Am I a Lucid Dreamer?

First, I'd like to congratulate on a wonderful site, both in content and engineering.

I've always been fascinated with dreams and the vast subconscious capacities of the human brain. As a child, I've had outrageously interesting, terrifying, and somewhat paranormal dreams that have always puzzled me as I grew up. Now a young adult, my dreams are, without any special influence, developing and changing very rapidly and I need to know if I could be classified as a 'lucid dreamer'.

Although some of my dreams are often uncontrollable, very many are completely up to me and incredibly alike. They usually begin with a blank canvas, a sky and sun appears. Clouds roll into view and I see myself in third person. Sometimes I could simply think of something and it will actively appear in front of me, other times, a preset environment is around me. Some things I can alter using my brain power, others I cannot. In more cases, it is the horror dreams that are beyond my utter control and are sometimes severly horrific.

I dream on a nightly basis and could probably recall the last few months of events that have struck me as odd or unfamiliar. Most dreams recur many times, while others that do now usually (and this is VERY strange) take on context in my life weeks, months, or even years later! And as crazy as this sounds, I've had a case of a dream that I recall having complete control over that actually happened in real life a few months later. I'm a tad bit worried and very confused. Help!

You say you're seeing yourself in the third person? I'm far from the most knowledgable one on the forums regarding dreams, but I would guess that you were partially lucid. In a completely lucid dream, one has total control and power. It's basically like being awake and acting without consequences.


...In my personal experiences.



:)

If you are having a nightmare, you are defenently not fully lucid.
Psychologists may teach patients how to become lucid in order to defeat their nightmares.

Being lucid is just the part of being aware that you're dreaming.
But KNOWING that you can do whatever you'd like, bend the rules of nature, have no consequences for your actions, that's a feeling you'll never forget.

Well it's a bit more complicated, because although I certainly would rather prefer not to have a nightmare, I can't tell whether or not it's instaged by me, which it very well might be. And if so, how could I control lucid dreaming from becoming nightmares half of the time?

http://lucidity.com/EWLD10.html

I hope this will help

Welcome to DV, Operator. To be honest, as soon as I opened this post the first thing I thought was, "He stole my avatar!" Not really, but that was the first avatar I had here. I like that little guy :)

Now, for a dream to be lucid, you have to be aware of the fact that you're dreaming. You can be lucid and not have control, but on the flip side you can have control in a dream and not be lucid. I've had a couple of those. Often I'm telling myself, "This is what I would do if I were dreaming."

At any rate, do you have any idea why these dreams could be getting stranger? The same thing happens to me for seemingly no reason. They just tend to fluxuate between slightly-off-kilter to what-was-that on a seemingly random basis. I would just give it some time. As for your nightmares, do they happen repeatedly? By that I mean do you have more than one in the same night or in several days?

In all honesty, I don't have much of an opinion about dreams that "fortell the future." I don't say they don't exist, but I'm personally skeptical about them. Really the only advise I can give you is just to relax. Wait and see what happens. Also, you can use those repetitive dreams as signs to become lucid. One thing you can do is whenever you get the feeling that you've "been here before" or "done this before" check and see if you're dreaming (reality check). There's a great tutorial on it that I would recommend. Once you are lucid, try finding someone to help you find out what's going on or even just look around your own dream, as a watcher instead of a participant, and see if you can find any answers.

That's all I have, but if you have more questions let me know. The other moderators and Dream Guides would be happy to help you out as well if you need anything. We're glad you're here and I hope you enjoy your experiences here.

-Amé