So a little while ago, maybe last year, I realized I have the ability to control non-lucid dreams. Let me use an example, like my dream last night:
One of my dreams had just ended, one about being a polar bear sledding, and new one was beginning, wherein I was walking through the streets of Russia. I gave myself a choice to either go back to the first dream and continue its story arc, or start this new one. Without being lucid, I chose to begin the new dream. I picked up a newspaper and read a story about these conjoined twin serial killer sisters, and how they were finally taken down. It had a picture. I decided I wanted to see what they looked like before they were sniped, and flashed back to one of their crimes. Again, not lucid, but I made these things happen. When an event took place that had nothing to do with the current plot of the dream, I stopped it and returned to the dream, so I could see what happened next.
I’ve been able to do this for quite some time, I just never really realized it. I think I’ve done it since I was five or six, when most of my dreams were nightmares. You hear all the time on this forum that people like me just learned to make themselves lucid and wake themselves up, but I just got the ability to change the dream into something else, or to bring into the dream people I trust. It is important to note that I am never lucid during these events, and I never realize they are dreams.
Since I realized it last year, I’ve been using it to decide what I’m going to dream about before I go to sleep, who’s going to be in it, and what happens in the dream. I’ve never been able to make myself lucid, however.
Do you know anyone else who can do this?
Do you think I could use this to get lucid? If so, how?
Sounds really interesting, and it’s hard to believe you can choose what you dream about and control the events without being lucid. Well I have “similar” experiences. I’m a gamer and pretty often in a dream I believe to be in a game. This allows me to decide what I can and can’t do. It’s still restricted by my schemata.
Then there is FLD. I have those when I actively try to lucid dream. In those I can have superpowers etc but I can’t just make stuff happen around me that easily.
If I want to dream about a specific thing, it has to be something I can easily visualize like Smaug right after watching the movie
After waking up I often know where I “believed to be” when I was dreaming. Often I believe to be awake, sometimes in a game etc. And sometimes I believe to be in a dream, but how about you? If you don’t believe to be dreaming, how do you justify your special powers in that dreamworld?
It’s normal, generally the way that autosuggestion works. I remember one Lucid Quest here that was “enter a video game”, so I incubated my favorite video game, that is to say I exposed myself to that video game a lot in waking life… and had nonlucid dreams about it
I think that mneumonic lucid dreamers might experience something similar with what I like to call “meta-lucid” dreams, which are nonlucid dreams about lucid dreaming, like a dream of talking with somebody about lucid dreaming, or browsing a bookstore and seeing that all the books are about lucid dreaming no matter what section you’re browsing in, but still not becoming lucid!
I’ve been doing this my entire life. It seems like that is what the dream world is about. But until a few days ago, I believed it was lucidity. It’s not.
I’ve had several lucid dreams throughout my life, and I never truly examined the difference, though I always knew there was one. I always classified them as lucid, but they aren’t…
Lucidity is when you recognize that you are in fact sleeping, and inside a dream…
That is rare for me…
But what is not rare at all, is what you have described… In fact what you’ve described is at least 90% of my dreams. I an often “omnipotent” in ways, in my dreams, but I only recognize that, and usually the understanding that I’m in an alternate dimension/reality, rather than a dream. And in ways, a virtual reality. Re-experiencing, choosing what I wish to experience, etc.
I understand exactly what you mean. Recently, I had a scary dream that I didn’t like where it was going, so I tried to take control of it. I wasn’t able to take complete control, so I just willed the dream to have a happy ending. I think I was able to do this because somewhere in the back of my mind I thought I was daydreaming, and when I daydream I have control over everything without recognizing that I’m in a daydream. And I’m sure that It’s not the first time it happened.
That’s exactly what I noticed too. I’m not thinking about the fact that I’m actually lying in my bed. I really believe to be part of that dream world. And that world has a set of rules that are determined by my schemata of the events and sights around me.
I get this too. It’s not so weird, I think, if you consider it one more weird aspect of dream reality that we take as normal when we’re not lucid. Right? If “Reality is such that Big Name Rock Star is attending a birthday party at my house and we’re all playing hide-and-seek” is a base-line assumption I can have during a dream, why not also “Reality is such that I can rewind and replay it”?
Most often I get a very mild version of it during nightmares, where I’m hiding from the bad guy, and I think, “He’s going to find me, I know he’s going to find me–crap! Thinking that has caused him to find me!” But I’ve had a few more “neutral” dreams in which I’ve consciously chosen to replay a scene. It’s just one more piece of “dream physics” that I can take for granted if I’m not lucid.
While I’m not sure what mneumonic lucid dreaming is, I recognize this too. Again, it most often happens in nightmares: “Oh no! I’m falling off a cliff! It’s just like my recurring nightmares! Only this time it’s for real!” It generally makes me feel very foolish when I wake up.
Once, one beautiful time, that thought led to my realizing I was dreaming, and I chose therefore to really let myself experience the sensation of falling off a cliff from the safety of my knowledge that it was a dream. The sensation did not, oddly enough, get less terrifying. It was a bit like a roller coaster, I guess, where the bottom drops out of your tummy and the accelleration squishes you and even though you know in your head you’re not going to die you still feel that instintual terror… (I’m, er, not a fan of roller coasters these days.)
I’ve been trying to train myself to recognize thoughts such as that, or discussions about dreams, as an opportunity to perform a reality check. (Hey, we’re talking about dreams! Are we dreaming right now?
anything is possible in dreams, and usually that leaks into our thoughts that overrides us. in the dream you were someone capable of doing something like that. it happens to me too. and when you take into account DO dreams that mix with ND’s, it can get pretty complex.
I would like to remind that there are several different dimensions here:
Lucidity;
Control;
Recall;
Stability;
Length;
Some of these are more likely to appear together but it’s not a must.
It is usually easier to control LDs than non LDs, but it is also possible to be completely lucid and not being able to control the dream.
It’s possible to have a LD without Control, recalling or not recalling it well.
It’s possible to have a non lucid dream with control, with or without recall.
