Why I'm here

[kino]

Hi, glad to be a new member here, not usually the forum member type. I've chosen the name "Kino" in reference to the light-novel series and anime "Kino no tabi (Kino's Journey) - The Beautiful World" because the main character, with her gender ambiguity, ego-less nature, and directionless journey, as well as the surreal world she explores (an endless forest speckled with tiny little "countries" whcih all seem to exist outside of time, i.e. some are futuristic, others ancient) seemed very representative of what every person is like deep down and the fact that we don't really have a fixed destination. I've always been fascinated by dreams and their amazing diversity, but only recently have I started to take them very seriously and not just as entertaining "mind junk". I'm a skeptic by nature, but that seems to be changing along with my dream-life, which has become more vivid and less confusing to me, even at its most bizarre. I haven't had a lot of true lucid dreams, never really practiced, but regardless, I'm becoming more self-aware and "real" even in my surrelistic dream worlds, the ones which generally were more like faded movies or blurry memories. Its really starting to make me be less skeptical when I read theories about a holographic universe, quantum mind, and all of that stuff. I certainly haven't become deattached from "real life", but I'm beginning to feel like dreams are a bit more real, or, to put it another way, we become too dependent on words to categorize what is "real". Neurologists specializing in dream research have even said that time and physics may be more accurately represented when we're asleep, partly because our frontal lobes aren't regulating logic and the left and right brain become "unified". I may be jumping the gun a bit, but the more I think about these things and connect them to quantum theories and Eastern philosophies, the more it seems like waking life is just a training ground of some sort, a place to develop emotions, even fear and pain seem to be integrating themselves in exciting ways into my dream world over time, and I think that's what has really been making me wake up (heh). In a way, I'm kind of scared that the implications I'm beginning to interpret are making me believe in an afterlife, a concept which disturbs me very deeply. I'm only 26 and it feels like I've already been alive forever; but then again, in my dreams, even when I'm self-aware, time doesn't seem to be the same, and with the loose objectives I seem to have in that world, I suppose eternity could be a pretty fun time; the need to survive and boredom are what make waking life seem so laborious, and those two things obviously wouldn't be issues. So, that's why I'm here, to try to piece this puzzle together a little more by exploring others' experiences.

[Caradon]

Hi Kino. Welcome to Dream Views! I'm glad you have decided to take your dreams seriously. And have an open minded outlook on the nature of things. Have fun, and feel free to ask any questions you may have.

[envisionary333]

First off, welcome to the forum. I'm not the forum-type either but I've been "lurking" for months, waiting until my first lucid dream experience today to finally tell my story. You and I have a lot in common. I am fascinated by all kinds of topics that yield further understanding of ourselves and our fundamental nature in this universe: evolution, quantum physics, cosmology, dreaming... If the topic interests me, I immediately gather up every book on the topic and shut out the world while I reconstruct reality from scratch.... again and again... As a natural skeptic myself, I've always been tempted to poke and prod at a subject from a distance before I gain enough trust to tread further. Lucid dreaming was the same way at first, but having learned of it's scientific validity and now experiencing it firsthand, there is no turning back. The door has been opened, and in with it will no doubt rush forward new discoveries. I am now questioning that these characters in our dreams are not mere constructs of the mind but perhaps we really are in connection with others, through space and time, in the communion of our dreams.... I agree with your comment about our dependence on words to speak for us when most of all experience is "indescribable," as so aptly stated in "Waking Life." Funny how it's such a little concept but it really does take up all of our existence, these silly letters that shape our universe with fumbling and finessing. Nevertheless, I believe we have moments of crystal clarity, when wave forms fall temporarily into unison and the electric charge is transmitted, just the way it was felt, just the way it was meant to be felt. The words limit us, but only because we let them. Now we must learn to speak without words...

[kino]

Hi, and thank you for the welcome! I was going to just wait until I came across something about it, but I guess I might as well ask now.Has anyone ever had a split dream experience like this: I was experiencing sleep paralysis, seeing from that POV and physically straining to move, and at the same time I was walking downstairs in my hallway, looking up the stairs and thinking "idiot", and then i woke up. It was lucid in the sense that half of me knew I was dreaming, but the other half was struggling with sleep paralysis. Which in a sense, was also like some sort of waking OBE! A short experience, yet one of the wildest. I can't even really process it consciously. Oh, and thank you envisionary333, as well. What you said about reading and then reconstructing is a great description of what I do, gets a little exhausting sometimes, no? But worth it, and keeps the mind fresh. And about characters in dreams, I get that feeling a lot, too, especially in dreams that border on lucid. Something just feels too "alive" about them, and the fact that I can be pretty self-aware in a dream and still never question the "reality" of others around me, kind of makes me think that its just my conscious "self" that questions them.

[Robot_Butler]

Hey, welcome to Dream Views, Kino. Dreaming certainly is an awesome way to deconstruct reality. I wish everyone had the same open minded inquisitive attitude you seem to have. From your split consciousness experience, it sounds like you're already having some great dreams. The line between asleep and awake is not real solid. It sounds like you were teetering right on the edge of fully entering a dream. If you read around, you will find its common to have some sense of your 'real' body in bed while you are lucid. Were you in the middle of a WILD meditation? Or did this happen as you were waking up from a dream? I've recently begun interviewing my dream characters. Next time you run into some characters tha seem 'aware', ask them some personal and meaningful questions to see what they come up with. Like, "Do you like me?" or "Where do you go when I'm not here?" and "What do you want from me?". Its pretty mindblowing to consider their answers, regardless of whether they are real or just your imagination.

[kino]

Thank you, Robot Butler! The experience I mentioned happened just like any other isolated dream - Went to sleep for the night, had that experience, and woke up in the morning. Couldn't remember any other dream activity that night.

[Hadyn]

Hey! Mind if I introduce myself here? (You should probably make an official thread for that, btw) My username is "Hadyn" because, quite sadly, Morpheus was already taken. Hadyn (as far as I know) doesn't actually mean anything. Anyway, I found this site via Stumble Upon. I had known about lucid dreams for quite some time. On a different forum a bunch of people always talk about them. I'm mostly here for the "Adventure and Excitement" aspect. As an aspiring Screen Write (read: writes movies) I'm pretty interested in these types of things. E.g. the same mentality that says LSD is a good thing if you're looking for inspiration for a creative writing class. Minus the several hundred dollar fine, and possible jail time. Anyway... I'm almost positive that I've had lucid dreams in the past. But I am definitely interested in different stories that I can write with this.