New here, plus why I'm into lucid dreaming now.
Hey everyone, my name is Gwrhyr (pronounced somewhat like 'grr-here', it's a Welsh name).
I just wanted to introduce myself and also talk about why I've become interested in lucid dreaming recently.
I've always occasionally 'woken up' within my dreams, usually once every few months, but I would always wake up shortly after becoming lucid. Whenever I would attain lucidity I got extremely excited, which I'm reading now is probably why I always woke up so quickly.
Recently I've been attaining lucidity more often, which prompted me to do some research about it online, and I read about how digital clocks don't function properly in dreams. After reading that, everytime I see a clock in a dream, I become lucid. I also had a dream recently where I was in a forest, following a path, and there were wooden direction signs, but the signs just had squiggles that would change if you look away and look back, and that prompted me to realize I was dreaming.
In another recent dream in which I had attained lucidity, I felt like I was waking up, but I started to use some techniques I recently read about, like rubbing your hands together, feeling the textures of the dream environment, and shouting "increase lucidity". I wasn't able to prevent myself waking up, but low and behold I didn't wake up into reality, I had a false awakening on the couch within the very same room that I had been dreaming in, a room that was very strange to me, furnished Victorian-era-style.
I've also really enjoyed dreaming, because I can often fly in my dreams, and the fact that I've always occasionally attained a little bit of lucidity has prompted me to want to explore the dreamworld more, and hopefully I will be able to build upon what already comes naturally and have full lucid dreams.
One of the things that has always sparked my interest in dreams is that when I fly in dreams, my dreamself often says out loud in the dream "Flying is so normal, there is nothing weird about being able to fly, this is a normal, everyday thing". I always found that really strange, because obviously flying is not normal, but what really got me to start wondering about the nature of dreams and dreaming was why I always stated the normality of flying in a dream, which is even more than just passively accepting flying as a reality... somehow my dreamself feels the need OVER-accept the reality of flying when I'm dreaming...
I do have some worries about lucid dreaming though. So far I always wake up shortly after attaining lucidity, and one of my worries is that now that I've started doing reality checks, I will attain lucidity when I'm flying and then my flying dreams will end too soon, because my flying dreams are my favorite dreams, and really enjoyable, and I usually fly a lot when I have a flying dream. I don't really want to always attain lucidity when I start flying and then have the dream end. But I suppose the only solution is to develop my ability to stay calm while lucid in order to stay within the dream. But it could also be that my over-acceptance of the normality of flying is needed in order to be able to fly, since I have read that a lot of people find it very difficult to fly lucidly... maybe the feeling is just too exciting, so it leads to waking up too quickly.
Anyway, that was just a little introduction into why Ive become interested in lucid dreaming... I feel like my dreamself has been pushing me toward it since I already am familiar with the phenomenon of 'waking up' within a dream.
- Gwrhyr
