I just started reading and researching about lucid dreams, and I have a big theoretical problem with lucid dreaming:
Since I’ve started reading about and working on lucid dreams, I think I’ve had a few weak ones.
In the first one, I realized that I was dreaming, and I could walk around, but I wasn’t able to control much or change a lot, and it only lasted a few minutes. However, it wasn’t the ultimate vivid experience that a lot of people say LD is, I remember it as just a normal dream.
When I woke up, I had this question: How do you know if you were really lucid? Maybe I just dreamed that I knew I was dreaming? When all you have is a memory, how can you tell the difference between the memory of real consciousness, and the memory of fake consciousness?
What you experienced was probably low level lucidity. I only had one of those, and it felt just like any LD, but I couldn’t change anything, like the dream was in charge, not me…
You should work on your dream recall if you haven’t already. Then when you become lucid, you’ll know it
I dont know if this happens to everyone but i feel a sence of awareness kind of like i am dare at that moment. For normal dreams everytime is more just like a memory thats how i tell the difference
It all depends on how lucid you are. Recently, I’ve had an LD in which my lucidity was mostly low. Sometimes it varied, so sometimes it felt a bit like an ND, but other times I had more control over things.
I’m not sure, it was a week or two ago. I think I woke up.
As for realizing that you’re dreaming, you can have the same doubts later, can’t you? Did I really realize that I was dreaming, or did I just dream that I realized it? A bit confusing it seems to me…
This is exactly what confuses me. I’ve had one high lucidity LD and for that one, I knew for sure it wasnt just a dream. But the other few were low lucidity and its really hard to distinguish whether they were real or just dreams. I end up counting them as LD’s though, they fit the criteria.
First of all, they are all dreams!!! There are ND’s and LD’s but both types are dreams.
Second, if you realise you are dreaming, then it is an LD. The question “was I just dreaming that I realised that I was dreaming?” is not relevent. You are dreaming! whatever you do or think is just in your dream. If you realise that you are dreaming, then it is a lucid dream.
Now we can start talking about how lucid you were, and what you can do with you lucidity. In a normal dream your mind doesn’t work normal. You see and do lots of things that just can’t be, yet you never question that in the dream. When you level of lucidity is low, this is also a problem. As your level of lucidity goes up, then you mind gets closer and closer to its normal way of thinking. At a very high level of lucidity, you can think very clearly and do what you want in your dream. You are then only limited by what you think you can do. At different levels of lucidity you might be able to think clearly, but not change the dream, or you could change the dream, but not think clearly.
At very low levels, you might not be albe to think clearly, or influence the dream. It sounds like you dream was at this level, a low level lucid dream. Now all you need is practice to work up to higher levels of lucidity. Keep working and one day you will have very high level lucid dreams.
don
Any dream in which you consciously realize you are dreaming is considered lucid. To question whether this realization is a dream, is like questioning whether you are actually awake right now. You don’t know, and there is no way to find out for sure, but you have a pretty good guess that you are.
This is what good lucid dreams are like. When you have one that’s better than a low level, you’ll understand. You’ll be fully conscious and be able to recall memories from RL and truly understand what’s going on around you.
Think of it like this: can you really know that your memories ever really happened? Enjoy the dream, and you’ll know.
[color=darkblue]I have the exact same problem Controller (appropriate name!)
I often wonder weather I was lucid in the low control ones. I think this is more to do with DR than actual control. I remind myself in the LD that it feels so real and I know that when I wake up it will get vague and it does!
It is so strange to think I believed in it so much as I dreamt it and knew I wouldn’t when I woke up so I reminded myself in the dream. I can waste a good few minutes LD time doing the reminding thing.
If I don’t do it though, when I wake up, the LD is worthless. I really do need to work on that DR and I think this could help you too…[/color]
If even your wake recall is fuzzy, why would you expect that your LD recall is better?
More seriously, different problems may appear. You can have a low level lucid dream and your mind was not very clear when you were inside. You can have a high level LD but it was followed by a ND, so you can’t remember it very well. And even our waking memories are fuzzy. We just have the feeling that they are solid and “real” cause we are in the same world and our currrent perception feels solid and real.
But if I try to remember what I did in the kitchen 2 minutes ago, I’ve just a vague notion of my past actions, and I can’t precisely remember my movements nor the differents scenes I saw. It’s the same for LD’s.
So the interest of LD’s is they have to be lived while they happen. Later, they just look like other memories.
I think the official definition is that a lucid dream is when you realize the fact that you were dreaming. It does not matter how conscious you really were. My own definition however is more strict. For me to count it as a lucid dream, i must both realize the fact that i am dreaming and i must feel as conscious as in waking life. Like i must be conscious enough to know where my physical body is, what i did last night in waking life and similar.
Some good points, but the question is, do you consciously realize that it is a dream, or do you just see somebody say “I’m dreaming”?
Let me see if I can explain what I’m saying with an analogy. Consider a normal dream as being similar to a situation in which you’re in a movie theatre watching a movie. Lucidity would then be the realization that what you’re watching is not real, and is just a movie.
However, what if you’re watching the movie, and the main character in the movie (whose point of view we’re seeing) realizes that he/she is in a movie. Since our minds don’t work right at the time, why can’t it be possible that we don’t in fact make the same realization, and it belongs just to the character in the movie we’re watching?
It’s exactly that, you think: “it’s not real, it’s a dream”.
It’s rather common for LD’ers that a DC in a normal dreams says: “It’s a dream”, and the dreamer doesn’t believe it and thinks it’s just a joke. Thus the dreamer doesn’t realize he’s dreaming. Nevertheless, it means that his subconscious is influenced by lucid dreaming.
Such dreams about dreams or lucid dreams are called prelucid dreams and you’re likely to have LD’s soon after you got such prelucid dreams.
There are definitely subtle levels of lucidity. Its not really an all-or-nothing split category. I’d break it down into about 5 levels.
No lucidity - You go where the dream takes you, without question.
Lowest - You realise things are strange, but you don’t pursue the thought any further.
Low - You realise things are strange, and pursue the thought somewhat but end up explaining it away or being distracted.
Intermediate - You make the realisation that you are dreaming, but even armed with this knowledge, you are still going along with the dream and don’t take full advantage of your situation. Sort of like a day dream. You remember knowing you were lucid, but have the feeling your brain was ‘half switched off’.
Highest Lucidity - You are the master of the universe. Your very thoughts alter reality. Colors are vibrant, you can see music, tastes are bursting from your taste buds, smells are intense, tactile contact is incredibly detailed and everything you hear is crystal clear. You can do - anything.
You were probably experiencing one of the lower levels of lucidity, or maybe even the Intermediate stage.
I had the same experience this morning. I can remember stepping towards a white car, repeating in my head “I am lucid, this is a dream, I am lucid, I’m in a dream”. But I was still going along with the dream. I wasn’t doing my usual tricks of flying, pyrokinesis, hydrokinesis, conjuring dead relatives or pets - nothing. Since that isn’t my usual style I can only conclude that although I knew I was dreaming on some level, I may as well have been saying “I could really go for a cheeseburger” in my head, because it would have had the same effect.
Trust us. When you reach the highest level, you’ll know it.
This is getting deep.
I think that wathing a move would be more like 3rd person POV. I have very little experance with that kind of dream, so I can’t say much about it.
I would say that it is clear that if a DC says you are dreaming then it is not yet an LD. If the DC is you, and you are seeing the dream in 3rd person POV, well, I am not sure. I can see that this adds a level of seperation between you and the statement “I am dreaming”, so I would guess that it would depend on how close the identificaton between “you the dreamer” and “you the DC” was at that point. I know that some of my RL memorys also have this split between “me the one remembering” and “me the one experancing”. This happens when I have had an accident, then I offen remember it in 3rd person POV, but when it happend I was there, and have the scars to prove it. Looking at it that way, maybe it was an LD while you were dreaming, but in memory it is just an ND. It is not as bad as an LD that you forget compleatly, but a lot worse then one where you remember everything.
In the end, each dreamer desides for himself if it was an LD or ND, then I know of no way that someone else can look into your dream and say for sure what you experanced in the dream. It would be great if someone could invent a videorecorder for our dreams but until then, you get to belive what you want about your dreams, and we can accept, or reject it, as we want.
don
Looking at it that way, maybe it was an LD while you were dreaming, but in memory it is just an ND. It is not as bad as an LD that you forget compleatly, but a lot worse then one where you remember everything.
but until then, you get to belive what you want about your dreams, and we can accept, or reject it, as we want.