This Guy Bashes Lucid Dreaming!?

We immerse ourselves in virtual worlds for two reasons: to be entertained, and to understand our "real" world better. By virtual worlds, I am referring to many things: movies, stories, dreams, games, etc.

Entertainment is simple. We want to laugh. We want to smile. We want to cry. We want to be scared. We want to feel.

Understanding our world through fiction is deeper. Classic literature is enduring because people have written simple stories which capture fundamental human experiences. You could pick almost any good film, any good book, any good story, and we could discuss how it helps us understand, or at least think about, our "real" world differently.

Simply put, there is great value in immersing ourselves in certain "unreal" experiences, because it helps us understand our "real" experiences differently.

qzole:

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Ok, so here comes my joker card: Go to the beyond dreaming part of the forum (warning: you have to be open minded)[/b]

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Yes, I’m afraid of posting such things in Beyong Dreaming forum :), partly coz too many people there believe in things like telekinesis and other planes.


Oneironaut:

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That’s all I’m saying, though I have a feeling it’s falling on deaf ears.[/b]

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Not this time :) It is more clear now how this misunderstanding arose, but still not clear enough. I liked your post, it made me laugh a lot (in a good meaning of the word).

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That’s like saying “Man, I’m running out of things to do in my spare time” and someone else saying “Well there is a new Lord of the Rings coming out, let’s go see it” and you answering with “Hell no, I used to like those types movies but I now refuse to get involved in the fake adventures of some fictional character. It’s so pathetic…”[/b]

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You’ll be surprised to know that I gave up watching movies years ago for that reason. :-) The actors were pretending! :-) But it isn’t as grave as it sounds, as it never impaired my ability to be immersed in books or games. That was a change of playground.

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…and then you go home and sulk about how bored you are because you’re looking for something “more” and refuse to take advantage of anything else, until you find whatever it is you are looking for. [/b]

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The case is the opposite. :-) I’m overusing ‘unreal’ things like books, out of boredom. That’s what makes me sick of more unreal things.
Then what is ‘real’? Reality is always around, yet how do you reach it?
Honestly, I feel like something is missing. This whole argument arose out of something that I’ve been pursuing without knowing what it is. What could create such a need to reach itself? Can you make a guess? I can’t help myself, but maybe someone who has it can tell me what it is.
If that’s ‘reality’, then I fail to understand what is behind that word. Coz reality is all around, and something is still missing.


Koji:

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I know several people, including public speaking instructors, that suggest practicing in front of a mirror.[/b]

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Honestly, I think that looking at yourself is more impressive strategy than being looked at by others. You can read your own eyes too well, and fear that you have of public speaking you will see in your eyes. I think that that’s different than learning public speaking in a lucid dream, but not coz it’s realler . Modest people are afraid of their own modesty, facing it in a mirror is a frightening.

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As Oneironaut has indicated, we participate in many activities in addition to our waking existence. These activities are not real, yet we still enjoy them. For these fictional things - which may or may not include that which one does in their lucid dreams - we activate the supension of disbelief. This is how we get involved in something that is clearly unreal. It is a concept of theatre and literature.[/b]

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Ok, I got your point. Tell me what is the opposite of that, for a person fed up with unrealness?


JaphyR:

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We immerse ourselves in virtual worlds for two reasons: to be entertained, and to understand our "real" world better.[/b]

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Still you can look at it the other way. Why do people seek to be entertained? Why do women like long tv series with lots of crying actresses and bad actors? What makes people want to cry over fictional things? Do they have a bad-things-deficit in their life?
In such a view it can be said that people entertain themselves coz they’re bored by ‘plain life’, so they want to relive others’ lives, both with laughter and suffering, it feels more real in such case.
Another approach, understanding the world better, is closely linked with it. It might be a variation of it. That one was emotional, this one is mental, and they often combine.
Surely, there’s nothing bad in either. I’d like to find what is the opposite of these experiences, it’s as I wrote to Oneironaut, to understand what I’m searching for.
So when you don’t want to entertain yourself emotionally or mentally, what is there left to want?

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Originally Posted by Follower

So people are blaming me for saying that they only seek a virtual reality in dreams? And yet you talk about what I’m talking about as only a virtual reality! That shows what people are seeking better than anything else.[/b]

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By pointing out that games I don't play are virtual environments shows my intentions about LDs? I don't follow the logic.

My only issue was with you seeming to put down others for LDing because it was a virtual world but also stating that your own experiences in a virtual world eclipsed anything outside of it, even sex. I've never denied the fact that LDs are virtual in the sense that they have no physical substance, but that does not mean the experiences are any less real to the person experiencing them. I guess it comes down to differing opinions on what is real.

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Originally Posted by Follower

I don’t see how it makes them disagree. You use dream yoga’s ‘dream is an illusion’ method of LD exploration and yet you’re agreeing with others that it’s bad to think like that?[/b]

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No. First, my intentions happen to correspond with the goal of dream yoga. I only learned this after your first mention of dream yoga and my subsequent research into the subject. Second, to use the dreamworld as a door into one's inner thoughts and desires and to use those discoveries to further oneself along the path towards enlightenment is not, in my estimation, believing that 'dream is an illusion.'

I think it would help if you clearly stated what you think dream yoga is all about instead of just quoting someone else and saying "hey, that's dream yoga." :)

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Originally Posted by Follower

So when you don’t want to entertain yourself emotionally or mentally, what is there left to want?
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What's left? Maybe only the most basic instincts: live, and spread
But 'spread'-ing doesn't involves much time, and if we have enough money, living is also assurued for some point. Maybe we could find ways to live longer, or how to conquer other planets to statisfy even more our basic instincts, but if we don't want to, then really what else remains for us to do?...

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The case is the opposite. :-) I’m overusing ‘unreal’ things like books, out of boredom. That’s what makes me sick of more unreal things.
Then what is ‘real’? Reality is always around, yet how do you reach it?
Honestly, I feel like something is missing. This whole argument arose out of something that I’ve been pursuing without knowing what it is. What could create such a need to reach itself? Can you make a guess? I can’t help myself, but maybe someone who has it can tell me what it is.
If that’s ‘reality’, then I fail to understand what is behind that word. Coz reality is all around, and something is still missing.
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I have had similar feelings before, at least to some extent. I think there is too much expectation from this so called reality, however one may define it. Fact of the matter is, for the most part, this material world and the things we do in it are rather boring. Do not get me wrong, we can be excited or overjoyed, but not perpetually.

To me, there is nothing wrong with having both “real” and “unreal”, as long as it makes one happy. In the end, is that not the point – whether or not one is content?

I can understand not wanting to overburden yourself with illusions and unreal desires, but I ask you, isn’t fantasizing part of our existence too? You may simply be unable to tolerate it, and if that is the case I really don’t see what I can do to change your mind. If you can tolerate it but feel like it is meaningless, I suggest you simply stop caring. So what if it, in the long run, does not mean much? This does not mean you envelope your life in unreal thoughts or ambitions. One should certainly moderate these things.

You are trying too hard to find your answers. My guess is you probably can’t help it. It is likely the stage of life that you are in. If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?

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Honestly, I think that looking at yourself is more impressive strategy than being looked at by others. You can read your own eyes too well, and fear that you have of public speaking you will see in your eyes. I think that that’s different than learning public speaking in a lucid dream, but not coz it’s realler . Modest people are afraid of their own modesty, facing it in a mirror is a frightening.[/b]

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I think you will be aware of your fear whether you can “see” it or not. In my dreams, even lucid ones, I can feel emotions and what not. Now, if I try to create a realistic setting and audience and practice on them, I think I would fair much better than practicing on a mirror. I have done both. Audiences give reactions, your reflection will not. Now, that doesn’t mean DCs give you correct reactions, but it can allow you to deal with random reactions when they come.

Furthermore, it allows you to practice scanning over an audience and “including” them in the speech. A mirror is just one’s reflection. Reflections can give fair results as you can see what you are doing wrong, but you can do that when speaking to an audience too. Not to mention, from what some people have said and even from my own experiences, one can likely do both at the same time in a dream.

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Ok, I got your point. Tell me what is the opposite of that, for a person fed up with unrealness?[/b]

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From the way you speak, it almost seems like you are unable to suspend your disbelief anymore. That would be a terrible thing to lose in my opinion. If you cannot, then I suppose you are indeed stuck wondering about some shadowed higher meaning to everything. I do this myself, but I am not quite as grounded in it as you seem to be.

If it is that bad for you, I think it is certainly something that you need to deal with. You make it seem like both “real” and “unreal” things are not enough for you. If that is the case, which exactly are you sick of? Reality is unlikely to offer you more than what you make for yourself. The fantasy component of reality shows no true merit in the physical world, yet gives you anything you could possibly want. Seems like quite a dilemma, in that whichever you choose would leave you wanting more. That is why I simply choose both, and just try to discard the problems with each of them. Yes, there is still an emptiness, but, in my opinion, there is no such feeling as wholeness.

Gregash:
My point about games and a virtual world was that it was not a virtual world for me, but more like playing chess on screen. I knew it wasn’t real and never pretended it to be. So I decided that if you insisted so much to look at it as at living in a virtual world, then you must be unable to view entertainment as anything different than that. :)

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My only issue was with you seeming to put down others for LDing because it was a virtual world but also stating that your own experiences in a virtual world eclipsed anything outside of it, even sex.[/b]

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You see? That’s where our misunderstanding is. For me, games are not a virtual world, you cannot suddenly find your own body in a game. Though both often fall in the same category of entertainment. And both are ‘unreal’. That isn’t worth arguing about, though.

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I think it would help if you clearly stated what you think dream yoga is all about instead of just quoting someone else and saying "hey, that's dream yoga."[/b]

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It’s tough to jam it all into one sentence. Let’s leave out the goal of possible immortality. :) Then dream yoga would be about ceasing to be dualistic. That is, to divide our thoughts, desires, subconscious tendencies, judgements, from our ‘pure’ perception (and ideally, eliminate them). This is achieved in daily life by treating physical reality as an illusion and your own perceptions of it (thoughts, desires) as illusions. At night, by treating lucid dreams in the same way (and ideally, they are eliminated).
That rang a bell for me. There has to be something real once you shred all your learnt thoughts and judgements of reality (and equally of unreality) and look around.


Qzole:

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What's left? Maybe only the most basic instincts: live, and spread[/b]

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But noone is killing you, you don’t have to keep yourself alive. Spreading is more complex, but you can’t go around the world with a single goal of spreading yourself. That sounds like a theoretical model. :(


Koji:

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I can understand not wanting to overburden yourself with illusions and unreal desires, but I ask you, isn’t fantasizing part of our existence too?[/b]

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It is. But what if you’re overfantasizing? It’s not that I lost an ability to fantasize, but fantasizing makes me sick now. I can suspend disbelief, but it will make me morose later, coz of wasting time for something unreal instead of wasting it for something else.
There must be some balance, it requires more ‘reality’. But you’re so right when you say that reality is awfully boring! Reality makes me sick, too.
So the question is, what can bring more reality into your life? And what would kill boredom that is so closely linked to it?

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You are trying too hard to find your answers. My guess is you probably can’t help it. It is likely the stage of life that you are in. If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?[/b]

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Over twenty, but not by very much.

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You make it seem like both “real” and “unreal” things are not enough for you. If that is the case, which exactly are you sick of?[/b]

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Of unreal things. But real things are boring… .

And concerning higher meaning… . It might as well fall into unreal category. A higher meaning of life for a christian would be different from that of an atheist, there is no objectivity. Any of them, or both, could be fantasizing. To use a ‘higher goal for LDing’ words was misleading on my part, I meant a ‘real goal’ perhaps. A goal which is not a game you play with yourself, thinking ‘I do this for that. I pretend that it’s important!’, but a goal that would have significance. That would yield results.

Ok, to sum it up. There’s so much entertainment around that it is stifling. But if you look about searching for something else, you find only an old boring reality. And yet, entertainment is stifling and has to be put aside for a while. I can’t say why, but maybe you know that it is so. You have to put something completely aside to prevent it from obscuring your view and find something else, something that was there all along.
But I can’t find anything but reality which is boring! And who makes it boring? It’s too easy to answer that, and too hard to fix. Impossible perhaps.
Those conclusions may be wrong. The last sentence was ‘But I can’t find anything but reality which is boring!’, everything else was a bunch of assumptions that could be on a wrong track.

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Originally Posted by Tsen

Yeah, some people are weird. A lot like Leo Volont, a former member of this forum (he got banned a while back, before you joined. Trust me, it's a good thing he's gone).
Anyway, Leo insisted that pursuing Lucid Dreaming was pointless and even harmful on a few occasions.
Really, I think its just that they have no imagination, and lack the capacity to keep themselves amused.
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Leo got banned...... O.O;; oh

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It is. But what if you’re overfantasizing? It’s not that I lost an ability to fantasize, but fantasizing makes me sick now. I can suspend disbelief, but it will make me morose later, coz of wasting time for something unreal instead of wasting it for something else.[/b]

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Like I said, maybe you should just try to let go, and enjoy the ride. I know that can be hard but if you can find the balance that doesn't make you feel depressed about the whole issue it might help. I am sure that balance is out there somewhere.

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So the question is, what can bring more reality into your life? And what would kill boredom that is so closely linked to it?[/b]

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I have asked this question many times as I quest for content. I have found that I feel more content when I am around people, whether it be extended family or friends. Problem is, I am also very introverted. I don't quite jump into relationships. I am working on this though. A study I read showed that those that are extroverted are generally happier. Perhaps the very thing we are looking for is something we can't do alone.

If you ever find the real answer though, tell me. O_O

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Over twenty, but not by very much.[/b]

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I thought as much. I think we are roughly in the same stage of life. We are not only looking for who we are, or perhaps who we want to be, but we are also trying to find answers to these questions that give us some sort of worth behind our motivations. I abstained from gaming a while back under similar motivations as yourself. I came to a realization that, I have fun gaming (at least sometimes). I decided that, for right now, I am not going to focus on that which I do not have but rather that which I enjoy. I guess you could see it as making a situation comfortable, or as much so as possible. I have been a bit depressed for a while, and I am trying to overcome that.

That's not to say that we should sit in a corner and ignore the world. I am merely saying, do what makes you feel good. If overfantisizing doesn't make you feel good, than I am inclined to agree with you. If it makes you feel good but it also makes you feel quilty afterwards about the time wasted, then stop worrying about time because, I hate to say it, you'd probably waste it anyway. I know I would LOL.

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Ok, to sum it up. There’s so much entertainment around that it is stifling. But if you look about searching for something else, you find only an old boring reality. And yet, entertainment is stifling and has to be put aside for a while. I can’t say why, but maybe you know that it is so. You have to put something completely aside to prevent it from obscuring your view and find something else, something that was there all along.[/b]

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I disagree. You have to separate them perhaps, but not put one aside. Instead, put them side-by-side. Look at them both objectively and decide what to do from there. If you see that, at a given moment, there is nothing you can benefit from either, than either activity would be fine to pursue. I would say you need to look at them as equivalent. Do whichever feels right at a given time. I don't know if there is something "beyond" reality to explore. I kind of lump it all into the same thing. Instead of looking at fantasy and reality as black and white, I tend to look at it as gray.

I guess what I am saying is, as you might be wasting time with fantasy, you are also wasting time looking for something more. I guess it all boils down to which one you want to waste more time with. I doubt there is something that will make the feeling disappear. I think that when you grow up a bit more, and can look over a long time of accomplishments and relationships, you might feel that it was worth something. In the present, you, and I, probably will not feel the value of what we are doing.

I also think you can find use in most things. Even while fantasizing we are doing something. Perhaps, we are formulating ideas. It might also be as simple as just enjoying the free time we have to do such things. Not everything needs to have incredible, life-changing value.

If you want to put lucid dreaming to a plateau where it might reap results, I suggest finding something to practice in it. I don’t remember where I read it, maybe it was LaBerge’s book, but I remember reading about how someone learned to do maneuvers in ice skating through LDing. She was too afraid to try them in real life, so she used her dreams to practice. She lost her fear and became quite good at the activity. No longer did she watch her friends while moving in repetitive circles. To me, that says a lot about what one is capable of in a lucid dream. All we have to do is find that thing which we want to develop.

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Originally Posted by Follower

But noone is killing you, you don’t have to keep yourself alive. Spreading is more complex, but you can’t go around the world with a single goal of spreading yourself. That sounds like a theoretical model. :(
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Hmm... yes I wan't to belive that I have more purpose in life other then spreading my species, but over the centuries what did we achived, and what was the goal? And also each and every animal goes around the world with a single goal of spreading themselves, and human is no exeption, or what was that we done that didn't support this single minded instinct?

P.S.: Sorry for sounding like a depressed b|tch

i wouldnt be so quick to bash the guy. he doesnt so much come down on lucid dreaming, but in a philisophical sense he lamets the idea of being God, as being THE ONLY ONE, brahman if you will. i have had a similar experience on certain hallucinogenics where i felt i was God...not that i could do anything Godlike, but knowing that I am the only being and everyone and everything around me is a division of myself was truly HELL in its purest form. if any of you get into hinduism or buddhism, this is a recurring theme in thier beliefs.

Great discussion! Some very thought provoking stuff (thanks!) all nice and civil too... I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with everyone!!!

[Hoping not to sound patronising]

Follower - have you read any Satre - e.g. Nausea? A lot of what you say sounds like classic existentialist stuff? I adopted that perspective for a while in my early 20s and indeed started writing a book called 'A Search for Reality' - found it, lost it, found it, lost it - and its still being 'written' twenty years later! It all got rather to nauseating though so... [snip] ...ended up with a Zen perspective where I try to remember that 'all is illusion' (waking and dreaming realities both), and also strive (whilst not striving - very tricky!) to 'be here now' (where time/space & self/other do not exist) and have frequently fully percieved Truth (whatever that might be!!!)

The lyrics of a Donovan song spring to mind: "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is."

Still playing with lucid dreaming and tantric dream yoga (and sex) and as it currently goes I'm enjoying the ephemeral illusions immensely... :wink:

I wholheartedly disagree that you could run out of things to do in a lucid
however, I do understand what hes syaing when he says,
about it being sad that you cant share your amazing experience with anyone, and that it could feel really lonley
that I do understand.
Ive always wodnered that
I bleeive that is why shared dreaming is so interesting to people
because they would love to have lucids with someone
to discuss all the great thigns they did together
i kind o get his ida, regarding lonlyness in a lucid
Imran

I think that you can only become bored with godlike power if you ALLOW yourself godlike power. If he wanted a challenge, he should have challenged himself. set out of climb the mountains of the moon one handed or something; as long as you don't "Cheat" I don't see why it should be any less satisfying than in real life. Other than that, I do understand his argument.