I'm a bit conflicted...

Well, I've always loved sleeping and dreaming. I feel like dreams transport me to a different world, but also allow me to analyze my own subconscious. I've always been good at remembering my dreams, and even though I've only had a couple of lucid experiences and what seemed to be some kind of OBE (sleep paralysis along with visualizing incredible designs, patterns and even faces... just trippy cool stuff), I like sleeping and I like dreaming.

Now, I want to say that this doesn't get in the way of my waking life in the fact that I try and stay in bed all the time and just dream... but there are those days when I really wonder if it really means anything at all... or if all that really does matter is waking life - after all a dream is just a dream (unless you actually have the courage to reenact some of the things (in reason) that you dream about). I've always heard that sleep is for the dead, and that those who aspire to be truly successful don't sleep but bleed their profession (I'm a college student at the moment, but I'm sure you understand what I mean).

I would like to get the community's take on this issue. How do you use your dreams to influence and aid your waking life? Or is dreaming just fun and games which means absolutely nothing at all?

When I was a child, I wondered if dream is a parallel world to waking world. Now, dream is just fun. I think real life is more important.

I learnt a lot about myself through my dreams. In my waking life I was always that quiet guy at the back of the class that nobody took note of. However, in my dreams I'm always the center of attention, doing amazing things, performing in front of thousands of people. When I finally realized the kind of person I long to become, I changed. I'm no longer afraid to go out there and show the world what I'm made of. I even became popular.

Hey there SaMaster14 :) I'll try to give my own opinion on the issue, it's good and valid concerns to hold.

I think the answer to your question can be approached from a very wide set of perspectives. Even though you leave two closing questions (which I will answer to the best of my ability), I believe the very essence of your concern is if you are wasting time on dreaming or not.

To this I can say it entirely depends on you. I believe it to be a subjective thing, and there is no objective truth to be found. It depends on how you want to use it. That's the wonderful thing about it, it's a gradient of meanings and there is thus many different valid ways to look at it.

My own opinion is that yes, lucid dreaming (and even regular dreaming!) can be used in a very constructive way in waking life, and in so many different possibilities that I won't even bother trying to list them, because it really depends, again, on what you do with it. I will give some concrete examples from my own life :)

First of all, you say that dreams are just dreams, and then wonder if they then therefore actually mean something. You might arrive to this conclusion because dreams are mostly talked about in a taboo way, and the phrase It's just a dream is thrown around often. It's talked about as something insubstantial that has no impact on you or your waking life, so then why bother with it?

There's a few troublesome things about these kinds of conclusions though. If the experience generated from a dream is "just a dream", then in the same vein is the experience generated by music, literature, movies, games, and all other kinds of entertainment also worthless? Is it "just entertainment"? Perhaps then it is not worthy of our time?

A lot of people would immediately reject that notion. Many have favorite music that might awaken certain emotions within, or make you re-live a long lost memory and much more. The same applies for movies, games and literature. This is something a lot of people value greatly. In my opinion none of these types of entertainment is worthless in any way. Great literature, for example, can inspire and spark ideas to life within you. It can give you hope to carry on through hardship, and so can things like music. Not only that, but if you listen to a positive song it can allow you to carry around a positive feeling for much of the rest of the day. There is probably hundreds of other ways you can think that entertainment impacts us. I would say these are not at all insubstantial! They are very substantial and can be used in our daily life.

Likewise is it with dreams. You can awaken from a horrible nightmare and you will know that the emotions carried away from it are very real. You might feel very upset. If it's particularly bad you might cry. If a monster was chasing you, you might feel paranoid for the rest of the night, and so on. In the same way you can wake up from a very positive dream and for much of the day have an optimistic view on the day. These emotions are just as real as any other you feel, no matter the source they come from.

But dreams can indeed be used for more. You've already seen examples in the post above you of how it gave something worthy to people to take with them in their waking life. From my own personal life I currently use it to get inspired for ideas. I'm a programmer, and do game development in my spare time. Dreams are probably one of the most amazing ways I've ever had to get inspired by ideas because in no other parts of life have I found as creative of a source as dreams. They can generate things so wacky, abstract and unbound of waking life that in no possible way would I have been able to come up with it myself when awake.

You will also find artists through time have used dreams to get inspired to paintings, music and problem solving too (I will leave a reference at the bottom). Other people use it for meditation, for personal growth. You might re-create situations you are uncomfortable with in real life, and get to live them out within your dream. Other uses could be purely recreational, simply being able to explore things that would be absolutely impossible in our world bound by physics.

There's probably a whole lot of other different ways in which to use dreams and lucid dreams that I haven't even thought about. It is a very personal thing, but if you want to it can indeed be very rewarding and can provide useful things for your waking life. You can be creative as you want to be.

If you want to be a bit of a smartass, you can also add that using dreams to something productive and creative surely is a better way to spend your sleep than completely ignoring the grand potential it has? Just consider how many hours of our total life is spend sleeping, and how much potential is wasted by completely ignoring it.

So, to answer your final question:

Quote:

Is dreaming just fun and games which means absolutely nothing at all?

It can be whatever you want it to be :)

Lastly, here's a book I would recommend you read if you want to explore the subject further (from a scientific standpoint):
<Link removed>

It is called "Exploring The World of Lucid Dreaming", and is written by one of the most well known professors on the study of lucid dreaming. It is a bit dated by now, but still extremely relevant. It also tackles the concerns you expressed in this post, of whether or not it is a waste of time. It gives interviews from people and many examples of how lucid dreaming is used in a very constructive way in our day to day lives.

I hope this was of some help to you :)