Thread: I wish I could live forever in my dreams

In my dreams, when I realize they are dreams, I suddenly feel quite lonely. Dream sharing originally motivated me to learn lucidity, and on this quest I achieved much. I explored ever reaching distances of possibility, realms I'd never predict I could conceive. And sometimes we held hands, her and I, and we ventured forth. But I knew it wasn't really her, so I worked hard to induce out of body experiences, and ventured into a whole new realm of experience, I became a ghost among the living while my body slept, and I hunted for her. And I found so many beautiful truths, as I've fallen and risen and fallen and risen through wisdom and ignorance, spinning and spiraling along what sometimes felt like a staircase and other times like a slide of human progression. But still, I never found her, not the real her. I love my dreams, in fogs like the one I sail through now, I am grateful that even if my waking life cannot muster a drop of hope to guide me forward, my dreams remain vivid and beautiful and still manage to fool me into feeling utterly alive. But I could not disappear into them, because she's not there. She's somewhere else, and even if it's a gruesome madness, it's better to share hell than be alone in paradise.

“You superior humans, what do you think? Am I a soothsayer? A dreamer? Drunkard? A dream interpreter? A midnight-bell? A drop of dew? A haze and fragrance of eternity? Do you not hear it? Do you not smell it? Just now my world became perfect, midnight is also midday – Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun – be gone! or you will learn: a wise man is also a fool. Did you ever say yes to a single joy? Oh, my friends, then you said yes to all woe as well. All things are chained together, entwined, in love – if you ever wanted one time a second time, if you ever said 'You please me, happiness! Quick! Moment!' then you wanted it all back! – All anew, all eternally, all chained together,
entwined, in love, oh then you loved the world – you eternal ones, love it eternally and for all time: and even to woe you say: Be gone, but come back! For all joy wants – Eternity!”

I think you need this reality in order to appreciate the dream world. Sooner or later you'd get tired and bored of being living a ''fake'' life. Just my oppinion, ofc.

as you progress slowly up the windy but seemingly endless staircase... you forget which way is forward... In your struggle to find truth ... a drop of hope emerges ... the hope that one day you shall find love... but you must realize that the concept of hope is nothing more than giving up... you look outside of yourself to find love... when you must look inside... only then will love be found, hate and love... love and hate a nexus which cannot be separated.

sometimes i wish to escape into my dreams, though i don't wish to remain there permanently. the challenges life provides is what makes it interesting. in my dreams i'm an explorer. i try to make that into a reality.

My dreams are mainly nightmares of some sort. I'm always being harmed/maimed/murdered on a nightly basis. Sadly, I prefer that to reality. Sleep is much better then living in hell...

I love my LDs, I consider them real.
I disagree Original Poster! What's the difference between DC and real ppl? You're not feeling their consciousness anyways, and if they aren't zombie like inside the LD, it's as good as real, even better since it's controllable. Reality is what you experience.

Yeah.... I wish I could LD forever.

Real life really isn't as mundane as it seems. All you have to do is look. Just look at how amazingly vivid the world around you is, how real it is. There are so many beautiful things in or lives each day we take for granted, and real life is in fact amazingly beautiful itself. Much more than some world full of magic and happiness would be. To have happiness, you must also have sadness. To have beauty, you must also have things that are drab. So the question is: would you rather live in a world with all of those, or a featureless bleak world with none?

Originally Posted by Avian

Real life really isn't as mundane as it seems. All you have to do is look. Just look at how amazingly vivid the world around you is, how real it is. There are so many beautiful things in or lives each day we take for granted, and real life is in fact amazingly beautiful itself. Much more than some world full of magic and happiness would be. To have happiness, you must also have sadness. To have beauty, you must also have things that are drab. So the question is: would you rather live in a world with all of those, or a featureless bleak world with none?

LDs are as beautiful, and even more, as waking life when it comes to happiness triggers and beauty. I see your point though; no single relative state can occur without the other. But, is that true? Without sadness there isn't happiness? What's the contradiction of pain then? There is no, but it still exists. Happiness is no different. Happiness isn't actually a state. You either got a trigger and you're feeling happy AT THE MOMENT, or there is no trigger and you aren't at the moment. It works on triggers, not a relativity system. It's how it's designed in our brains. As for appreciating good things, you don't need bad things to do that, you just don't. Of course there is a certain happiness for jumping from a low to a high, like if you stop breathing, the next breath you take will feel great, on the contrary to just regular breaths. This is more like an advancement happiness, but it is surely not the only one. You don't need to watch a bad show before your favorite one for you to enjoy it more. This happiness you're talking about is a small part of the overall happiness. To illustrate more, imagine you've gone without food for 3 days. The meal after that would be amazing, much more than your usual lunch time meal, but this is a happiness of getting out of something bad.

I'm talking about a long-term state Louai. Yes, short-term you can have lots of happiness with no sadness. But for an entire life, there must be sadness to balance it out. Otherwise the happiness will fade and it will no longer become happy. Things tend to be balanced, so if there is absolutely no sadness or bad things, the good things will equalize as well. After many years of living in your own beautiful world of lucid dreaming, the things that were once so amazing and happy would no longer have any significance. You would eventually be left to walk around in a world where nothing matters. It wouldn't necessarily be boring, as that is a "bad" thing, but it would just be a drab world that has nothing for you. It would be like an eternal limbo. I know that is not what I want.

I personally am stuck between two philosophies and I'm not sure which one I like more. I think there are two ways to live that I would say are the best, no contest. The first would be to live with extreme passion and emotion, always investing yourself in emotions and just living a very fiery, lively lifestyle. The second is the exact opposite, to free oneself of all emotion and basically reach enlightenment, only feeling the ecstasy and joy of existence, but no real emotions.

TL;DR
I don't know whether I should be super duper chill or super emotional, but I believe one of them is the best way to go.

Originally Posted by zaelithia

My dreams are mainly nightmares of some sort. I'm always being harmed/maimed/murdered on a nightly basis. Sadly, I prefer that to reality. Sleep is much better then living in hell...

Then don't live in a living hell. It is all perspective. I have an insane amount of stress in my life from school, to the point where last year I sank into a deep and incurable depression that I only got through after spending a month in the wilderness of Canada. However, I could end all this stress at any time, just by the mere decision of letting go. I could just throw school to the wind and live a carefree happy life until the end of my days. But I want opportunities. Chances are I am going to do that anyways, but I want the option to get a nice job and make some money if I want to. If there is no end goal for you, nothing you are suffering for, you need to just let go. If you can't beat your depression, spend a long time in the wilderness with a very small group of people or alone. I can almost guarantee you will come back completely chill and happy. And then stay like that. Just don't really stay attached to anything. I would recommend following one of the two lifestyles I have posted above.

Originally Posted by Avian

I'm talking about a long-term state Louai. Yes, short-term you can have lots of happiness with no sadness. But for an entire life, there must be sadness to balance it out. Otherwise the happiness will fade and it will no longer become happy. Things tend to be balanced, so if there is absolutely no sadness or bad things, the good things will equalize as well. After many years of living in your own beautiful world of lucid dreaming, the things that were once so amazing and happy would no longer have any significance. You would eventually be left to walk around in a world where nothing matters. It wouldn't necessarily be boring, as that is a "bad" thing, but it would just be a drab world that has nothing for you. It would be like an eternal limbo. I know that is not what I want.

I was trying to explain that the phrase "happiness can't exist without sadness" isn't true. Happiness is a triggered emotion related to CUES and not RELATIVE STATES. Studies show that happiness and sadness are generated in 2 different regions of the brain. They aren't related when experiencing one, or in other words, the one doesn't need the other to activate. In fact, you can feel happy and sad at the same time!(also proven through studies (on humans)).

What you need to be happy is to actually not seek it. You just get happiness when you accomplish other things, or in other words, the cues. Don't seek happiness directly, or you'll get disappointed. You actually need to accept bad things when they arrive, have healthy relationships, and help others. In short, lower your expectations or you'll get disappointed bcz you would always want a perfect state you can't reach, imbrace problems as a natural part of life, and get out of your way to make others feel happy too, and of course work hard to get what you want, in a way that appreciates what you've got. This doesn't mean that if you do these then you'll be your happiest. The more cues you have, the happier you are. This just means that you should accept problems(including not getting everything you want) because if you don't, you'll be blocking your own way.

So this doesn't mean that happiness can't occur without sadness, this means that you should accept your problems so you wouldn't be standing in your own way. If you haven't noticed, believing that happiness can't occur without sadness means that you'll accept your problems. "Happiness can't occur without sadness" isn't true, it just happens to indirectly make you accept your problems, which is the goal.

So, in LDs, you got all the cues and no problems. It is the most happy state possible! You accept any problems, which wouldn't occur, enjoy healthy relationships with ppl (or DCs) that you can truly make happy, and you enjoy and appreciate what you have, which happens to be everything you want.

Oh, and I can completely debunk this rule of "happiness can't occur without sadness" by telling you that in fact, happiness and sadness aren't even states at all!! They are at the moment emotions, not states that cloud your life. You can't say "I'm a happy person" or "I'm a sad person". Again, they're just cue and response. You can Google all I said if you want, it's all scientifically proven, pretty recently too.

I hope you take my post into consideration and reread it a few times, I just want you to understand how happiness really works for you to be really happy

You should read this
A Dialogue on Happiness - Existential Comics
I just think it is a really cool dialogue on happiness. I still believe what I said though. I don't think we need sadness for there to be happiness, but I think that without sadness of any sort one can't truly be happy. Yes, the emotional state happy, but I don't think you could be thoroughly satisfied and happy with yourself on all mental levels without sadness. I think you might feel happy, but you would still feel incomplete at the same time.

Originally Posted by Avian

You should read this
A Dialogue on Happiness - Existential Comics
I just think it is a really cool dialogue on happiness. I still believe what I said though. I don't think we need sadness for there to be happiness, but I think that without sadness of any sort one can't truly be happy. Yes, the emotional state happy, but I don't think you could be thoroughly satisfied and happy with yourself on all mental levels without sadness. I think you might feel happy, but you would still feel incomplete at the same time.

Ooooh, you mean the emotional completion. It's good to feel all emotions, even the bad ones, so you'd get a little flavor in life. You don't need much sadness though for that. Yeah, I think we're on the same page here.

I think there are two types of sadness. There is the depression kind which has no good aspects and is never good to have. This only brings bad feelings. Then there is the other kind which is more melancholy, like thinking about your childhood. This is sad, but also beautiful in a way, and it is the kind I am talking about. Depression sadness is never good, but I think people need the second kind.

Yes, if I could live in my dream world instead of heaven I would be happy.

Originally Posted by Avian

I think there are two types of sadness. There is the depression kind which has no good aspects and is never good to have. This only brings bad feelings. Then there is the other kind which is more melancholy, like thinking about your childhood. This is sad, but also beautiful in a way, and it is the kind I am talking about. Depression sadness is never good, but I think people need the second kind.

Yes it is important for emotional completion, I agree with you, but I'm not sure if this type of sadness is specifically NEEDED, as in MUST, for happiness (happiness not emotional completion) to be able to exist.

Originally Posted by petersonad

Yes, if I could live in my dream world instead of heaven I would be happy.

Amen to that!!!!

I wouldn't want to be there permanently, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to just take an extended vacation to there at will.

Well I have debated to my limits considering I haven't had a real lucid dream yet. When I do we will see if my viewpoint has changed.

Originally Posted by blade5x

I wouldn't want to be there permanently, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to just take an extended vacation to there at will.

http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-cont...-tutorial.html

look into this it seems super awesome

"Life" or this experience we call one is just a loop of existence and inexistence. You live this life, you live another, sometimes completely different, maybe even as another person or thing, sometimes exactly the same, sometimes only minutely different. How do I know this to be true? Because I exist. I will always exist and have existed, even if sometimes this isn't true, it will always remain a fact that this happened, and so long as I choose to keep living it will keep happening, exactly how I choose to make it happen. So, you already live forever in your dreams, wish granted, life's purpose has just been fulfilled. Congratulations op.

Originally Posted by snoop

So, you already live forever in your dreams, wish granted, life's purpose has just been fulfilled. Congratulations op.

You still have to give him his prize, snoop. He wants his prize. .-.