Some Facts of Lucid Dreaming

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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Link to column: How do you have lucid dreams?

I have been lucid dreaming for 25 years now. For those interested because it sounds fun or a blessing to get rid of nightmares…let me tell you it will become a curse!!! But a few quick facts.

To start lucid dreaming one only needs to remind themselves that they will be dreaming tonight. So when you lay down in bed, just keep reminding yourself that a dream in coming. Stay focused. One you get to sleep and a dream starts something normal happens that is out of place…you see someone who is dead, you can fly, Frankenstein’s monster is after you, etc. If you have remembered that you would be dreaming these type odd events will allow you to realize you are in a dream. Once you realize you are dreaming you are then free to change any and all things around you.
This ability to change a dream is its own curse. When i first started it was so much fun. I could always draw a gun from by pocket when something was chasing me. If I was in a yard of snakes I would grow wings and fly away. Soon I got the girl every night. I was Luke Skywalker one night, Captain Kirk the next. I single handedly stormed the beaches of Normandy and killed Hitler. In 25 years I have done everything I could imagine.
But lost in my dreams was anything that the dreams would have shown me. If dreams have some purpose, I haven’t benefited from it in a quarter century. When I started I never got a goodnight’s sleep because I spent the whole night “rewriting” my dreams. The dream would try to “right” itself to fix what i had changed, so I had to “rewrite” more. Over the years the “dreams” have given up fighting back so now I have ultimate power…which brings ultimate boredom. I have tried for years to restrain from changing anything, but alas I can’t stop.
So now 25 years later, I wish I could have just one normal dream. I would love a good nightmare. How great it would be to be surprised in a unscripped dream.

So to the Teeming Millions I ask…Would you really want to live in an Amusement Park, or watch only your favor television show for the rest of your life? I would think either would get boring. And that is the same my friends, if you can control your dreams. You won’t live happily ever after.

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Well, since the holodeck isn’t slated to be invented for another four hundred years or so, I’d really like to give it a shot. I’ll let you know if I run into any problems, but the only ones that I can foresee right now would be financial. If indeed I am successful in achieving a threesome with Sandra Bullock and Ashley Judd, I’m going to have a hell of a time ever getting my ass out of bed.

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Not to say you’re wrong or anything (I’m one of those who isn’t even sure he does dream every night, for all I remember), but this is the first complaint I’ve ever heard in dozens or hundreds of accounts. Of course, by its very nature we can’t prove whether or not you’re making this up, but if you aren’t why hasn’t anyone else complained about the same effect?

Or maybe you’re just not very good even after 25 years and everyone else can turn it off when they don’t want to use it.

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Hm. Maybe there’s a market for repentant lucid dreamers.

Illucid dreaming?

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Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, wissdok, we’re glad to have you with us.

When you start a thread, it’s helpful to other readers if you provide a link to the column. Yes, sure, it’s on the front page today, but in a few days it will vanish into the murky past. So, to help keep us all more or less together and to save searching time, we prefer to have a link to the column in the first post of the thread.

No big deal, you’ll know for next time. I’ve edited the link into your post (Moderator’s privileges).

And, as I say, welcome!

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Well, it is similar to what I mentioned in my post on the subject. Lucid dreaming, for me, became too much work and not enough self introspection. I never took it to the extreme **wissdok ** did, but I can understand where he’s coming from.

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That was the first thing I thought of when I’d finished reading the article - how can you sure LD is not bad for you? As Wissdok says, that means you’re not having your natural dreams, which can’t be good for you if dreaming has a purpose.

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I think you’re confused, Washoe… That’s not a lucid dream; that’s a liquid dream. :smiley:

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To start, I’m sorry I didn’t link the original column. I will do better next time.
Mathochist
Quote:
Or maybe you’re just not very good even after 25 years and everyone else can turn it off when they don’t want to use it.

I can’t really tell how good I am at Lucid Dreaming because I don’t know a standard to measure it by. I can tell you that I have limitations but they are not in control but acceptablity. I have the power to create or change anything in a dream but I must not do too much at one time or it will throw me out of the dream. If I ever had a need for a gun (for example) I could create one in my pocket, but not already in my hand. I can go anywhere by opening a door or create whatever I want in the very next room. As that was my original goal I don’t see how anyone can have much more. But as I originally posted, it may have been fun the first couple of years but now it has lost its luster.

I have had thousand of dreams seen I first started controlling them. As each night went by I learned to change more and more. It may have started as “lets see what I can do,” but in time it becomes “let me change it to make in more interesting.” As the saying goes, “Absolute power corrupts Absolutely.” In Leviosarus posts he stated it is a lot of work to lucid dream. It is not just to “write” your dreams but to fight your subconscious who wants “rewrite”. I haven’t talked deeply on this subject with others but over the years my subconscious doesn’t put up as much of a fight as it once did.

As for “no” other complaints, I think you have not been looking Mathochist. Lucid Dreaming has been explained as a way to fight nightmares, address trauma, or to just have fun. The problems of playing with your dreams has been discussed all along, but by individuals not publishers or universities. When I was in college a psychology class textbook had a whole chapter on the benefits of lucid dreaming. When I gave my same comments to my Professor that I made here, I found that while he pushed the idea made in the book, neither he nor the three other Pyschology Professors had ever had a Lucid Dream.

And to point out that there are false experts on the subject who don’t know enough to talk, is the ordeal they tell people to do to start Lucid Dreaming.
The way I started was the way everyone I have ever meet started… reminding themselves that they will be dreaming. I can promise you that if you remind yourselve each night before you go to sleep that a dream is coming, you will have a lucid dream. There are no big processes you must follow, no need in any fancy books. If these people are so knowledgeable, then why do they teach the hard way?

To each, his own. But I will say once more, when your night dreams become just another daydream…what good are they?

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Actually, this doesn’t sound like lucid dreaming to me. I believe one psychologist studying
dreams called this ‘dreaming within a dream’. You can actually dream that you have
control over your dream, when in fact you don’t. A truly lucid dream does not ‘try to right itself’’. Secondly, lucid dreams do not inhibit sleep. As far as losing your ability to learn
from your dreams by trying to understand what you dream, no one person or group has yet
proven that dreams are a result of intillegent process, and not just a side effect of brain
patterns. Telling people to avoid lucid dreams is like telling a dog not to lick it’s ass.
The dog is going to lick it’s ass, it’s going to enjoy it, and it’s probably going to do it again.

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Actually, the fact that one can just ‘remind oneself that they are going to dream tonight’
will not produce lucid dreams in most. As I said in my previous reply, I doubt very highly
that you are producing a true lucid dreaming state from how you describe your dreams.
Such a small percentage of the population will ever have a truely lucid dream, and only
the tinyest amounts have them regularly. I cannot remember the exact amounts quoted in
one of the books I read, however, needless to say, it was less than 5% on both accounts.
With that in mind, telling people that they simply must remember to lucid dream tonight,
won’t do jack :slight_smile:

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I have had lucid dreams but never knew they had a fancy name!

I was inspired by the movie Dreamscape (1984) and though an adult at the time (still am, despite my wife’s comments) I did occasionally have discomforting dreams. While the movie was largely fantasy, it did inspire me to try to control my dreams…to remind myself that I was in charge of the dream.

Subsequently I was able to control, at least to a satisfactory degree, dreams that I had. I generally only tried to intervene when the dream was distressing, but I could also add some input into enjoyable dreams.

As the article briefly mentioned, I too assumed that my ability to manipulate the dreams was due to being “on the edge” of unconciousness and semi-conciousness. After all, there have been numerous times were I have awaken after a dream, then returned to sleep and re-entered the dream, and this seemed none too different.

And while I’ve not discussed this heavily with others, I would certainly agree that not everyone would be able to have lucid dreams, or at least it would take a lot of therapy. Though I’m not sure it requires a belief in mysticism, I do think you need a creative mind.

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Here’s another fact about SDMB, wissdok: many of us have a sense of humor that makes the Sahara look like a rain forest.

I’ve seen quite a few anecdotes over the years, but no, I haven’t been particularly looking. However, what you go on to say does not support your point. If you mean by this quote to say that there are many other complainants, show me a citation. Show me a study collecting these negative anecdotes.

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I “trained” myself to lucid dream, starting around fourth grade. I don’t remember exactly how I did it, but it involved a heck of a lot of effort, balancing between breaking the “Fourth Wall” (so I can control the dream) and playing by the rules (so I don’t inadvertantly wake myself up).

However, when I started getting really depressed, I started having very vivid nightmares of me dying in various painful ways. At that point I regarded this as a Very Bad Thing and tried to turn them off without much success, but nowadays I find it to be a useful psychological barometor. (“Hm, I’m having the Lead-Legged Chase Sequence* again. Am I about to miss a deadline or something?”)

Particularly encouraging are dreams where I’m finally starting to fight back–and actually win on some occasions.

*Dream involving me being chased by a number of bad guys who are trying to kill/and or maim me, but I can’t get away from them. My legs feel like lead, I can’t use my usual dream powers of flight or invisibility very well, and it’s basically much suckiness.

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As an ex-cop, my recurring dream involves trying to shoot various bad guys but the trigger is incredibly difficult to pull, like it requires 100-pounds of force.

Oddly, in one dream I simply pulled my finger from my pocket and made a “kiddie-style” gun with my hand and shot the bad guy dead. Real guns don’t work in my dreams, but improvised ones do.

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Piku
Quote:
*Actually, the fact that one can just ‘remind oneself that they are going to dream tonight’
will not produce lucid dreams in most. As I said in my previous reply, I doubt very highly
that you are producing a true lucid dreaming state from how you describe your dreams.
Such a small percentage of the population will ever have a truely lucid dream, and only
the tinyest amounts have them regularly. I cannot remember the exact amounts quoted in
one of the books I read, however, needless to say, it was less than 5% on both accounts.
With that in mind, telling people that they simply must remember to lucid dream tonight,
won’t do jack *

I would have to beg to differ with you on this. I have never personally meet anyone that lucid dreams that had to go through some major routine to start lucid dreaming. But the difference in me and others is I NOT trying to sell Self-Help books. Nor am I some academic professor claiming this is part of a scientific process. All you need to know in Lucid Dreaming is the knowledge that you are dreaming. Once you know you are dreaming you can disbelieve the stuff around you and design the dream as you like it. The fact that you know you are in a dream allows you to lucid dream but doesn’t force you to do so. So your statement of 5% I can’t really argue with, because I don’t know. Lucid Dreams and dreams in general are not a common conversation item that I use in day-to-day life. But having said that, I think I am more than qualified in explaining what goes on in Lucid Dreams.

I don’t as you say, “dream within a dream.” I am fully aware of the dream and my own limitations to avoid waking up. The stuggle that I had/have and others have is you can’t design everything in a dream or you won’t have time fully dream. I can’t speak for others but most of my dreams are short not epic length.The more detail I add to a dream the more difficult it becomes. I have to focus all my effort. If I chose to micromanage every aspect of my dreams it would be over before I was done. What good is changing a dream if you don’t get to live out the dream?
I hate to draw Hollywood into this discussion but the John Candy movie"Delirious"is very similiar to what I am talking about. Maybe others don’t have as much problems as I had in the early days, but I didn’t always get what I wanted. A gun in my pocket would be a derringer not a 44 magnum. A car in driveway would be a Dodge Dart not a Corvette. Over time that problem has faded, but that is a common problem with my lucid friends.

As for my friend Machochist, I didn’t mean to offend you. My point is that if I am at the level I claim, do you really think I continue lucid dreaming out of desire or is it just a reflex? Its just natural now to start fixing anything that is unpleasant. As for research on “complaints” for lucid dreaming…I will try to find some, but I will say again “lucid dreaming” is the “in-thing” right now. WaldenBooks devotes whole row to “Lucid dreaming”, dream analysis, and any other dream related topic. Colleges teach classes on this stuff now. Does it not sound like Repressed Memory all over again?

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My experiences match exactly what **wissdok ** is saying, including the limitations.

In one of my first lucid dreams, I was being victimized by a bully. I remember shouting at him “I’m not going to listen to you anymore because this is my dream and I can do as I damn well please, and I’m going to fly away now.” And I did. He chased after me along the ground for a while, until I made a lake appear, and he got stuck on the shoreline, cursing me out. See how this experience maps directly to wissdok’s:

  • I realized I was dreaming
  • I was immediately able to change my environment
  • I didn’t have full control (i.e., I couldn’t delete the bully.)

I think the real problem here is that there will never be a concrete way to define, test or measure Lucid Dreaming. It is an entirely subjective experience. For what it’s worth, I disagree with the psychologist you paraphrased. What he’s describing doesn’t fit my experiences at all.

To your comment that lucid dreaming doesn’t effect physical rest, I direct you to the first post I linked to. Yes, after lucid dreaming I would feel physically rested, but not mentally rested. I can’t explain it clearly, as words fail, but it’s similar to the mental state I am in after running several miles, where I still feel lots of physical energy, but I am mentally less alert. I believe there are probably people who can lucid dream all night every night and still be mentaly alert, just as there are those who can run a marathon and then do advanced calculus for the rest of the day. My guess is that those sort of people represent a very small portion of the population.

But, as I say, this is all subjective and guesswork. You’re going to have to take our word for it that **wissdok ** and I have lucid dreams.

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Well, I would hypothesize that basically anybody is capable of manipulating their dreams.

But this is an empirical matter.

Separately, the OP suggested that wissdok maintained an iron-grip control of his dreams, at least to me. Later elaboration suggests that this is not the case.

wissok:
---- But I will say once more, when your night dreams become just another daydream…what good are they?

1a. For me, they are not another daydream. They are an -err- night-dream: my “lucidity” comes in when I respond to them or sometimes try to set up a simple scenario.

1b. I still have complicated dreams on occasion though.

1c. …and my memory of my dreams is pretty sketchy.

1d. Besides, if you remember that you’re dreaming within your dream, couldn’t you just make a decision to see what happens?

  1. What good are they? They’re recreation. Maybe they might help people who have chronic nightmares (PTSD?)

  2. If somebody wanted to take an expensive course in Lucid dreaming though, I would advise against it. It’s not that amazing. Personally, I wouldn’t even call it a hobby.

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:slight_smile: In the last few days I have spent more time thinking about my dreams than I normally do. As I tried to state before “lucid Dreaming” has become a New Age Phenomenon. If you do a Google search you will find 100s of websites that sell something to start/help/explore lucid dream.It wasn’t my point to question lucid dreaming but to just point out what these websites don’t, it may not all be “good” stuff. My original point was there can be too much of a good thing. It was a lot more fun when there was a challenge in my dreams.After being questioned earlier I found this, which my help some people.

http://www.spiritwatch.ca/LL%208(2)%20dec%2089/GACKE082.W50.htm

Let me explain again that once you start play with lucid dreaming you will naturally find the tendency to see how much you can get away with. As time goes on you will assume more control. The problem is what do you do when you have develop complete control? I don’t think my critics realize how boring that can get. And the idea of “switching” control of isn’t as easy as it seems. If you lucid dream enough you will realize you are dreaming almost as soon as they start. Once you know you are dreaming you can’t help but start changing things when you encount unpleasantable things. I would relate this to flinching when someone swings at you in real life. Its a simple reflex. Another more abstract example is… Can “Superman” restrain from using his power when he sees a disaster happens? You have the power, why not us it?

A earlier writer question if I realy had ulimate power in my dreams.There are limits, but thing are only obstacles that can easily be worked around. From conversations with others I believe that this is a standard feature with all Lucid Dreamers. Generally for me it is limited only in things that would kick me out of the dream. It seems that people don’t understand that no matter how much power you obtain you will have limits because it is a dream. The two major limits
(that are common)are time and avoiding things that might wake you up. The first…Time…is a precious commodity in a dream. As I stated before, I, like most people, don’t have “epic-long” dreams.Controlling a dream takes time from the dream. So, more you micromanage less time you have to interact with the dream. The second…Not waking up, I believe is more tailored to each person. I personally avoid supernatural events because they often wake me up. A friend with far less experience is right the opposite, he is kicked out only when the dream slows down. Both these things are something you learn and can be easily overcome.

People also don’t realize that unless you plan to control everything, your normal subconscious will design some or all of you dream.Remember more you control… less time you have to dream. As I already said…Time in a dream is a precious commodity. Your subconscious is alway designing anyway. When someone wants to be in the mountains, they just think mountains and the mind takes over. Could be the Alps or the Rockies. So when you want a sports car, you may get Jaguar or a Ford Escort Sp (or anything in between.) As you gain more experience the outcome will be normally closer to the former, but with more experience it won’t matter anyway. The point I am trying to make is that this isn’t a limit to allow your subconscious to design some, its just more productive. A example of working around your subconscious is a old feature I had in many dreams. I have a phobia of snakes, and lucky for me my subconscious love to throw those in. A recurring
plot in my earlier dreams was to be in a house surrounded by a yard of snakes. I could easily just “wish” them away but there is always a fear that I either didn’t destroy them all or that they would reappear later. Plus that wouldn’t have been much fun. Here are a couple of creative way I handle this event.

  1. The easiest…I flow over them.
  2. I went to a closet and got knee-high pair of boots.
  3. I brought down a thick snowfall.
  4. I replaced the grass with concrete.
  5. I summoned a pack of wild dogs to eat the snakes.
  6. I used my everyday household universal transporter to “beem” me pass the snakes.

The point here is that the subconscious “rewrite” is common and something you learn to work around. I don’t consider it a “limit”, just something that you learn to live with to keep the dream from bogging down. With more experience, I have to “work-around” rarely now. On the same note, the last item “transporter” I use often now. As time is very important in a dream, travel needs to be short. Also avoiding needless events and encounters is critical. I uses my transporter, my friend flies,and other may use something else.

As for avoiding waking up, I originally used supernatural events as a trigger that I was dreaming. Too much supernatural stuff would cause me to “overload” and wake me up. Because of that I learned to avoid the “superman” complex and try to keep things somewhat realistic. I believe each person is different. With more experience I now normally pickup on the drab color as a trigger for lucidity, and now start 50% of dreams lucid, so this “overload” problem is less common. This again isn’t a limit because I, like most experienced lucid dreamers, find a comfort
zone for dreaming. You adjust to what you mind will allow.

The point I would like to end with is that daydreams are never as fun as true dreams. If you truly master lucid dreaming the result will be nothing more than a daydream. No emotional element, no surprise element, and no challenge element. Please believe me, when you have a “perfect” dream everynight… what do you measure it against? I don’t say lucid dreaming is a waste, just it isn’t all good things. When you get to the point that lucidity is second nature, its not going to be a switch to turn off.

Some highlights/milestones of a few of my dreams:
I had a recurring nightmare as a child of an axe murder killing me. Maybe I watched to many Halloweens, Friday the 13th, The Shining…etc. I had the same dream annually for several years. After the first, I knew how the dream would play out but was helpless to do anything about it. It was having this dream in mind that encouraged me to take a friends advice and try to “produce a gun” or “try to fly.” But sadly that dream never came back naturally. I later created
a dream based on the memory of that dream, but by designing it, I lost the emotional element.

I decide one night to dream of being married to my favorite ex-girlfriend. The dream started in a nice restaurant and after a short conversation the waitness brought the food. As my “wife” reached for the food I noticed she had no fingers. Her reason for having no fingers was that she believed that you should lose a finger if you commit a sin. {Religion played a part in our breakup}I don’t know if it was that she had sinned 10 times or the fact that hand-holding would be uncomfortable, but I end the dream. I re-entered, at the same restaurant, similiar
conversation and then…bam… her 6 kids from a former “unknown” relationship showed up. To add to the problem, she announce that she was pregnant with a seventh.I ended the dream and re-entered once more. This time everything is going great, she is 10 times pretty than I remembered. Everything was going great, until she said that she had to meet a client for a date…aka she is a callgirl. I could have “fixed” any of these dreams but spending all my time tweaking the dreams would have taken from the pleasure I was expecting from the dream.

For fun, me and I my friends try to test the power of dreams. A friend would draw a card from a deck and that night I was suppose to guess it by revisiting the event in my dream. Each day the deck was resuffled and a new card drawn to keep the odds at 1 in 52. I was 0-10. They also hid an item in the house and I was suppose to find it by searching the house in a dream. It was found it on the third try. Because of the size of the house, I believe it was more deductive reasoning, than any act of psychic ability.

I have tried to add more color. In a mixed group of friends a few years ago we discussed dreams and color. All four girls said they dream in color, which 5 of 6 guys said that they don’t. I tried later to add color but I always would get thrown out of the dreams. My current girlfriend claims technocolor and panavision, to my, at best, MAS*H drag coloring and tunnel vision.

While I would love to keep writing on this subject, I think I have bored the Teeming Millions enough.

Thank You,
Sweet Dreams
Wissdok :slight_smile:

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Do you mind if I write a novel based on your expirience?