Do you remember the scene in The Matrix, where Morpheus tells Neo that most people in the Matrix are not yet ready to find out the truth about their simulated world?
I think people in our reality seem to have more or less the same attitude to lucid dreaming - when you tell the average person about lucid dreaming they tend to react quite uncomfortably, and refuse to accept it as something real, no matter how much you try to convince them.
This seems pretty similar to the way people think in The Matrix.
The only people who have taken me seriously when I have mentioned lucid dreaming to them are those who have already experienced them and been fascinated by them, or those who are generally interested in dreams.
Everyone else seems to respond something along the lines “ah ehm okay… let’s hope I won’t confuse dreams with reality then… 
… PERIOD. Now let’s change the subject to absolutely anything that has nothing to do with this whatsoever.”.
You would expect a natural response to be something like “can you really do that?! cool! so I can do anything in them?! tell me more, this was fascinating, I have so many things I want to experience!”.
But I guess Morpheus was right - most of these people are not yet ready to be “unplugged”.
It’s a shame the majority of people react like this, we spend a third of our lives asleep and they’re not going to do anything with all that time, what a waste.
Indeed. (Although what Morpheus meant was kind of the other way round. The people there were trapped in the ‘dream world’, which we LD’ers try to enter)
I think people associate lucid dreaming with the more vague stuff. They think we’re like wicca people or hippies or anything (nothing against them btw xD), even though LD’ing is a real, scientifically proven thing.
They thought Colombus was crazy.
They thought Galileo was insane.
The crowd always prefers the known and abstain from uncertainties. It’s a survival instinct. You need a knowledge seeker, an explorer, to hear about something like that and get all excited about it.
I couldn’t have any LD because my subconscious the presence of LD ? Is that a possible limit?
Could you please rephrase the question?
I actually discussed dreaming with a friend yesterday while we were watching Nightmare On Elm Street, and he seemed interested enough to at least ask why he has such a hard time reading texts in his dreams, and I told him that it is because our brain is not really developed to understand written languages.
I never quite mentioned lucid dreaming though, although I did tell him about Dream Yoga and the ability to remain conscious until you enter the dreamstate, and at that point he became kind of uncomfortable and didn’t want to talk about it anymore. 
Laurelindo, if you ask me, you should try and use a different approach - i.e. not to try to persuade anybody about anything but rather share your own experience to get them interested (and maybe even involved). As you said - most people are just not yet ready to be “unplugged”.
I believe we do live in “the Matrix”, in a sense - our beliefs are limited and conditioned by the world around us, by the things we learn (mostly from others, rarely even questioning its’ validity) since the moment we are born. We believe that “real” is only what we can see, hear, smell or taste. When it comes to feelings, things already begin to get fuzzy. If you look at it from this angle, it becomes quite “logical” - to a person who never experienced a lucid dream, just hearing about it sounds like sci-fi or magic or even something “demonic”. I agree with AgentO - this is a survival instinct.
But don’t worry - things are changing at its’ own pace. 
Thank you, nightEagle.
It’s not like I’m trying to persuade them to lucid dream, I am always very careful not to do that - in fact I was sitting through a couple parts of Nightmare On Elm Street and was wondering if I should tell them that “you can realize you are dreaming”, but I wasn’t sure they would like it, so I didn’t say anything.
I do however take any chances I get to get a bit more in-depth about it and simply mention a couple things I already know myself, and try to bring up the discussion as cleverly as possible.
For example, on one occasion when we were merrily talking about random funny dreams we had had in the past, I told them about that dream when my real-life alarm clock disturbed me during a dream I had, and how I walked around and desperately tried to make it stop ringing and was like “what the hell is going on here anyway?!”, so they would perhaps start wondering just how cautious and observant you could become during a dream - they looked a bit astonished and impressed, but just went “wow, cool” and didn’t want to talk any more about it after that either. 
I find it quite normal. Specially for western culture where dreams have very small or none meaning. We are not taught to value our dreams or to learn from them.
It’s fascinating and yet funny how would people wake up and feel all happy today but yesterday they were all angry and groggy and the best explanation that one can get from the people is that he get up on the wrong leg - that’s the old saying at least in my country. 
That really makes me cry.
Then again if you think about it how many people do remember their dreams. It really is funny how they think we made these things up but they don’t understand how easy is to actually get the proof. We already sleep every night so why wouldn’t we have a little extra fun.
Those that experienced real LDs usually remember their dreams very well and they are those that will keep their dreams close, in their memory. In all of my attempts to spread the knowledge of LD’ing was almost zero. Some interest I had found in those that already had LDs before and they knew what was I talking about.
Other friends, they were just not interested in the idea. That’s because they don’t understand the possibility of the LDs. And for the example my brother, he doesn’t like dreams. When he was a kid he had intense nightmares and he was sleep walking and any kind of discussion on dreams you can see that it makes him uncomfortable, specially the idea that you can experience that consciously when you are in a dream…
The idea that you can turn this around into something good was not interesting to him because again it would mean to dig into his dream world which he doesn’t like…
Get up on the wrong foot… Same here (and other countries as well)
Some reference it to something called biorhythm, but to ignore the hours of your unconscious state as an influence on your subconscious feeling and emotions seems ridiculous once you know that world.
Personally I believe this practice provides a whole lot more than the occasional recreational fun (although nothing wrong with that). You can do a lot to learn, improve, understand etc. It’s like exploring an entire world without getting out of bed, literally.
You’d think people have learned from mistakes like on Galileo’s or Einstein’s era, and start approaching ideas with open and inquisitive minds. Alas, as the old saying goes “history repeats itself”
Yes…
Well the part where I said having a little extra fun, you know that’s always just a fun at the beginning but later when you become more conscious it really becomes something more then pure wild fun, it becomes more spiritual experience…
I guess one of the best ways to make people comfortable with lucid dreaming is to compare it with daydreaming - although daydreaming is obviously not even close as vivid as lucid dreaming, it is technically the same kind of thing: an imagined landscape that you can affect with your own willpower.
Once they have realized these similarities and just exactly how your brain can simulate stuff from waking life in the same way, they should be ready to learn more about how awareness can in fact make you live out all kinds of fantasies, since becoming lucid is practically the same thing as becoming aware during a daydream.
Once you are in bed sleeping, you are in the realm of the unknown and of myths.
And in such a realm, explorers will always be looked upon as crazy no matter how you present it.
As the old saying goes, not even 100 wise men can remove a single stone a dumb man threw into the well.
Or in our terms: It will take more than a few scientific articles to remove the dubious reputation of dream exploration…
Yeah, sometimes I’m actually wondering if we lucid dreamers are even considered “crazy” by the general public or something?
Because whenever I mention lucid dreaming to, for example, colleagues at work, I get this “oh, mhm, okay cool” type of reaction and then they can even seem uncomfortable around me for some time after that.
And even if they don’t act stiff around me after I have told them about it there is always that defensive and almost scared reaction.
Let me demonstrate this with a smiley scene, between me and a random non-LD’er:
Now when I think about it, I actually know a couple people who have spontaneously told me that they have experienced becoming lucid during a dream and had fantastically vivid ordinary dreams.
This kinda makes me wonder - shouldn’t they realize at that point that they could experience both things at the same time?
Or is the idea of “another reality” like that so scary that they cannot quite accept it?
In my experience, it depends on the audience. I’ve had people who were fascinated by LDs and wanted to know every last detail. I’ve had others who dismissed it as a waste of time. I’ve talked to some who are freaked out by it.
I think the majority of people I talk to simply don’t understand what LDs really are. When I describe it to them, they say something like, “Oh yeah, I’ve had those,” but from their description, I can tell they really haven’t.
hahahaha
I quite like the fact it’s not mainstream makes it more special and like I’m part of some secret club. I think in the near future we will develop dream recorders and be able to upload videos to youtube. If that happens lucid dreaming will become mainstream and for many here it will become a profession either in teaching or developing block buster movies.