Who or what should we blame for the lack of lucidity ?

[VagalTone]

Why are lucid dreams uncommon without training? Is it purely for physiological reasons ? If we can get clearer ideas about this, it may help to channel our efforts more effectively, and perhaps avoid some hardships and dead ends.

[apsinvo]

I think that as we grow up, we lose focus on the dream world and also lose our awareness and focus. Probably because of the plethora of attention sapping devices we use to distract us - TVs, games, computers, etc. Without awareness in waking, we aren't aware in dreaming. Personally, I found the quickest way of achieving regular lucidity to be all day awareness practise, regular reality checks and meditation. All the induction and ancillary techniques come after that in my opinion.

[VagalTone]

Thanks for your reply, so you are pointing mainly to psychological aspects. I don´t know but i am more biased to blame sleep physiology* ( somehow i don´t want to believe i am guilty ), but let's see what more people have to say. * Of course physiology and mind are deeply connected

[Darkmatters]

Why are elite athletes uncommon without training? Or artists? Or musicians? Humans have the potential to become really good at some things, but that ability needs to be trained and honed. Some people are natural athletes or whatever, but even they can benefit from training their technique etc. Most people aren't naturals but can become pretty good with enough work. The way you're wording this it sounds like you somehow think being expert at lucidity is everyone's natural right and that something is unnaturally blocking most of us.

[Meskhetyw]

Yup. The body simply cannot do everything. We train to lucid dream for a specific purpose, just as we train to fight, do a split, think within the rules of logic and reason, be an acrobat, etc. It is fortunate that the body is so great at adapting to these things, but it almost always takes daily practice to truly excel. Through this practice you discover the barriers one at a time, often getting injured or frustrated, and learn to overcome them.

[IAmCoder]

Evolution, the brute-force algorithm that has begotten us this far. And the environment our ancestors grew up in. Think back to the first organism that had the mutation in the nervous system that allowed it to have full-blown hallucinations during the dark hours of the night coupled with muscle atonia to keep it from falling out of the tree. It would unconsciously dream about things that threatened its survival. And every now and then, after repeating the same nightmare all night, night after night, it would come up with a unique way to survive a threat. The next time the troop encounters said threat, it would have a greater chance of escaping and surviving and having more offspring with the same mutation. Therefore we all dream. Enter the lucid dreamer in that environment. It feels for the poor unenlightened souls who whimper at night and have no control over their dreams and tries in vain to teach them they can simply fly away or beam a bright light to overcome their nightmares. And promptly gets eaten because that doesn't work out so well when the threat is encountered during the day and it doesn't survive long enough to reproduce and pass the light on to us. Therefore lucidity is an ability that can only begin to emerge now that we have full command over our environment and the amount of data in our unconscious mind has surpassed the level where randomly merging emotionally charged memories outweighs consciously directing which areas of knowledge deserve the highest priority on a given evening.

[VagalTone]

Why are elite athletes uncommon without training? Or artists? Or musicians? Humans have the potential to become really good at some things, but that ability needs to be trained and honed. Some people are natural athletes or whatever, but even they can benefit from training their technique etc. Most people aren't naturals but can become pretty good with enough work. The way you're wording this it sounds like you somehow think being expert at lucidity is everyone's natural right and that something is unnaturally blocking most of us. Yup, i agree i might sound like that. But i think there is something naturally, and not unnaturally, blocking most of us, as you said. I am not claiming anything, i would like to know why we are not all natural lucid dreamers, there must be some good reason, i don´t think that is our fault, or lack of training. I agree must of us have to do something to become good at it, but if we don´t know what the mechanisms are our efforts may not yield best results. So, what´s the right target to hit, if there´s one ?

[Darkmatters]

I totally get what you're saying, I just disagree with terms like Fault and Blame, which imply that someone or something is stopping us. Put it into a different context - who's fault is it that I'm not rich? What is to blame? See, the actual fact of the matter is that most people just aren't rich and never will be - though a person can work toward that goal if they really want to and bother to learn how. Lucidity is like that - it's a weird state of mind that happens to many people naturally a few times when they're kids, and to a small handful or people pretty often, usually because they had a lot of nightmares and learned to recognize the feel of a dream. So what's to blame is that lucidity isn't really a normal state - it's a rare one that can be cultivated with practice, or that some people learn to achieve thanks to their nightmares as kids. You're essentially talking about a rare occurrence but treating it as if it 'should' be normal. It's like saying "what's to blame for the fact that the entire world does't exist in peace and prosperity all the time?" -- when clearly peace and prosperity are rare events that depend on many local circumstances and can't be sustained indefinitely. To me it's just a weird way to word the question, and to find answers it's important to word the question properly. Looking for something to point the finger of blame at seems counterproductive to me. Unless you mean to 'blame' something like the fact that not many people know about lucidity or how to achieve it - which really isn't a fault or something to be blamed on anybody, it's just the way things are. I guess I dislike terms like fault and blame because they imply victimhood and a state of self-imposed helplessness, and to me that state is the real culprit and needs to be gotten rid of before a real search for answers can begin.

[IAmCoder]

But i think there is something naturally, and not unnaturally, blocking most of us, as you said. I am not claiming anything, i would like to know why we are not all natural lucid dreamers, there must be some good reason, i don´t think that is our fault, or lack of training. I agree must of us have to do something to become good at it, but if we don´t know what the mechanisms are our efforts may not yield best results. So, what´s the right target to hit, if there´s one ? Yes... natural selection! The right target to hit would be to link survival to lucidity - make the brain understand and feel that increased lucidity, or greater levels of awareness and conscious control will increase its chance of and level of survival. We should all go on a hunger strike until we have a lucid dream! Or something along those lines...

[VagalTone]

I totally get what you're saying, I just disagree with terms like Fault and Blame, which imply that someone or something is stopping us. Put it into a different context - who's fault is it that I'm not rich? What is to blame? See, the actual fact of the matter is that most people just aren't rich and never will be - though a person can work toward that goal if they really want to and bother to learn how. Lucidity is like that - it's a weird state of mind that happens to many people naturally a few times when they're kids, and to a small handful or people pretty often, usually because they had a lot of nightmares and learned to recognize the feel of a dream. So what's to blame is that lucidity isn't really a normal state - it's a rare one that can be cultivated with practice, or that some people learn to achieve thanks to their nightmares as kids. You're essentially talking about a rare occurrence but treating it as if it 'should' be normal. It's like saying "what's to blame for the fact that the entire world does't exist in peace and prosperity all the time?" -- when clearly peace and prosperity are rare events that depend on many local circumstances and can't be sustained indefinitely. To me it's just a weird way to word the question, and to find answers it's important to word the question properly. Looking for something to point the finger of blame at seems counterproductive to me. Unless you mean to 'blame' something like the fact that not many people know about lucidity or how to achieve it - which really isn't a fault or something to be blamed on anybody, it's just the way things are. I guess I dislike terms like fault and blame because they imply victimhood and a state of self-imposed helplessness, and to me that state is the real culprit and needs to be gotten rid of before a real search for answers can begin. Hey, i just used those words because you have to make the thread more attractive. I am sorry So, you get my idea. Now, please focus on that. Edit: for instance, why is memory impaired in dreams ? that is an implicit question in my first questions. That´s a question i would like to explore.

[Darkmatters]

Lol ok, that makes sense then! Sensationalism does bring in viewers. Let's see, I've already covered that I think lucidity is not a normal state and that for most people it takes practice to achieve.. as for memory in dreams, I'd say it's because the 'conscious mechanism' (including waking life memory access) is offline while we're sleeping - usually anyway, except for when we become lucid and intentionally access it. But then this is all really conjecture since not a lot is known about the mind and how it functions during lucidity. Mostly we just have our own gut instincts, we each have our own theories on how things work. Basically, once again my answer comes down to "because lucidity is not a normal state but rather a sort of 'glitch' that can be achieved with effort/practice".

[VagalTone]

Basically, once again my answer comes down to "because lucidity is not a normal state but rather a sort of 'glitch' that can be achieved with effort/practice". No question that practice and effort is how we get skilled, most of us. What do you think of natural lucid dreamers, and i mean those that don´t do anything, and get lucky everynight ? What is working here ? That question makes sense to you ?

[Darkmatters]

Well, as I said already, as far as I'm aware most natural lucid dreamers get that way because of nightmares when they're kids, and they learn to wake themselves up because they learn to recognize the 'feel' of the dream state. Some people only use it to wake themselves up, but some learn they can use it to control the dream. From what I've seen of natural lucid dreamers around here, many of them hate lucid dreaming and wish it would just stop. Not all of them of course, but quite a few have started threads to that effect. I guess since they don't learn about the science behind it or about what can be done in lucid dreams they come to see it as a sort of curse, in which they realize they're dreaming but associate that with the terror of nightmares, and it makes them only feel trapped. In cases like that of course being a natural is not a good thing, though its based on a misunderstanding stemming from lack of education.

[VagalTone]

You make a good point here: many, if not most, naturals learn to be naturals. They are not completely naturals But that was just an example. IAmCoder, do you wanna try and report back ?

[Sensei]

Hmmm... I think that if you ask any naturals, they have a linear learning curve, so it is like most everything else. There are some people that just can do it really well at the beginning and don't need any teaching (take any class and you will see this) they can teach themselves. There are the ones that try really hard to do good, and even if they don't do good at the beginning, they catch up in the end. There are those that are good at everything that they do, so when they do this they are more in the middle, but depending on their progress at the beginning and things they do, they can also get to the point of naturals. Then there are people that dont try hard and aren't naturals. The only difference between them and the ones that try hard is amount of effort, and the difference between them and the ones that are good at almost everything is their mindset is negative. I believe that anyone can get good at LDing if they study hard and work hard and stay consistent. Knowing how to learn is something that is shown more easily when we are doing something like lucid dreaming versus school.

[VagalTone]

Although we know very well how to get skilled at LDing, our efforts don´t quite hit the fundamental problem, i think. That´s the feeling i have. There´s some basic knowledge i feel is missing, which could be hugely important to LDing.

[Sensei]

I don't feel like basic knowledge is missing. I just think it is hard to explain, so you might hear 10 bad explanations and one good one. That is why like everything you need a good teacher. If you look at my LD by months, you can easily see when I first got a good teacher. First good teacher was August when I read ETWOLD (started trying in June). Talked to Lucidmax in October (and started becoming a regular at DV). And lastly Hukif I first talked to around end of December beginning of January. After you learn the info, the next thing is to apply it every single night. Don't take a night off, make sure you sleep consistently. Using my dream journal system, you can easily figure out what works for you, and what works for recall. It takes a lot of energy out front, but after 3 months with that I don't need a DJ anymore and I keep getting better at LDing as well. Even through my most busy year yet. Working full time and part time and studying a lot add on a baby girl in June (yet again, the numbers show all of this).

[VagalTone]

What this thread is all about is the mechanism that prevents natural lucidity. I dont think we have that knowledge, but it could have some practical application.

[StephL]

Evolution, the brute-force algorithm that has begotten us this far. And the environment our ancestors grew up in. Think back to the first organism that had the mutation in the nervous system that allowed it to have full-blown hallucinations during the dark hours of the night coupled with muscle atonia to keep it from falling out of the tree. It would unconsciously dream about things that threatened its survival. And every now and then, after repeating the same nightmare all night, night after night, it would come up with a unique way to survive a threat. The next time the troop encounters said threat, it would have a greater chance of escaping and surviving and having more offspring with the same mutation. Therefore we all dream. Enter the lucid dreamer in that environment. It feels for the poor unenlightened souls who whimper at night and have no control over their dreams and tries in vain to teach them they can simply fly away or beam a bright light to overcome their nightmares. And promptly gets eaten because that doesn't work out so well when the threat is encountered during the day and it doesn't survive long enough to reproduce and pass the light on to us. Therefore lucidity is an ability that can only begin to emerge now that we have full command over our environment and the amount of data in our unconscious mind has surpassed the level where randomly merging emotionally charged memories outweighs consciously directing which areas of knowledge deserve the highest priority on a given evening. This. It is something new - we as species are beginning to learn it - as opposed to doing what all other mammals do - learn for real life - or just simply practise real life - in dreams. We are at a stage, where it is not longer necessary that dreams are steered automatically into a natural biologically useful setting. We probably still "need" - or can make good use - of the non-lucid dreams for that purpose. But are not bound to it - as you say - we control our environment to a big degree - and with a certain threshold of awareness in general - it might just swap over. Maybe evolution even selects for LDing sine an unclear while..? There is a quite related thread next door - I have transfer-quoted you over, IAmCoder - maybe someone in here would like to take a look - topic gets deepened and furthered there! http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...ml#post2072594

[Laurelindo]

I believe the reason why most of us are not natural lucid dreamers is because we simply aren't lucid enough in our waking lives. If you think about it, lucidity seems to be particularly common among children, and I believe this is because children are still relatively curious about their environments, since so much is still new to them, so they will observe everything, listen to everything and feel a great interest for their surroundings in general. This probably carries over to their dreams as well, so that they more easily realize that they are dreaming at that point. When you grow up, you become more and more used to everything around you (I am sure we have all gone through the painful phase when we no longer feel any great excitement for the things that used to be so fascinating, like birthdays and Christmas Eve), and lose interest in it, and this also makes you stop paying attention to the dreams.

[VagalTone]

I agree with you Laurelindo it´s a shame we don´t keep some child traits as we grow up.. but, again, i feel my question is not being properly understood Anyway, i am happy you all have posted here My question is why critical thinking, memory and recognition of clear dream signs and aberrations is not working in dreams as well as IWL ? Is it possible to fall asleep and keep these intact ? Or activate them with some external aid ( cranial stimulation.. ) ?

[Sageous]

I think you guys are all sort of beating around a bush, here (and on that other thread Steph noted above). Lucid dreaming is difficult because we are not naturally programmed to do it ... period. We are designed to be doing the exact opposite of lucid dreaming during sleep -- passing the time consciously unaware of our selves, our situation (sleeping), and generally our memory and bodies (perhaps to avoid interfering with necessary repairs, and, once falling out of trees). That is how we are wired, and probably was quite helpful when we were sleeping in the wild, and needed, say, a break from concerns about being eaten. So, though you all seem to be saying it, sort of, one way or another, lucid dreaming is not easy because we are not naturally meant to do it. We have to train ourselves to be self-aware in dreams, because there is simply no wiring naturally in place to do it for us. Hell, as it is we are just barely wired for self-awareness during waking life, and must work at that as well. There is also a lot of misunderstanding about children and LD'ing, I think. Because they lack any sense of self-awareness at all, children don't LD as we understand it. It's more that their daytime world is quite solipsistic (meaning their entire universe revolves around them), and they simply carry that solipsism into their dreams... in other words, their dreams are just as real as their waking life. This is interesting, yes, but by no means is it an awareness that they are dreaming, and that their dreams are not real, but a creation of their own mind (or that their sleeping body is elsewhere, etc.). I really don't think it's a great idea to wish for childlike experiences of dreams, because that would be a fairly enormous step backwards. There are a lot of reasons adults have trouble LD'ing; maturity is not one of them. Okay cue the irate mothers and those who have friends whose uncle's cousins say they are "naturals." ^^ I forgot to mention this above: So, though there may not be a "pure" physiological reason for failure to be regularly self-aware in dreams, there is often quite a hill to climb as we encourage our brains and unconscious minds to work with us for a bit, and let us into dreams. That might come easy to some, but certainly not all, but it doesn't represent an actual, designed, barrier.

[StephL]

Not expecting such an answer - or any answer - and surely not everybody to read this really long and partly repetitive post. So just ignore and not feel any bad from it! But if I wait and shorten and file on it too much - I'll not do it at all maybe. I think you guys are all sort of beating around a bush, here (and on that other thread Steph noted above). Lucid dreaming is difficult because we are not naturally programmed to do it ... period. We are programmed to do LDing I believe - or how would you explain the sheer (rising) numbers? Not only that - it is widely agreed, that all healthy people can learn LD. There is nothing happening in the extremely evolutionarily fine-tuned network of the brain, which is not pre-programmed, when it comes to such crucial aspects. At least not in genetically healthy people - which to a nice degree, we all hopefully are. It is clearly hardwired into us to lucid dream*. It is not a curiosity which only the selected few experience. Not something only for "special people". There was a long documentary on LDing on German and French television. It was portrayed as a skill you can learn - an art even, when you cultivate it. One of great personal usefulness - having tons of potential benefits behind it and worth the while surely. How come so many people do LD in your view, Sageous? Does the soul program something new into it's supposedly mere vessel? How should I understand you? Do beat on the guy in the bush directly yourself please! We are designed to be doing the exact opposite of lucid dreaming during sleep -- passing the time consciously unaware of our selves, our situation (sleeping), and generally our memory and bodies (perhaps to avoid interfering with necessary repairs, and, once falling out of trees). That is how we are wired, and probably was quite helpful when we were sleeping in the wild, and needed, say, a break from concerns about being eaten. No - we are not designed by evolution. Again it comes up - we had this before - you putting a creator into the concept of evolution - but that is not how evolution works. And on how we are wired to do so - see here: Lucid dreamers help scientists locate the seat of meta-consciousness in the brain* So, though you all seem to be saying it, sort of, one way or another, lucid dreaming is not easy because we are not naturally meant to do it. No - I sure enough am not saying that we are naturally meant to anything in the first place. And - if I take your supposed meaning and translate it into my language here - no - I do not think, it is a trait, that is selected against. I say this concerning perceived barriers : People have dreams, which are unconsciously steered and that is good for you, since they help you deal with real-life situations in a way that would be lost to you, were you constantly lucid. The more unresolved stuff on the platter to learn from in a non-mess-about-able way - the bigger the resistance maybe. Creativity in avoiding getting eaten brought about a mechanism of nightly all-round hallucinations, combined with sleep paralysis - dreams - in the first place - or to come up with throwing stones for example - sounds very reasonable to me. IAmCoder`s arguments of lacking evolutionary pressure against it from great control over our environment - and a certain dominance of human conscious faculties in all functions of the mind - sort of a spill-over - are good. I want to think a bit further than that - maybe LD is an evolutionary invention maybe (a lot?) younger than that, what we feel distinguishes us from animals. What for? Just shortly ponder, where the wording - realize your dreams comes from. Is not LD an upgrade to that? LDs are widely seen - by the informed, incl. non LDing scientists - as being good for artistic and scientific inspiration (periodic table, benzene-carbon structure, Dalí, my sig..). For musicians and sports-persons - for becoming more one with one self and happier - lalala. Are we not all rather convinced, LD makes us special, be honest! I get consistent positive reactions, for once. But having visions for your life - being inspired - like for example to building up a huge company - lets see it monetary - is generally seen as a good thing - attractive. Unfortunately probably mainly in men.. Realizing your personal dream with all that is associated, is actually something which counts in sexual selection, don't you think? And that is more likely from LD than from normal dreams - or isn't it? At least to such a degree, that evolution has thrown it up . Or at the least not suppressed it/eradicated it as un-fit - by brute force algorithm - like all else detrimental. Such a high percentage of a trait - is conserved for a purpose. As said - there was a study finding significantly less mental health problems in the 5-10 % LDers in the population (Germany probably). Even if it was so, that the more healthy do more LD - it is a selection factor indirectly then. And maybe that is not the right way round - why not assume, LDing makes you mentally more healthy? I could list very good arguments for that.. So it is (at the very least) not detrimental - and it is not a rare trait - it is a latent skill. As animals there was no need to learn true visionary thinking, no higher philosophical, political, personal businesses involved in mating. Also from having that much of the "meta-consciousness ongoings"* in the brain of sapiens sapiens - a mere spill-over in connectivity could be imagined well. We have to train ourselves to be self-aware in dreams, because there is simply no wiring naturally in place to do it for us. Hell, as it is we are just barely wired for self-awareness during waking life, and must work at that as well. Sorry - but that makes no sense. Of course it is hard-wired - how else do we do it? You can't just "learn" to wire your core-consciousness into your dreams, when there are not already ways there, I believe. Maybe we do not have to "learn it" just keep it up from childhood on, when at least the first levels of it turn up on their own - naturally. All it maybe needs is recognition, confirmation and coaching, teaching - and it would be the easiest thing in the world for children to lay the groundwork for what you tend to mean with lucidity - namely only high-level lucidity. But sorry - you can not tell me it was not lucidity to know, that I dream, even despite thinking I have too open the kitchen window - and then time and time again - go air-swimming. That surely is lucidity - even with low control and understanding. This skill and understanding nobody did teach me further - who knows, where I would have gotten otherwise. But I did not jump out in real life either - confusing it with LD - having inferior consciousness of some sort. There could be a "natural learning" - guided from teachers from that point on. Said so elsewhere - five people still remember LDs from childhood in my real-life surroundings. I guess, you also had low level lucidity as a child and forgot about a lot from that period. There is also a lot of misunderstanding about children and LD'ing, I think. Because they lack any sense of self-awareness at all, children don't LD as we understand it. It's more that their daytime world is quite solipsistic (meaning their entire universe revolves around them), and they simply carry that solipsism into their dreams... in other words, their dreams are just as real as their waking life. This is interesting, yes, but by no means is it an awareness that they are dreaming, and that their dreams are not real, but a creation of their own mind (or that their sleeping body is elsewhere, etc.). I really don't think it's a great idea to wish for childlike experiences of dreams, because that would be a fairly enormous step backwards. There are a lot of reasons adults have trouble LD'ing; maturity is not one of them. Okay cue the irate mothers and those who have friends whose uncle's cousins say they are "naturals." Do you have this experience with your own children if you have children? In my view you underestimate children by quite a margin. I have talked with my mother about my LDs - she said, she also had them as a child** - she was on a Rudolf Steiner School (Anthroposophy) and was always moaning to have lost all connection to her spiritual essence from her childhood - incl. LD – but let’s not get into that. Yes - she thought, I was something very special - but I was not - I was just encouraged. Credit to her, where credit is due. She generally treated me with real serious interest and surely assumed me to be fully conscious and able to understand all sorts of “deep and complicated” topics - she gave me all information, I wanted to have - and explained it all in words I could understand. Went with her to yoga class and meditation as well with at least 8 - if not before. There are also really amazing children out there, I could put up lists of them - I was not like that. Maybe the memory of your own childhood is a bit hazy – but not the childhood..? **Even forgot counting her - 6 then.

[Sageous]

Believe it or not, Steph, we're more in agreement than you might think -- I think some things got lost in translation. Let me try to make a couple of quick responses, though: We are programmed to do LDing I believe - or how would you explain the sheer (rising) numbers? What sheer numbers would those be? LD'ing might be quite popular in Germany, but it is still extremely rare here in the U.S. Though, probably thanks to the Internet, there are certainly far more LD'ers than there used to be, the practice is hardly mainstream, or even close to it. Not only that - it is widely agreed, that all healthy people can learn LD. Of course they can. But learning something is very different from naturally being able to do something (more in a sec). There is nothing happening in the extremely evolutionarily fine-tuned network of the brain, which is not pre-programmed, when it comes to such crucial aspects. At least not in genetically healthy people - which to a nice degree, we all hopefully are. It is clearly hardwired into us to lucid dream*. I obviously don't agree with that. Couldn't it be that we are clearly hardwired to learn? There is a difference. It is not a curiosity which only the selected few experience. Not something only for "special people". No. It is a curiosity that a self-selected few experience, by their own choice, and by their own effort. There was a long documentary on LDing on German and French television. It was portrayed as a skill you can learn - an art even, when you cultivate it. Absolutely! I think we are generally saying the same thing here, Steph -- that all humans are more than capable of learning to LD. But does being capable to learn something equal having a natural tendency to do something? I don't think so. How come so many people do LD in your view, Sageous? In my opinion, precious few people practice LD'ing. Yes, maybe tens of thousands are doing it these days (though likely not), but remember that there are 7 billion people wandering this earth... out of that number tens of thousands does not amount to much. And yes, thanks to movies like Inception and Avatar, that number might have gone up briefly, but even if it when up tenfold, it still wouldn't even be a statistical blip on the world population scale. That said, I am also confident that everyone experiences a lucid dream once or twice in her life by accident, but this is not the same as actually practicing the art. Does the soul program something new into it's supposedly mere vessel? That's a very cool concept, and I hope it's true, but no, that is not what I was saying. I'll probably repeat this in a moment, but keep in mind that brains are extremely malleable organs -- we can alter its hard-wiring, and do so regularly. Learning to LD (and to be self-aware in general) is simply another way that we rewire our brains. That they didn't come a certain way does not mean we can't make them a certain way. Do you think we were hard-wired to, say, fly airplanes or write symphonies? I don't think those would have occurred to DNA back when the original hard-wiring was working itself out. No - we are not designed by evolution. Again it comes up - we had this before - you putting a creator into the concept of evolution - but that is not how evolution works. Saying that we're designed by evolution was just been a turn of phrase on my part, sorry about that. No, there is no "Evolution God" overseeing our development from the primordial soup to present day, but I think it's safe to say that there is a process to evolution, based on natural selection and eons of changes, that can be used to define how we came to be, and what we are or are not hard-wired to do. I never said there is a God overseeing things, and never intended to say that. And on how we are wired to do so - see here: Lucid dreamers help scientists locate the seat of meta-consciousness in the brain* I never said we weren't capable of LD'ing, or that dreaming does not exist. That would be absurd, especially coming from me. Those dreamers that contributed to that study were using their skills to contribute, and I would bet that most would say those skills were well-earned, and not naturally bestowed upon them. No - I sure enough am not saying that we are naturally meant to anything in the first place. Well then you agree with me, right? I say this concerning perceived barriers : People have dreams, which are unconsciously steered and that is good for you, since they help you deal with real-life situations in a way that would be lost to you, were you constantly lucid. The more unresolved stuff on the platter to learn from in a non-mess-about-able way - the bigger the resistance maybe. Okay. I have no problem with that, and can see how the unresolved stuff would indeed cause a barrier to learning -- but not a natural, hard-wired, barrier, more a psychological one. Creativity in avoiding getting eaten brought about a mechanism of nightly all-round hallucinations, combined with sleep paralysis - dreams - in the first place - or to come up with throwing stones for example - sounds very reasonable to me. Agreed again. That creativity, and the malleable brainpower that enabled it, are the roots of intelligence, of sentience, and, ultimately, of being able to learn to do things that defy our natural make-up, like being awake while we're asleep. IAmCoder`s arguments of lacking evolutionary pressure against it from great control over our environment - and a certain dominance of human conscious faculties in all functions of the mind - sort of a spill-over - are good. I want to think a bit further than that - maybe LD is an evolutionary invention maybe (a lot?) younger than that, what we feel distinguishes us from animals. What for? Just shortly ponder, where the wording - realize your dreams comes from. Is not LD an upgrade to that? I don't think so. Though our self-awareness is what distinguishes us from animals, and I'm all for LD'ing being an "upgrade" in evolution, I think it is much more an extension of waking-life consciousness, of a curiosity expressed by our own intellectual decisions than it is a function of genes or chemicals. LDs are widely seen - by the informed, incl. non LDing scientists - as being good for artistic and scientific inspiration (periodic table, benzene-carbon structure, Dalí, my sig..). For musicians and sports-persons - for becoming more one with one self and happier - lalala. Agreed. Are we not all rather convinced, LD makes us special, be honest! Sure. But is it our ability to Ld that make us feel special, or the actual knowledge that we can go to a very special place -- a place where no one else can go? I'm not sure. I get consistent positive reactions, for once. You live in a very special place, I think, Steph! Realizing your personal dream with all that is associated, is actually something which counts in sexual selection, don't you think? Sure. And that is more likely from LD than from normal dreams - or isn't it? I don't think so. LD'ing might help, but the stuff that makes you successful in life is also the stuff that makes your LD'ing successful. If you lack the strength, focus, self-awareness, and perseverance necessary to succeed, you likely will have trouble learning to LD. At least to such a degree, that evolution has thrown it up . Or at the least not suppressed it/eradicated it as un-fit - by brute force algorithm - like all else detrimental. Such a high percentage of a trait - is conserved for a purpose. I'm not seeing LD'ing as a high percentage trait... indeed, I'm not seeing consistent LD'ing as a measurable trait at all. As said - there was a study finding significantly less mental health problems in the 5-10 % LDers in the population (Germany probably). Maybe I'm wrong, though; has anyone ever checked this statistic? 5-10% of the population doing consistent LD'ing seems extremely high (though statistically it is just next to insignificant, BTW). As animals there was no need to learn true visionary thinking, no higher philosophical, political, personal businesses involved in mating. Also from having that much of the "meta-consciousness ongoings"* in the brain of sapiens sapiens - a mere spill-over in connectivity could be imagined well. Okay. But that spillover of connectivity comes with conscious input, and not the other way around, I think. Sorry - but that makes no sense. Of course it is hard-wired - how else do we do it? You can't just "learn" to wire your core-consciousness into your dreams, when there are not already ways there, I believe. Of course you can learn to "wire your core-consciousness into your dreams," Steph, just as you can learn to wire, say, doing the backstroke into your floating skills. As I said above, the brain is a very flexible device, and is able to adapt to change or new experiences with amazing dexterity... that's what learning is, in the end. Yes, we "always" were dreaming, but we were doing so without knowing we were -- just as we only very recently (evolution-wise) became aware of our places in waking life. We don't have our entire existence programmed into our heads at birth, I think. Do you have this experience with your own children if you have children? In my view you underestimate children by quite a margin. I have no children, but was one, once, have a great deal of experience with them (including but not limited to studying their development in school) and believe me, I do not underestimate their intelligence or abilities by any measure, thank you. Mentioning that bit of (very well-known, studied, documented, established, etc) child-development -- that kids simply haven't developed the self-awareness to truly LD, and do have a world-view where dreams are just as real as waking life, so those dreams seem to be lucid -- has gotten me into trouble before, and led me into unwanted emotional arguments with others who were fully stocked with anecdotal evidence, and I have no wish to go there again. So I won't. I'm more than happy having you assume I'm wrong on this. I hope I've made myself a little more clear, Steph, and that these short responses indicate that I am indeed the same person who has been posting on these forums to date. If I was still unclear, let me know, and I'll try again -- except for the kids stuff!

[StephL]

Completely forgot - like the documentary also said - most children who learn it do so as a defence against nightmares.