An idea for one of those years-long lucid dreams

The topic pops up here every so often. Someone claims to have spent years in their lucid dream, followed by pages of posts of speculation, flaming, skeptics, devotees, etc. I believe the common explanation for this is currently that you only seriously "remember" the important bits; the rest is the kind of filler memories most of our lives contain(do you remember every bite and swallow of breakfast this day last year? No.).

One trick I've seen cited is to prompt some element of your dream to prolong the dream as long as possible. I propose this as a topic to maybe get someone interested in trying extended dreaming:

Play back your entire life thus far... as it would have gone if you were the opposite gender.

Should be easier for some of us than others, and it will be interesting to see how different your life really is...

Great scott! I'd be a lesbian!

Did you just read the El Goonish Shive archives? :-P Mostly kidding.

I've always wondered what it would be like to have a "what if" dream. It's happened occasionally, but never the past, and never in lucids. That's an interesting idea, and I'll have to see about going through a different past sometime in a lucid.

I believe that the reason we sometimes feel as though a long passage of time has passed in a dream is simply that the brain switches from the feeling we get when we first start doing something to the feeling we have when we have been doing something for a long time in order to give us the illusion that we have been doing whatever it is we are doing for a while. I have actually caught my brain doing this during a lucid dream. I was folding a cardigan during a lucid dream and suddenly I attained the feeling I'd been tidying my bedroom for ages but because I was lucid I knew this wasn't so. It was quite an interesting experience.

I think the brain does something similar to when you are watching a movie and the picture fades out and then with the next scene are the words "3 years later...". In a split second our mind imagines that length of time and somehow compresses it. It's hard to put into words. Our brains are able to make the adjustment for whatever length of time is said to have passed in a movie eg "10 years later" vs "6 months later" or even "one year earlier".

Hopefully this post might put an end to any arguing on the subject. I mean, it's obvious to me that the brain is simply able to simulate the passing of time just as it is able to simulate dreamscapes and conversations with DCs etc.

Who's arguing? I haven;t seen anyone saying anything about dreams actually lasting for years, just what you might try when this occurred. "Time compression" or an implication of time passing, it really shouldn't matter in this discussion.

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Originally Posted by JET73L

Who's arguing? I haven;t seen anyone saying anything about dreams actually lasting for years, just what you might try when this occurred. "Time compression" or an implication of time passing, it really shouldn't matter in this discussion.

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I don't know who is arguing, JET73L. Sorry, I can't help there.

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Originally Posted by DreamQueen

I don't know who is arguing, JET73L. Sorry, I can't help there.

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Exactly. No one is arguing.

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Originally Posted by DreamQueen

Hopefully this post might put an end to any arguing on the subject. I mean, it's obvious to me that the brain is simply able to simulate the passing of time just as it is able to simulate dreamscapes and conversations with DCs etc.

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I thought this thread was about what one might do if this happened, not whether it actually happened or just seemed like it. I agree with that, but I didn;t see how it was relevant to the thread. I wasn't trying to star any sort of fight.

ttt

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Originally Posted by edge0125

ttt

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Yes, I agree!

Have you guys ever thought of not including time into the equation?

Though this is arguable, Time is a man-made thing. I've noticed that when I stop trying to make my LDs last longer- They last longer.
For instance.. You're sitting in school. We all remember that. We glance at the clock.. Listen to the teacher, maybe take a few notes.. Look back up, feel like class should be AT LEAST half way over..
And only five minutes has passed.

This happened to me the other day- no lie. I literally thought twenty minutes had passed.. But it was only five minutes.

Time is of your own perception, and if you choose not to notice it, I think your brain will instead focus on the tasks you want done, rather than having the longest LD ever.
Because when you think about it, time doesn't exist in your head. You can't measure it by days, hours.. Because if you wanted to, you could change all of that in an LD.

Think about it that way, and I think you'll have a more fulfilling LD.

Time is a factor in LDs because your REM periods run out eventually. While dreaming is possible during N-REM sleep, they are usually less dream-like and harder to remember. Trying to get your perception to cover days, months, and even years is exactly the focus of increasing LD length. We aren't sure exactly how it works, it could be increasing the rate your brain processes thoughts, or maybe just bending perception, or maybe even extending the REM period itself. It helps to have a goal when trying for one of these, one technique I have seen is to find a button that causes a dream to last for X amount of time and push it, and enjoy the results.

Ive never had a year long dream