Hi All

[CentralSphere]

Hi All - I have just Stumbled upon this forum. I post a fair amount on-line. I haven't looked through the forum much; but this seems like a well run forum & the homepage is good. I will be candid. I used a lot of alcohol & street drugs for 17 odd years, & I have a history of MH (Mental Health) issues. Mt present situation is that I have made very good recovery from addiction (7 years clean/sober) & very good recovery from the MH "stuff". I have a good life really, productive, & live independently in a nice place. On to the Dreams; I have always had very vivid & real dreams. I dream in colour, they are often very nightmarish, although the nightmares come in phases. I have a very good dream recall on the whole. I attempt to keep dream diaries, but usually only keep it up for a few days. There are dreams I had when I was a kid, which I remember as well as my "real life" memories, from that time. Things often remind me of dreams I have had years earlier. Dreams have always fascinated me. At college when I was 17, I found a very comprehensive book on Dreams & the different Cultural explanations & relationships to Dreams. There was a large section on Lucid Dreaming. I started practising the technique of looking at my hands in sleep, to induce, conscious awareness inside the Dream state & Lucidity. I started to experience Lucid Dreams, although sporadic. Shorty after college I was sectioned under the MH act & spent around 4 months on a locked ward. I was placed on some strong psychiatric meds. The dreams became so vivid as to be "real" or as real as waking life. Fast track to now, & my situation is that since my earlier college days; I have not even practised techniques to induce Lucidity in Dreams. But I have them. They come & go. Although I know when I am dreaming (Lucid) - I cannot distinguish between them & waking reality in the vividness of them, although the content obviously is more bizarre. I also dream these hyper real dreams, & often I am not aware I am dreaming. I am wary of practising lucid dreaming techniques, given my history of extreme altered states & psychosis. The subject however is of great interest to me; as is anything connected to the study of consciousness. I take a low dose of a med, which appears to keep me functioning, on a level. Does anyone else on here have experience of "MH" difficulties with the practise of lucid dreams? The associated practise of "astral projection" or OBE's is also of great interest, as are NDE's. I also have an interest with the work of Robert Monroe & the work of some of his contemporaries. Hope that tells you a little about one aspect of myself. I will post again below about some certain dreams I have had this year & a strange effect.

[Serith]

Welcome to Dreamviews! I haven't heard any other cases of anyone with mental health issues who practiced lucid dreaming, although I'm sure someone here has. I understand why that might make you wary of lucid dreaming; one of the few reasons why it might possibly be dangerous to lucid dream that I've heard is if someone with a mental condition mistook reality for a dream because of hallucinations, they could try something that would be fun in a dream like jumping off a building and get hurt. Since you're stable now, there probably won't be problems with it, but you might want to decide to just not do anything in lucid dreams that could hurt you in real life, to be safe. That book you read when you were 17 sounds interesting, what was it called? BTW, about the best book out there on lucid dreaming is "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" by Stephen LaBerge, and if you don't want to actually find the book, all the practical information from it and more can be found in the tutorials sub-forum. If you want to talk more about astral projection, OBEs, NDEs, etc., there's the Beyond Dreaming sub-forum, but we warned that a lot of the threads there degenerate into arguing. However, the threads there where people aren't trying to prove/disprove some phenomenon usually turn out well.

[seeker28]

I'm someone with a colorful history of mental health issues who is an avid lucid dreamer. I am fairly stable now. I take some meds, see a psychiatrist, and see a counseler. I'm a "natural" LDer, meaning I stared to LD at a young age and have had LDs off and on since then. Since I hallucinate I am always very careful to be sure that I am dreaming before I do anything that might get me killed, or be embarassing in waking life. Beyond this I haven't found LDing to cause any problems in my waking life. In fact, I've used LDing to improve my mental health. One of my MH issues is (or maybe "was") post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from some bad stuff that happened when I was younger. I've been quite successful in using my lucid dreaming to combat the crippling nightmares caused by the PTSD. I've used the LDs to deal with the fear, anger, etc associated with the events. I am a calmer, less anxious person. I gotten so much better than I'm not even sure if I have PTSD anymore.

[CentralSphere]

I've been quite successful in using my lucid dreaming to combat the crippling nightmares caused by the PTSD. I've used the LDs to deal with the fear, anger, etc associated with the events. I am a calmer, less anxious person. I gotten so much better than I'm not even sure if I have PTSD anymore. Thank You for the positive & encouraging reply Seeker.

[CentralSphere]

That book you read when you were 17 sounds interesting, what was it called? Thanks for the reply & info Serith. The Book was called "Visions of the Night" by David Coxhead and Susan Hiller, 1976 Besides containing marvelous information about the ancient and esoteric history of oneirology, this book has marvelous illustrations, gathered from many cultures, illustrating key points about dreams. The dream mediates between the worlds of matter and spirit, time and eternity. In Jacobs dream; the ladder with angels ascending and descending; symbolizes the ease of transition between these levels of reality in the mind of the dreamer; Time is abolished, and analogous incidents of past and future are perceived simultaneously as the dream opens the way from one world to another, establishing a relationship between the mundane and spiritual realities. The entire world may be understood as the dream of an awakened dreamer. In dreams of this order there is, literally, no distinction between levels of reality. The creative principle of the World grows out of the navel of the dreaming god in the mythical instant of the creation of the universe. This concept is present in the shamanistic tradition, perhaps as old as human history, in which the individual adept, assumes the role of conscious creator.

[Robot_Butler]

CentralSphere I hope you find a happy medium that works for you. Maybe just giving more attention to your already incredible dreams will yield you some results without confusing your mind too much. There are some great opportunities for psychic healing to be found in dreams. An easy example would be talking with your dream characters to find out more about yourself. You can get some surprising answers if you ask the right questions.

[egizmo]

welcome to dv!.. nice avatar

[CentralSphere]

Hope that tells you a little about one aspect of myself. I will post again below about some certain dreams I have had this year & a strange effect. Thanks for the replies. Earlier this year I had two dreams which stood out especially. The first I was in a house, in a room, with a large garden outside. A snake started growing from between my teeth. It started very small, but grew quickly, it was brown to begin with & then started to become very colourful. It dropped out of my mouth & continued growing to a large size on the floor, while slivering about. It was multicoloured by this stage. Then it disappeared under some furniture; I looked for it, but couldn't find it. I am aware of the obvious representation of the snake with phallic symbolism. But the snake is also associated with communication & renewal (especially cycles of death & rebirth (the shedding of skin etc)). I also very often dream almost as soon as I am asleep. I can awake after 20mins - half an hour, or an hour; after having had a lot of dreams. Is this common? Sometime early year I had a nap during the day on the end of the bed. As soon as I was asleep I was aware I was on the bed & asleep. I had very real physical sensations that I was dying; I died & saw colours & "light", I honestly believed that I had died & it felt like I was "Outside" of my body. Then I awoke. I had been asleep for around 10-15 minutes. Recently I had just fallen asleep & I knew I was asleep in bed. I dreamt that someone was in the room & they jumped onto the bed on top of me & started punching me. I felt the physical sensations of their weight & fists, & desperately tried waking myself up, which I did do. When I LD it has usually been this "type" of dream scenario - I am having nightmares, & I wake up; but often all I have done is dreamt I have woken up; I can dream I have "woken up" a number of times, & then realise I am dreaming. But these nightmares are usually very disturbing at the time, & I want to actually awake to check things are OK, & I put a lot of effort into waking myself up. They usually follow certain themes that I am in my flat sleeping in bed (which I am); & people are in the house attacking me or intending to. On actually awaking I often go around the flat & turn the lights on & check stuff is OK, I feel very much in a "dream state" & groggy when I am awake, but it passes after a while. These reoccurring nightmares have improved over recent years, & I have interpreted them in a Jungian sense - that the "attackers" are really aspects of myself; I have got more so where I overcome &/or fight them.

[CentralSphere]

CentralSphere I hope you find a happy medium that works for you. Maybe just giving more attention to your already incredible dreams will yield you some results without confusing your mind too much. There are some great opportunities for psychic healing to be found in dreams. An easy example would be talking with your dream characters to find out more about yourself. You can get some surprising answers if you ask the right questions. Thanks Robot; I am a bit of a computer/technology obsessive & I put the PC on as soon as I wake up; & so I am going to try keeping a regular dream Journal, on this site. I will try what you suggest, & speak with dream characters, it is something I don't really do or attempt, but I will give it a go. I agree that dreams can be very healing - I think one aspect of dreams is a way of working through "negativity", or a release valve for emotions, & an expression of the "Psyche" or unconscious.