I’ve noticed from my few lucid and semi-lucid dreams that my LDs are usually triggered by my more normal dreams, while I remain oblivious in my really freaky dreams.
Take for instance last night in my dream my grandma, my mom, and I were walkin down a sidewalk in like a big city. However something didn’t feel quite right and I said aloud to them, “Hey am I dreaming?” Then a few seconds later after I’d tried to remember how I’d gotten there, “HEY! I am!!” and went on to have a very nice LD and some really weird false awakenings. Of course, on the flip side, I’ve had just simply outrageous dreams where I never even came close to lucidity. Anyone else out there like this, or am I just weird?
I’ve never thought about this before, but it seems like an area that needs further discussion. Perhaps ‘Normal’ dreams remind you of RL, and your conscious mind suddenly recognises them as dreams? Maybe when you are dreaming about totally far-out situations, you’re subconscious knows that you are dreaming and prevents the conscious mind from waking up?
One possible theroy is that this works exactly the opposite to what most people might think. The fewer strange occurances, and bizzare events might in fact give you a better chance of becoming Lucid?
What if Lucidity is the result of your subconscious mind forgetting it is dreaming, perhaps due to the dream being so realistic, and waking the conscious mind?
While it’s probably not cause to change all your beliefs on the subject, does anyone have any comments?
Those are some extremely fascinating and interesting points! I went back earlier and went over my dream journal, and it confirmed what I thought to be true. The only times I have EVER became lucid or semi-lucid came from ‘normal’ dreams and not the more far fetched ones…EVER. I wonder if LaBerge or any of the more well-known LD researchers have ever considered this. If not, I think it’s something they might find interesting.
Now that I think about it, I’d have to agree with you there, Clint.
Most of my LDs occur when I find myself in my house. Also, they generally tend to occur when nothing extremely unusal is happening. Last night for example, I dreamt that my dad was cleaning my car… in the living room. This isn’t something you see every day, so maybe that’s the reason I failed to achieve lucidity?
That’s an interesting idea, and it certainly resonated with me. Hmm. Let me think of dreams where I became lucid because of something REALLY weird…
Well, there was one where I was in England and was worrying that I hadn’t called home in a long time, and then I realized that I wasn’t really in England and became lucid, but that had been preceded by much weirder stuff (jewelry shifting in a store, 3-D designs on quarters, and a movie changing into real life). And twice I became lucid because I saw my grandpa, who’s dead, but I’ve had many, many more dreams about him in which I didn’t think twice about it.
It’s much more likely that I’ll become lucid because of something that’s not quite as strange, like my clock being in the wrong place or too big, or my computer not changing backgrounds when I try to make that happen, or (this one is great) seeing a weird pink computer in the corner of the living room in my house, where there isn’t a computer, while this weird Wrinkle in Time story is going on, and realizing it’s a dream because “modern computers didn’t exist when that book was written.” DUH!
Another common thing is that I’ll become lucid because of some strong emotion. For example, I was playing in a soccer game at this strange college (and I’m not in college yet) and I scored a goal. I’ve never scored a goal in a real game because I’m a defense player. I was really happy, and then I said, “I hope this isn’t a dream.” I found out that it was. It was a little disappointing. Another example is that I was in this apartment building with my grandpa. Someone said that he wasn’t really dead but was living in this apartment because he and my grandma had had a horrible fight. I said, “I hope this is a dream,” and once again found out that it was.
I have. Well, low lucidity anyway. I was at school and I really didn’t want to be there. I said, “I hope this is a dream. Wait a second, school doesn’t start for three days! I’m dreaming!” It was weird. Another time, me and my friends were just sitting and talking and that made me lucid. It’s weird how it seems you never know your dreaming unless your brain WANTS you to know. Wonder why that is.
I think you might be right about emotions being a trigger for lucidity. My ability to generate a theory out of seeming nowhere presents me with this:
How ofter do you dream about something completely strange, that could never happen in RL, yet not feel any strong emotion? In my case, it’s fairly often. I find that even the most bizzare events, such as a pack of dogs chasing me around a friends house with knifes, while my friends sit there watching, seems to cause no realistic sense of terror that you would expect.
So then, I conclude that perhaps only when a dream is realistic enough, the conscious mind is tricked and begins creating emotions? In fact, emotions themselves may not cause lucidity, but instead be caused by the same conscious reactions?
Lucidity and emotions may both be the product of your conscious mind becoming tricked by how realistic the dream is?
Feel free to tell me I should never attempt to write a book on this
I think it’s funniest when you start talking about things you can do in your dreams… not realizing your dreaming… and you tell another dream character about it. And when you look back on their reaction, you can TELL they knew you were dreaming and they were just playing dumb to you LOL.
Like one time I was making someone walk back and forth up and down the stairs… like I was rewinding the scene in front of us and fast forwarding it and stuff like a vcr and this girl I went to school with was there and I was like “LOOK! I CAN CONTROL THIS! I think I might be dreaming!” And she goes “looks kinda shocked oh um… well, yea… that’s cool and stuff…” but she had like a paniced look on her face like OH CRAP SHE’S STARTING TO COME AROUND!!!" rofl. That was crazy!
No not again! . I was at the swimming pool. I was standing in front of the door to women’s showers. Than I saw my friend in a bikini. WOW!. She went inside to take a shower. I thought “I wish it was a lucid dream:-( then I could go with her”.
well last night my brain really didnt want me to have a lucid dream, what happened is for some reason i thought i was dreamin so i did a a reality check and it proved i was dreaming, so i went and told my mum that i was dreaming, and she said “wow, interesting” i then heard the phone ring, really really loud and i found my self waking up, so i say to mum “cya, i’m waking up”, she waves goodbye, i then get up out of bed go to the ringing phone, pick it up and say “hello” but theres noone on the other end, so i tryed to type in *10# (number in australia to return unanswer calls) but it didnt seem to work, i gave up and went back to bed, next thing i know i have woken up again,
i go to dad and say “did the person ring back?” he didnt know what i was talking about, i told him how i tryed to answer the phone, he said that the phone rang, he answerd it and it was a guy from work, there were no other calls, so then it hit me, the phone actually did ring, and my brain used this as an excuse for a false awakening, so me answering the phone was actaully a dream, which explains why the phone didnt work.
It’s not uncommon for real world sounds to interfere with a dream. It used to happen a lot more to me when I was younger, and wasn’t woken up by the slightest noise.
Usually falling asleep while watching a movie has the same effect. I wonder if that could be used the same way as a WILD with music?
Might give it a go tonight. Since movies sound different to music, there might be a more realistic influence to your dream?
If I were you, I’d unplug every phone that I can hear while sleeping. It should be a crime to be awaken from a LD! But one thing; don’t be cursing your brain, who knows what phsycological impact it may have.
There does seem to be some connection between the types of dreams and the potential of becoming lucid. I believe that when the dreams are more realistic, it may be because you are more actively participating in your dream (and their creation), and therefore your consciousness is actually more awake. My first LD today was very realistic, and I was able to pinpoint that the couch was not in the right spot, triggering an odd but successful RC. Other dreams are so messed up that I can often see my mind thinking out the outcomes, (i fell in the water, now what if I actually hit the floor, and there I hit it) but I am actively myself (not the mind creating) sleepwalking through the dream without a spark of intelligence.
Last night in a dream, I was suddently at the airport with tickets to the USA. I freaked out because I couldn’t remember how I planned the trip and what I was going to do in the US in stead of taking it as the obvisious dreamsign it is
Well this happend to me last night: I was in EVA unit 0.1 (From neon genesis evangelion) and I was rehesing how to stand on my head (DUH!)
And after that I swam in icewater for a week , and even after that I didin’t realize it was only a dream, though I haven’t hade an ld yet.
When I had my first lucid dreams, they were often triggered by nightmares. Nowadays my dreams don’t seem to scare me anymore. Last night I dreamed of a man beeing shot (shot in the neck, he seemed to be still a live, he asked me not to look at him soo noone else would notice he was still alive and so they wouldn’t try to shoot him again), earlier this week there were dangerous traffic situations, last week I almost drowned, then also this dream were someone could be chasing me, I was running trough a forest, there were lots of people in small groups, but I couldn’t join a group cause all members of each group were identical, soo everyone could see I didn’t belong to a group. … all these things happen to me in dreams but they just don’t scare me. I don’t know if that is a sad thing.
On the other hand a few weeks ago, this one dream full of emotions, didn’t make me lucid either. I embraced my grandfather and I was crying a lot. He said, you should come and see me more often. (In real life he is dead for 5 years)
I miss the most obvious things. The other night I dreamt that I found my cat, who dissapeared several months ago, in my computer room. So I was petting him and stuff, and then I was afraid to turn around because I thought he might disappear because it might just be a dream. Then the rest of my family came in to see, and the cat was still there. I was like hey, I’m glad someone besides me saw him now, because I always dream about the cat coming back but he never does in real life. Then I woke up, frustrated with my own stupidity. Also a few days ago, I dreamt that it was Christmas eve again. All of a sudden in the middle of the festivities I yelled out “oh my god, tomorrow’s christmas?!” I couldn’t get over the fact of how fast the year went by. My mom was like yeah, christmas always does come fast. But I was completely confused. I said “but we just took our tree down 5 days ago, I think.” Then I started talking about how I ALWAYS dream that it’s christmas again just a couple weeks after christmas. And I still had no clue.
In a dream I had once, I was back in high-school having biology class. We talked about lucid dreaming that lesson, and my EWofLD book was even lying in front of me - but I didn´t realize. Talk about being f´ed up or what.
I think the thing about only being able to get lucid in realistic dreams has alot of truth to it, I just read this whole thread and I too have noticed it’s the weirdest dreams that I have no clue about. And in semi-ordinary dreams I almost catch on. I often hear my mind talking like a narrator’s voice in the backround, and I try to figure out what’s gonna happen next. Like this one dream I had that was completely messed up, at the very end I decided the house should blow up. And I was thinking “well, maybe she should put the bomb over there, but wait, if the whole house blows up everyone in it is going to die…oh well, it’s just a movie anyway” and the last scene I was outside watching the house burst into flames. I always have dreams that I think are movies, where I’m sort of just observing everything.
This night I dreamed that I was sitting at a friends place, and I was watching his documentaries about lucid dreams. I woke up (FA!) and thought, Oh my god! I need to tell that friend I was watching his documentary in my dream without realizing I was dreaming! I was still lying on my bed and listening to the radio. On the radio a man was telling before he went to sleep he imagined (probably hypnosis) he was putting al kinds of things in his big toes, and when he was dreaming he took the things out of his big toes en used them in his lucid dreams. Again I didn’t realize I was dreaming till I woke up and this time it wasn’t a FA.
Looking back through my dream journal I would have to agree for the most part anyway. Most of the dreams that I’ve been able to make lucid were semi-realistic, but I’ve also had some come from dreams that were… well… out there. I also noticed that when you try to bring emotions or feelings into a dream, the chance to becme lucid, or at least notice that it is prolly a dream increases, for instance:
last night I dreamt that I was fighting these evil creatures back in this lab like thing that I’ve never seen before, no lucidity triggered, then later, once we got to safety, my teeth started to fall out, I can remember the pain quite well, once it got to be too great, I said, “Thats it!, enough of this dream!” and woke myself up.
. I was at the swimming pool. I was standing in front of the door to women’s showers. Than I saw my friend in a bikini. WOW!. She went inside to take a shower. I thought “I wish it was a lucid dream:-( then I could go with her”.
, and even after that I didin’t realize it was only a dream, though I haven’t hade an ld yet.