Is Lucid Dreaming Natural?

I just wanted people's opinion on the issue.

Do you think lucid dreaming is the normal way our bodies are supposed to work? Do you think our busy minds and stressful lives prevent most people from doing it without a lot of effort? I know that younger people LD more than adults, young children especially.

Or do you think that lucid dreaming is a trick we can play on our minds? Our willpower and mental powers of concentration being strong enough to break down our bodies normal separation of conscious/ unconscious?

I know that we are capable of it, so it must be natural. But I can't help but feel like I have to trick my brain into getting there.

I agree... It does seem like we have to trick our brains... Although there are naturals who have had the ability to Lucid dream every night since they could remember... So good question

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Originally Posted by Robot_Butler

I just wanted people's opinion on the issue.

Do you think lucid dreaming is the normal way our bodies are supposed to work? Do you think our busy minds and stressful lives prevent most people from doing it without a lot of effort? I know that younger people LD more than adults, young children especially.

Or do you think that lucid dreaming is a trick we can play on our minds? Our willpower and mental powers of concentration being strong enough to break down our bodies normal separation of conscious/ unconscious?

I know that we are capable of it, so it must be natural. But I can't help but feel like I have to trick my brain into getting there.

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Just because we're capable of it, it doesn't mean it's natural.
I'd say that it is sort of playing a trick on our minds, though idon't believe it is a bad thing or could do us any harm.

No, lucid-dreaming is an exploit. If the admin catches us, we're going to get fucking banned!

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Originally Posted by Marvo

No, lucid-dreaming is an exploit. If the admin catches us, we're going to get fucking banned!

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Sent to after school astral-detention for passing notes to our subconscious during class.

Maybe that should be The Breakfast Club III. I bet we can still get Emilio Estevez-Sheen.

Hey there,

Personally, I think when we're born, we begin in a state of unconsciousness. Consciousness and awareness slowly gets build, thanks to the people around us. They offer us guidance, focus our attention on things, little by little make us more and more conscious of the world we live in.

But they're very selective in what they focus our awareness on (and subsequently what we become conscious off). We are very conscious of some things, and completely oblivious of others. Cultural differences show how some cultures are highly conscious about some aspects that we don't even have a clue about (with the good old stereotype of the Eskimo who 'knows' thirteen different types of snow, while to us there's only... snow.).

Why's this important? Because dreams are one of these things that our culture neglects, in my opinion. We are not made to be more conscious of our dreams, because they're not given attention. They're dismissed as 'only dreams', 'illusionary', 'not real', 'of no value'. We're not taught to remember them, we're not taught to pay attention to them. Subsequently we're not conscious at all during them.

So is lucid dreaming natural? Well, what's the definition of 'natural', first and foremost. But more importantly, I think lucid dreaming is nothing less then the usual 'conscious' building process that's slowly being applied to a new area that we're not taught to be conscious off during our upbringing.

Just my 2 cents,

-Redrivertears-

I've had lucid dreams since as long as i can remember...

... it's as natural as me ...

... not saying much ...

... i think i'm a clone ^___^

Interesting reply, Redrivertears. :) I'm disappointed that so many people in my culture (I'm Norwegian) just completely ignore what goes on in 1/3rd of their lives. I find my "sleep" life important as well, because it tells me so much about what's going on in my subsconscious mind.

If it natural, I think it depends on the mind. I'm a natural lucid dreamer, I've had lucid dreams my entire life (as far as I know), and it's natural to me. Maybe there is no real answer to this?

It occurs naturally, but it is an anomaly. I doubt dreams were designed to be lucid. I just think it's the eventual by-product of our relatively advanced brains.

I wonder how lucid dreaming fits into evolution? Dreams are good, that's why most mammals and birds have them. But what about lucid dreams? What advantages would they give humans as a speicies? This seems a bit off-topic, but it's not. I was thinking about what natural means, and tied that in with genetics. *shrugs*

I consider it natural, but it takes a certain frame of mind to recognize the dream state. At it's core, I believe it comes as sort of a fight-or-flight reaction. Most "naturals" (myself included) seem to have one main thing in common. We have discovered lucidity through response to nightmares. I honestly haven't run across anyone that says otherwise, as of yet. So I believe it may just be one of those things that originates as a survival instinct. We get into a hairy situation and feel the need to get out, or resolve it in some way. In becoming that alert and aware, we realize that what we are experiencing is the kind of thing that just doesn't happen in real life, or that the situation itself just doesn't feel quite real. And Bam, we are lucid. It only takes that one initial time to become aware of the dream state, to be able to recognize it again. Recognition of it then turns to experimentation with it. I believe this stems from just that initial act of becoming aware in a nightmare.

If, too look at it from another way, a person's first lucid dream simply comes from being in a serene situation (which I think might only be the case later on in life than childhood) I think it's just a by-product of intelligence, as Abra said. Whenever someone has time to stop and think, they become more aware of their surroundings, and more able to realize that they aren't in their every day, waking state.

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Originally Posted by Oneironaut

We have discovered lucidity through response to nightmares. I honestly haven't run across anyone that says otherwise, as of yet.

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At first I was going to disagree with you, since I consider myself a natural, but have never had problems with nightmares. Then I remembered that the whole reason I got into learning about LD in the first place was because I would often get terrifying sleep paralysis as a kid while taking naps. It later developed into something I would induce just for kicks because I loved the "high". I guess SP counts as a nightmare, so you may be right.

Redrivertears and Abra, I feel like you are the angel and devil on my shoulders. On the one hand, I feel like society teaches us dreams are not important, so we definitely don't take advantage of them as much as we should. I wonder if, from birth we were encouraged to take our dreams as seriously as our waking time, would it change the way we separate waking and sleeping?

But on the other hand, even with years of practice, I know how much work it takes to induce a WILD, or how much you have to self hypnotize and autosuggest to get DILDs regularly. I have to believe it is some sort of anomaly in the way our brain functions that lets us do this.

I think it is natural, because some people have LD's before they ever know what they are. I don't think it has anything to do with tricking your brain, I think it's just having a higher level of awareness in your dreams. If you have low awareness, then you probably won't become lucid. If you have a high awareness, then it's very likely that you will. (This is only with DILDs, though. WILDing probably is tricking your brain.)

I agree it's not natural for most of us. We'd still have to work at it even if we were living in caves and hunting tigers, or whatever evolution says we should be doing :-). I don't see how its pro-survival. "Exploit" sounds about right.

I wouldn't call myself a full "natural", but my first dreams where I was lucid happened spontaneously, without having to work out a technique, so I'd say LDs aren't unnatural either. I go with Abra: it's an anomaly.

I've only had a few LDs, but some of them have been WILDs which are way cool. I WILD'ing this morning and didn't do a good job of it though. Had a jolt of fear, then some crazy ~sound effects / jitter, a non-vivid lucid (vision, movable viewpoint not much else), and other strangeness. I'll ride it better if happens again soon.

I wasn't planning it, just happened to wake at 6:30, so it I could say it was a spontaneous, "natural" WILD. But I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't read WILD tutorials and done it before. So far my experience of WILDs is that in order to start, you either need to be a "natural" at it, or you need to be consciously trying to do it. I think there is a strong case for saying that staying awake when your body falls asleep is unnatural!

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BTW, my first LDs were for fun, not to avoid nightmares. I remember being badly affected by some early nightmares, but nothing came of that. As far as I can remember, my first LDs were flying dreams. I had one really cool flying dream that I got excited about; I had a load of flying dreams after that, and they became familiar enough that I recognised them at a conscious level, even if I didn't explore much further. And some lucid sex dreams later, in the same way.

Now I say that though, I have had nightmares where lucidity was a real saviour. Hmm. What comes to mind is a technique I had early on, of waking up by opening my eyes, then opening them again, which does require lucidity but doesn't leave you any time to explore it :-). I think I have, at some times, stayed in the dream and just blew the nightmare away with lucid powa!, but I can't remember when.

So I think 'neiro is probably on the right track about the power of nightmares. They wake you up which makes them much easier to remember, and hard to ignore. They really make you want to be able to tell whether you're dreaming. And if you do become lucid, theres a dual rush - becoming lucid and fighting off the nightmare - surely that gets you off to a strong start.

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Originally Posted by Oneironaut

I consider it natural, but it takes a certain frame of mind to recognize the dream state. At it's core, I believe it comes as sort of a fight-or-flight reaction. Most "naturals" (myself included) seem to have one main thing in common. We have discovered lucidity through response to nightmares. I honestly haven't run across anyone that says otherwise, as of yet. So I believe it may just be one of those things that originates as a survival instinct. We get into a hairy situation and feel the need to get out, or resolve it in some way. In becoming that alert and aware, we realize that what we are experiencing is the kind of thing that just doesn't happen in real life, or that the situation itself just doesn't feel quite real. And Bam, we are lucid. It only takes that one initial time to become aware of the dream state, to be able to recognize it again. Recognition of it then turns to experimentation with it. I believe this stems from just that initial act of becoming aware in a nightmare.

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Originally Posted by Robot_Butler

At first I was going to disagree with you, since I consider myself a natural, but have never had problems with nightmares. Then I remembered that the whole reason I got into learning about LD in the first place was because I would often get terrifying sleep paralysis as a kid while taking naps. It later developed into something I would induce just for kicks because I loved the "high". I guess SP counts as a nightmare, so you may be right.

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I was going to as well ^_^
then i remembered my nightmares :/
geez, i wonder why i forgot them....

you have a strong point there Oneironaut.

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Originally Posted by cloudWalker

I was going to as well ^_^
then i remembered my nightmares :/
geez, i wonder why i forgot them....

you have a strong point there Oneironaut.

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You forgot, because now you have awesome lucid powa you don't have to worry about nightmares anymore :-).

Or maybe it's because we tend to grow out of nightmares, or become less bothered by them, which could be a reason we're more likely to discover lucidity for ourselves (as a result of nightmares) when we're younger?

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Or maybe it's because we tend to grow out of nightmares, or become less bothered by them, which could be a reason we're more likely to discover lucidity for ourselves (as a result of nightmares) when we're younger?

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And that could also go along with what I said before, because when you're scared you seem to have a higher level of awareness.

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Originally Posted by sourcejedi

You forgot, because now you have awesome lucid powa you don't have to worry about nightmares anymore :-).

Or maybe it's because we tend to grow out of nightmares, or become less bothered by them, which could be a reason we're more likely to discover lucidity for ourselves (as a result of nightmares) when we're younger?

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Lulz, not to sound too beyond dreaming, but it was in a house which i think was haunted.
We moved in, and the real-estate agent (convieniently) forgot to tell us some guy had commited suicide in there not even 4 months beforehand.
We found out whilst talking to the neighbours.

"Coincidentally" in that house, multiple times the gas was "left on" and we all nearly died.
A fire (started from about half way up the curtain) in my room nearly killed me in the middle of the night.
Also, i had literally 5 months of recurring nightmares. I thought it was normal at that age...
I was known to have awoken mutiple times, and in a sleepwalking state, go out on to the road, and just stand there.
My mother later confessed, she had seen someone who couldn't possibly have been there, and the same with my father.

Yep, i think it was haunted.

I only remembered about all this as i saw the topic before my first post, along with remembering the nightmares themselves. :?

i dont think natural is the word to use it. coz LD is something like walkin, speakin, reading where we are taught, except tat LD isnt taught to us when we are kidz cos the adult also didn know it. right?

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Originally Posted by Robot_Butler

Sent to after school astral-detention for passing notes to our subconscious during class.

Maybe that should be The Breakfast Club III. I bet we can still get Emilio Estevez-Sheen.

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Yes, but can we still get Ally Sheedy?

(shudders)

Okay, well for my two-cents I think that lucid dreaming is natural but the act of training our minds to consistently experience lucid dreams seems unnatural due to the effort that has to be put forth by most of us.