Faq

In days of yore, the denizens of Usenet gathered round their glowing green terminals and talked of many things. Yet as the glowing green terminals spread across the land, and many were initiated into its fellowship, those of old grew tired of the unceasing questions of the young which had been answered before, yeah, unto many times. And so did the Elders compose lists of the most repeated questions, resolving to answer them once and for all.

There's already a Lucid Dreaming FAQ among the tutorials, but as one tutorial of many it looks somewhat more like an introduction in a Q&A format than an actual Frequently Asked Questions page.

Also I'm not sure that, for example, "What is WILD?" is either frequently asked, or deserves a long answer in an FAQ - all that the FAQ need do is expand the acronym, say where it comes from, how well defined it is, give a short definition and then point out the tutorial on it. There's no point putting all the tutorials together and calling it an FAQ :-). The above FAQ also has a coupla formatting goofs :-) (some of the headers look exactly the same as the normal text).

If you've been here for any length of time, you've probably seen the same question asked more than once. You may also have had the frustration of not being able to find the original thread.

What questions have you seen asked multiple times that you think would belong in a DreamViews FAQ? As well as lucidity this might include questions that recur about the forum software, moderation policy, Beyond Dreaming questions, or the question "Why can't we all just get along?". Due to the aforementioned frustration in digging out old threads, please post links to show examples if you can find them.

Here's the one that first came to mind:

I dunno what this is but...
Falling impact feeling
Random Body Movement
Does anyone get these?
Weird Twitch

The question goes something like "I start to go to sleep and drift into a really short dream where I'm doing something, and then wake up because my body moved. What is that?". The general answer is that it's called a Hypnic Jerk, its completely normal but we don't really know anything about it :-). It might be associated with a feeling of falling or hitting the ground, or it can just be a completely random jerk.

So, there's a first Frequently Asked Question. My impression is it gets asked quite a bit, and I've backed that up with threads. I've also managed to avoid the completely useless Q "What's a hypnic jerk?" - useless because if you know what it was and how it's called you wouldn't have been asking the question.

Threads (or search for title "blind" in appropriate forums; 25 threads found)

Google "blind dreams"
The first result is a scientific paper which includes a review of this question.

Quote:

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1. There are no visual images in the dreams of those born without any ability to experience visual imagery in waking life.
2. Individuals who become blind before the age of five seldom experience visual imagery in their dreams, although Deutsch (1928) reports some visual imagery in six schoolchildren who lost their sight before age five.
3. Those who become sightless between the ages of five and seven may or may not retain some visual imagery.
4. Most people who lost their vision after age seven continue to experience at least some visual imagery, although its frequency and clarity often fade with time.

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Latest thread

Although this is an Frequently Asked Question, you should still feel free to ask it on the forums! Presumably you are new to the site, or it's your first lucid dream, so we'd love to hear about it and welcome you to our community of lucid dreamers.

This is a common beginner question. Sometimes people ask because they think they were lucid, but didn't have any control over their dream, or maybe it wasn't very vivid, and they expected something more. The answer is very simple: if you realised that you were dreaming, then it was a lucid dream.

It's also common to become lucid for the first time and then quickly wake up. Or you might forget very quickly and then carry on with your non-lucid dream. But it still counts as a lucid dream.

Google: "Was this a lucid dream?" in thread titles.

Oh it was a Q...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ExoByte

Oh it was a Q...

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Lol: http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...d.php?t=41693&

(sorry for useless post, but Exo did it as well... carry on)

Lol. You're welcome. Sometimes I go off DreamViews though, so don't worry too much if it seems to die - I'll be back!

I'm posting these Q's when I see them (and experience deja vu :-)), so that I know they're actually being asked. Once it's fleshed out I'll copy-edit it if I can get it accepted somewhere.

At least to start with, I'm picking up on well-defined recurring questions. I've not been looking for the absolute most frequently asked - mainly it just feels like too much work.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by yelizaveta

This is mentioned rather furtively in a lot of posts i've seen, and I can't find a topic for it...but I'm really curious... I'm not lucid yet and when I am i really don't think sex will be the first (or even fifth...) thing I'll try. But i have heard people say some interesting things about it, and I want to know...what is sex in a lucid like for you?

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Note: to see the whole thread associated with the above quote, click on the arrow icon. Cool forum software or what? This seems pretty useful here, especially since it turned out to be impossible to include links to forum search results.

This is good evidence that people don't always use search :-P. Technically this may not be a particularly frequently asked question - because it spawns very long-running threads :-D.

Google search results

Also, the majority of the previous threads I found weren't actually questions. However, I still think this belongs in the DreamViews FAQ. As the poster says, we tend to be "furtive" about the subject - so including it in the FAQ could make people feel more comfortable starting threads about it.

Answer: I've been naughty and not asked a specific question here. But I can say that it is entirely possible to have vivid and very enjoyable sex in lucid dreams, without waking up. Interestingly for men, orgasms in a dream need not be associated with physical ejaculation.