Thread: I sincerely had no idea...

Hello everyone,

To think...at my age -- I never even knew this was a "thing". My partner and my daughter encouraged me to look into my dreams / visions and that led me here. In just glancing through these forums I can tell this is going to be a fascinating place for me to visit.

After really discovering what "lucid dreaming" is, one question is answered for me. There is a name to what I have been doing for many years. A little time with Google has also shown me there is a small industry built around this offering classes, and books, and instructions, and supplements designed to either give one this type of dream state or to better hone in on it and control it. I am not quite sure yet if that's a great or terrible thing. I would love to find all the best information and that can often be clouded by someone's desire to sell you something. Nevertheless, this will be wildly interesting I think.

Lovely to join you...

Welcome to Dreamviews! I am very happy that you discovered the world of lucud dreaming even after you where lucid dreaming for so long without knowing it.

As for lucid dreaming as an industry, you can succesfully lucid dream without ever spending a dime but there is some useful stuff out there. There are a lot of good books on the subject. Stephen LaBerge's Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming is practically a must have. I am currently reading Daniel Love's Are You Dreaming and it seems good too. There are plenty of free resources online, especially on this site, so don't feel like you need $$$ to learn more.

Supplaments are in no way required to lucid dream but can give more vivid and interesting dreams in general so can be worth giving a try. Learn about what the different supplaments do and how they work first before so you know what it is you are buying and test what kind of results it gives for you personally. Lucid dreaming inducing sleep masks like the Novadreamer and REM dreamer can actually work too belive it or not. Pretty cool stuff. What's important to remember is that in the end it's up to you to become lucid.

Anyways, we would be proud to have you as part of our community and help you grow your understanding of dreams. There is always so much more cool stuff to learn and share.

Hello MadMonkey
Thanks so much for the welcome! I am totally open to doing some buying if there are good products out there. I think I was just struck by the "sales pitches" I got when I first started looking at this. I love the book recommendation, thank you. I will pick those up. I feel like I want to read everything now. As I said, I have been lucid dreaming for a long time now and mildly controlling it. But the idea that I could further that control and participation in them is fascinating.
So again, thank you and I am really looking forward to being here.

It takes a lot more time than money, spending time learning to awaken after every dream, to recall as much dream as possible, to journal etc.

But there are things I would buy like a good mask if it was available, the Rem Dreamer is the only one in production that I think has much to offer but I fear to buy one because it is from far away and if it broke I'd have to ship it to the other end of the earth.

I do wish I had a Zeo Sleep Tracker System tho, I hope the company that bought all of its patents will produce some kind of awesome new device for tracking sleep. Of course Intel has bought up Basis and now makes the Basis Peak, which looks pretty good.

I just wish some company would make a device that works with PCs (not IPhones and such) that has brain wave tracking, eye movement tracking, vibration, paralysis sensing, 3D movement tracking etc all in one device, with ability to program it ourselves thru a developers kit

Oh well someday

In the mean time I only spend money on stuff like vitamins and melatonin.
Like the previous poster said this site and other internet / youtube etc have tons of info for free

Hey cooleymd,
(as I said above) about the spending. It's fine with me for items that will really help me to work with this. You clearly have a lot of experience with this! Some of the things you mention sound wild! I can't wait to see what they are.
You know, I have used melatonin off and on for some time. I don't have any recollection of if or how that affected the dreaming. I will have to take that regularly again and see what impact that has on it.
....Thanks!

typically melatonin makes dreams more vivid as opposed to things like vitamin b6 that make recall better

Welcome! I too was surprised to find an entire industry devoted to lucid dreaming. I was particularly stunned and encouraged by the amount of good science in support of lucid dreaming (see Stephen LeBerge at Standford). I have always taken a more spiritual approach to dreams, believing in their prophetic potential, access to higher self, access to the collective unconscious, etc., so I was thrilled to discover the scientific angle to complement my existing beliefs.

I agree the S. LeBerge and D. Love books are an excellent starting point, but I would also add Robert Waggoner's book, Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, to that list. That one rocked my world, and opened up a whole new world of dream exploration for me. I have also experimented some with supplements, namely galantamine, and have had stunning success with it.

Happy exploring!