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. :P

good points, very good points

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

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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've found to be true within myself...but like someone else said, i have the same problem of making myself believe what's right in front of my eyes and then doing a reality check.

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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. :P
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And thats where the control techniques come in =P

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

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Ya, this is for dreams.

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

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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

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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]

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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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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.

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.

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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?

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;

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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.

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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]

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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?

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... :hrm:

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.

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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... :hrm:
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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

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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.

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

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).

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

I don&#39;t know if there is an I-Doser for DXM...in fact...in pretty sure they wouldn&#39;t have made one like that...but DXM is a dissociative, so it&#39;s similar to PCP or Ketamine, so if there&#39;s an I-Doser for either of those I&#39;d imagine it&#39;s quite similar.

what the fuck? Do I smell a postwhore getting banned?

Aquanina, I can relate to you on this one, although I havent done DXM, I once had this super skunk, red hair, crystalised, and green but almost black weed, I got really paranoid and, I don&#39;t know if that&#39;s got anythign to do with it, but it felt like I was laying down on the grass for hours when it was really only minutes. I only realised how short the time actually was when the bell for the end of lunch went. Coming to this realisation scared me even more. Because I thought I was going crazy. I can only imagine this would be X 10 on DXM or other harder drugs then weed.

I think maybe that it is caused by the drugs opening the creative part of your mind, and there is just so much running through it that you forget about time, and you think its been really long because usually it would take you ages to think of all this stuff, but now its only taking you minutes or seconds. Take this with a grain of salt thought, because I don&#39;t think people really know why alot of things happen from drugs. Even scientists that research it.

Also I would advise you not to do DXM, if you must do drugs try something else, this is one of the drugs that is most likely to give u a bad trip, and if you get time dilation from it alot, then you don&#39;t want to be stuck there for hours (days in your mind) like you were the time u mentioned.

One last interesting fact, if any one has heard of Salvia Divinorum, it is a drug that makes you hallucinate and have all the effects similar to shrooms or LSD but it only lasts for a few minutes and then you are back to your normal self. Its very strange. Anyway, people have reported to live out entire lifetimes in these few minutes after they smoked copious amounts of this plant. Is this even possible do you think? Like is our brain powerful enough?

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Originally Posted by arby

- Time is a figment of your imagination. It’s as free flowing as the sand in an hourglass.
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A strange analogy to chose, considering that the very purpose of an hourglass is to restrict the flow of the sand so that it takes longer and flows at a controlled, paced rate.

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A strange analogy to chose, considering that the very purpose of an hourglass is to restrict the flow of the sand so that it takes longer and flows at a controlled, paced rate[/b]

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LOL this is exactly wat I thought, I was like yeh good point there, but amazingly shit analogy lol. But I suppose you can turn an hourglass around but you can&#39;t exactly make it slow down

Fine then. A broken hourglass XD

I think I really need to go through that first post again =/

Lol yep, actually a broken hour glass is alright because it mean you can get rid of it completely. But still I think maybe just take out the analogy lol

Well, here&#39;s my own theory on time dilation.

First off, I would like to cite a study done by LaBerge and co. that was exactly for this. In the study, individuals were taught a signal to make with their eyes that would indicate that they were lucid dreaming (in case you didn&#39;t know, eyes are one of the only parts of the body not paralyzed during sleep). While dreaming, the participants would count to ten, indicating when they started and stopped. Then, they would wait for what they thought was ten seconds without counting, again indicating when they started and stopped. The result: both were about the same and both were approximately ten seconds.

So, we can safely say that for most individuals, time is experienced normally in a dream, unless there was a major flaw in the test. Well then, what makes time dilation work? It&#39;s because sense of time is like any other thing; an experience created by our brain. Now, I firmly believe that reality does exist and that time really does move at a fixed rate in real life. If this is true, then the passage of time is merely in our perception, and there are several things that affect our sense of time. There is one in particular (and most relevant to what has been discussed) that I like to call the montage effect. In a movie, a character has to train for a fight, and we see short clips of important parts of his training. When he is finally ready to conquer whatever foes there may be, several months might have elapsed, but only three minutes of movie time.

Here&#39;s how it might manifest itself in a dream: Say you&#39;re trying to find an object in your dream. You know you need it to progress somewhere, and hours later you finally find it. Now let&#39;s say you could watch your dream like a film: after realizing you need the object, you go in search of it. Now, key scenes from your exploration sort of blur in and out, until it shows the part where you find it. Only ten seconds have passed of real time. However, because sense of time is created by the brain, and because you are convinced that it took a long time, your brain makes you feel like it did take a long time.

In my dreams I&#39;m rarely lucid, but here&#39;s the funny thing: I&#39;m almost always conscious of the fact that these montages happen. For example, if I&#39;m running through all these rooms of a house to get out, upon waking up I distinctly remember that I only saw scenes of my run through the house--through a den, down a hall, through another room and then I&#39;m outside, even though I feel like it took longer--and I am aware that it wasn&#39;t one continuous experience. It&#39;s weird.

That&#39;s my theory, and I&#39;m sticking to it.

Please debate. I&#39;m interested in what people have to say. :D

Actually I just said that on page 2

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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.[/b]

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But I think you explained it much clearer though. lol :D
This is also my main theory, but not really 100% sure about it, the reason you may only remember some parts is because your dream recall isn&#39;t perfect maybe?

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Originally Posted by tommo

This is also my main theory, but not really 100% sure about it, the reason you may only remember some parts is because your dream recall isn&#39;t perfect maybe?
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I dunno. I still think expectation has something to do with it, at least for some dreams. Perhaps there&#39;s some desire for instant gratification? Like, we want to see what happens next quickly, so it does, but we also realize that it must have taken a long time, because it makes logical sense. So our brains deliver both: a quick proceeding to the next event, and we&#39;re given the sense that it took a long time.

By the way, sorry I missed your theory in your post. I shouldn&#39;t read things when it&#39;s eleven o&#39;clock at night. :zzz:

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By the way, sorry I missed your theory in your post. I shouldn&#39;t read things when it&#39;s eleven o&#39;clock at night.[/b]

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haha np. You explained it better anyway.

I actually just woke up from my closest Lucid ever, I seriously missed about 10 dreams sign all together and 5 of them were in very close succession, I questioned every one of them.
Anyway. One part invloved walking down a long path, and the later on back up it. I woke up and took the - newly named by me - Instant Gratification Theory into account :D I actually think there is alot of truth to this now, I hadn&#39;t actually analysed my dreams earlier to see if this was right. But since you also thought this, I decided to. All I remember from the path was starting to walk from where my dream sign white car was parked I took a few steps and the car was out of my vision. Then all I remember was being at the beautiful lake. But every other part of my dream I had remembered precisely, even down to little things on the sand, approx. height of rock. The feeling of the line tugging etc. It was really vivid. But I don&#39;t remember the path.

So if anyone else has a really vivid dream, care to post what you remember of things like this, long walks etc.
Aactually I might make a new post on this so more people see it.

Good theory. I&#39;m 99.9% possitive that "montages" do occur in dreams. I posted how i&#39;ve seen my own dreams end up in chunks here.

The thing that we cannot be sure about however is if the actual time in the dream itself is normal or fast-forwarded. The reason that experiment might not be valid is those people are being specifically told to count out 10 seconds. This could easily bring them back to normal time because they are concentrating on the time element so much.

You might be able to validify the experiment if you use an external way of measuring time. Ex, have something beep once every ten seconds next to the sleeper and see how far apart they appeared to be in the dream. It probably would be better not to tell the sleeper how far apart the beeping was so they couldn&#39;t anticipate the time and mess up the results.

Eh, and I only read Arby&#39;s post so I don&#39;t know if this is completely off topic or not. XD

QwinspeiaSquared, you&#39;re still on the topic.
And you&#39;re idea sounds good, familiar to the one mentioned earlier in the thread.
I think it&#39;d be more effective if the space between the beeps was one minute, somehow 10 secs seems to short.

Lol, anyone willing to try the beep test?

Agree. agree. agree.
I also thought that because people were told it was 10 seconds, even trying not to think about it they would still be counting in thier head. QwinsepiaSquared your idea for this sounds really good, you should contact someone&#33; :D
I would try the test but I&#39;m not up to scratch with Lding yet.