When I was young I used to get very vivid nightmares on a regular basis. They were so terrifying that they constantly left me feeling uneasy and nervous the whole day after. And they tended to repeat themselves. There were really only about 5 or 6 nightmares that I'd relive over and over. I would talk to people about them but nobody could offer much in the way of a solution.

After a few years of this, I found a book in the school library about dream interpretations, thinking that maybe if I understood them better, they might cease. In the book was a series of exercises that were designed to solicite desired dreams. Most of them did little or nothing for me, but one really worked.

If you put a small object that symbolizes something desired under your pillow, you're sort of putting it in the back of your mind. When you sleep on it, it can cause your subconscious to incorporate it into the dream, and often even creat an entire dream around it.

So if you wanted to dream about being a professional baseball player, put a baseball card, team logo sticker, miniflag or whatever under your pillow and it's far more likely to happen.

This worked great for me and I relied on it heavily for months. Eventually, I became increasingly more aware that I was dreaming, while in these dreams. I became able to manipulate my dreams at will, then. And finally, I got to a point where I no longer needed to "seed" objects under my pillow.

If I was having another nightmare, I was actually able to stop it in its tracks, proclaim out loud (in the dream), that "This is my dream and I control it with my will alone". From there I could stop any nightmares I'd have. And soon after, I simply stopped having nightmares altogether. I can't even remember the last time I had one.

There's a lot of power of your mind that can be mastered in your own dreams. Like a battlefield where, if you can deliver it there, your conscious mind can rule your subconscious. It's fascinating stuff.

Originally posted by sc2099
So what exactly is the purpose of lucid dreaming besides fun or entertainment? What can be gained in waking life by the practice?

Let me be mean:
What exactly is the prupose of a waking life beside fun or entertainment?

The wake life is a pointless as a lucid dream life if you consider it objective. In both you simple 'life', explore, discover, learn, create, be creative have fun and can do all the things that makes a life interesting.
Differences:
In wakeing life you also have to go to work and fullfill your basic needs of your body.
Social life is usually more interesting in wake life because dream character often arent that great communicative or social and mroe flat (missing emotinal outbursts, twist, conflicts), creating less peper in experience.

Lucid dream gives you a new sort of experience, a new world much different to the wake world. That's what makes it interesting: New experiences much different and often highly enjoyable to the degree that wakeing life can just become dull. It's an experience worth to do.
Ever feelt joy to tears or love to tears? There are 'dream places' where it's like meeting heaven. It can enrich your life by seeing and experience also the wake world with different eyes after.
Dispite that you can learn to deal with unpleasant situations. Often dream scenery can be experienced as lessions where you can check if your reaction / actions leads to a good or a bad outcome and can repeat and change it. Also often dreams can contain answers on questions. And also sometimes but rather rare it can include glimbs to future wake life events.

It's just a worthy experience.
And no, it doesnt helps you to gather more money or material world things (at least not that direct if it's that what one is here for only then I guess lucid dreaming is just a useless wast of time for that one.

Nice to have a forum now for talking about such things like lucid dreaming!


Is there also a place where we can share and read interesting vivide and/or lucid dreams?

I'd like to read and share dream experience and stories.
That would be something interesting.

Originally posted by g210b
I'd like to read and share dream experience and stories.
That would be something interesting.

Thats what I made this thread for. To share vivid and lucid dreams.

Hello,

I agree that LD is usually fun and exciting. (I have been LD since I was 9 yrs old.) I have always been able to manipulate and think clearly in dreams. I extremely Rarely have a "movie" style dream (where things happen and I don't feel compelled to adjust or take another door, so to speak.

On the flip side... Does anyone else find it a tad annoying when they can't stop LD?? I find myself on edge alot as if I did not get any sleep at all, which I chalk up to not being able to just let a dream flow. Everyone says I am "so lucky" to have this ability, but is there too much of a good thing?

Great reference in OP, BTW Skyfloating ... Bravo!

Flagged and Starred.

Originally posted by Cheyracingchick
On the flip side... Does anyone else find it a tad annoying when they can't stop LD?? I find myself on edge alot as if I did not get any sleep at all, which I chalk up to not being able to just let a dream flow. Everyone says I am "so lucky" to have this ability, but is there too much of a good thing?

Aktually I have read from 1 or 2 others that are Lucid Dreaming almost every night and also would rather have a pleasent passive dream and sleep.
During my active LD phase I also feelt a little satisfied with the time.
I startet to concentrate fully on wakeing life and simple let fad the dreaming more and more. For me this worked. From LD I entered semi lucid dreaming (in my definition a sort of subconcious knowing that it is a dream and thereferoe you can enjoy that passive in full. That's the sort of dream I like the most. ) And later it back normal dreaming and no dreaming. Aehm I let it slip a little too far

Just want to say I believe by not paying attention on the dreams anymore you should become less awareness and less awarness within dreams.
It seems all to be just a question of awarness you can build on focusing on it or not combined with your will.

@Eevee:
Interesting "dream" or dream-flash
maybe you were really that far out there


[edit on 18-6-2008 by g210b]

Great thread, Sky!

I've been lucid dreaming since I was a kid. I didn't even know what it was called until I came to ATS; I had been describing it as 'waking up in my sleep.' I can't actually control my dreams yet, though. If I have a nightmare, like I did a few nights back, it sucks because I end up feeling trapped in my own dream, and all I can do is force myself to wake up. (And then I can't get back to sleep )

Any tips on getting to the next level?

I've had 2 LD dreams in my life time.

The first one was a dream that lasted 23 years, or so it felt that way. I lived a life in my dream and died in an accident. I was German in the dream I think. I remember parts of the dream on occasions. Had to conquer fear of flying due to dream.

The second dream was one of battle. I was fighting this "person" that sucked a skull out of my stomach and I felt I was falling when that happened. Then I woke up and I couldn't move and I vomited. I couldn't get up until 6 PM that day. My mother called the doctor and he said I had nothing, but I sure felt like crap.

Those have been my dreams. The first one was nice but the last one was horrible. Any ideas on these?

Originally posted by HarlemHottie

Any tips on getting to the next level?

Yes. The key to take controll is to create an act of will. Put it a little effort.
It's the same as you will yourself to wake up.

And drop the "it's impossible" idea or maybe a feeling like cheating or breaking a law feeling or som esort of that. You have the right to defend yourself with the same weapons as the dream mosnter use. They cheat also!

I always had some feeling like cheating in my first steps steeling out of a situation with illegal magical methodes..some sort like that. That was, what hold me back the most.

My first way of takeing controll was first slowing the time to have time to find a physical possible solution for a bad situation. Somehow time manipulating didn't felt as cheat for me. That was very simple and very powerful it was at start a very mighty weapon against nightmare if you want so. Next was flying. I love flying.
then walk through walls. Then summon things.
It helped that I read that you can do such in a dream and so I could tell my mind in the dream: I know it is possible, so do it!

delete tripple replay (how happen that multiple replay copies?)

[edit on 19-6-2008 by g210b]

deleted double replay

[edit on 19-6-2008 by g210b]

Originally posted by HarlemHottie
Any tips on getting to the next level?

Opinion:

If you´re enjoying the regular level of vivid dreaming, there´s no need for effort to climb to another level. Sometimes its more enjoyable to let a movie surprise you than to take influence on it.

But the more often you do have lucid dreams, the more probable it becomes that you start consciously acting in them. So, looking at my OP, if you are frequently on "Level 5", Level 6 comes naturally. If you want you can also simply start INTENDING to.

I've had lucid dreams for as long as i remember, the level 5/6 kind of the OP.

In the earliest kinds i would be taken away by a shadow that came through the ceiling and he would take me to a dream or, even more fun, into an huge waterslide without the water but with doors on the side. behind those doors there would be a dream so i could open a door, look inside to see what kind of dream it was and, if i liked it, step inside. That was always all kinds of fun. It's not really that i realize i'm dreaming with somekind of jolt i just know it as i always do.

If i have a dream about being attacked i'll just kick the other ones behind untill it stops moving, fly away or make myself wake up with blinking my eyes or going to sleep in my dream. A couple of times i had fun in a dream and just before the alarm went on i'd say that it was fun but i had to wake up and would get up and start my day. The fun thing about it is when you have a nightmare it just doesn't touch you the way it could if you are in the illusion of reality. Lately i am experimenting with other things like moving objects from a distance and stuff like that so that is pretty fun . I'm pretty interested in Fantasy/sci-fi stories so they dominate my dream realm and what is more fun than flying around, doing spells or cruising in some spaceship?

Just around 2000 i discovered this was not the normal kind of dream and there were people desperatly trying to get where i was in the dreamstate.

I never got so far that i could shape my dream into what i wanted but that's ok because i like suprises, just playing inside whatever dream is featured and have fun. It's a lifelong hobby of mine and it doesn't cost me anything, the best things in life are indeed free .

I'd just like to add a word of caution. Exploring dreams like lucid dreaming might appear fantastic and wonderful but strange things might happen which can preoccupy someone during waking life, messing up the performance at work and alienating from friends. This is from my own experience, I was simply unable to handle some experiences that I got from exploring dreams.

Originally posted by Skyfloating

Originally posted by sc2099
So what exactly is the purpose of lucid dreaming besides fun or entertainment? What can be gained in waking life by the practice?

Not everything need be a matter of gain or achievement. There´s also the concept of fun. However, usually when I wake up after a lucid dream I feel energized and inspired, which does have some work-life advantages.

It's all about gaining, in waking reality as well as when dreaming. In your case it's gaining a pleasurable experience (fun) and you study dreams in order to achieve that more often. We're all thrillseekers one way or the other.

Ultimately there's no real purpose or meaning to this reality, neither is there any purpose to dreaming reality, it's whatever purpose you see in it or meaning you make of it. If you view dreams as meaningful they will become that and you might remember them more clearly. If you view dreams as insignificant they will become that, maybe such a dream is so boring and repetitive the dreamer isn't aware and because there is so little awareness the dreamer doesn't remember it when waking up.

Great thread, some good techniques here for LD. I got into LD while doing an A level in psychology, got interested in the whole ESP and then that led to LD. Unfortunately, I have only ever had 2 Lucid dreams, the first, was my very first try, the second was my third try, haven't been able to do it since.

Anyways, I firmly believe that there is something...else (?!?) to lucid dreaming, for me it was a doorway into astral projection (again, first time, but never been able to do since) and it was incredible, it just seemed to be another part of life, and I couldn't believe I hadn't found it before and that it wasn't well known. Lucid dreaming, for me, is the key to unlock untold potential, now we just got to find the right door.

The technique which I read out of a book was very helpful, worked first time. The first step was realisation and that is really down to you, you have to realise you are in a dream and accept control over the dream. Once realised, to accept control, it says to picture something from your childhood, something familiar. I pictured a tree, that used to be outside my house on the lawn.

When I was younger, this tree looked huge and as I remembered it, it appeared (this was very cool btw!!). What I realised was, that this tree was alot 'bigger' than I remember it and it immediately reduced it size to proportion itself correctly (I was remembering my perception of it as a child, would seem alot bigger compared to me then, than it would to me now). This basically helped me both times I lucidly dreamt, successful lift off, the reason I haven't done it since is a mixture of little effort on my part and some bad habits.

Interesting thing happened on my first lucid dream, after the tree etc, once I had full control, I decided I wanted to fly, and so I was (speed of thought, no transition). Next, I realised I was flying by my house, so I decided to swoop in and take a look at myself sleeping, just as a passed over were my body was lying (above my house) I woke up with an incredible start, nearly fell out of bed and I remembered everything, it was like I'd flew right through a door and into my body. Incredible experience and I believe I was astrally projecting, although I have no frame of reference to compare it to.

I would like to know, does anyone have any experiences with meditating while in a dream state, because I've heard it's great.

Thanks. EMM

[edit on 20-6-2008 by ElectroMagnetic Multivers]

[edit on 20-6-2008 by ElectroMagnetic Multivers]