Originally posted by Underfinger
I still don't think I've made this clear enough.

The point of the question is:

How can we be sure that lucid dreams are what we perceive of them?


I have never had a lucid dream, so maybe once I do, I will understand. But until then, how can one know that what we call lucid dreaming is in fact controlling your dreams? In reality it may be what I stated: Dreaming of being conscience and controlling the dreams when in reality the dream is so much like being aware of your dream, you think of yourself as being aware of it.

I basically just summed it up because I was tired.
Lucid dreaming is the conscious perception of one's state while dreaming, enabling a more cogent (\\"lucid\\") control over the content and quality of the experience.

One way of putting it is that your body is asleep, but your mind is awake--though this is not completely accurate, but it lets you grasp the idea.

After having my own lucid dream, I truely believe that my mind is quite aware in the dream. Once you have your first lucid dream, not DAD, you will understand it too. It's much like if you were to suddenly realize that right now that you are dreaming. You would think to yourself, \"Wow, I'm dreaming! What fun stuff should I do right now? Hmmm...\" Right? That contemplating is solid proof that you are aware of dreaming, and not just dreaming about being aware, in my opinion. Your mind would be working very similar to how it works in waking life, except all your senses are being fuelled by your imagination, instead of physical reality.

I hope that cleared it up.

Originally posted by Underfinger+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Underfinger)</div>
Can anyone answer the questions about the weird noises, and my dream about my bed being at the fair?[/b]
I'll try...

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Then, my ears started ringing. Not the usually ringing you get when there is no sound, this was LOUD. And every 2-3 seconds, there was a big \"wave\" of ringing that was so loud, my eyes watered. The best real life relation I can think of is feedback on a microphone/guitar etc... but it was a higher pitch. Then I saw these orange lines kind of moving in rythm... hard to explain.
That's normal. I think they call that white noise that your brain generates to induce sleep. You hear this, not so loud, when you're in a completely silent area. It gets much more noticeable when the REM-period starts, which is typically accompanied by the hypnagogic imagery you described. This happens several times throughout the night without you noticing it. As you practice lucid dreaming more, you will notice this more frequently because you're training your brain to stay aware which is why you're hearing/seeing these things.

Originally posted by Underfinger
Just a few minutes ago, I thought of a dream I had one night after going to the fair (one of the few dreams I can remember past 2 weeks or so... Its over 3 years old). It had me waking up in my bed that was on the fairgrounds with people all around me. So I told them to shutup and I went to sleep.... They woke me up again o_O and that was when I realized I was dreaming (hadn't ever even heard of lucid dreaming). And as soon as I thought of that, I woke up.
This is just false awakenings. It's "fairly" common (pardon the pun ). You simply dream about waking up. This used to happen to me all the time in high school. I dream about waking up, having my shower, eating breakfast, then going to school, then I'd wake up for real! I might drift off to sleep again and have the same dream...it got quite annoying. You said you realized that you were dreaming then you woke up. That's quite common if you didn't know what lucid dreaming was. I had a few dreams in which I realized I was dreaming and woke up soon after, but that was before I knew anything about lucid dreaming, so I don't count those. It's impossible to say if it was a lucid dream or a DAD because at the time you didn't know the difference anyway so it didn't matter.

Hope that cleared things up,

D!