a mandatory introduction

Hello all,

So, here's my introduction. I've been having lucid dreams on and off for about 14 years. At first they were exciting, later I stopped caring because of some conclusions I drew about their nature, which made them uninteresting. But lately I came to be interested in this topic again, if only indirectly, through my interest in how the consciousness works. If anything, lucid dreaming can clarify that a bit.

I'm hoping to stumble upon interesting and productive discussions in this forum.

Cheers to all members!

Welcome

I'm interested to hear about the conclusions you've reached because I'm in a similar position. After a while lucid dreams became rather dull... it seemed they only drew on my expectations and became an almost empty experience compared to the wild nature of some fantastic dream I'd get lost in. For a while now I've been achieving a state of semi-lucidity. I joined the forums today in hopes of opening some discussions about it. For me, it's a much fuller experience than any lucid dream I've had to date.

Have you experienced the state between awake and sleep? Hypnagogia is the term, and if you haven't experienced it, I'd recommend you try. There is myriad of sensations I've felt as my thoughts become more sporadic. It's almost as if my ego ("I") dissolved and is overtaken by this flood of emotions and thoughts I can't control. Then through those thoughts a faded image makes itself known but I can never really tell what came first...Is it that the images I see are generated by those thoughts? Or are the thoughts and images the same thing? My experience so far make me lean towards the latter. They seem indistinguishable.

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Originally Posted by Literphor

it seemed they only drew on my expectations and became an almost empty experience

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I can relate to that. But for me the reason was not the wildness of normal dreams, but rather experiences I had from meditating. I wouldn't say outright that lucid dreaming was less interesting per se, but it had a major drawback: it was rare enough, too short, and lucid awareness was not good enough.

However, I think I recently understood the causes of all these things. They're related to how our consciousness works at daytime, and I think all of those things can be changed. With a lot of work.

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Originally Posted by Literphor

I joined the forums today in hopes of opening some discussions about it. For me, it's a much fuller experience than any lucid dream I've had to date.

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I could swear that there are other interesting states to be achieved in dreams, apart from lucidity or semi-lucidity. Did you notice that lucidity is not always linked to the awareness of being in the dream directly and happens afterwards? Most of my lucid experiences started out like that, with a sort of (mental) jolt, and the realization about being asleep occuring later. Sometimes instead of a jolt I would experience distinct physical sensations spontaneously that would shatter the ongoing dream, mostly drawing me into sleep paralysis and indirectly causing the realization of being asleep. So I started wondering if the realization of being in the dream is necessary to be lucid, or being "in control" is caused by the jolt and the realization of being in the dream is a by-product. After all, in our waken life we're "in control", without having to remember that we're awake!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Literphor

There is myriad of sensations I've felt as my thoughts become more sporadic. It's almost as if my ego ("I") dissolved and is overtaken by this flood of emotions and thoughts I can't control.

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That sounds like some side-effects of meditation, too. In both states you gain access to such experiences. If you like it and find it easy to enter hypnagogia, you should try out some meditation.

Hi,

It's interesting to see someone having differing thoughts about lucid dreaming other than playing or trying out things in a lucid. I'm a beginner in LD, only had 2 so far. But now that I recalled back it seems the moment I gained awareness, I was pretty lonely and alone. The moment I realise I am in a dream, I know DCs are just projections from my mind so I am actually alone in the "dream plane".

My second LD was quite frightening to me, I was attempting a challenge to walk through a mirror but because I was still unstable, after managing to get on the other side, I lost gravity and floated back in front of the mirror. As I was facing the mirror, I was fearing the mirror would show me something I don't want to see, something that I have buried deep down within me.

I wonder your thoughts about these?

Carrot,

Isn't it paradoxical how in the first dream you knew that all DCs were your own projections, and yet in the second dream you had fears associated with a dreamt-up mirror? I'm curious: how would you explain such a discrepancy?

Lucid dreaming can bring out your fears, just as well as it can show your desires. Some people turn to sex in lucid dreams, other turn to superpowers, etc. My pet peeve has always been fear of the dark, and sure enough, most of my lucid dreams quite annoyingly started out in darkness. Lucid dreaming is walking through the realm of your mind, after all, so what you see is a reflection of emotions, desires, and fears inside of yourself.

That said, looking in the mirror is a normal thing to fear. You know that your reflection is likely to be different and you would experience a great shock seeing it. I never dared to do that myself, but whenever I tried to look at my body (during OBEs) the bed was empty, and I drew a conclusion that seeing it was too much for me too handle. There's something dreadful about seeing your body in a different way that you're used to. Your fear of the mirror must've been caused by similar feelings.

Hmm maybe if I were to tell you what my fear is, you would know the difference. Ironically I have used mirror to do reality check twice so I wasn't afraid of my reflection. I have seen them, the first where I have a super huge nose that looked as though I was in a mirror house in an amusement park, the second time I saw my reflection, it was perfectly normal.

My fear in real life is things abruptly appear and gore. Combine them together I would get a shock of my life, reasons why I don't like horror movies. :|