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What would you do if you had an hour-long lucid dream every night? Would you even want it? And you'd only be asleep for 7-8 hours, so there is huge time dilation.
If you want to, say what you chose and why = D
The point of this thread was mostly to go nuts fantasizing about this happening, but then I realized there are probably some very different opinions about this, so I made it into a question and added a poll.
I picked the first option. Some problems to get out of the way: I would forget a lot of stuff about waking life, since basically only like 0.3% of my time is spent there, so I would probably forget my friends and family. But maybe I can solve that by writing stuff down about my life and constantly remembering it in the dream, like a daily or weekly homework assignment.
Maybe I'll get bored, but in waking life you also get bored, and I think a dream is much more fun than waking life. You can literally act out any fantasy you want! Live any life, be anyone or anything o: You can go to the planet in Avatar and live among the blue people for a few weeks, eat a bunch of weird fruits, ride on a horse and a flying dragon, and then turn into a dragon and fight that black rhino thing or the big cat. You can also eat whatever you want for as long as you want without any consequences. Invent any life on the spot and go live it for as long as you want.
It's impossible to list all the things I could do if I had thousands of years of lucid dreaming, but I think that since I barely get bored in waking life (except when I'm doing homework or some kind of chore, but those aren't necessary in dreams), it is pretty much impossible to get bored in lucid dreams, even I spend 500 times more time in it (approximately).
I get lucid on a daily basis for well over a decade now, so I say it is awesome and the longer you travel, the more you learn. Dreams always have something new and inspiring to give even if you are lucid in them, and there is, so far, not a single point in my travel where I get bored of lucidity and all the options availible to play.
I went with a couple of hours a night. I think that's enough, though I would like to have the option to go longer. Like a week long vacation in the dream world every now and then.
I would probably explore a lot. Travel and discover cool stuff. I would also try to create some sort of world or game which was consistent across dreams where I was limited to a certain extent and had some story. Save the princess and stop the evil wizards robot army or something like that. And I could go there if I wanted to.
Hopefully find my dream guide(s). Where are you!?
I would probably do what I do now, but more and better. Investigate. Find the limits. Master different skills. Live fantasies.
Oh: and I would figure out shared dreaming. Go to some super powerful wall street guys dream in disguise as a little monkey that explodes if you don't tell the truth. Get him to give me all those juicy insider trading tips. Get rich and buy a sailboat and a modular synthesizer.
:spam:
i'm pretty sure people who could afford it would be up to pay even millions to get this possibility ( if control and clarity of the dream would be guaranteed as well ). a year a night sounds way too long though, you would spend 365x more time in a fake reality than in waking life, it could probably mess most people up pretty badly. 2 hours-2 days per night would be fantastic.
I think that the trade (losing track of waking-life stuff) would be vastly outweighed by the life-extension of getting a "free" year every night -- especially since that "life" is one of a lucid dreamer exploring unlimited new universes and conscious experiences without threat of impending wake-up. Besides, it would make the relatively short time in waking life even more valuable, because every wake-up would be like a homecoming. I would probably be a somewhat different person after a few months of this, but I think that difference would be positive, and not something bad.
Also, to turn down the chance to develop my Self and explore existences and experiences I have not imagined, perhaps currently cannot imagine, would, in my mind, be a profound mistake.
So yeah, I would take #1, for sure... would that the offer could truly be made!
The options in the poll weren't appropriate for me. I do have lucid dreams every so often, almost daily. I'm certain if I get off my meds and am able to sleep on time without sleep aids I would have lucids on a daily basis. Anyway, as much as I'm all for lucid dreams I appreciate regular dreams as well. Whenever I meet my significant other in my lucids it's too emotional for me. Quite a few times she even told it's easier to hang out with me when I'm not lucid as she doesn't want me to be sad. However, in regular dreams I could experience her company at some level without knowledge she passed away (depending on the dream).
Regardless, with that said having daily lucid dream is more possible than a fantasy than most people realize. OvO
^^ Unless I did myself, I think you may have misunderstood the poll itself...
It isn't asking if you want to have a LD every night for a year, but if you want to have a time-dilated LD where you experience a full year of dreaming life every night.
I misunderstood it at first as well, but on reading Shiroyasha's post (#2) I figured it out; I guess the question itself could be read a couple of different ways!
Ah I guess I misunderstood. Time dilated, especially one that's year long, every day will be a bit too taxing to keep up especially if you are serious about journaling as well. One year time dialated dream is pretty long. I only had few time dilated dreams that's that long. I'll go with weekly than daily. XD
#1, for sure. Anytime you want to return to waking life you can just "wake yourself up." When you are fully lucid in a dream, you are fully present and with that you are extending your conscious life.
By the way, life extension through transferring consciousness to a new body is a big part of the popular new series Altered Carbon on Netflix. Like in the show, people would definitely pay a lot for the ability proposed in option #1 of the OP's poll.
I forgot to mention above that I would also hope to discover that dream-sharing were possible, so that I can share this virtual immortality with my wife.
... and it ought to be possible in this context, right? Given that it's just as likely to exist as time dilation of this magnitude?
Oh. If you can wake up when you wan't then I'll agree on number 1.
I thought you HAD to do the full year every night. That could obviously have been horrible.
@lighrkVader, @fogelbise, I didn't consider that, but I think it falls under the last option. Option 1 is really about committing to it.
:rolllaugh: hahaha that's cheating xD But I guess it's okay since this is just fantasizing :P This didn't even occur to me since I was just getting excited about meeting people in the dream and building relationships with them. But then you would want them to be sentient and actually feel stuff.. which adds a lot of issues, because what happens to them when you don't dream about them? Is it immoral to stop dreaming about someone? (wow this is getting into philosophy.. let's not go there). Or does every creature exist whether you dream about them or not? There would have to be a ridiculous number of creatures in your head.. Anyway taking someone with you is a really good idea. Or maybe there would be some place in the astral plane or whatever with a bunch of people who also have this ability and you can share dreams with them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sageous
I think after a single night I'd already be a very different person, even after a single 1 month lucid dream. I think after a week of year-long lucid dreams I would be so out of touch with reality (or waking life) I would basically consider myself nonexistent in the waking world and just focus on treating people decently and figuring out how to earn a basic income and not get sick or die too soon.
I guess I was mixing in a fact with the fantasy - namely that you can wake up from lucid dreams pretty easily. Usually the issue is being forced to wake up before you are ready, of course.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shiroyasha123
In this fantasy, if you can keep up an appropriate focus on your waking like - then, since you would only be using each single night's sleep to experience a time-dilated year in dreamland, you could work fine during the day in order to earn a basic income. Going further, you could probably develop all kinds of skills useful to increasing your income in waking life - if that were a goal.Quote:
I think after a single night I'd already be a very different person, even after a single 1 month lucid dream. I think after a week of year-long lucid dreams I would be so out of touch with reality (or waking life) I would basically consider myself nonexistent in the waking world and just focus on treating people decently and figuring out how to earn a basic income and not get sick or die too soon.
Thank you for the fun, interesting discussion :)
What I do in year long lucids, is create a waking-life sphere to remind me of what my life is like in waking before waking up at all. Which made it pretty easy to keep me focused despite the long dreams.
Are you saying this is what you would do, or that this is what you have done?Quote:
Originally Posted by Hukif
What I have done
Hey Hukif, is this waking-life sphere something that you carry with you or floats nearby you perhaps? Sounds like an interesting work-around.
Oh normally Will create a lair for myself where I Go everynight to sleep. And before sleep the sphere Will replay my waking life to solve t he issue
For me dreams are timeless, so i could easily spend a few years just meditating or exploring the universe.
Ya'll are giving such awesome answers :yddd:
Cool! So if you can dilate time, have you posted any tutorials or anything on it? I would love to read that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hukif
I haven't made any posts/threads about it really, but I could PM you the ways I dilate time.
Besides the centuries one, there was a ten year long dream in which I had a family and everything even.
I feel kinda strange and unfamiliar in my body for few moments after i wake up from 1hr+ lucid dream. So i cannot imagine how it has to be after months or even years of lucid dream.
I wouldn't mind having the option to have a year of dream time in a lucid dream. As someone who admittedly enjoys the escapist element of it, being able to retreat into a dream for a year each night would be wonderful. After all the thread creates a hypothetical scenario where you have a year of lucid time each night. If it were a nonlucid dream then it might be easier to lose your bearings on reality; but in the case of an automagically lucid dream I don't think that would be a problem.
I have no shortage of lucid dreaming goals I'd like to accomplish. I could probably learn to coupe with a lot of the issues I face with lucid dreaming; things like the poo dreams, false awakenings, dream recursion, anxiety dreams, and schemas that plague me. I could go through every single TOTM/TOTY this website has ever posted in a single night. Sageous has good points about the life extension as well. You could have years of time to ponder things and meditate freely.
I would like the Caveat of; if you wanted to end the dream, felt like you were getting overwhelmed or losing your bearings you could wake yourself up or cut the dream short and just arrive at morning in the waking world.
Why settle for just one year. Why not hundreds? Thousands? No, Millions!
@FireFlyMan, Damn that's a really good question..
Found something very similar to the "experiencing a year (or more) in a night of dreaming" discussion. I came across a cool article "Inception's inception? 38 stories that take place largely within dreams" and one I checked out was "The Inner Light" which was episode 25 of season 5 of Star Trek: The Next Generation (for ease of locating on Netflix or elsewhere). In the episode, the character is seen with REM-like eye movements under his closed eyelids and he experiences what seems to be a few decades of another life while in this induced state (which seems to be dreaming). When he wakes up they tell him how long he's been passed out, which fits within the timing of a dream.
I remember reading a reddit thread about someone waking up in a hospital from a super long dream where they had a whole life and people he loved, he said he was super disoriented for a few weeks after waking up. I wonder what it would be like to wake up from that.
Also @fireflyman, a million years a night sounds pretty cool actually xD Death just feels like such a terrible thing, I want to keep existing! So having an insane abundance of time isn't something I would reject. Yeah maybe I'd get bored and go absolutely nuts after a single night, but at least I'll have had the opportunity to live to my heart's content. And if I don't get bored.. Well that would just be insanely fun and awesome :P But I'm going to think about this more. Also fyi, when I first read that I thought "damn.. a million years a day does sound like a lot.." and then I thought "but a year a night is also a pretty big amount of time, what makes you (me) think a year a night isn't too much?", which was probably your intention.
I been going over my significant other's dream journal because I remembered her telling me a very lengthy dream couple of years back. This dream spans through the course of 3 years within the dream and it all took place in a single night. It was a very disorienting for her and those around her. The dream mimicked waking life so she had quite a bit of false memories to go through. She was not lucid in this dream though, but I'd still imagine it will be just as disorienting. Just putting this out there for anyone seeking time dilated dreams. It's not all fun and games. ^^'
Not all fun and games, but it is pretty damn cool :P
Every Great Thing comes with dues, I guess... and I for one would be more than willing to pay these dues! Some disorientation, even if it's serious, seems to me a fair trade for virtual immortality spent in worlds of my own making or discovery.Quote:
Originally Posted by lucidbunnie
That's a good way to look at it. ^^Quote:
Originally Posted by Sageous
So i dont feel left out.
I think having a year lucid every night could be fun but i don't know if i'd go through with it completly though. I most likely would miss WL(family/friends/pets,etc)and make myself wake up after a decent amount of time like "one or two days". However, during that time i would try to have as many memorable moments as i could and try out dream telepathy. Kind of like Sageous's dream share task but more out there.lol:alien:
My vote was number 3. (I prefer "one or two days") i could probably get use to that.
I would absolutely love this, but I'd also like an opportunity to get a little nerdy here and do some math.
Let's assume an average person lives for 80 years exactly. Also, let's assume that a lucid dreamer were to start living a year worth of dreams every night at the exact day they turned 20, because optimism ftw. That would leave exactly 60 years in which that person was able to live a year each night in their dreams.
So, we can now say that on a normal year, this person has experienced 366 years; on a leap year, that person will have lived for 367 years. These numbers include waking life years.
Leap years take up 1 out of every 4 years. So, this would mean that the optimal amount of time experienced would be (60/4)*3*366+(60/4)*367+20 years experienced. Simplify this down and you get 16470+5505+20 years, which simplifies to 21,995 years experienced; That's 8,028,175 days of life; 192,676,200 hours of life; 11,560,572,000 minutes of life; or 693,634,320,000 seconds of life. You would have experienced a lifespan nearly quadruple the amount of time that human civilization has been around. And, if you could experience 10 years every night? Your human experience will have been nearly 20,000 years longer than humans as we are today have been around. Would you even be capable of comprehending the apparent length of your lifespan with such an amazing skill? It's absurd really, but the thing is-- we are pretty confident that it's theoretically possible, based on the accounts of trustworthy, experienced lucid dreamers.
I, for one, would love to have a life that long, especially if it's spent lucid dreaming for the majority of that time. Sure, it would be disorientating, but I'm sure that's something I could get used to after a while.
Interesting, i thought about that but i still chose to lessen the amount of time. I wondered why i would give up that much time if it would feel like i was living longer too. I suppose it just depends on the person but it's also the thought that sometimes more seems amazing however when you get into it and there's no turning back, you may regret it. I mean let's turn the tables and say you wouldn't be able to wake up in btw until you make it to year time. That way you get the full experience and don't just take what you can get than call off the dream. How long would you guys go like that if it started today?Quote:
Originally Posted by SpaceGod
In the end, I suppose it comes down to the perception of the individual. As far as if the dreams must last a year, I haven't been in a very long lucid dream yet, so I couldn't really answer that until I get I feel for that kind of experience. However, in my perspective, I would still want to do it, if only because I want to experience being alive for as long as I can; my stance on this may change if I experience something similar to that first-hand, but until then I suppose I will maintain my opinion in that situation until then.Quote:
Originally Posted by DawnEye11
Thanks for explaining SpaceGod. I understand why you chose to go that path more now and i think that's a fair point. For me being in a long lucid is fun until you reach a point where you ask yourself if you've overstayed your welcome. Mostly because of waking life responsibilities. If you don't have to worry about time in nightly year lucids or waking life responsibilities I suppose year lucids feel like you were in the hyperbolic time chamber from DBZ conjuring and experiencing things until the dream ends. Also, when it comes to company dream characters can be with you until you wake up. Now this reminds me of an movie/episode from foster's home of imaginary friends where frankie(think that was her name) was kidnapped by an imaginary friend and brought to a imaginary world where she had to made the decision to leave or stay. Sorry, i need to stop coming up with comparisons from cartoons but i felt like it was worth mentioning. XDQuote:
Originally Posted by SpaceGod
TLDR; Once I feel confident that this is going to happen regularly, I would become seriously detached from the world, my main goal above all would be to figure out how to not die or get sick, my secondary goal would be to read fiction and stuff on dream sites and explore other people's fantasies for ideas on what to do while dreaming. I would treat my friends and family very nicely, just like I treat anyone I don't hate and very rarely see.Quote:
Originally Posted by DawnEye11
At least on the first day, after a just 30 minutes, and then after an hour, and then after 90 minutes, and many more times after that, I would cry and scream with joy xD Because I would be super duper happy about having such a long lucid dream, because it means I can have more of these in the future, and because my life is kinda meh. After a day? (or two) I would start doing reality checks and seriously wonder what the hell has happened and I would think that maybe somebody put me inside a virtual simulation without me knowing it, or maybe I took some insane drug and forgot about it, and I would constantly do reality checks and figure out ways of making sure I'm in a dream. It's kind of hard to imagine actually.. Part of the reason why I made this thread is just to talk to people about it and explore it together with you guys. But after a week.. I honestly don't even know :P Obviously I'll be worried at this point or at least very very curious about what the hell is happening, Am I in a coma? what did I do to land in a coma? Are my parents and family and friends worried? I'm so sorry if that's the case..
But I would just do all the things I want to do in a lucid dream and probably be very haphazard at first, just like all of my lucid dreams. But after like an hour or two, if not after 2 days, I would definitely realize this might go on for a while and make long-term plans, like I would practice skills like flying and magic tricks and transformation, summoning stuff, and fundamental skills like that, to make other things possible. And I would explore how the dream world works, like, is my mind the same? (this is actually a huge thing, because usually in dreams my mind is like 10-20% of what it is awake, but since it's a fantasy I just assume the mind is fine because it's more fun that way) I would see if I can make notes and read them later after forgetting about them, how does physics work, how sophisticated are people? Also flying, that never gets old :D I am really curious if I'll ever get bored with flying or if I'll just spend hours every day flying and have it be just as awesome as it always is.
After a month? That's even more difficult to imagine, but a month is a really, really long time. I think I'd still be screaming or crying out from joy because I'm just in this awesome place for god knows how long and my waking life is meh. I'd probably meditate occasionally just to center myself and put things in perspective (whatever that means :P), just think about stuff and make sure everything is cool. I would probably miss a lot of stuff from my waking life and try to imitate them and try to find or create them in the dream world. I would try and remember stuff about my waking life so that I don't forget it, in case I ever wake up. And I would also build some feeling of "oh god I really don't want this to end, it would suck so much if I left this beautiful place" and get sad just imagining waking up.
Now it's been a year and I wake up. Hopefully I don't jump out the window and die (actually I'll probably do reality checks constantly just because of this possibility.. hopefully I will remember what waking life is actually like so that my reality checks are still valid), instead of dying, I do a million reality checks to make sure I'm really back. Then I go to my computer and write down all the things I did, and do all the things I missed doing. And I would think all day about what to do with this experience and how to tell my friends, because no way they will believe me :P
If the next night I get lucid again, after 15-30 minutes I'll think there's a good chance it happened again, because my lucid dreams are almost never that long. What I would do, I really have no idea because it's already super hard to imagine what I would do after a month, or even just a week. A week is a long time.
But once I feel confident that this is going to happen regularly, I would become seriously detached from the world (Hey didn't you read this before? Time for a reality check!), my main goal above all would be to make sure I don't die or get sick, my secondary goal would be to read fiction and stuff on dream sites and explore other people's fantasies for ideas on what to do while dreaming. I would treat my friends and family very nicely, just like I treat anyone I don't hate and very rarely see.
Thanks DawnEye for that question.
No problem. ^w^That was a good read Shiroyasha. I enjoyed reading about what you would do and feel like. I think i would go through something similar except you dont have to worry about death if you wake up consistently early. Like at 6am or something and it just felt like a year. However, you would be anxious after much time passes.>. <So it does make sense if you think about it like that.
I definitely wouldn't mind being guaranteed however much lucid time I want each night. But I wouldn't eat poop for it.
This might be slightly off topic as It's not 1 year time-dilated dream, but rather 7 years. There were moment's in the dream I'm not fully lucid as well. If anyone wants a sampler of a long time-dilated dream check out Story of Cocoa in my Dream Journal.
I still feel year of time-dilated dream every night is over doing it especially if we can't break free from that condition as we please. ^^'
If anyone claims they lucid dream every single night, thats cool, i just personally believe it would mentally exhaust almost anyone (like not sleeping 2-3 days your memory/thought process could easily f*ck with you)..if I continuously had lucid dreams for two weeks id be twitching out on my couch, borderline psychotic, doing reality checks every two minutes
It's very rare for people to be lucid the whole night, so for most people I don't see how it could affect quality of sleep so much... I'm curious where this very common idea that LDing too much wears you out comes from... I've never read somebody saying that it's a problem for them. And I've never felt any sort of fatigue when I've had periods of nightly LD's. I'm doing nightly lucids right now actually, not noticing any difference at all...Quote:
Originally Posted by PrisonPlanet
Maybe it's because some only get lucid when they're not sleeping properly one night, and so they wake up exhausted and figure it's because of the lucid... idk.. Another possibility is that if you wake up from REM, you'll be pretty groggy..
@prisonplanet we can pretend that in lucid time we don't feel the effects of not sleeping
Lighrkvader ive had lucid dream experience's that appeared significantly longer than others, when i awoke, definitely experienced fatigue, perhaps its psychosomatic and i dont doubt there could be numerous explanations (yours sound reasonable) i dont assume lucidity only occurs in rem but have read during rem sleep our body may shut down systems in our brain responsible for creating memories (im unsure if this applies to lucid dreams) especially if someone's repeatedly in some heightend state of awareness night after night, some researchers believe we are designed to forget our dreams because if we remembered all our dreams we might not be able to distinguish dreams from real memories
i dont have lucid dream but once in a blue moon so this sounds like heaven to me. I would practice not being impulsive and self indulgent. i would also play though and be magic. I have had non lucids where i can use telekinesis and summon fireballs...it is amazing. I would have the adventures i couldnt in waking life because lets face it doing some of those things will land you in prison lol
Yeah. The memory is largely turned off, which is one of the main reasons we aren't quite ourselves as soon as we get lucid.. You can turn it back on though. There is a guide on it somewhere on the forum. I think it's called the three fundamentals or something along those lines... A guide to increasing lucidity.Quote:
Originally Posted by PrisonPlanet
Basically if you take a pause when you become lucid to ask yourself questions that you'll need your memory to answer you turn it on more and more. Increasing lucidity.
I would totally want to be able to have a solid year's worth of LDing a night... If I could wake up whenever I want to. If not, I'd rather just have an hour or two a night, so time spent lucid feels more special. Still though, it's a tough call.