Finding Beauty in the Mundane Through Lucid Dreaming

[fogelbise]

I wouldn't be surprised if I heard something about finding beauty in the mundane before my adult lucid dreaming practice, but if I had, it certainly never sunk in until the last year or two. I noticed the glaring truth in that statement after some special lucid dreams followed by certain subsequent exercises and then later, more naturally, in waking life experiences borne from the aforementioned. This thread could become more depending on my inspiration or through other DV'ers input. Your input may be what strikes a chord with a new inspiring LD'er better than this simple OP can. After some tremendously beautiful and awe inspiring lucid dreams, I had a more mundane philosophical dream that I considered to be an in-dream epiphany: I'm my present self sitting outdoors at a cafe soaking in the moment. I see happy and sad faces on this beautiful day. I say to myself: "If you don't open yourself up to the world around you, you will miss out on so many experiences." Many passing by are missing the beauty of this moment. There is knowing the above to be true and then there is knowing it to be true...and I would be willing to bet that there is way more for me to experience along this vein as I am catching more and more moments of beauty in the mundane and as I have more experiences of being lucid in waking and in dreaming. Beauty, joy and wonderful possibilities are all much more apparent due to my lucid dreams and practices and I am so thankful to this community for helping me along this path. "Find beauty in the ordinary and you'll find joy in unexpected places." -unknown "Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.” - Camille Pissarro "It's up to you to find beauty in the ugliest days." - unknown

[LouaiB]

Definitely an important thing for every human being to practice; living in the present moment. The actual term for this is mindfulness, and it can be cultivated efficiently through mindful meditation (which i always slack off of doing even though I know I should ).

[FryingMan]

Great stuff! The epiphany was that there is no "mundane." Sometimes it takes having many amazing dream experiences to realize that there is *no* limitation of having amazing experiences only in the dream state. Creating an artificial barrier between the dream state and the waking state, defining only the dream state as desirable, misses out on 2/3 of life's experiences!

[LouaiB]

Great stuff! The epiphany was that there is no "mundane." Sometimes it takes having many amazing dream experiences to realize that there is *no* limitation of having amazing experiences only in the dream state. Creating an artificial barrier between the dream state and the waking state, defining only the dream state as desirable, misses out on 2/3 of life's experiences! So true.

[fogelbise]

Great stuff! The epiphany was that there is no "mundane." Sometimes it takes having many amazing dream experiences to realize that there is *no* limitation of having amazing experiences only in the dream state. Creating an artificial barrier between the dream state and the waking state, defining only the dream state as desirable, misses out on 2/3 of life's experiences! Yes, yes, yes! If you think about some of the ordinary situations that are so joyful in lucid dreams, you begin to see a lot of those same opportunities in waking. I really like the way you put it FryingMan!

[Rothgar]

Before I learned to lucid dream, I often had days that I would describe as being mundane. But really, since then I don't view days like that. I think the reason I feel that way is: a) I may have had some really cool dream that previous night or two ago and I think about that experience....so even if the day is "ordinary" I have recently had extraordinary experiences I draw upon, or b) I may do some RCs then, realizing I might have a cool experience that night to look forward to. Doing this, ordinary days are more like anticipation. But I like this additional idea of now viewing the ordinary days as extraordinary in themselves. I think practicing awareness is one way to cultivate that.

[Patience108]

Yes - its one thing to read and learn about our everyday life having meaning and even being profound but when one starts to actually feel it through ones experiences its simply cool and what I call spiritual - its sure you guys who have been LDing a while have felt this...Ordinaryness The more I LD and connect it to awareness practice and present moment gentleness ...the more I am getting it - the whole picture... well my tiny version of it anyway - thanks for all being here and sharing I cant help thinking it would be good to have a thread/workbook for this to really help folk along maybe this is it ....possibly with Sageouse's input too ( I know he has the Self awareness in the Wild section but maybe that could be a point of its own connected to all LDing in general ...just a thought

[Suacy]

After getting back into lucid dreaming, I had some LDs that were kind of blurry and not very vivid. I felt like all my senses were dulled in the dreams. Then the next morning as I was walking my dog, I spent time looking around at the trees and listening to the sounds of cars and nature, and appreciating how vivid everything was. I spent more than an hour walking that day, whereas I used to spend a half hour at most. I feel like I never have boring moments now, because there is always something to pay attention to.

[fogelbise]

I honestly feel this is one of the ways that the world could become a better place, through the discoveries and re-discoveries found in lucid dreaming and lucid dreaming practices. Please keep the input coming!

[Ajanime22]

I realized that the NOW is actually a phenomenon. It is always departing and always arriving. It is the only thing that exists. The past only existed when it was "NOW". And the future only exists when it becomes NOW. Enjoy whatever you're doing because there will come a time where what you are doing NOW will only be a memory. Enjoy it while it's still here. Relish the NOW!

[jzinser]

I had a similar experience with psylocibin shrooms but it has lasted since (about 15 months ago) While I was "high" I just kept immersing myself in the moment, watching the clouds and the birds that flew by, listening to music, feeling the grass on my feet.. etc. Just enjoying everything around me, this lasted for about 5 hours and was very very powerful. Then after the experience I had a moment of integration of the whole experience, this was my realization: "We live 90% of our time (if not more) in the past or in the future... thinking about what we will do next day, next month or next year. We keep regretting stuff, wondering what would have happened if we did x instead of y, punishing ourselves because of things that already happened, etc. We live like this most of our days, more and more as we grow up. We create memories based on this, we create memories that are not based on the moment, because we weren't really there. Most of our memories are incomplete, we build our life experience based on memories and not actual experiences. As we grow up our reality becomes more and more distorted because of this... and it is like a snowball, if we do nothing about it it just keeps getting worse and worse" "We take so many things for granted that we forget how lucky we really are, having a bed to sleep on, food on demand, a shower with hot water, arms, legs, a family, friends, ... the list is infinite, just being alive is so amazing! We should never ever take these things for granted! EVER!" "Learning to be in the moment, to take it all in, being able to stop for 5 minutes just to feel everything is key and the lack of it is one of the main problems of our society. Being is the moment is blissful and an amazing experience, every moment is unique and so every moment that we are not living in the present is a forever lost opportunity. Being able to enjoy the simplest things greatly boosts a persons ability to be happy and joyful" Anyways, a little bit off-topic but I wanted to share this life-changing experience with you guys!

[fogelbise]

I realized that the NOW is actually a phenomenon. It is always departing and always arriving. It is the only thing that exists. The past only existed when it was "NOW". And the future only exists when it becomes NOW. Enjoy whatever you're doing because there will come a time where what you are doing NOW will only be a memory. Enjoy it while it's still here. Relish the NOW! ^^Thank you for that. It reminds me of this very moving TED talk where the speaker had lived with years of crippling mental disability but broke through it by basically living in the present: @jzinser Thank you for sharing your very interesting experience. If you had that realization solely, or at least primarily from that experiment, I am impressed with the potential. No judgement at all, I just personally struggle with the idea of psychedelics or hallucinogenic substances being an appropriate route for certain people to go down. I say "certain people" because I am open to the idea that it may be a productive avenue to pursue for certain people in some circumstances. I honestly believe that we can have similar experiences through our lucid dreams without the accompanying risks, but I admit that I only have experience with lucid dreams and not the above mentioned substances.