Printable View
One of my goals is to practice public speaking in a LD, to the point of being able to present confidently in front of any audience.
I have to give speeches every now and then for university and academia related stuff so...
Does anyone have any stories of this working or anything?
I was lucid on a back stage corridor of an indoor stadium/ giant warehouse where there was a band playing to an audiance of like 10,000 people. I just ran to the stage and began singing to one of the microphones :chuckle:, and I even sang like a rock star haha. Everyone was still cheering and everything. I then went and flied over the crowd before shortly losing lucidity.
Yeah I think you can easily practise speaking in public with LDing.
It's difficult to do because I think when you are lucid you gain a massive sense of power and confidence, a confidence that doesn't exist in the real world.
A problem would be that the audience would likely react however you expected them to! It seems therefore that it would be impossible to objectively assess your development.
I disagree on this one. The confidence is innate to you, not the dream. Not trying to start a philosophical debate on what "you" means, but that kind of confidence is definitely available in the real world. We shut it down most of the time. It just comes from feeling free. And if what you were saying was true, then LDing would have no kind of transformative power whatsoever (which it definitely does!).Quote:
a confidence that doesn't exist in the real world.
To the OP, I would say that speaking in front of people in a lucid dream will ease the pressure quite a bit, and you will start to see the possibilities of having this confidence in waking life. I have practiced being kind to people who don't like me in dreams, and I found that that activity made me feel forgiveness and acceptance in the dream, which carried over to waking life. I was able to be kind to these people in my real life, and in some instances, we became friends. Even when these people openly rejected or insulted me (in waking life), I chose to continue practicing in this way. It has had good effects.
So you can change yourself in the dream, and the changes do have real-world effects. Go for it.
Yes. Awareness is not to do whatever you want in the dream. It is to help. A good way to do this is speaking well.Quote:
Originally Posted by ThreeCat
Really? I'm not very experienced so I didn't know that. What kind of transformative power does lucid dreaming have?Quote:
Originally Posted by ThreeCat
The psyche by nature is fluid and malleable. Belief and intention are incredibly powerful on their own terms. Think of any negative thought you might have during the day, such as, "I'm not good enough." That thought, in and of itself, is not really anything at all--it's just a thought. But our belief in that thought creates a downward spiral of negative self-talk, negative emotional energy, and negative (and mostly false!) story lines that we repeat over and over again. We transform ourselves all of the time, but unfortunately, often not in the best ways.
Lucid dreaming is so powerful because the brain does not know the difference between a virtual experience and a "waking life" experience--partly because they are all experiences! When we play video games, we often feel joy, excitement, and so forth, even though our mental "self" knows the game isn't "real." Studies have even determined that the brain releases the same amount of dopamine for a positive virtual experience as a positive "real" experience. Still with me?
In a lucid dream, everything is so real anyway, and emotional energy and creativity are at very high levels. If we channel this energy in helpful ways, we transform ourselves. These experiences don't die in the dream world--they carry over and make us who we are. If we spend time exploring our minds, breaking down mental barriers (like taking risks in the dream state, feeling confidence in the dream state, learning to turn fear or anger into positive emotions) then we begin to cultivate and then harvest those positive qualities. This is because the "dream self" and the "waking life self" are simply different iterations of the same stream of consciousness.