic, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that! I remember years ago reading a book by Carlos Castaneda about dream control, and while I could not relate to it (I am more of a Stephen LaBerge scientific approach to lucid dreaming kind of girl), but I could understand why it would appeal to and work for some people, and I do not see anything wrong with that! I am very glad that this hobby is so diverse, makes it more interesting.

**Taffy** · 02-28-2013 04:58 PM

I wonder why it's been increasing in popularity so recently though, seems like its been springing up everywhere lately. Never seen it expand so much, you'd think it'd become popular instantly for what it is.

**JoannaB** · 02-28-2013 05:24 PM

Fad? Any of you read the book Bellwether by Connie Willis. If you have not read it, I recommend it. It is a fictional book about how fads spread, and even though it is fiction, many of the insights into fads are real.

**rockonguy** · 03-01-2013 01:49 PM

I've heard of that book and might look it up sometime soon...

@Taffy: That's what I thought. I just hope people won't be idiots when it comes to LDs.

**Taffy** · 03-01-2013 02:36 PM

Mhm, the last thing we need is "it's a gift from satan" and "I heard you can go into a permanent coma if you're not careful."

**avery81** · 03-01-2013 04:07 PM

Originally Posted by Taffy

Mhm, the last thing we need is "it's a gift from satan" and "I heard you can go into a permanent coma if you're not careful."

I wouldn't mind going into a permanent coma if I could figure out how to make myself lucid. Then I could have/do/be/go where ever/whatever I want... First I have to figure out this lucidity thing though...

**JoannaB** · 03-01-2013 06:16 PM

A gift from Satan?! Seriously?

I was just thinking today that for people who are religious like me, we could interpret lucid dreaming as an opportunity to better understand God's point of view as creator and decision maker with infinite powers.

There are some interestic ethical decisions to be made in lucid dreaming if one chooses to: does anything go in lucid dreams or is it wrong to do somethings because it makes one a person who is then more likely to behave like that in waking life - so do bad habits transfer from dream to waking?

Also if one believes that coveting a neighbor's wife is a sin, then one might not choose to have sex with her in one's dreams.

Or one could say that ethics is different for dreams: it is not sinful to do something in one's dream when not lucid because it is not a conscious choice, and perhaps even once it becomes a conscious choice it is not sinful because none of it is real and one is fully aware of that, and thus having sex with someone else in a dream is not adultery but more like a harmless fantasy. Either interpretation I think will have some people arguing in its favor.

Personally I think intension should be considered: if one kills someone in a lucid dream knowing fully well that they are not real, and one's intension is to relieve one's anger (sort of like tearing up a paper representation of them), surely that is different from someone who kills in lucid dreams because they have a strong desire to become a mass murderer in real life and are working out their urges to perfect their skills before doing it in real life!

In my mind lucid dreaming gives one an opportunity to make decisions as to whether (or not) and how ethics should be applied to lucid dreams. I think this is interesting.

**Taffy** · 03-01-2013 06:46 PM

I'd rather this not turn into a religous debate, it was just an example. But personally I separate dreaming from religion anyway (not that I've done anything super sinful).

**Bobblehat** · 03-01-2013 07:09 PM

The more people that like lucid dreaming, the more chance we have of finding better techniques.

**JoannaB** · 03-01-2013 07:13 PM

Originally Posted by Taffy

I'd rather this not turn into a religous debate, it was just an example. But personally I separate dreaming from religion anyway (not that I've done anything super sinful).

Agreed, sorry, got carried away. The Satan comment just riled me up I guess. No longer riled up here.

**JoannaB** · 03-01-2013 10:58 PM

Since I felt a bit guilty for my long off topic rant, I decided to google News with term "lucid dreaming" and to just glance at the results to see whether anything caught my attention.

What I found was: a lot of misuse of the term such as in the phrase "in a particularly lucid dream" where clearly they meant to say "vivid", or describing a daydream as a "lucid dream". Also I found some news article that included a laundry list such as "artificial life, lucid dreaming, and virtual reality" which seemed to be a compilation of cool terms or cool stuff.

All this made me think a bit of the game of telephone, which we would play as kids: someone said "lucid dreaming" and different news picked it up, and by the time the term has been circulating for a while, you shake your head at some of the results.