Thread: GUILT in an LD

Don't feel bad for feeling guilty. Our logic can be flawed even in lucid dreams. Maybe you felt guilty because you did something bad that you didn't mean to, even though it was just a dream and you knew that it doesn't matter, because it wasn't real.

I only kill DCs if it's self defence, I can't even kill my Sims in Sims 2 on purpose. I feel guilty myself.

hehe yeah I'm not one big into violence, and the "killing" was oh so accidental. I swear my heart was in my mouth and I was going to be sick! Seems I'm always to damn overcareful about things, even in a dream. That's creepy.

Peace; Smee

I had a LD similar to this in the sense of the guilt. I told a DC that I didn't have to listen to her because under her helmet she was just a faceless doll of my dream. To make it more hurtful while saying this I took the helmet off and sure enough she did have a face. The man that was standing beside her bust out into tears over this and it made me feel so guilty I tried to say I was sorry. I ended up waking up because of this.

I think that it is a deep part of us that summons up the guilt even though we know we are dreaming a deep aprt of us holds on to the values we have in waking life. I think it is because of this you felt the guilt of killing the DC.

Take Care,
Anna

I think your DC answered your question already. If you feel your DCs represent a part of you, of course you should feel guilty for killing them.

Ya, I don't see any reason why you should not feel guilty in a dream.

Feeling guilty simpy indicates that you were not at an extremely high level of lucidity (at least at that moment).

While many people tend to think of lucidity as you-are-or-you-aren't, true-false kind of condition, it's more accurate to think of it as a continuum with one side being "not at all lucid" and the other being "completely lucid."

With the absense of lucidity, obviously you have no knowledge or even suspicion that you are dreaming. You completely accept your dream as reality.

With low-level lucidity, you are basically aware that you are dreaming, but you may still accept certain aspects of your dream as reality. You may be scared to jump off a building, you may view another DC as a real person rather than just another DC, or you may not realize that the setting you are in is different from the way it is in waking life.

As you move up the scale, you become more aware of the implications of the fact that you are dreaming. You realize that everything around you is just a product of your own mind, but you may still follow certain social rituals which you obey almost unconsciously in waking life. For example, if you decide to have sex with a DC, you may choose to take them into a more private place first (forgetting that there would be no social consequences of just doing it in the middle of the street), you may choose to open a door rather than simply pass through it (the door is not real and therefore cannot keep you out), or you may feel guilty after "killing" a DC (even though they are not real in any sense of the word).

At the very top of the scale is complete lucidity. I think by now you can pretty much guess what that entails.

I think even if you're fully lucid, you can still feel guilty. I feel guilty in my Lucids all the time.

I look at it like this. Sure my DCs are not real. Sure I can't get in trouble for doing anything bad to them. Does that mean that if, in real life, I do something wrong that doesn't hurt anyone, and no one finds out, I should not feel guilty? No, because I will know I did something wrong, and I will never forget it.

It's really not a matter of getting in trouble or not. Dreaming about doing something wrong is not doing something wrong. Dreaming is functionally the same as daydreaming - do you feel guilty for fantasizing about punching your boss in the face or getting it on with that hot girl in math class? Of course not - it's just a fantasy.

Originally Posted by DuB

It's really not a matter of getting in trouble or not. Dreaming about doing something wrong is not doing something wrong. Dreaming is functionally the same as daydreaming - do you feel guilty for fantasizing about punching your boss in the face or getting it on with that hot girl in math class? Of course not - it's just a fantasy.

wow.... simply wow...

I believe there should be boundries you set for yourself. The way you act in a dream, should replicate somewhat in real life. I believe that if you become over confident that you can do whatever you want in dreams, the same may happen in real life, resulting in bad consequences. I want to respect most of my DC's while they respect me.

Of course, no one said anything about going to another lucid universe and busting heads! XD I am generally speaking of just the general lucid universe, without any fantasy. Check out BillyBobs "Lucid Universe" thread. <- It is the leet.

Mabe you need to separate it into two issues.

First issue: Morals.
Everyone has two different sets of morals. Some things that are immoral in real life are fine in your fantasies. I would never cheat on my girlfriend. However, every time I masturbate or LD, I fantasize about another woman. I'm fine with this. On the same note, some things are totally wrong in both real life and fantasy. I would never kill a baby and then cook it on my barbeque and eat it. If I fantasize about killing and eating a baby, it still feels wrong to me, even in a fantasy. So I personally believe that some things are so wrong, I can't even fantasize about it. This will obviously be different person to person.

Second issue: Guilt.
Based on these dream morals, I think it is legitamate to feel guilty in a dream. If you do something that you define as 'wrong' in a dream, and it feels wrong at the time, then you will obviously feel guilty about it later. If I mowed down a thousand ninjas in a videogame-like dream, I would think it was a fun dream. If I purposefully killed someone in cold blood, and had to watch them beg for their life and then suffer and die in front of my eyes, I would feel guilty about it later. I would think, "Jesus-chrimes, what the hell is wrong with me? I shouldn't have done that."

Back to Smee's original post. He felt a connection to the character he killed. He even felt that he was a part of him. That he accidentally killed a part of himself. It sounds like this dream was specificallly themed about guilt. Like maybe that was the whole driving force behind the episode. I wouldnt shrug it off by saying nothing in a dream is real. Its real to you, and the emotions, images and memories stay with you. That feeling of 'wrong' stays with you.