Thread: Lucid dreaming......What's the point?

Personally, I love to go to sleep to see what will be in my dreams that night. On average, I'll remember 3-5 dreams and usually one or two of them I remember in detail.
Sometimes, I do rely on my dreams to give me answers or guidance in my waking life, it's been really helpful. Anyway, there's been a couple times way back when, I realized within my own dream that I was dreaming. I was in a very dangerous situation in someones house, there was a few things that appeared to be odd to me then at that moment, it occured to me I was dreaming. I sensed something was coming at me and saw a black panther and a grey coloured panther charging toward me, even in my dream I felt a rush of adrenaline, I gestured my hand out as if for them to stop then these animals went really slow motion, past me and when I turned around to see where they were headed, I lost control of the dream then they came back to attack me, I told myself in my head to wiggle my toes to get the hell outta there.
Then I woke up with my heart racing.
Initially, I thought it was cool that I had that experience but really, what's the point in trying to control your dream? To me, it seems like a lot of effort and ton of time practicing. What's the point? I'm asking out of curiosity. Why not put the effort improving your real life rather then your sleep time..................Just wondering what you get out of it? How does it serve a purpose in your waking life?

Well, one, it feels exactly like real life. I mean, you can do anything! With no reprecussions!

It serves a purpose, because you can talk to your subconscious! Ask it to give advice to you! Ask it anything!

Life simulation. Test what would happen in that situation..

To do whatever the heck you want - like fly, or live out your favourite cartoons and movies! Plus, it gives you something to do during the time you sleep, instead of wasting a third of your life.

To me lucid dream practice IS about improving waking life. To become successful in lucid dreaming I try to improve self awareness in waking life. My goal behind lucid dream practice is to battle depression by becoming so self aware that I will start corrective action as soon as there are any signs of depression. That level of self awareness helps with both overcoming my depression and with lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is fun and exciting and temporarily improves my mood the day after a successful lucid dream, but all that is icing on the cake, the lucid dream preparation practice is what it is about for me. Unfortunately, I am not as consistent as I ought to be and my success thus far is limited overall. But when I am actually practicing self awareness, I can tell the positive difference it makes in my life. Not doing stuff on autopilot. Catching my initial emotional reactions to what is happening and reevaluating them. Looking for cause and effect of how the world affects me and how I affect it back. Looking for weirdness in life, and gaining greater appreciation for how wonderfully weird life actually is, even in waking let alone in dreams. Understanding better how my waking life affects my dreams and how my dreams affect my waking. Goal setting and determination in stead of just following routine blindly. That's the kind of stuff that lucid dream practice can provide.

What's the Point!?! Why do people wait in line for 2+ hours to ride an amazing roller coaster for 75 seconds? Why do people train for weeks and jump out a plane just to free fall 14,000 feet in 65 seconds. Lucid Dreaming feels amazing and is a positive experience. It relieves stress. It can help people to deal with nightmares. It is a way to work for, and succeed in reaching positive goals, which leads to greater levels of discipline, self-confidence and self-esteem. It is a place to learn from your subconscious. It is a place where you can hug a dearly departed relative whom you miss. It is a place where you can feel high without the use of drugs which damage your body and mind....I can go on and on....

I will just say one more thing...I CAN FLY LIKE SUPERMAN IN MY DREAMS!

Well, because it's fun! That's why!

What is the point of any game? It is for fun! Also, you can perform psychological experiments, fight, upgrade muscle memory, anime fight, practice memorization, gun fights, wish fulfillment, talk to characters from books and movies, fight! All night long!, act out your favorite books and movies. Hukif studies in his dreams and practices mathematical concepts (when dealing with a 4+ dimensional graph, waking pictures don't suffice), if you write books or draw, there is endless stories and pictures that only you can access, also... My personal favorite, you can fight!

Two words: Instant holiday.

Also, no one that has taken the time to LD has been dissapointed by the time spent on it, just the years spent without it.

Originally Posted by BrandonBoss

Also, no one that has taken the time to LD has been dissapointed by the time spent on it, just the years spent without it.

Oh the wasted decades....sigh. Well, finding LD at last is better late than never! Why oh why didn't I take Inception seriously? And google "lucid dreaming?" And find DV then? Or read ETWOLD when it first came out? And take it seriously? Well, dream time dilation may be the answer...heh! Time chamber, nice beginning, time dilated persistent realm? NOW we're talking...

The dream world is a universe of its own, and it is poorly researched, so it lies wide open for the bold explorer. Who knows which treasures are to be found there?

And who would prefer to explore this wild and exciting place whilst unconscious? It's far better to be aware, and to pick the roads to travel by with a clear and alert mind.

You can face your deepest fears in a safe and fully controllable environment, talk to anyone you want without consequences. Try out things you wouldn't dare in real life just to see how it feels like. For example my absolute greatest fear is outer space. Just the vastness and nothingness around you, not even gravity, you're floating around in this extremely, unimaginably large nothingness and you can't do anything. But one of these days I might fly to make a space flight, I decided. The possibilities are endless. You can literally do anything you can imagine. But the reason people ask questions like yours (with all due respect) is that this takes some effort. The only reason not every single human being has 5 crazy lucid dreams every night is because it takes effort and they are too lazy.

Great thread! Everybody likes listing the things they are excited about

In lucid dreams you have the potential to experience absolutely anything in stunning realism, and this will allow you to live out your wildest fantasies.
This will also obviously have a fantastic effect on your waking life as well.

It is also a completely unique experience on so many levels - it's hard to completely accept the fact that you are completely alone in a world that will never be fully explored and that doesn't even consist of matter.

Originally Posted by Ginsan

Great thread! Everybody likes listing the things they are excited about

Oh - I wish I was so much better at it!!
I really yearn for features, which are not yet in my reach.
One thing I would love to do, among others, is throw an atom bomb somewhere and watch this beautiful mushroom expand, feel a bit of the woosh - maybe even burn up in it.
I am aesthetically so fascinated by them - the shape, the size, the violence of the eruption - but that's something, which hopefully doesn't get done for real any more - not even for testing or for me to watch on youtube..rolleyes.gif
I'd also love to throw an asteroid on the planet and watch from space. Or on earth and see the flood-wave coming, hundreds or thousands of meters high - ripping everything down.

Or something peaceful - like having a wonderful fairy-tale adventure with enchanted forest and pixies and elves..
And of course - ALIENS!!!

@Steph, if you have a big goal that you can't do yet, break it down to a few different tasks and do them in your LDs until you can do all of them at once. Active atomic bomb. Learn how to summon really really good. Pixie adventure, teleport good, and how to make DCs act normal around you.
I'd also love to throw an asteroid on the planet and watch from space. Or on earth and see the flood-wave coming, hundreds or thousands of meters high - ripping everything down.

StephL, you sure like destruction don't you?
*dirty joke about mushrooms*

Originally Posted by somap778

Why not put the effort improving your real life rather then your sleep time

Well why not. I mean, I'm not taking up any time practicing. I'd be sleeping anyway.

why not improve real life rather than sleep time

I will answer this directly as well.
There are 168 hours in a week. Say you spend them this way.
56 hours of sleep
60 hours of work (and commute time, and self improvement)
20 hours of eating
=126 hours or 42 hours of free time. and let's face it, you probably dont do the first 2 as often as that.
So say you want to spend time with your friends and family and have a personal hobby. 6 hours a day for all that to fill up your calendar. I doubt that you use that. I am guessing that you spend 3 hours a day max with friends unless you are a teen-college kid. Leaving you 3 hours a day to veg in front of he TV and/or computer.
Here is my straight up schedule.
56 hours sleep.
35 hours work
25 hours study and church functions
7 hours with daughter (minimum of 1 hour a day)
14 hours with wife (minimum 2 hours a day with her)
10 hour minimum with friends and family
Total 147
11 hours for hobbies, which I have a lot of, so to only have 11 hours is rhard. Note that this isn't rigid. I often spend less time with wife and more time with friends, and I often study less in order to hang with friends and family, or sleep less to spend time with wife or daughter. but my 11 hours seems pretty strong. If my schedule gives, it gives to something else. So to ask why I don't work on something in real life is a little crazy. I spend all day every day on real life. If I can increase my 11 hours a week to more because of changing sleep to fun time, I will.

Also, it is a hobby that might help real life in the future, so fun now, fun and help real life in the future sounds like the way to go for me. I simply love LDing, but I will not sacrifice any relationship for it, I sacrifice hobby time only. And in order to get better at waking things and keep hobby time working i have learned to speed read. This makes studying more intense and book series able to get through with such short time.

Life is about balance in many ways. You should look for your stress vs work meter and see how productive you can be without becoming a crazy person. I am a very stress free person, and I can credit that to balance and a laid back person and my God (I won't talk about the last one since y'all prolly don't care, if you have questions, then PM me).
Laid back doesn't make sense because laid back people normally like more time to chill out, but it is actually cool because since you are chill, you can really work more without. Letting things go easier, working harder without letting t get to you.
Balance is more about balancing everything on your stress level. So I do as much for my self improvement as possible, because stress will make you lose things and forget things that you wouldn't have had you spent less time on it and had a better balance. It is better to study the day before, sleep the night of, and do a short review the day of, rather than to study the whole day before, night of, and day of a test.

So it isn't "work on LD instead of something that could help me." It is "work on LD or some other hobby."

It's just a hobby, like watching a movie, reading a book or playing games. But it is a little different in that you have to invest in it before you can enjoy it. And the more you invest in it, the more you can enjoy it. So you have to view it as a hobby, it is just for your enjoyment, but because you have to work first to start enjoying it, you wonder if it is really worth it. Maybe it is like playing a musical instrument.

It may be a lot of effort, but in return, it gives you amazing memories. Also, it's fun to witness what your mind is able to conjure, like experiencing it, instead of just waking up and remembering it. That's just my opinion.

Oh, and it gives you something to look forward to when falling asleep. (or dissapoint you when you wake up x)

The first 20 hours -- how to learn anything: Josh Kaufman at TEDxCSU - YouTube

I have said many times on here that learning how to learn changes your life. LDinghas tthe same. Graph as other things, but it takes a little longer time to get to the place where you can sit back and just enjoy whioe getting better.

Originally Posted by BrandonBoss

The first 20 hours -- how to learn anything: Josh Kaufman at TEDxCSU - YouTube

I have said many times on here that learning how to learn changes your life. LDinghas tthe same. Graph as other things, but it takes a little longer time to get to the place where you can sit back and just enjoy whioe getting better.

Great video. Thank you. so that information breaks down to this:

1. Deconstruct the skill (Break it apart)
2. Learn enough to self-correct (you know when you did something wrong and can fix it)
3. Remove barriers to practice (TV, Internet, etc.)
4. Practice for at least 20 hrs

• The major barrier to skill acquisition is emotional. (Scared, feeling stupid, etc.)

Questions: 1. how do you deconstruct the skill of Lucid Dreaming? To what parts can you break it down? 2. How do you practice those parts?

I do practice RCs, I also practice dream recall and journaling. What else?

Originally Posted by Tygar

Great video. Thank you. so that information breaks down to this:

1. Deconstruct the skill (Break it apart)
2. Learn enough to self-correct (you know when you did something wrong and can fix it)
3. Remove barriers to practice (TV, Internet, etc.)
4. Practice for at least 20 hrs/week

• The major barrier to skill acquisition is emotional. (Scared, feeling stupid, etc.)

Questions: 1. how do you deconstruct the skill of Lucid Dreaming? To what parts can you break it down? 2. How do you practice those parts?

I do practice RCs, I also practice dream recall and journaling. What else?

That is a few difficult questions.

Gimme a sec to answer...
4) 20 hours a week. I dont believe that that is what the video said... Now I have to rewatch it. Lol.

http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...-dreaming.html
^ up there I posted sageous breakdown and mine. Mine is still in the working and is hopefully going to answer everything when I am done with it (dry spells, naturals etc.)
So sage has sleep, awareness, and recall.
I have sleep, state awareness, and general dream awareness
#1… sleep consistently.
#2 think about LDing and dreams. Question your reality. Or for sage, be more aware. RCs, mantras, expectation, meditation, and visualization are all great for this.
#3 there are about a million things to make your recall go up. All of them take effort. The best is a consistent sleep schedule like we talked about before. There is a whole subforum on dream recall, and my DJ system is to find out what works best for you to increase your recall. After you get enough data, DJing itself becomes obsolete, because it is one that pays off a lot, but it is also the one that takes the most time.

That is my simple breakdown. I talk and ramble a lot more about LDing broken down in my thread in my sig (one is the DJ system, the other is BBs ramblings)

Originally Posted by BrandonBoss

That is a few difficult questions.

Gimme a sec to answer...
4) 20 hours a week. I dont believe that that is what the video said... Now I have to rewatch it. Lol.

No, the video says "20 hours total." And that's to get "somewhat good" at something.

But dreaming is somewhat different from the rest of things that people want to get good at (playing the ukelele, learning French, etc.) in that there is a potentially long delay between taking action and observing an improvement. You can learn a new word of French or a new chord on the ukelele in a few seconds or minutes. However, you may not observe improvement in dream recall for days. You may not achieve your first lucid dream for months. With lucid dreaming, you're basically trying to "hack" your brain to change the way it operates, not simply just store data for later retrieval.