Thread: Some "truths" About Lding

Before you read this thread, I would like to mention that no point in this thread is un-disputably true. Like almost everything in this forum, it is theory. Although, I assure you that it is based quite solidly. If you have a problem with one of the points, Post about it. Its a discussion forum after all. But at the same time realize that this is for a non-religious/spiritual look at LDs. This does not necessarily apply if you think LDs are designed to serve a purpose along those lines.

Now, why I decided to do this... Mainly because I can... But also partially to share the most interesting tidbits that I’ve learned through experience with the community. I hope these serve as good leverage to perhaps gaining good/complete control or (better yet) help people to have more enjoyable dreams.

The List!

- What happens in a dream is exactly what you truly expect, deep down inside to happen.

- If you truly believe, with no doubt in your mind or heart that something will happen, it will. No matter what.

- There is no spoon (Think of the context of this one. It’ll make sense.) The spoon doesn’t bend. Only your mind.

- All control techniques do one thing and one thing only: make you believe that something will happen by using something that is easier for our mind to believe. Lets take a time machine for example. If you build a time machine that you think will take you back in time... it will. Of course, if you have doubts about it not working, it may not. This is why many techniques fail. Lack of trust.

- It is possible to have an enjoyable LD without total control. “Sure, you can move mountains. But why move mountains when you can walk around them and witness the wonders that lie there?”

- Time is a figment of your imagination.

- A dreams worth can never be measured using how vivid it is, how long it was or how much control you had etc. No statwhoring. The bottom line is: did you enjoy it?

And there’s my 2 cents about Lding. I may start updating this as I remember more things that are important. Comments plz.

I agree with every point you made.

Which is funny. Because although I completely understand that if you believe it, it will happen, I still can't make myself believe sometimes.

Originally Posted by Eminence

Which is funny. Because although I completely understand that if you believe it, it will happen, I still can't make myself believe sometimes.
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And thats where the control techniques come in =P

except "if you truly believe something will happen, it will" (unless you mean only in a dream)[/b]

Ya, this is for dreams.

i have the same problem of making myself believe what's right in front of my eyes and then doing a reality check.[/b]

Everything in the dream is created by your mind. Because everythings created exactly how your mind invisioned it, nothing seems out of place. I might add another point about that... hmm...

And thanks for all the positive remarks guys <3

I also wonder if time dialation is consciously possible.

I&#39;ve had a non-lucid that took place over three days, which made me wake up in a confused state of "how did I get here", and it took at good 5-10 seconds for me to realize that everything that just occurred was a dream.

Conscious time dialation would be pretty sweet. My longest LD seemed to have taken maybe 30-45 minutes or so in dream time (this was an early REM dream too).

good points, very good points

except "if you truly believe something will happen, it will" (unless you mean only in a dream)

Originally Posted by arby

- A dreams worth can never be measured using how vivid it is, how long it was or how much control you had etc. No statwhoring. The bottem line is: did you enjoy it?
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I like this point the best. I think people get caught up too often in how much control they had, how long theirs are compared to others, how vivid it is, etc. Some of my most memorable and favourite dreams have been very short, and others non-lucid.

hey, this is a really good post, and i like it...most of what i read i&#39;ve found to be true within myself...but like someone else said, i have the same problem of making myself believe what&#39;s right in front of my eyes and then doing a reality check.

In a dream everything is created by you and your mind. This means that everything is created in the way that you see it. If you think flowers are/should be beautiful. They will be. If you think a friend is annoying, they will be. Looking back at these aspects of your dreams can teach you endless amounts about how you see the world around you.[/b]

I pretty much agree with all of your points except this one. Just because, dream logic...is...quite illogical at times. Or, most of the time. So I wouldn&#39;t expect everything to be created in the way that you see it, and sometimes, nothing is&#33; I might think that a flower is beautiful...but that won&#39;t stop it from turning into a 7 foot purple ape throwing his arms around and then quickly turns into my dog being swallowed by a tulip...

Originally Posted by Aquanina

I pretty much agree with all of your points except this one. Just because, dream logic...is...quite illogical at times. Or, most of the time. So I wouldn&#39;t expect everything to be created in the way that you see it, and sometimes, nothing is&#33; I might think that a flower is beautiful...but that won&#39;t stop it from turning into a 7 foot purple ape throwing his arms around and then quickly turns into my dog being swallowed by a tulip...
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Yeah, this is what I generally expected people to disagree with. Its also what i&#39;ve been trying to decypher for a while.

I know that your dreams reflect how you see things. Perhaps thats a better way of putting it. There is much too much co-incidence with my dreams and how I think/feel for it to be unrelated. And I do not think anything in a dream is illogical. Perhaps it seems random but everything in your dreams tends to be a perfect metaphor for something happening in real life or something that entered your thoughts. For the dog being swallowed by a tulip, perhaps your dog got lost in the woods a while back and you were really concerned for it. Then on top of that you are worried about the tulips in your garden. Okay, thats a really bad example but still... I&#39;ve gone through some of my really crazy dreams and tried to relate them to reality. It takes a while but everything fits with something that is important in your life. Perfectly. Its uncanny. The seeming randomness come from totally differnt feelings/memories mixxing with your dream/with each other and making something strange.

But that theory of mine is a lil too unproven and out there for me to put it up just yet. I&#39;ll probably re-word that point or remove it entirely.

Originally Posted by arby

I know that your dreams reflect how you see things. Perhaps thats a better way of putting it. There is much too much co-incidence with my dreams and how I think/feel for it to be unrelated. And I do not think anything in a dream is illogical. Perhaps it seems random but everything in your dreams tends to be a perfect metaphor for something happening in real life or something that entered your thoughts. For the dog being swallowed by a tulip, perhaps your dog got lost in the woods a while back and you were really concerned for it. Then on top of that you are worried about the tulips in your garden. Okay, thats a really bad example but still... I&#39;ve gone through some of my really crazy dreams and tried to relate them to reality. It takes a while but everything fits with something that is important in your life. Perfectly. Its uncanny. The seeming randomness come from totally differnt feelings/memories mixxing with your dream/with each other and making something strange.

But that theory of mine is a lil too unproven and out there for me to put it up just yet. I&#39;ll probably re-word that point or remove it entirely.
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You know...I want to just say that I disagree with you on this point...but I guess I can&#39;t because I probably haven&#39;t tried to see if there is meaning/metaphors in even my most illogical dreams. Then again...when you want to, or are looking for meaning in something and are trying to relate to your own life...it&#39;s a heck of alot easier to find it. We see what we want to see. It&#39;s almost like playing chess with yourself. Do you get what I mean by that?

Originally Posted by Aquanina

We see what we want to see. Do you get what I mean by that?
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Yeah, but alot of it is a little more then just anology. Like, in your dream you had a window. Later in the day you go to work and see that exact window and are like Hey&#33; that was in my dream&#33; That window in the dream, will then relate perfectly to how you view it in real life. Lets say its the window that you boss always looks out of to make sure everybody&#39;s working. You might have a dream where you&#39;re hiding from an alien or something thats shooting at you out of the same window.

Of course, alot of it is analogy. Thats why I agree its a sketchy theory.

I agree with your points, but was puzzled by this:
QUOTE(arby @ Jan 24 2007, 12:16 AM) *

- Time is a figment of your imagination. It’s as free flowing as the sand in an hourglass.

Sure, we can turn time backwards or do other things about it, but generally when lucid dreaming I feel time as normal, not as a figment of imagination. I think that time exists in our minds, so it exists in dreams, and when we do things to it in LDs we don&#39;t really work with time. So if we turn the scene back to what it was before we just turn the scene, the time is still linearly flowing and the time of that scene that we sort of &#39;turned back&#39; has already passed. Do I make any sense?smiley.gif[/b]

Not really sure what you&#39;re getting at here 0.o But I believe that the only reason that time exists in a dream is because its what we will believe will happen. Understand where i&#39;m going?

I agree with all the things you&#39;ve said 110%, after all, a dream is what you make it to be and it&#39;s a good dream as long a you enjoy it

The point of enjoying a LD without control, dream control can sometimes wreck the whole point of LDing since you&#39;ll spend your whole time trying to accomplish one task when there are other things to do that you would never [conciously] imagine waiting for you to stumble upon, things that are just as fun. You can be LD without exterting total control, which I personally prefer, because then you&#39;d have a use/purpose for the things you learn to do in a dream, like flying to avoid a mob of angry people is much more fun, to me, than flying just because you can.

Very good points, and they&#39;re pretty much all true.
Liked the Matrix reference in it =P

It&#39;s like FLYING in Peter Pan&#33;
If you believe it, you really can do it&#33;

Interesting read.

I just have a few questions; with the point about you dreaming what you deep down expect to happen, is that what you want? or just what you expect of the situation.
Because that&#39;s... well, kinda disturbing, cos some dreams are pretty messed up, no further comment needed.

Time is such a weird concept, in dreams you can stop/pause time and play around with it.

I totally agree with your points related to lucid dreaming, like not controling everything and learning to appreciate the unknown/spontanious.

You say we experience time in our dreams because we expect time to progress naturally while we are dreaming. So then, do you believe that it is possible, to learn to stop time in a dream...and remain there and live out a dream life for years...while no time is passing in the real world? And going beyond merely stopping time, since time is whatever you expect it to be...could you also move backwards in time? Hmm, now that&#39;s a strange thought...

Originally Posted by Aquanina

You say we experience time in our dreams because we expect time to progress naturally while we are dreaming. So then, do you believe that it is possible, to learn to stop time in a dream...and remain there and live out a dream life for years...while no time is passing in the real world? And going beyond merely stopping time, since time is whatever you expect it to be...could you also move backwards in time? Hmm, now that&#39;s a strange thought...
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I was talking about in-dream time =P

If you could stop time in the real world while dreaming... call me XD

Originally Posted by arby

I was talking about in-dream time =P

If you could stop time in the real world while dreaming... call me XD
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So was I. I was basically talking about time dilation in dreams.

Hmm, good point Aquanina. Stopping time for years in your dream, but its only hours in real life. Time would have no point then...
Except, if you did manage to do that, it would require lotsa brain power (or so im guessing ) and you&#39;d probably wake up x100 tireder than before you went to bed.

I guess with practise it could be possible.

Do you mean make the dream time go so quickly that it seems that normal time is standing still?

Basically I&#39;m just talking about time dilation...where it feels as though you&#39;ve been dreaming for hours or days, when it&#39;s really just a few minutes. Can you somehow manage to stop/dilate time in your dream...so that...you can spend months or years living in a lucid dream...and it&#39;s really only a few minutes in real time. And if you can slow down or dilate time...can you stop it completely? Can you experience a lucid dream while no time is passing in the real world?

I guess that&#39;s what I was getting at...

Well..... Time dialation is wierd. I&#39;m alomst certain that you couldn&#39;t make real time stand still in comparison to dream time tho.

Yes, you can speed up time. This actually occurs naturally with most people. Dream time is rarely on par with real time. When you try to speed time up by thinking about however... complications can occur. You see, because you know you are speeding time up, its not natural time anymore. Natural time is still at the speed you originally were using. This will feel like artificial time and will be difficult to control, will most likely dis-stabilize the dream and result in waking up or other. Therefore, you have to somehow make your mind (or whatever controls time when you&#39;re not) change its mind without yourself going in there and doing it manually. Do you get what I mean? And I have no clue how to accomplish that >.<

And its not even as much a problem of "time" as it is a problem of perception. If you want to cram a year into a minute, how will you be able to register so much happening so fast? we&#39;re talking a few days a second. Can your mind work fast enough to act that out? Of course, there are people who have "accomplished" feats like this but I think I might have an explanation for that too. Take a look at an old thread of mine where I posted an explanation for this. (its a very large post close to the bottem of page 1)

But yes, time in an LD can go zooming by. Just... we need to figure out how to gain some control over our sense of "natural time" in LDs. Perhaps if you tried to slowly speed up time... That might work better since the change will be gradual..... Hmm... I&#39;ll have to play around XD

Lots of people seem to wonder about time dialation 0.o

Heres the best advice that I can give to all of you: This is not exactly an easy thing. If you are an average or casual LDer it is unlikely that you will be able to accomplish anything that will benifit you. But that does not matter. The length of your dream doesn&#39;t matter. Remember the last point. No statwhoring, just enjoy your dreams.

And now I go to bed cause its late.

In reply to most of the posts on &#39;time dilation&#39;. I do not believe it to be possible manually, unless you figure out what your mind is doing to make this happen automatically.

Like blade5x said he had a dream that he played out for 3 days and IRL it was just one night.

I believe if you tried to speed up time in your dream without knowing how your brain does it automatically, you would just have a dream that goes into fast forward like fast forwarding a tape. Mainly because some people use commands to accomplish things like INCREASE LUCIDITY or FLY etc. If you tried to say FASTEN TIME you would probably jsut have a dream in fast forward.

The only thing I could think of why we have dreams that seem like forever when really its only seconds or minutes IRL is because we actually do have a fast forwarded dream but when we wake up we remember it being really slow. Either that or massive chunks of the dream are cut out and we just imagine that there was something there that actually happened.

Have you ever day dreamed in class and you&#39;re zoned out for so long that when you come back you think &#39;shit&#33; the class is probably almost over and i havent even started this essay&#39; ?
Well think about why this would happen, maybe when you come up with an idea, for instance we&#39;ll take my idea of just thinking it went slow when you wake up when it was really in fast forward while you were dreaming.
Try and figure out something which will make you achieve this manually for example you could use auto-suggestion and say to yourself "This dream will run in fast forward so I will experience a few days in my dream. but when I wake up I will remember it running normally" Something like that anyway.

But, not to confuse you, there is the problem of what time actually is, and if you have thought about this your brain may get confused and the auto-suggestion may not work.

I dunno...I definitely think it&#39;s possible. I have a close friend who spent a month in a lucid dream. He had a life there...and was happy...friends...a girlfriend. A whole month&#39;s worth of LD...then he woke up...and was terribly confused and very sad as well to find that all his friends, and the girl he loved were not real. It really affected him...enough so that...he at times forgot that it was only a dream and actually confused reality with dreams a bit.

I have experienced slight time dilation in dreams...and I&#39;ve also experienced time dilation in REAL LIFE. It&#39;s a result of doing DXM...and even occassionally, I have time dilation from weed, but it&#39;s nothing like DXM. For example...on DXM it might feel like you are doing something for hours, when it&#39;s really only a few minutes. And it never ceases to amaze me. I can&#39;t figure out HOW or WHY this is happening. Sometimes its HORRIBLE...like if you are doing something you don&#39;t want to be doing, then the time dilation seems even worse. I explained my first DXM experience as being stuck in hell for years...although it was only a few hours. And even the whole next day...after you&#39;ve come down from a DXM trip...you&#39;ll still experience time dilation, until the effects slowly wear off.

But anyway, I don&#39;t want to get too much into talking about drugs in this thread, I just would like to understand what causes time dilation in real life.

Hmmm. autosuggestion is probably the best bet for getting time dialation in dreams.

Now, aquanina... TD (I&#39;ll refer to time dialation as TD from now on) in real life is even worse. To be able to understand that... you&#39;d have to understand time itself. Now what is time exactly? Nobody really knows but there are some threads bout it in philosophy. Try researching DXM and see what it really does. Its probably your best lead. Also, i&#39;m just thinking..... You know that I-Doser thing thats being talked bout in the lounge? Think theres a DXM for that? If there is... Free TD, no? =P

And about your friend, experiencing a month in 8 hours of sleep is very believeable. First of all, he wouldn&#39;t have experienced sleeping or the like. That cuts down the time by about half. On toop of that he probably wouldn&#39;t have done quite a bit of what he thought he did as explained in my previous link. Thus, he probably dreamed 80 hours in 8 hours. A ratio like that can happen easily and naturally.

And my dream last night was equvelent to about 3 days long. =P

Plus, the dream revolved around time manipulation. I still think my dreams reflect whas been happening in real life =P