personality changing through LD practice

[JoannaB]

So I have been thinking that LD practice is one of those hobbies that has the potential of changing one's own personality drastically. LD practice encourages self awareness and self improvements and it can be very empowering. I know I changed drastically during my freshman year in college 20years ago, and of course college certainly had a large impact on that but I think it is not a coincidence that this was the year when I was into LD practice. I came back to LD practice earlier this year because I did not like certain aspects of my personality and I wanted self improvement, and I knew LD practice was good for that. We tell newcomers to the hobby that LDing is harmless, but is it really? Any hobby powerful enough to dreastically change one's personality has got to have the potential to do harm if one is not careful. What do you think?

[VagalTone]

I think it can promote good changes. I don´t see many ( if any ) bad potential drastic changes..providing one has already some « psychological» balance, but then so many children rock at LDing ( ok, this may not be a perfect logic, but i always love to talk about that ) One thing that may happen, perhaps, is an increased curiosity for the paranormal, or more ethereal subjects which, for some people, can sidetrack into dangerous beliefs, if they are not careful. And beliefs can change everything. I am not saying they are not worthwhile being investigated, just that one must be careful. Open mindedness, observation, and skepticism in this inner experiment can provide great insights.

[Crotch]

Lucid Dreaming helped me appreciate real life more. I feel more present in everything. I think the only change can be a good one.

[DreamscapeGoat]

I've never heard of someone going down a darker road by deciding to take up LDing. I don't believe you can shift your personality towards a more negative one through LDs. However, I it is possible to get addicted to LDing, and any addiction is pretty unhealthy.

[JoannaB]

See I do have a 7 year old son who is into lucid dreaming. What I am thinking though is that lucid dream practice makes one more open minded to personality changes, and kids already have that since their personality must change. Part of me wonders though why when we grow up most people get a strong reluctance to drastically change themselves. Was there some evolutionary advantage to that?

[fogelbise]

Part of me wonders though why when we grow up most people get a strong reluctance to drastically change themselves. Was there some evolutionary advantage to that? I found that to be a fascinating question and found this info about a book: Spoiler for Wall of text: Born to Rebel ranked number 35 on Amazon.com's list of best-selling books for 1996 and was also picked as a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times. Dust Jacket: Born to Rebel Synopsis: Why are individuals from the same family often no more similar in personality than those from different families? Why, within the same family, do some children conform to authority, whereas others rebel? The family, it turns out, is not a "shared environment" but rather a set of niches that provide siblings with different outlooks. At the heart of this pioneering inquiry into human development is a fundamental insight: that the personalities of siblings vary because they adopt different strategies in the universal quest for parental favor. Frank J. Sulloway's most important finding is that eldest children identify with parents and authority, and support for the status quo, whereas younger children rebel against it. Drawing on the work of Darwin and the new science of evolutionary psychology, he transforms our understanding of personality development and its origins in the family. Most persuasively, Sulloway's findings offer conclusive evidence that the family, with its powerful interpersonal dynamics, is a cauldron for the great revolutionary advances that drive historical change. Through his analysis of revolutions in science and social thought, from the Reformation to Darwin's theory of natural selection, Sulloway demonstrates that the primary engine of history is located within families, not between them, as Marx believed. This landmark work illuminates the crucial influence that family niches have on personality, and documents the profound consequences of sibling competition--not only on individual development within the family, but on society as a whole. Born to Rebel's pathbreaking insights promise to revolutionize the nature of psychological, sociological, and historical inquiry. Comments about Born to Rebel: "Sulloway has delivered one of the most authoritative and important treatises in the history of the social sciences." --Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of On Human Nature "Every once in a long while a book is published which changes a whole field of scholarship, perhaps even everybody's thinking. Such a book is Born to Rebel." --Ernst Mayr, Agassiz Professor of Zoology Emeritus, Harvard University "Sulloway's book will change the way each of us thinks about the past, the future, and ourselves. I believe this book will have the same kind of long-term impacts as Freud's and Darwin's." --Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, author of Mother Nature and The Woman That Never Evolved "Born to Rebel is a masterpiece, extraordinary to the highest degree. It develops its subject matter in an original and incredibly arresting manner, and it flows with the excitement of a good novel. I believe it is the first book which really uses Darwinian evolution to produce a new way of doing history successfully." --I. Bernard Cohen, Harvard University, Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus "A quarter century in the making, this brilliant, searching, provocative, and readable treatise promises to remain definitive for at least as long. Whether firstborns or laterborns, all of us will learn fascinating and surprising details about ourselves." --Robert K. Merton, Columbia University, University Professor Emeritus "Born to Rebel is a magnificent intellectual accomplishment, at once sweeping and intimate; it affords a whole new perspective on both human history and everyday life." --Robert Wright, author of Nonzero and The Moral Animal Excerpts from Reviews of Born to Rebel: "This book represents a stunning achievement." --Derek Bickerton, The New York Times Book Review "Fascinating and persuasive. . . . Birth order places children in different 'niches,' requiring disparate modes of competition for maximal success. Sulloway's substantial birth-order effects therefore provide our best and ultimate documentation of nurture's power."--Stephen Jay Gould, Natural History, June 1997. "An extraordinary new study. . . . Sulloway's argument demolishes all simplistic notions of nature and nurture." --Matt Ridley, The Times (London) "Fascinating and convincing." --Jared Diamond, The New York Review of Books "Bertrand Russel once stated that the power of a thinker's contribution lies less in the uniqueness of his ideas, more in the skill with which the thinker defends his vies against all possible criticism. Sulloway's approach is admirable in this respect--and particularly so for a work that is primarily historical and archival in nature. Throughout, he considers alternative explanations, produces relevant data where he can, and suggests further studies that could resolve paradoxes and contradictions. . . . Clearly, Sulloway intended to write a book 'in the grand tradition' and, by and large, he has succeeded in doing so." --Howard Gardner, Nature "Dr. Sulloway has built a formidable case. . . . Forget Adam Smith's invisible hand, Karl Marx's class struggles and Sigmund Freud's Oedipal clashes, he says. Radical change in human affairs is wrought by the perennial rivalry between eldest children and their younger siblings." --David, Stipp, Wall Street Journal "Sulloway's birth order theory shares the parsimonious elegance of the Darwinian principles that were its inspiration. . . . Born to Rebel [has] an interpretive nuance rarely found in quantitative studies." --Robert Boynton, The New Yorker "An important and valuable study that will define research agendas for years to come. It is also hugely fun to read." --Chet Raymo, Boston Globe "Sulloway has gone on to do what Darwin did not do in Origin of Species, which is to supplement the anecdotal material showing how birth order can work with statistical demonstrations that it does work. . . . I urge my colleagues who have not yet done so to wake up to the seriousness and worth of this book and its arguments and take a detailed look at its conclusions and its methods.--Mott T. Greene, Isis I, for one, have found countless benefits from my LD practice. Spoiler for some of my soppy examples: It may sound cheesy but I relish the beauty that is found all around us. I don't mean that I am constantly floating on cloud 9 or anything (so far) or that everything is beautiful, there is plenty in this world that is not. And sure my wife and son think I am weird now for the way I find beauty in so many things that others find mundane but they also notice and respond to my increased appreciation for them and the way I more frequently shower them with affection. I become annoying when I try to play devil's advocate "maybe this person was coming across as an as* because of (this, that or the other thing)." I also have a stronger thirst for knowledge and a stronger appreciation for the arts.

[Amiana]

I've struggled with self-confidence and anxiety since I was a teenager -- since I've started lucid dreaming, that's nearly disappeared. In some ways I feel like I'm meeting myself for the first time.