Heya guys, I just wondered if there's anyone on this site who (outside this forum) also feels like they're the only person who is fascinated by lucid dreaming?
I do talk about it with my friends, and they do understand but they're not riveted like I am.
Please say I'm not alone!
I've talked about it with a few people. My wife thinks I'm crazy for being interested; most of the rest who know of my interest range from thinking it's kind of weird to kind of interesting, but nothing they'd actually persue. Thankfully, I do have one friend who's recently become interested in it. Every morning, we trade stories of our dreams from the previous night, and that's been a huge help with my dream journaling.
Given the luke-warm reception I've received from most people, I generally don't talk about it much :(
Sure, I feel alone too! People couldn't care less if I was lucid or not. From my experience, people seem to care a lot more about the content of the dreams more than the dreaming itself. The only time people would care I was lucid would be if I told the person I was lucid, summoned them in the dream, and did something with them. :cheeky:
yes
Most developed answer I've ever read. :cheeky:Quote:
Originally Posted by samsailboatsayl
Thankfully, not really. :) Two cousins of mine, who I see very often, are interested in what I have to say about lucid dreaming. One of them actually does have lucid dreams, but he's very spiritual and sees them as astral projections. We do have very rich discussions, despite our very different point of views. :)
I have been LD'ing for some 35 years now, and to date I'm still the only person I've ever met (outside of my forays into the specific -- and distant -- LD'ing community) who does this.
It used to bother me, for a while it empowered me, lately it means nothing to me. That last impression is the best, I think.
I usually give everyone a chance and most of the responses are sort of in the same direction of weird looks, disregarding it, or no response, I do have one friend who finds it really cool and is jealous of me ;), and some people who think it's cool but just don't want to put in the effort.
Honestly, its whatever, some people are not very open-minded and if that is the case, they don't deserve to have the opportunity of lucid dreaming and all its mysteriousness and awesomeness. I'm thankful enough that we have a community we can share ideas and get excited about our dreams and push our abilities further.
Yes!
Actually, I do have a couple family members and relatives who are familiar with the subject - my mother has occasional lucid dreams and has mentioned them before, my little brother is sometimes interested in it and one of my cousins has told me how she sometimes experiences False Awakenings, and finds them extremely exciting - and since she knows I have some knowledge in lucid dreaming she has asked me many things about it.
Other than that, though, I definitely feel alone about it.
I frequently notice that people around me seem to be sleep-walking, and react with surprise when someone appears almost next to them even though they should have been able to notice them much earlier than that, so they are definitely not very aware of their surroundings, which kind of indicates that they probably don't practice lucid dreaming, since lucid dreaming has a lot to do with practicing general awareness.
Ugh, I try to talk to people about it sometimes and almost every single time I've had to explain that lucid dreaming is knowing you are dreaming not just having a vivid dream. I don't know what word in there is confusing them. When I talk about it to certain people, the concept that you can know you're dreaming and possibly control the dream just goes right over their heads. And when I explain it I usually get a weird look and they try to change the subject. I've started talking a little more openly about it all lately to those who listen to my ramblings, because I just don't care what they think of me.
It was kind of refreshing the other day when I was talking to a friend and mentioned my non-lucid LSD dream (in my DJ) and he thought it was cool and told me that he's been experimenting with his sleep schedule (basically described WBTB) and said every time he does it his dreams get weirder and weirder. But he still hasn't had the lightbulb turn on for him about what lucidity really is and why he should go for it, even though I've tried to tell him. Why is it that no one seems interested in lucidity at all, or even half as interested as we are in dreams in general? It almost makes me question my sanity... But again, I've pretty much stopped caring.
A lot of people think of waking life as the only form of consciousness you can have, and sleep is a "dead" phase when absolutely no consciousness is involved whatsoever.
So their reaction to lucidity is something like "no you can't mean you are actually aware, that's obviously impossible, so you must mean something else - I don't know what that would be, but it's definitely not awareness in dreams, that's absurd - you are asleep, goddammit!".
These kinds of people clearly have no idea what consciousness actually is - I mean, if you experience dreams and remember them afterwards, then obviously you were conscious during the dream, you were just not aware of what kind of state you were in.
Allow me to demonstrate this with one-liners and smilies - this is what my LD conversations with most people usually are like:
"Hurray! last night I realized that I was dreaming, it's fantastic, have you experienced that before?! :D:D:D"
"Eh, what do you mean, you were having a vivid dream or...? :?"
"No dude, I was aware that I was dreaming! I took off flying, and I could do anything I wanted! :banana:"
"O... kay. (Jesus, what the hell is he talking about?) Um, but, so you dreamed about fun stuff? Cool. :disconcerted:"
"No, seriously, I knew I was dreaming, and it was so much joy! :goodjob2:"
"Ah, okay. Anyway, could we talk about Random Subject That Has Nothing At All To Do With Your Babble? :|"
"Do you want to change the subject? :shock:"
"Yes... :eek:"
"Okay. :("
Of course not literally like this, but the conversations are something like that.
I can agree with that 100%, that is the attitude... I just don't see why it's such a stretch for them. When I first learned about LD, it actually explained two experiences I had as a child (around 5-7 years old probably) that had completely boggled my mind before. I remember telling my ex about an LD I had and she was confused about why I was so excited about such a "dull" dream and didn't understand no matter how I explained that it was because I caused it all myself instead of it happening just randomly.
Exploring mental states is something that's not practiced much at all in our culture - this practice is much more typical in the East - so it seems like an extremely distant subject and something that most people have major problems understanding.Quote:
Originally Posted by duke396
People tend to believe that you can only be conscious in waking life, and that dreams are "that stuff that is not real in any possible sense - you are unconscious then".
So telling them that you can be conscious and lucid in a dream is almost like claiming you were experiencing a dream scene in waking life, and took off flying over your hometown in the physical world.
And if they understand what you mean then they will immediately try to change the subject.
This happens to me all the time, and it's kind of annoying.
But still, I must admit that it is something special about the fact that not many people know anything about this - it's like our own beautiful secret, and I have always liked underground stuff, and lucid dreaming is definitely still an underground and fairly unknown subject.
Over the years I have talked to a lot of people about lucid dreaming. In fact, I go out of my way to tell people about it. There are some people that really will never be interested in things like lucid dreaming. Its just not what they are into. And thats perfectly alright. But I think a lot of what others might think about lucid dreaming comes from us. If we do not present it well than its not likely to be understood or desired. Its all in the presentation in my opinion. Out of all the people I have talked to 4 are lucid dreamers now, or at least they were at the time I was involved with them. And honestly it takes a while to explain to someone what lucid dreaming is to make sure they understand how it differs from just a regular dream.
Yes. People throw the "weird" label on things that they do not understand. I believe it truly is that simple.
There was a long thread some time ago ('What is your personality type?'), about the psychological types of us DV'ers. It was based on the MBTI-categorisation into 16 different types.
There was an overwhelming majority of "Intuitive" types.
The intuitive type is characterised by being highly interested in intangibles - ideas, concepts ... dreams. The alternative is "Sensing", and these people are characterised by being highly interested in measurable reality - physical reality.
Therefore, it seems reasonable, if the "sensing" are less likely to even consider the idea of spending time and effort on dreaming as meaningful, whereas the "intuitives" are more likely to find dreaming an area of special interest.
According to a statistic (I believe it came from David Keirsey, but I'm unsure about that), there are 20% intuitives and 80% sensing people in the general population. That would indicate that four out of five people would be very difficult to bring into the lucid dreaming world.
I've tried to get some of my friends into it. One is genuinely interested, most everyone else just looks at me funny and changes the subject. I was hoping to get my husband into it but that hasn't gone so well.
Sometimes you find support in unexpected places, though. A few days ago I had a couple coworkers ask me to teach them how to lucid dream, so later this week I'll be teaching a little intro class during lunch hour!
People don't understand lucid dreaming, because they never had a lucid dream. That's why it's really hard to tell somebody about this topic, because they never experienced it. I think they cannot even imagine it, because of their limited philosophical understanding of dreams and consciousness.
I tried to learn my open-minded friend to have LD. I told him about MILD technique and I lent him my LaBerge's book. I told him about how hard is to learn flying and going through walls. In the first week he has the first LD where he flew and went through wall like it is easy to do and it's completely natural thing. What a jerk :/ :D.
I've started to write a book to explain to the uninitiated what LDs are all about, since I feel so much like I have some great wonderful unshared secret and want to share it. But the reality is that you try to explain it, and people mostly dont care or think you are nuts. So I vacillate between finishing the book to help the world enjoy this great thing, or saying "screw it... it's their loss." The biggest problem with LDs, as fantastic as they are, is that only YOU experience it....it cant be shared in the usual sense. So dreamviews forums and other sites are the only options...sharing common experiences, but not the EXACT experiences, if you catch my drift. If only shared dreaming were a reality or possibility...
Well, who is to say, that it isn't? Certainly it would be a virtually insurmountable task to prove that shared dreaming is impossible.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rothgar
I've heard some pretty convincing stories about dream sharing before... I've never experienced anything like it though. But think about this: Soon technology could have the answer. Wouldn't the next big step in "virtual reality" gaming be to have a machine that creates dreams for you to lucidly play in? Gotta have multiplayer. ;)
I've tried teaching this to my sister, but then 1/4 way through she got tired of it lol
You're not alone in being alone. I used to be really secretive about it since I was worried my parents/people I know would assume it's unhealthy or that I was using it for strange reasons, but my cousin brought it up one time so we got into a bit of a conversation then. He said he was going to try it but I'm not sure if he wound up doing that or not. But other than that I don't really bring it up out of fear that no one would "get it" and to avoid confusing assumptions.