Thread: Questioning Reality

They are NOT the same. Like I said, you have to work WAY harder to have an OOBE than you do to have an LD. You can have an OOBE with every technique, but again, it takes work. You have nothing to worry about. Just think about all the cool things you can do in a Lucid Dream. It will come. As soon as you stop worrying!!!

Hah, I'm not even sure if I'm interested in LDs anymore. The way my mind works is, whatever is the last thing to grab my attention is the only thing I care about. At the moment I'm far more interested in these alternative sleep patterns. One might very well argue that since I don't like my waking life, it's strange to want to spend even MORE time awake, rather than escaping into a magical fantasy world every night, but whatareyougonnado.

Originally Posted by Snowy Egypt

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No offense, but you shouldn't talk about something if you don't know much about it. You may confuse others.

Originally Posted by heebiejeebies

Hah, I'm not even sure if I'm interested in LDs anymore. The way my mind works is, whatever is the last thing to grab my attention is the only thing I care about.

Maybe you should try a couple of LDs before deciding if you're interested in them or not? As far as I understood, you haven't had them, so you cannot really decide. Maybe you'll like them so much that you'll forget all you thought before, many people are excited by LDs!
But yes, you're really strange... First you make a thread about LDs and things related to them, then you say you're not interested anymore
Good luck, though

Reality is something we perceive - ? And therefore completely subjective, unique to the individual.

If this is the case than unique reality exists in every conscious being in existence. If all conscious beings are "collectively conscious"; unified, than is all individual consciousness, collectively shared with one another?

If this is the case, reality is manipulated simply by your thoughts, actions, and intentions (collectively of course). This means there is no (1) reality, and therefore no right reality.

If you are perceiving, anything, doesnt that qualify for reality?

I just don't see the need to question reality - especially its existence

Originally Posted by IWantToChange

No offense, but you shouldn't talk about something if you don't know much about it. You may confuse others.

I'm not trying to confuse him. LDs and OOBEs aren't the same. Not even close.

Anyway, thanks to heebiejeebies, I'm interested in sleep patterns now. I'd say give him time with LDs, though.

sweetshoes18, That's very deep, and a good way to look at reality. Nice.

i think that we don't actually understand reality at all. while we have theories that can explain everything we see in our daily life, there's a lot that we have no idea what it is. and if we can't explain some of it we can't explain any of it via our expressions. that is why so much of reality is up to our minds. as we evolved there was an evolutionary necessity to see patterns and develop senses, which is what we base the majority of past descoveries and inventions on. it's only recently that people have had the courage to move beyond conventional "wisdom" and move on past our past selves. i think lucidity and especially the "dream yoga" that i read about a little while back are huge steps in realizing that our reality is just a convient clumping of things. and dreams are all over the place because we have no reason to cultivate them, until you become lucid. and when we realize that the way we see our dreams is no different from the way we see our waking life then we can let go of our conceptions of our "waking reality" that some people have trouble questioning. yeah it is scary to think about, but honestly it's not like every seconds you're gonna question reality it's too much to think about all the time. you'll just learn to appreciate things again. i feel that it's like being a kid again, to be enamored with just living. thats the way it should be.

"ohh im too scared to lucid dream!"

"oohh im too scared to think!!"

do you live in a box?? does your mommy dress you for fear to choose yourself?

your fear to think. your fear to question. your fear to experience. is a fear of LIVING. its not a fear of dreaming. so GROW UP. and QUESTION and THINK, like the rest of the adult humanity. because, you have no idea how LAME and PATHETIC it is to hear that someone is afraid to lucid dream. how lame and pathetic it is to hear that someone is afraid to THINK.

lucid dreaming isn't going to awaken your mind to any greater reality. not with your attitude. your mind awakens when you are adult enough. lucid dreaming doesn't magically transform you into something. it is simply awareness of dreaming. how far you carry that awareness is up to you.

but lucid dreaming can give you a damn good understanding of the dual relationship of reality, the objective and the subjective reality. how the two are different. and how the two are the same.

if you are too scared to THINK, leave. RIGHT NOW.

WHERE does the dream take place INSIDE the mind? if the mind is consciousness? and the consciousness is the dreamer? and the conscious dreamer is running around INSIDE the dream? how and why do we perceive a dream as an environment OUTSIDE of our mind when science tells us its actually in it?

if you walk through a fire in a dream and feel your whole body burning, what is burning if your body is safe and sound on your bed? what is doing the feeling of burning? and why is the feeling of burning so real? so real you scream? if there is no real fire? if there is no real body?

how do you scream in a dream if your vocal cords are asleep?

what is the substance of a dream body? the vehicle which allows us to run, jump and interact with the dream environment? is it an illusion? what is an illusion then? just signals in the brain telling us something is there?

do you know how science tells us how we perceive reality?.....through signals......what does this all mean? you will never know unless you ask. theres no harm. you'll only know more and grow and learn.

the waking life has continuity. what this means is, what you did yesterday is going to affect tomorrow. we can't go around do what ever the hell we want and never worry about consequences. because of continuity in this waking reality - illusionary or not - there are consequences.

now dreams tend to lack an outer continuity. that is, every night when we dream we tend to find ourselves in a new world. a new environment. a new kind of story. that what we do in one dream - DOES NOT AFFECT THE NEXT.

but it does have continuity of some sort. it turns out, everything in a dream is spawned from your subconscious. your subconscious is the seat of your emotions and memories. where do we get these memories and emotions from? from the WAKING world. are you dreams boring? well, if they are. your LIFE IS BORING.

when we lucid dream, we are now able to consciously control the dream. so now you don't have to dream about work. so now you don't have to dream about exams. or that scary dentist visit. now you can magically create a door for yourself and walk into wonderland.

lucidity means..AWARENESS. being aware of dream is no different than, BEING AWARE OF LIFE. the more AWARE you are in life, the more aware you are in sleep. the two realities, have a constant.

what is the point of questioning reality? what is it that lucid dreams offer us? there are a million and one discussions concerning this, going into strange eastern beliefs about maya. about the illusionary waking world *with very valid statements*. but the most IMPORTANT thing to walk away with is the understanding that there is a constant in both the subjective and objective reality. that there is a constant, even if you believe life is an illusion. that because this thing always IS existing, even in the illusionary maya, it must be the one thing that IS NOT AN ILLUSION. that this one thing - IS EXISTENCE. IS REALITY. that constant, that always IS - is -

you.

Blow it out your arse you pompous prick.

Originally Posted by heebiejeebies

From the Lucidity Institute’s website:


This freaks me out and is one of the reasons I have been scared of trying LDing for a while. The absolute last thing I want is to be questioning everything – being wide awake, wondering if everything that’s happening to me is real, or if it’s just a hallucination - or to have my perspective on life, death and the universe significantly altered. At the moment, I believe waking life is real, and LDs are entirely created by our own minds. What do others feel? Has having LDs made you question the nature of reality, and whether waking life is real? In what ways has it changed your perspective on things ?

Thanks
-heebs

thats what I believe, and lucid dreaming really hasn't changed that, if anything its made that belief stronger. You definitely should not be afraid of LD-ing, because really its just dreaming with extra stuff, lol. Your fear will sound REALLY silly to anyone that has experienced a LD, very very few people get revelations of that magnitude from LDs and people who fear that for even a second are not likely AT ALL to be those people, IMO of course

Lucid dreaming is definately something you should not be afraid of.

Honestly I think that this thread is overcomplicating lucid dreaming and for people who haven't had a lucid dream it could seem a little overwhelming.

For me lucid dreaming has had no negative affects on my life and instead has given me more incentive to sleep and an ability to use what before were wasted hours of my life.

S’alright guys, I’m over this anyway. I only replied because I got the above messages through e-mail notification. Couldn’t work out how to LD; had a couple of close calls where I dreamt I was LDing but wasn’t actually, then gave up. Moved on to bigger and better things like hitting myself in the head with a cast iron frying pan.

I believe I was already questioning everything before I began to fully explore the world of LD. You are afraid of LD preceding the other. Perhaps for me the questioning preceded exploration of LD.

Lucid dreaming won't make you question what you know, because you don't know anything. The more you learn, whether you study science, philosophy, religion, politics, law, or anything else, the more you'll discover that there are no definite answers, just assumptions that you consider more valid than other assumptions for various reasons.

Don't fear change, you can't ever prevent your perspective from changing; you can only choose whether or not to accept and be aware of these changes, or ignore and be unaware of them.

Part of maturity is understanding that your perspective won't ever be the right one, can't possibly take everything into account, and isn't who you are. It's just a compilation of assumptions put together in a way that lets you create generalizations about your past experiences, so you don't feel like you're stepping into the unknown when you get out of bed in the morning.

If you understand that these generalizations are just your mind recognizing patterns in past experiences so you feel like you have more of a grasp on reality than you actually do, the familiar stops seeming inherently positive, and change and the unknown stop seeming inherently negative.

E: I really hope you don't abandon this thread or your interest in lucid dreaming, because (patronizing as some of our posts may sound) we all want to help you learn a skill that can only be positive and useful to you.