Lucid dreams

12

These are dreams in which you can control part/all of what happens in them. I don't think many people have them, but if you have them, can you post with what you have done in them.

Is there anyone here that thinks there are useful interpretations of dreams?
For example, a repeated dream of mine is a false awakening - in particular, dreaming that I have got up, got ready, had breakfast etc. I also have a dream where I really want to wake up so I try to (lucid dream) but I can't physically open my eyes - this can be quite terrifying.

Also, instead of having particularly fantastical dreams, I tend to dream about past events - a very common dream of mine being to relive certain things.
Does anyone else have a similar experience? Or would just like to discuss aspects of their dreams.

Reply 1

PinkMobilePhone

Chat Forum Helper, Life & Style Forum Helper

22

I've only ever lucid dreamed once - I can't remember exactly what I did though, it was a long time ago.

I've had a few false awakenings - especially when pregnant. Dreams get a lot more vivid when you're pregnant for some reason.

Reply 2

Giga Flare

8

Drederick Tatum

I don't think many people have them,

I think you'd be surprised actually. I've heard that most people experience at least one lucid dream at some point in their lives, but few people know of the existence of the term 'lucid dream'. Also, our brains seem to try to make us forget the details of what we have dreamt the night before - I wonder why? - so many people wouldn't remember that they'd experienced anything.

Drederick Tatum

Is there anyone here that thinks there are useful interpretations of dreams? For example, a repeated dream of mine is a false awakening - in particular, dreaming that I have got up, got ready, had breakfast etc. I also have a dream where I really want to wake up so I try to (lucid dream) but I can't physically open my eyes - this can be quite terrifying.

I get that feeling sometimes. I get a lot of deja vu as well, which I'd attribute to dreaming of something - forgetting most of the details, and having it only in the very back of my mind - then reliving the same experience whilst awake (most likely out of coincidence).

Drederick Tatum

Also, instead of having particularly fantastical dreams, I tend to dream about past events - a very common dream of mine being to relive certain things.
Does anyone else have a similar experience? Or would just like to discuss aspects of their dreams.

Anyone has the ability to train themselves to lucid dream at will, but I haven't tried this myself. Why? I believe lucid dreaming is directly related to sleep paralysis, and vice versa. I used to suffer from nightmares as a child (I vaguely recall symptoms of sleep paralysis, but I'm not absolutely sure this is what I was suffering from), so I don't want to risk upsetting the good sleeping pattern I've had for many years now. It's a great pity that I'm such a coward, because lucid dreaming is probably one of the greatest human phenomenons, and I really feel that I'm not experiencing life to the full if I don't try it at some point.

Anyway, enough rambling for now; I'm off to bed! :wink:

Reply 3

Segat1

16

I have them all the time. I don't tend to do anything particularly significant, jsut go to work, have sex, go shopping. Brill.

Reply 4

Hispanic-Impressions

11

I've been trying to do this for ages.
The closest I've come is realising that I'm dreaming (which is quite hard in itself) but I couldn't control anything.

This might help for anyone trying to do it - http://www.lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html.

"Do a reality test.
Carry some text with you or wear a digital watch throughout the day. To do a reality test, read the words or the numbers on the watch. Then, look away and look back, observing the letters or numbers to see if they change. Try to make them change while watching them. Research shows that text changes 75% of the time it is re-read once and changes 95% it is re-read twice. If the characters do change, or are not normal, or do not make sense, then you are most probably dreaming. Enjoy! If the characters are normal, stable, and sensible, then you probably aren't dreaming. Go on to step 2. "

That could drive me crazy. :s-smilie:

Reply 5

Cherry Kisses

13

Have always wanted to lucid dream but never been successful

Reply 6

Queen Alice

10

I have had several lucid dreams...
Most recently I realised I was dreaming then started to skip along the street singing "I'm dreaming, I can do what I want", then I decided I wanted to go to a Really big house and I did. Don't remember the rest...
Oh, and once I dreamt I was in class (boring boring), realised I was dreaming, danced on the tables then jumped out the window :wink:

I also have lots of "repeated awakening" dreams.
The worst was I would wake up, see my laptop had a virus, then "wake up" again. This would repeat till I actually woke up to find I had a migraine :frown:

P.S, I have lots of dreams where I know I'm dreaming, but can't make anything interesting happen. And there are times when I am having a good dream, realise it is not real and I'm dreaming, and then it ruins the dream!

Reply 7

Airel

14

I've had two.

One was about 3 months ago, a few days after a girl I know died. I was talking to her, and trying to tell her she was dead, but she wouldn't believe me. The trigger for realising it was a dream was that I knew this girl was dead. It lasted about 10 minutes.

The second one I had was only last night. I was walking down a street and I stopped. I turned around and saw a huge ball of lightning gathering more lightning. I thought "wtf....oh. I'm dreaming :3'. I tried to fly, but i woke up :<

Reply 8

Celifein

7

I often do this during intense nightmares. I either take control and make myself more powerful/the "monster" less powerful or I wake myself up.

I also do this during recurring dreams, when I realise that I've dreamt it before. I change things to how I wanted them to go the first time, or I correct people if they do something differently.

Reply 9

CJPT89

2

I've been a lucid dreamer for years, but one dream has always remained in my memory:

I was in foxhole with some other Soldiers, in Tundra-like terrain. We were about 500 yards from some sort of factory/installation. We all had our heads down and were freezing, when one of the enemy Soldiers came out for a smoke. Apparently I was the best shot in the group, so I was nominated to shoot him.

I shot the guy at the long distance, and here's what weirded me out. I ejected the shell casing from the gun and kept the shell - an object in my dream had sentimental value.

I've never had anything quite like that since.

Reply 10

username136883

8

I do this all the time. Just lately I haven't been able to remember my dreams, so I haven't done it for a while :/ But it's incredibly fun. The way I always test if it's actually a dream is to try and fly by jumping. Sometimes it takes two tries, but then I can do it. It's kinda weird, though, because the muscles I use to fly in my dreams don't actually exist (it's kind of like jumping, but it doesn't use my legs...) I think that's actually how I tell if I'm dreaming, because I can feel those muscles... :s-smilie:

Reply 11

J+N+B+J

I always have lucid dreams, and they always come true as well. sometimes i get so worried. can any1 tell y this happens to me, not others.

i had 1 dream abt 2 weeks ago abt my result

in my dream i saw my result and it was below 20. it came true. in another dream i saw myself crying.

Reply 12

Eien

16

It's funny how you can remember certain dreams and not others - I remember certain dreams I had years ago, just as I would with certain things that happened years ago, and others I may have had last week and forgotten about.

Reply 13

Schmokie Dragon

17

Lucid dreams . . . how does this differ from normal dreaming? I can't say, as the description you have of a 'lucid' dream seems to describe almost all of the dreams I have.

In almost all of my dreams I know that I am dreaming, and so can control my character (like in a computer game) and I don't often feel scared etc, even if the dream is scary, because I know it is just a dream. Make sense?

I used to have horrible nightmares as a kid, and the only way I could deal with these was to distance myself from what was happening, and take an onlookers viewpoint. Soon I found things that had previously terrified me quite amusing!

I usually play along with what is happening, as I find it ruins things to actually try and change what happens. I can do what I want in real life, so when I dream I like to see where my mind takes me because it is often very beautiful, interesting and surreal! However, if something does start to scare me, then I can sometimes take control. I occasionally have a dream where I am in a dark building at night, and I think something is hiding in one of the rooms, or maybe I am being chased by something. So I might jump into a room and scream loudly (and make a face :p:

) to scare it off. Whenever I do take control, it feels like I am walking through tar and everything kinda goes slow and feels weird.

I usually remember my dreams vividly for a few days, and make quite a big deal out of them to my mother and friends, but if I stop thinking about them, I often can't bring the memory back to the surface, and I'm just left with a feeling or sense of something.

Reply 14

Jackathon

They sound quite cool, don't think I've ever experienced one though. :frown:

Shall have to try.

Reply 15

noodles!

14

I don't think I've ever experienced a lucid dream. Sounds fun! But kinda weird.

I might have a go at training myself, but not on my own in my room in halls, it might get scary =/

Reply 16

Tagit

12

I have had a few but then my default instinct is wait a second, i'm dreaming here.. and then i wake up :mad:

Reply 17

charlottebox

I have had dreams where I was aware I was dreaming, and didn't bother to play along because 'it's only a dream', which annoyed the other people in the dream! I've also tried to get out of a dream, or 'woken up' only to wake up again, properly.
J+B+N+J - This has happened to me too. I have predicted utterly random things I wasn't even aware of thinking about, only for them to come true a few days later. Any explanations?

Reply 18

iliketurtles

12

Drederick Tatum

Does anyone else have a similar experience? Or would just like to discuss aspects of their dreams.

Ok, this might be totally weird but as a very technically minded person I find that I often dream in code. This isn't quite what you'd imagine, it's nothing like the image of something resembling The Matrix with the green characters flowing down a screen, but more a visual representation of problems (even extremely difficult or non-deterministic polynomial-time complete problems, which cannot be solved in computational time) which seem to become perfectly clear and obvious in my mind whilst I'm sleeping.

It's really difficult to put into words, and you probably won't understand unless you're an experienced programmer or mathematician, but it's as if any personal problem can be solved by an algorithm (a defined set of steps), which I can see before me in a somewhat colourful representation. Problems are represented as functions with other influencing factors (such as people, feelings, etc) as input variables or objects.

I know this is seriously weird compared to the other stories on this thread, but it really frustrates me sometimes because I can see the solution to these problems in a perfectly logical algorithm, often with reasonably computable asymptotic running times, however once I wake up I simply cannot express the solution in the same way and it's just not comprehensible.

Oh, I do have normal dreams too. It's just these particular ones freak me out a bit.

Reply 19

frank_drebin

16

bigred

Ok, this might be totally weird but as a very technically minded person I find that I often dream in code. This isn't quite what you'd imagine, it's nothing like the image of something resembling The Matrix with the green characters flowing down a screen, but more a visual representation of problems (even extremely difficult or non-deterministic polynomial-time complete problems, which cannot be solved in computational time) which seem to become perfectly clear and obvious in my mind whilst I'm sleeping.

It's really difficult to put into words, and you probably won't understand unless you're an experienced programmer or mathematician, but it's as if any personal problem can be solved by an algorithm (a defined set of steps), which I can see before me in a somewhat colourful representation. Problems are represented as functions with other influencing factors (such as people, feelings, etc) as input variables or objects.

I know this is seriously weird compared to the other stories on this thread, but it really frustrates me sometimes because I can see the solution to these problems in a perfectly logical algorithm, often with reasonably computable asymptotic running times, however once I wake up I simply cannot express the solution in the same way and it's just not comprehensible.

Oh, I do have normal dreams too. It's just these particular ones freak me out a bit.

I know what you mean mate. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad

:yy:

Lucid dreams

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