Thread: Theory Regarding Naturals

So I was thinking the other day about lucid dreaming, and something struck me as rather odd.

When I was a baby (according to my mom) I used to suffer from night terrors. I have no memory of any such incidences, even though I have many memories of being an infant.

Sleep paralysis is something natural that happens every time we go to sleep and dream. As much of an experienced LDer as I am, I still have episodes of frightening SP occurring on a somewhat regular basis.

So first I start wondering if infant night terrors have to do with sleep paralysis? I imagine such an experience would be extremely frightening for a baby. Wouldn't it make sense for the body to naturally create some sort of defense mechanism to protect an infant/child against such experiences with SP?

Then I start thinking about people we label as "natural" lders...and others who have to work really hard to develop this skill...and something sort of clunks into place.

Why would our mind "hide" something like lucid dreaming from us? From any of us? True our minds repress memories which are extremely painful, but why repress lucid dreaming, when it is so wonderful?

I think that maybe everyone is born as a natural lucid dreamer, and many of us experience frightening incidents as infants (such as sleep paralysis) which cause us to become more separated and dissociated from consciousness during sleep as a defense mechanism. Therefore, we literally have to relearn this ability that we are all born with, but have repressed for so long.

To me I can't find much other justification for why some people are naturals and others are not. I only became a "natural" at the age of 18, but in reality we're all naturals...some of us just maybe do a better job of forgetting this innate ability than others?

I wonder if they could do tests on babies to see if they lucid dream? ...though that kinda sounds mean, doesn't it? lol

It's just a theory, so for all I know, there might be scientific evidence to the contrary, I'm just putting it out there and am interested to hear what other people think.

It sounds like a plausible idea but I was under the impression that naturals were the ones who had the constant awareness thing going on and it carries over into dreams for them.

Originally Posted by Dying Dignity

It sounds like a plausible idea but I was under the impression that naturals were the ones who had the constant awareness thing going on and it carries over into dreams for them.

I don't think there is such things as "naturals". I've managed to develop the skill of being able to realize I am in a dream without any effort at all. Its just started happening recently all by itself. I attained such skill, I didn't have it to begin with. I believe others can develop it too.

Originally Posted by Loaf

Its just started happening recently all by itself.

that's what I understand for "naturals"... one doesn't have to put any effort in order to realize one is in a dream, it just starts happening.

I agree with the idea that natural lucid dreamers are just people who learned the skill unintentionally, from an early age, usually in order to deal with nightmares. The earliest lucid dreams I can remember are ones from when I was fairly young (age 5-7, probably), where I used lucidity to escape from nightmares. Beyond that, I don't really agree.

I very much doubt that infants, or really most people under the age of about three years old, are capable of lucid dreaming. After all, people that young can't tell the difference between dreams and waking while awake, yet alone while asleep. I know this from personal experience, as I remember several times at that age where I believed that certain experiences where real, and only years later realized that they must've been dreams. I also remember what my thoughts were like at that age, and even while awake they resembled those of my most non-lucid dreams. This makes me doubt that the vast majority of very young children are capable of lucid dreaming.

I think your ideas are likely to be correct to some degree, but I suspect it applies more to the 5-10 age group, rather than infants. I also doubt it applies to everyone. Some people just never have nightmares or similar things. Some people have them, and then just never learn to do anything about it. But the third group, people who learn just enough lucid dreaming to wake up during nightmares, is probably the majority. The majority of that group focuses on the nightmares, and rejects dreaming, while naturals focus on the lucidity, and become better at it.

However, I don't think much of the idea that lucidity is being actively repressed. The majority of that third group probably just doesn't know it's useful for anything besides waking yourself up. Most people just never needed to develop it, or found other solutions to their problems with nightmares.

I've noticed no particular pattern in people I've met that are natural Lucid Dreamers. I've met a few, ranging from a happy, content and secure artsy type, to a confused and insecure pleasure seeker who seemed predisposition to be homeless, and that judgment was not far off.

The ability to dream Lucidly naturally, may have very little to do with dreaming at all in the long run, but more a natural mental or intellectual ability of awareness.

In both examples listed, the only recurring theme I've noticed is a natural ability to notice things, or be aware of events, situations, surroundings and/or environments.

Both examples led and lived entirely different lives, but both grew said ability out of necessity or influence, which led to their natural ability to Lucid Dream.

In some cases, it may just be the difference in the ways our brains are wired, as there are some who have the ability to be self-aware in their dreams from the moment they are self-aware in their lives.

Originally Posted by Serith

I agree with the idea that natural lucid dreamers are just people who learned the skill unintentionally, from an early age, usually in order to deal with nightmares. The earliest lucid dreams I can remember are ones from when I was fairly young (age 5-7, probably), where I used lucidity to escape from nightmares.

Up until now I didn't realized that there was so many of us who have learned to lucid dream like this.I was having recurring nightmares when I was 5 of a witch that was going to eat me , probably because at that time I didn't know anything else that was more frightening.In order to somehow remove the fear and become aware that I'm dreaming before going to sleep I visualized the same witch but in less frightening situations.That witch soon became my first dream sign.After that I started to control my self in the dream.It was like a second life for me.
Some times I think that I miss very obvious signs that I'm dreaming just because I've experienced so much unusual things in my dreams when I'm half lucid.
I believe that lucid dreaming is a skill.And that anyone can learn it.Sure some people have a better imagination than others , some people are more conscious then others but in the end we all dream every single time we go to bed (every single time we have a REM period) and it's only up to us to realize that we are in a dream.

first of all, I think you have an hypothesis, not a theory.

secondly, I think that the sleep process has developed from mytosis since really ancient times. The proces could have been in this order:
mytosis-(after a very long time)->sleep-->dreaming-->lucid dreaming.
It is a little bit hard to demostrate the validity of my hypothesis but it has some sense in order to understand that dreaming could be a consequence of sleeping and this, could be a consequence of body regeneration.
SP could be necesary when the body is regenerating (what posibly is the reason why it exists) I dont´t think that SP exists for avoiding us from acting out our dreams. On the contrary, I think dreams exist because of SP.

I have two daughters, one of them is one month old. I can see that their frightening stuff seems to come more from the fact that they are no more safe inside their mom and perhaps their moment of birth which was natural in both of them and is known as our very first confrontation to death (I think this because of the way they used to wake up by opening their arms wide open before start crying. I´m looking it again in the younger one. It looks like: "WTF I am!")

It's obvious that some experience is needed for dream context, then I'm thinking about their experience in life. The younger one has little experience and its usually around her food and body health, the rest is a bunch of weird stuff for her senses as I can see.

We must take into acount the 9 months of pregnancy too, the nervous system started to develop since her 4th week if I´m not wrong and it would be a clue to follow up their brain growing process in order to understand when dreaming starts out.

I'm natural lucid dreamer, and I know exactly when I started to realize I was into a dream: because of a recurrent nightmare when I was 7 or 8 y.o. Its context was the mixture of some horror movies I saw and my older brother´s active colaboration by always looking to scare me. All the dreams I remember before that period of my life, looklike a mixture of reality and fantasy. I even sometimes cannot tell if what I remember is a dream or it really happenned.

At this point I think that natural lucid dreaming is a kind of developement from normal dreaming (usually nightmares).

I´m still looking forward to see in my older daughter the dream developement process and if she has realized the difference between waking life and dream world. well, there is a little bit problem yet. comunication, she's 3 y.o!

well, that's what I think.

I think there could be some misconceptions about what we call "naturals": There's a point of view which claims "a natural" as a person who has borned with the ability of lucid dreaming. The second point of view, says "naturals" to those who learned to lucid dream without any "help", usually at early ages and more often due to nightmares. There is a third point of view which says that "naturals" don't even exist!

As Serith says, it's most probable that infants are not able to distinguish between waking life and dreams. It could be that they are kind of dreaming all the time? Lucid dreaming involves the fact that one knows he/she is dreaming, for that reason, conciousness about what is both waking life and dreams is needed. If I'm not wrong, self conciousness starts near the 3 years old. May be what we learn is to be aware more of our waking life than our dreams.

Some of the following self-experience characteristics of my first lucid dreams could be common among "naturals" (I'm starting to doubt about my "natural" adjetive. All I know is that I lucid dreamed by myself before I knew about what lucid dreams are):

1- I didn't know it had a name (eventually I gave it my own expression: "to wake up inside a dream")
2- I achieved lucidity just by noticing dreamsigns, although I didn't know any name for those.
3- I didn't know it was posible to induce a lucid dream.
4- I didn't know there were other people who enjoyed lucid dreaming too.
5- I didn't know anything about reality checks.
6- At the beginning I didn't remember about it during my waking life. I remembered about it only in another lucid dream. (although I think it happened because of I had to wake up on the rush for school).
7- I started to remember about it during my waking life after my adolescence (may be because of highschool ended too).
8- It just happened.
9- Once I was a recurrent lucid dreamer I used to call my waking life as "the outside".
10- Sometimes it was hard to convince myself that it was a dream (although I think its common to all lucid dreamers)
11- No one told me about lucid dreaming before I had my first lucid dream.
12- The only thing I wanted to do during my first lucid dreams was to wake up.
13- Once I knew about lucid dreaming, well, my skills have improved.

On the other hand, we have people who learned to lucid dream from the experience of other lucid dreamers who somehow taught them the skill, which seems to depend more in the conviction of who wants to lucid dream more than any genetic pre-disposition to lucid dream. I mean, it lookslike anyone can lucid dream if he/she wants, because anyone can dream.

If I'm not wrong, there are some people who even "naturally" lucid dream without being triggered by any nightmare, they just achieve lucidity because of they just noticed a dreamsign or were able to recognize the difference between both worlds.

What does make one as a "natural" then?

I always rather felt the lucid dreaming was just as much a learned skill as playing the piano. Anyone can walk up to a piano and play it... there may be some who can even listen to Mozart and Beethoven and reproduce what they hear without really KNOWING what they are doing. Some people might only get twinkle twinkle little star.

But then you get the knowledge taught, like piano lessons, or lucid lessons. You learn techniques and skills. Those who could play Mozart by listening would take that knowledge and FLY with it. Those who could play a C octave might take years of diligent practice before they can play Mozart fluidly.

Perhaps lucid dreaming is much the same way? Once given the knowledge, some people are going to find it very simple and become advanced quickly and have lucids every night. Others will find it difficult and maybe only achieve a few lucids a year, despite diligent work nightly.

Just my take!

@Box77

I'm sorry, I didn't read your whole post, but I wanted to say this before I forget about it. I've always thought that "a natural" was a person who, whether they trained themselves to do it or not, is able to have an LD roughly every night with hardly any effort. I never once heard someone say that it has to do with how they learned to LD (i.e: on their own, from birth, etc). However it somewhat depends on the context you use it in. As a general term you would be right, but as a specialized terms for LDers, I figure it's what I said. Granted, I may have interpreted it wrong this whole time, or I may be getting the wrong context from this thread, but that's what I think.

Originally Posted by Xedan

@Box77

I'm sorry, I didn't read your whole post, but I wanted to say this before I forget about it. I've always thought that "a natural" was a person who, whether they trained themselves to do it or not, is able to have an LD roughly every night with hardly any effort. I never once heard someone say that it has to do with how they learned to LD (i.e: on their own, from birth, etc). However it somewhat depends on the context you use it in. As a general term you would be right, but as a specialized terms for LDers, I figure it's what I said. Granted, I may have interpreted it wrong this whole time, or I may be getting the wrong context from this thread, but that's what I think.

Its the difference between a piano student that learns twice as fast, and a baby that pops out of the womb and plays Mozart.

Actually it's more like the student that learns twice as fast and gets to the point where they don't even need practice, as apposed to the baby that plays Mozart

Originally Posted by Fabio-the-dreamer

Its the difference between a piano student that learns twice as fast, and a baby that pops out of the womb and plays Mozart.

I lol'd.

I don't know if babies are lucid enough in waking life to be lucid in their dreams. Babies aren't very self-aware.

Also, I don't really get the whole 'sleep paralysis is frightening' thing. As a little kid I used sleep paralysis to fall asleep most nights. If there's anything that drives people away from lucid dreaming as they grow older, I think it would more likely be their solidifying worldview. Children don't have so many limits on their imaginations of what's possible and what's impossible. I think that's probably why lucid dreaming comes more easily to children than adults.