moscampfire
Member

I'm cool on Buddhism. Where Buddhism calls it "mindfulness", my generation called it "awareness", and, as an ageing hippie, I kept the faith and valued new awareness all my life. Lucid dreams are dreams like the waking world- physical awareness, smells, bodily sensitivity, choice of experience, Consciousness. It's not that regular dreams are not conscious, but that a lucid dream is MORE conscious, as if it were a physical event. I'm not sure how mindful I am in a normal dream. I assume that I am, within the laws of that experience. But in Lucid dreams, I am applying my mindfulness in the same way I apply it in waking consciousness. Because I am taking the waking self into the dream state, with all my beliefs and assumptions, I respond to events from my own beliefs and experiences.
I have had lucid dreams that did not include all the baggage I carry in physical life. I have experienced total consciousness without memory of my current life. But I still felt totally, physically aware, not afraid of the tendency of the environment to offer unexpected events, and without a sense of need to control my experience.
I've had Lucid dreams where I required control. But the ones where I let my control go seem to be the most interesting.

Hi. I'm new here. I was drawn to the community because I've always experienced lucid dreaming, even before I read La Berge's book back in the 80's, and also, specifically, because my family often discussed dreams with each other, and we discovered that we dreamed together often, each of us, generally, able to describe the events and individual actions in the dream (though we discovered that sometimes the dream was experienced on different nights!)
I'm interested in the idea that dreams are a "place", rather than an individual's private construction, outside the dreaming of others. I have experienced shared dreaming with other's outside my family, all spontaneous, but verified when next I saw them. This is outside the lucid dreaming theme. These dreams might have been the common dream, recalled but not lucid. I have yet to have a lucid, shared dream.
In the common dream, sharing might occur, but participants might not remember? Do we all share activity in the dreaming world, and either not remember it or not discuss dreams with them? I don't know, but I'm interested in anyone who has experience with this.

This is like my experience! In one dream, I was going for a walk with my niece. She was six at the time we shared this dream, and in my version, we encountered a big warehouse filled with interesting, museum-like things. Over in a far corner was a playground, complete with swings and slides, and she went there to play while I looked at all the fantastic things elsewhere in the warehouse. Two days later I asked her about her dreams, and she told me about the Carnival we encountered in a park. She said I let her go and ride any ride she wanted while I stayed at the picnic table. She was so pleased to be free to play by herself!
I've had four such dreams, where the experience was different, yet alike enough in the basic encounter. I think of a Star Trek scene where Riker and DeAnna Troy beam down to a planet and while they are both together, each experience different environments.
In one of my family's shared dreams, we discovered that one brother dreamed it on a different night. Points to the possibility that time doesn't matter in dreaming, and that people might not need to be asleep at the same time HERE, but that it may always be the same time THERE?

I believe that when this life is over, we all meet around the same campfire, no matter who thinks they own it. My attitude toward organized religions. From my viewpoint, it would be mine-but only in respect to me being there. It really doesn't belong to me, either.