Unclear dreams

Lucid Adventures
1

Good day people !

A little description:
As you can see, I’m really new around here. Still, I’m not really new to lucid dreaming. I’ve been knowing this site for about a year, so I know something about LD’s after all. I can’t say I’m a professional in these things, neighter am I amateur. I’m full of questions and stuff like that, but I’ll post one at a time.
The LD’s I’ve had by now were all triggered by coincidence. What I mean is that all of a sudden “Hey, I’m dreaming !”.

Problems:
Now I have some problems in every dream, not only in LD’s. Everything is foggy in my dreams. Once in an LD I was with all my collegues form work on a corridor hanging around. It was nice as I could do everything I wanted with them. I was completely lucid. Then I took one of them and sayed to him “Hey, look at me. I wan’t to see your eyes.” I was curious how “dreameyes” look like.
Then it happened. His face was foggy and I couldn’t see any detail. In every dream it is the same. Everything I see in a dream is like seen through a dirty window and I don’t know how to improve my “video performence” during a dream.

Some advises please ? :help:

PS: My fist LD was the same. I was sooo excited about it that I could do whatever I wanted… but thenI realized the blurry thingy and the excitig feeling faded away. If I can’t see more clear the details in my dreams then it can’t be so fascinating as I thaught and I’ll leave the whole thing be.

PPS: The video performance in movies and games was allways the most important thing in my oppinion. If that doesn’t work correctly then nothing is interesting anymore. :sad:

Moved from General Lucidness. :dragon:

2

You can think of it that way: the amount of sensory experience generated by the dream is proportional to the amount you care about, and that you would be open to receive and remember. For example, if someone seldom uses their sense of smell, then they will have few dreams where this sense is used, like a dream taking place in a greenhouse, where they stop smelling each plant/flower. In the same way, your amount of awareness of a certain sense determines how much of that sensory you will receive during any dream.

So, the main idea would be developing awareness of sight, and consequently, dream recall. It all starts with dream recall, you see :tongue: the more you are willing to record, the more will present to you.
Therefore, my suggestion for you would be stating before bed, “My dreams are vivid and clear”, and prepare yourself for some nice recall :content:

When you are lucid in a dream, then you can intervene on the spot, just shouting “Increase vividness!” or playing around with dream properties, like focus and brightness, like it was some sort of monitor/virtual experience :wink:

3

Thanks a lot for the advise tosxyChor. But it is not every night that I have a LD like proffesionals. I’m still quite an ammateur :wink: … not really an amateur. A better word would be “beginner”. Every night I see the posibility to have a LD, so I’ll do that every night untill I’ll have an LD and test it. Thanks again !

PS: I think I didn’t understood you to well about the first part. You mean… I should use my eyse more often ? :happy:

4

I think I can help here with the eyes. What he’s talking about is increase the details you absorb during the day through your optic nerve. So when you notice an object, notice all the contours, the rough edges, the color, the different hues, all at once. Take in more light through your eyes, all day long. I used to do this anyways, and now my dreams are about a 7/10 in clearness normally. Sometimes, I’ll have those dreams with high lucidity, and it will be exactly like IRL. The Increase vividness will help, also, say before you go to sleep “I recall all my dreams with perfect clarity and vividness”. Say this slowly when you are very relaxed, and put emotional emphasis on every word, but try to make it joyous, and exaltant. Hope this helps. Namaste

5

Thanks iammoto. Now I understand the eye thingy pretty well. And you are right, tosxyChor about my “sense” of seeing. I just look at things the way they are. I never look at detail too much, even though I am a perfectionist :bored: (perfectionist = someone who wants everything that he is doing to be perfect).

I look at objects the way they are and that’s it. But I use the touching sense very much… don’t get me wrong, I just touch things all the time (e.g. I like to put my hand on a tree and feel theyr rough bark, or I like to feel the smoothness of a CD). Will that help me in my LD’s ?

I allways have had this problem in my dreams (ND’s and LD’s). I never get confuzed if it reality or not, because all my dreams look so very unreal, so I don’t use RC’s… :sad:

Anyways, I’ll try the thing with observing the details on every object I get my hands on. I guess the most important thing here is patience… :content:

6

The magic word is: Deepening!

When you have a LD, the first thing you should do (and what I forget quite often and am not good at yet) is deepening to increase vividness and length of the LD. It can be done as tosxyChor suggested by just shouting “Increase vividness!”, or by rubbing your hands to really feel them, or by peering at your hands and dream objects and observing all the details of them quickly but thoroughly. An interesting video for that technique is the following:

youtube.com/watch?v=-GYXMWWM … r_embedded

Other techniques I heard of are ripping off your clothes (because you get aware of your body sensations) or taking the vividness pill which you will find in your pocket while dreaming :wink:

The general idea is to stimulate your senses until you have a vivid dream. Oh, and regarding “video performance”: I have heard that dream vividness can go beyond that what is possible in the real world, but I haven’t seen those HD visuals yet.

7

Hmm… interesting techniques out there. What I want to know is, could it be possible that you confond RL with and LD ? I mean, can an LD have so good graphics that you may think it is 100% RL and thus if you wake for real up you are not concern if you still are dreaming and your ONLY way to find out is through a RC ? Can a ND or a LD be THAT real ? :eh:

8

Yes, that’s really possible. It’s called a FA (False Awakening) where you think that you just woke up from your dream, but really only continue to dream a different dream than before, i.e. the awakening. Indeed the FA I had after awakening from a recent LD was so clear and convincing, that I started to write down half of my previous LD in it before I noticed some errors in my room, like an old radio I threw away years ago. And not only the visuals were convincing …

9

Really frightening… But, you know, in dreams, timing is extremely different from the one IRL. That’s why, I’m asking you: Can it happen to someone to have thousands of these FA’s and kinda “get stuck” in his/her dream ? It could be that a year in a dream is just an hour IRL. So, can someone have thse FA’s which are soo very real for a whole dreamyear ? That would be the most frightening nightmare ever…

10

I think you can have some FAs after each other, perhaps 3 or 4, but not thousands. And if you are frightened of anything, as for example you are of not being able to really awake, then there are dream exit methods. One is for example to continuously stare for a longer time at one detail in your dream. This will break the eye movements which are necessary to continue the REM phase. Other possibilities are just to think of your physical body and wish to return or be very inactive in your dream and not touching anything. There are other methods, but I don’t know them because I am mostly interested in prolonging my dreams!

And regarding dream/IRL time: I think it was Stephen LaBerge who proved that dream time and real time are quite similar. It’s just that you may have the impression that a dream has lasted far longer because of gaps which occur in your dreams and which get filled in by your imagination to have happened later.

11

I guess the FA’s shouldn’t be a problem if you are lucid… :neutral: In fact, nothing can’t be a problem if you are lucid in a dreamn, 'cause you can controll it, can’t you ? But I guess the most important thing here is to believe what you say to yourself… and that would be another big problem of mine. I don’t belive what I say, because it sounds strange. I mean, if I’m having an LD, I know I’m the one who can controll everything in it, but if I say “Transform intro a dragon!”, it sound silly (like kindergarden kids) and I don’t quite belive it will actually happen. That’s another problem of mine… can do anything to make myself belive myself :content: ?

12

Youll eventually get kicked out of the dream world. Stephen LaBerge didn’t prove anything about DT vs RT, he just said he did lol. Plus he didn’t even try to increase the time. And he’s relying on info, to this day, on stuff he did back in the 80s and 90s. Anyways…that touch feeling should help you increase vividness, because it will deepen the dream. As for it getting more than real life…Yes I have experienced this, and it is awesome :smile:. You should not be scared, no fear :smile:. I don’t know, to me life is so much better than the dream world, because it is so much more complicated, and I know I only know just the tiniest fraction, and I have so much more to learn. I want to master the dream world so I can LEARN more about life lol. Learn how to master everything in life. Dreams are a tool, and it is learning how to manage this tool that is essential for learning to activate your true potential. In any case, start noticing the details of an object, not just be feeling, but also visually, and your dreams will follow suit. Also, develop better dream recall by getting a voice recorder. close your eyes, and replay the dream right after you have it, and say into the voice recorder exactly what is happening. This will develop new neuronal circuits to the visual center of the brain(Its called “Image Streaming”. Set goals for yourself as well to do stuff in the dream world, goals you can only do with good vision :smile:. This will help as well. Namaste

13

In his book “Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming” on page 25 LaBerge writes:
“We approached the problem of dream time by asking subjects to make an eye movement signal in their lucid dreams, estimate a ten-second interval […], and then make another eye movement signal. In all cases, we found time estimates made in lucid dreams were within a few seconds of estimates made in the waking
state and likewise quite close to the actual time between signals.”

So it was obviously an experiment done with a group of people and not just a statement said without basis! Have you any proof that LaBerge’s statement was wrong iammoto? And additionally I don’t see that information becomes invalid, only because it’s 20 or 30 years old!

14

I think what iammoto means is that LaBerge proved that dream time usually behaves like WL time, but he didn’t (and I don’t think it can be proven) prove that it’s impossible to have longer dreams.

Well, that’s my view on it and what I got from:

Perhaps it’s possible to have longer dreams by accident or by will, maybe it’s just another LD skill :content:

Ahem, back on topic though, I’ve had 4 or 5 FA one after another. It was annoying but nothing to freak you out :tongue: and if you are lucid you can chose to wake up and lie still and all, like Kenty said above.

I haven’t gotten really really vivid LD’s eaither, but I think that kind of vividness naturally comes together with good lucidity, so it should be easier to simply know it’s a dream.

15

“Vividness naturally comes together with good lucidity”. What do you mean by this ? Once you are lucid in a dream you KNOW it is a dream and you are aware of everything that’s going on. So… once are lucid you can’t actually get more lucid. It’s just like (as an e.g.) when you are dead you can’t be “more dead” (just a stupid example). Maybe I’m wrong. If so, please explain that to me…
“It should be easier to simply know it’s a dream.” I don’t get this part eighter. When you are lucid in a dream, you know it is a dream, because if you weerent aware that that’s a dream you wouldn’t be lucid :wink:.
Anyways, someone please explain these things for me. :shy:

16

Both vividness and lucidity come with awareness of the surroundings. If you’re aware of what’s happening around you, enjoying the sensory you’re perceiving, being mainly immersed in what’s happening around you, without being distracted/dragged off by the events, then it’s also easier to recognize the dreamstate, since you are free to think without dream events influencing you, plus the dream body feels somewhat different from the waking one, and you should be able to tell if you pay attention :wink:

17

Their are different levels of lucidity for one thing. I’ve had dreams where I realize I am dreaming but I can barely move or even roll over. Either that or I wake up or things become blurry as soon as I become lucid. However I’ve also had dreams that become more lucid as they go on. I realize that things are weird at first and I become some what lucid, I eventually do a RC and realize I’m dreaming so I am more lucid, and finally more events/activity occurs in my dream with increasing detail and vividness which I would consider to be an even higher level of lucidity.

In addition I have no doubt that dreams can feel longer than they actually are in real time. The reason I say this is because some of my longest and most vivid LD’s have been while taking short afternoon naps (10-40 minutes) that seem to last longer than that due solely to detail. However the brain is an interesting thing so it is also possible that my brain is filling in the blanks to make it feel like longer.

Anyways the best way to increase vividness is to work on dream recall. One of the best tools for doing this is a dream journal and as well as doing more RC’s during the day.

Also, as far as the whole FA discussion goes… many people (including myself) often have false memories from dreams. For example I sometimes think I’ve had a conversation with someone only to realize that it was in a dream. Often times we don’t even know it. Another example is when people feel a sense of deja-vu, however I’ve also read theories that say that this is because of time travel in dreams (due to an astral dimension/realm if anyone believes in that.)

18

very interesting, but id just like to…clarify a bit in the FA discussion, i originally studied a bit on this, and talked to a couple of friends who know more about this than me, and its pretty suprising.

dreams can last however long they want to, or how long you want them to.
what i mean by this is that through practice, you can control how long you want your dream to be, or it can just coincidentally last for a long time.
im pretty sure its called speedsolving, where dreams can last up to hours, or weeks, and even up to years on end.

and heres the thing about FA’s, even if you are lucid, it doesnt matter.
the whole point of an FA is to make you think you just woke up, tricking you into making yourself think your awake.
your still lucid, and yet you dont know it.
and no, you cant control everything in a lucid dream, there are so many different factors to it, there has to be some sort of limitations. (LD gods, monsters, FA’s, Focus, etc.)

and as for getting stuck in a dream, yes.
it can happen.
i know of a friend of mine who was stuck in a nightmare for so long(he couldnt wake up) he thought he wasnt actually dreaming.
even though there were schizophrenic wanna-be black ops troops trying to murder him and his family.
in his world, it lasted up to weeks, and when he woke up, he found that he was only asleep for an hour.

also, theres a movie about a girl who finds herself in a dream without even knowing it, its called “inception”, all i know is that its about lucid dreaming, other than that i have no clue.

19

I’m totally agree with you about the part of the dream lenght. It can take up to weeks in a dream when IRL it was just an hour. But I think, that, the longer the dream is (a dreamyear for e.g.) the shorter the timepriode IRL is. I’ve had dreams (ND’s) which were like an hour long, but IRL it took a whole night ! I also had had a dream who lasted up to 4 months (they passed by quickly in dream life) and IRL it was just an hour or so, 'cause when I woke up it was still night.

Now, I am afraid of this thing: Can you get stuck in a dream and never wake up ? Well… not never, but wake up after a whole lifetime (in dream) :eek:. Can that happen ?
You sayed, XwolfbroX, you can’t controll everything in an LD. You are practicly contradicting what everyone else sayed. How can’t you controll everything in a LD ? You can’t get it to work 100% as you would like, but still you can change many things in an LD. Give me at least two examples of things you CAN’T change in an LD… :eh:

20

its not what you cant control, its things that are a real pain in the *** that you cant get rid of until you start to advance yourself. (other than FA’s)
here’s an example:

Dream gods are beings inside your dream reality that, for the most part, are completely invincible.
they are stronger than you, faster than you, more skilled than you, and in almost every situation, they kill you.
you cannot control them.
you cannot fight them.
you cannot kill them.
the techniques you use to get rid of them, or even kill them, don’t work. (such as repeating a sentence to yourself)
luckily, this is like writers block, you find a way to get past it.

now, don’t get me wrong, you can control nearly everything, BUT most of it, you cannot control until you find out HOW.
you gotta figure out how to think big, you gotta figure out how to make things work, its a lot like the matrix when you think about it, but that’s another topic.

now, you shouldn’t be afraid of this.
what problems would spending a lifetime in a dream with no consequences have?
your not spending that entire time in a dream, so whats there to be afraid about?
and this is actually possible.
there’s a man who actually spent what seemed like an entire lifetime in a dream.
and he didn’t even know he was dreaming.
I’ve never actually read the original story about this, but it just makes it possible, considering there have been multiple accounts of this, and people who supposedly have had this happen multiple times in their lives.
there’s no consequences to having this happen, all this can do is give you a lifetime of experience in a very short time.
which is why a lot of people are trying to figure out how to do this consciously, i mean, imagine living over 1,000 lifetimes in only a few years :eek: