Dreams vs. Waking Life

the Stuff Dreams are made of...
1

I’ve been thinking… (something new :tongue: )

I’ve put a question in my head and I just don’t have the answer. Question to myself was: “If we already dream every night why by default we don’t know that it’s a dream?” - by default I mean on every person that has to learn how to dream consciously

I’m pretty sure that this has been discussed, but I couldn’t find it. So my question is not why we dream, or how many dreams we dream peer night. Most of us need to learn how to control them and by “default” we don’t know that we dream.

From time to time my friends mention dreams and how they dream and what they dream. From their stories I can tell that they wouldn’t even thinking about controlling their dreams or knowing that they actually can, at least not in a million years. And for the sake of the discussion I wouldn’t think that , not if I hadn’t experienced it.

So to me it’s very interesting the very essence of lucid dream, we all know that at the begging of the lucid dreams scientists declare that it’s not possible to control subconscious or unconscious part of the mind. But dreamers from that time prove them wrong, as we do! :grin:

Also at some point I dare to say that dreams feel more real then WL, at least when we are in them. I don’t know if it’s true that the part of the brain that controls logic is shut down during dreaming or not and if it’s that the reason that we don’t know that we dream but we just can’t tell whether it’s dream or not. So that’s my main question of all of them, why we can’t know or control our dreams by default like we dream every night by default.

I’m interested in your own opinion, whether is scientific, religious, personal or some other kind of source… :plotting:

2

I’m impressed this didn’t get any replies yet.

That’s related to what I (and others) call “dream logic”. I sincerely believe that dreams are meant to be Non-Lucid to test our mind in simulating new possibilities and facing fears.

Being lucid all the time would spoil that.

Also, we are sleeping, parts of our brain may need to rest. When the dream is blurry, hard to recall, low vividness and etc, maybe parts of our brain is resting. Brain logics and memories depend on synaptic connections, if parts of the brain is resting, maybe some connections don’t happen.

3

Heh, I’m not because it’s pretty difficult question! :smile:

I agree with that. Being lucid we can turn nightmares into perfectly awesome lucid dream, but this nightmare might have some answers to our problems. But then we can through lucid dream face some fears or doubts… :hmmm:

Even to that I can relate. I had few pretty exhausting days behind me and I was very surprised this morning. I had a longest LD ever, it lasted about an hour but when I waked up I could remember only a few things, the begging and the end of the dream, but I was totally lucid because I have learned to RC every few minutes when I’m in a dream and I did it in this dream too. So this is actually an answer on mine weak recall of lucid dream. That never happened before to me so I was really surprised!

Anyway, thanks for the replay!

4

During the dream, everything is controlled by our subconscious, by default. Our conscious mind is inactive at that point and therefore, it’s logical that we can’t realise that we are dreaming.
The realisation comes when our conscious mind/logic becomes active for a few seconds. When it gets active, we immedeately think, that something is wrong. We do a RC, it succeeds and our conscious mind powers on completely and becomes stable, as long as we are concentrated.
If we look at average people, their conscious mind doesn’t get active that often. That’s because they don’t practice any awareness techniques. We practice doing RC’s, we practice lucid living, etc. So our conscious mind becomes active during dreams more and more often. Of course, there are exceptions. Those people, who were born with the talent to lucid dream, have a very active conscious mind. They don’t even need to practice any techniques for that. But when talking about a usual person, they just don’t know about it, they don’t practice it, and therefore, they don’t lucid dream by default.

5

I look at it as a kind of defense mechanism, played by our subconscious mind to give us a bit of a break from all the stimuli of waking life. For instance: could you imagine how hard and confusing life would be if you always where aware of your dreams? 1) sleep wouldn’t feel nearly as restful 2) our brains might not be able to differentiate what is real and what is illusion (assuming life itself isn’t an illusion :wink: ).

I say this because i speak from experience. A couple years ago when i first got into LDing I kept remembering my dreams every night and they would wake me up constantly. Trouble was, when i wanted to stop and just have a normal night of sleep i couldn’t. And that was frustrating. Anyways, sorry for the rambling, hope this helps put some perspective into it!

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Sorry for the wall of text… :meh:

I think the reason we (most of us, that is) don’t get lucid by default is that we learn to not pay attention to our dreams.

When little kids have had a nightmare and run crying to their parents, they almost always hear something along the lines of: “Oh, it was just a dream!” We are educated to focus on the important things of life, as school and work and not to wander around daydreaming.

I guess I’m not the only one who get uncomprehending reactions from parents, relatives etc. when dreams come up in a conversation. Regularly my father says things like “Oh, your reveries again?” when I write in my DJ. The most ridiculous sentence I’ve heard so far is “Stop dreaming and come back into reality!” “o_O” is the best description of my reaction to this.
What I want to say is that there seems to be no room for dreams or even sleep in our society. Many people don’t sleep enough and the last thing they do is to think about their dreams.
Dreams are classified as something dispensable and not worth noting because they don‘t have a profit for many. I bet that many people would try immediately to get a LD themselves as soon as they pay attention to the subject of lucid dreaming. But it already fails at this point because dreams get just waved aside.

Nevertheless, it seems that many had at least one LD as a child. For me that is because little kids don’t differentiate between real life reality and dream reality. Otherwise the explanation by the parents that it was just a dream wouldn’t be necessary.

IRL, for almost every unusual situation a logical explanation can be found. The teacher’s too late? Well, he must be ill. It’s awfully cold/warm considering the season? It has to be an effect of the climate change.
But what’s about the dream? The only explanation for seeing the deceased uncle or that one’s able to breathe underwater is, that it’s all a dream! To make such logical conclusion we do, as Paulius said, RC’s or LL. But because children see the dream as another reality, they adopt the logical rules also while dreaming and get lucid.

Though with getting older, we learn that dreams just are weird, that this is normal and we accept this, maybe unconsciously. We accept that dreams are absurd and illogical. If we attempt now to draw a logical conclusion for this flying pink elephant, we conclude unconsciously that this is a dream. But: There’s nothing unusual about this, because dreams just are like this. So, nothing weird, it’s the most normal thing ever, because it’s just a dream!

I feel like I babbled a lot of unnecessary stuff, this is just my own attempt at an explanation…Maybe the logic itself isn’t shut down while we’re dreaming, we only draw the conclusion that the unusual is normal since it’s a dream, therefore we don’t care because everything’s in order…

And I have to disagree about this:

I enjoy recalling my dreams because it makes my sleep more restful. I always feel like I haven’t slept at all, like no time has passed when I have no DR. It gives me a feeling that something actually happened, that sleep isn’t a waste of time.

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I wouldn’t agree on that one. When we dream, it doesn’t matter if we are lucid or not. Our body is asleep and rests. So if you frequently had LD’s, you wouldn’t feel tired or anything like that. In fact, lucid dreams energize us and we usually wake up full of adrenaline.

8

I agree that we rest while dreaming, but in my example i was speaking in extremes. For instance, every night would begin with a WILD, then continuous dreaming for 8 hrs (or however long you sleep) until you wake up in the morning. I haven’t had many long dreams, but i have had one ND that lasted at least 2-3 hrs and when i woke up i felt exhausted. Maybe it was just a fluke though…

Also later on in my post i elaborated that the restlessness stemmed from being woken up by dreams throughout the night, messing with my cycle and what not.
Not taking offence or anything, just clearing the air.

9

human consciousness evolved and entered into the subconscious at some point in time.
Maybe we are in a time before it evolves once again, through technology or naturally.

In the meantime, what are most humans occupying themselves with?
Consciousness? At least not here in the western world…
they follow religions/cultures that don’t speak of higher states of consciousness in themselves. we are mere mortals, placed here in order to follow, serve, and sacrifice for when God does return, we will have a spot in ‘heaven’ (or whatever). We burned people at the stake not too long ago for sneezing in fear that a demon just pooped out of them… You don’t want to be labeled a witch doctor do you? dreams were associated with evil. They thought that people who concentrate too much on dream will be cursed.

How many lucid dreamers do you know personally?? i know 0 irl.

I don’t believe in any single religion but, imagine if the west was more like this…

“No matter which branch of ancient Eastern Civilizations you study, a
single supreme practice always lies at the heart, one either locked
behind seven seals or necessitating decades of preparation. Its
goal is to release the conscious awareness from the confines of
the physical body. It is sometimes referred to as the eighth and
highest level of yoga - the state of samadhi, or dream yoga.
Why did ancient peoples pursue it, and why do modern
high-level yogis practice still practice it? It may be shocking to
learn, but they believe this practice to be a way to train for… the
process of dying. They believe that before another senseless
reincarnation after physical death, we find ourselves in a special
intermediate state - sidqai bardo. However, we are usually unable
to maintain conscious awareness during it, and this is the main
reason why we find ourselves on Earth once again in a new
incarnation. Thus, if over the course of a lifetime one practices
consciously separating the mind from the body while still
preserving full awareness of one’s surroundings, this will facilitate
control of the process after death and finally stop the cycle of
rebirth, allowing one to reunite with the universe.”
~Ultimate Yoga - Michael Raguda

10

Firstly, thank you on your replays and discussion!

For me lucid dream brings more energy to me, I mean I feel more energetic after having one.

That is possible I believe but only if one has some psychological disorder…

Feel free to write even more!

I totally agree with this. I feel the same, I’m disappointed when I don’t recall any dreams, because If I have slept for 10 hours and if I don’t recall any dreams I’m like:
That’s it, no dreams? C’mon 10 hours and nothing, what a waste of time :bored: !

Exactly, not even one! :eh:
Also not that I’m judging, but religion, any religion is so limiting, because if your thought one thing and if you don’t even question that, if you blindly follow then it’s your lose…

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Perhaps we don’t realize we’re dreaming because we want our fantasies to come true.

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Yeah I know what you mean, but it’s sad how many people just don’t want too remember their dreams… Because for them dreams are nothing more then wasting time…

13

Uhh, I like this theory!

That would also explain why some people get lucid in their nightmares: Because those dreams are not enjoyable at all nor do they fulfill any nice fantasies and thus they either wake up or realize they’re in fact dreaming.

dB_FTS, I agree with you… :sadyes: