Lucidity not exactly Black and White...?

**JadeGreen** · 08-24-2014 09:33 PM

As I've been lucid dreaming, something has become more and more clear to me. That lucidity isn't exactly black and white. There seems to be a whole bunch of different variations in-between purely lucid and purely non-lucid.

These are the types of lucidity that I have discovered:

True Nonlucidity: You are completely unaware that what you are experiencing is a dream. This is what you experience when you dream that you are late for school or your naked in public.

Vague Nonlucidity: This is what you experience when something is happening and although you may not at all grasp that you are dreaming, you grasp that what you are experiencing does not matter and will have no long-term repercussions.

Ironic Nonlucidity: This is what you experience when you are non-lucid but are thinking about the concepts of lucid dreaming. This encompasses the dreams I sometimes read of where people carry out lucid-dreaming oriented tasks such as writing in their dream journals or saying their mantras completely oblivious to the fact that they are already dreaming. Ironic lucidity can however, often lead to higher levels of lucidity as carrying out lucid dreaming related activities will often lead one to reality check.

Story Lucidity: Have you ever dreamt about your favorite TV show or Video Game in a way that you were a character in it? (Or sometimes it is a completely imagined story.) This can often represent a level of lucidity as you are aware that as a character in the story and are aware that anything that happens to that character will have no repercussions on your life because it is just a made-up character.

Inception Lucidity: This has happened to me a couple times, and it is very strange. I will have a dream in which I fall asleep. As I am falling asleep (unaware that I am already dreaming), I will think to myself about lucid dreaming, and my desire to have a lucid dream. As I do this, I will fall out of the current dream into a 'dream within a dream' and become lucid in the second dream. However, I will not realize that the reality I fell asleep from was a dream as well.

Unguided Lucidity: Have you ever gotten lucid but continued to play along with the dream plot? I call this unguided lucidity. Even despite a high level of awareness that what you are experiencing is just a dream; part of your own mind, you still try to get to that class that you are late for.

False Lucidity: This is what I call lucidity where you become lucid, but you never take a moment to properly think what that means. The dreamer will just think to themselves: I'm lucid. That means I can control what happens. Without properly realizing the full implications of what is happening.

Drunk Lucidity: This is like the less-nasty form of Unguided Lucidity. It is basically you become lucid to some extent, but for some reason decide to carry out actions that may vary greatly from behaviors you would expect from yourself in waking life, or perhaps doing things without a real reason. This differs from proper experimentation with the dream world.

True Lucidity: The opposite of false lucidity. In this you become lucid but you are fully aware of of what a lucid dream is, and are aware that you are in fact back laying on your bed. I often find that when I am in a truly lucid state, the clarity of the dream increases greatly.

Control Lucidity: This is the summit of lucidity. It's like True Lucidity in that you are fully aware of the situation, but you are also aware of your objectives and limitations in the dream world, and you are in the process of carrying them out, or considering how to do so.

What I want to know is if there are any more variations of lucidity to be known about.

**dutchraptor** · 08-24-2014 09:47 PM

You're on the right track, two really great lucid scientists have both created non binary systems, in celia greens case for lucid dreams, and in allan j hobsons case for consciousness in general.

Anyone who becomes interested in dreams will quickly notice that it isn't black and white, that there's a whole spectrum. A lot of dream journaling methods on here endorse this idea by writing down what level of lucidity you judge you had.

You've categorized the dream situations by content which is fine in a way, but you'd be better off categorizing them based on form.

**~Dreamer~** · 08-25-2014 08:11 AM

There are a couple of other threads you might be interested in that talk about the 'Layers of Lucidity':

http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...-lucidity.html

http://www.dreamviews.com/beyond-dre...-dreaming.html

I would definitely agree that lucidity is not a black and white concept.
I categorise mine more generally into non-lucid, semi-lucid (which incorporates a lot of the halfway styles you've mentioned,) and lucid.
In the Layers of Lucidity, your Ironic Nonlucidity is referred to as Layer Zero. I have those quite often, haha.

**JadeGreen** · 08-25-2014 01:45 PM

There are a couple of other threads you might be interested in that talk about the 'Layers of Lucidity':

The Layers of Lucidity

The layers Of Lucid Dreaming

I would definitely agree that lucidity is not a black and white concept.
I categorise mine more generally into non-lucid, semi-lucid (which incorporates a lot of the halfway styles you've mentioned,) and lucid.
In the Layers of Lucidity, your Ironic Nonlucidity is referred to as Layer Zero. I have those quite often, haha.

I saw these youtube videos by ReceeJones87 a long time ago, like when I first learned lucid dreaming and completely forgot about them. It's similar but he doesn't mention the cases of 'Inception Lucidity' or 'Story Lucidity'.

It's good to know there others who see it this way.