I like that idea Mystic. If LD’s ever do become mainstream, then most of the questions people will have, and most of the experiments they’ll want to do will have already been answered and done, a lot of them by LD4all.
I’ve also tried to tell a few people, and everyone’s believed me, but no one seems anywhere near as interested. I think that it’s mainly because they don’t know just how wonderful LD’s can be. When you think that many people can only remember a small amount of dreams, and they’re usually not vivid, then they don’t understand that LD’s seem as real as life.
I told one of my friends, and after a few months he said to me “so, are they like watching a television then”. He just didn’t get the realness, and until people do, I don’t think they’ll be very interested.
They don’t know what they are missing, and that is exactly why they aren’t interested. Can’t blame’em.
Yes, it’s kind of sad to do it for the sex…but I hear it’s great, though. Besides, I think more benefit comes from luring them in with sex into the dreams than to have them never experience a lucid dream.
Come to think of it, if people came to me about this when I was much younger, and rarely remembered my dreams, I would not be interested. Only after diving in psychology, philosophy, and religion…actually, after jotting down my first dream in a journal, I knew there was potential at that moment.
It depends on how you bring it up. I have to question how you approached the subject?
If you said “hey guess what, I found this website and learned about this cool thing called Lucid Dreaming”, they’re automatically going to question the source because its “a website”.
And the truth is, it’s a scientifically proven subject. So instead, start out by stating that.
“I found some really interesting materials about dreams. Scientists have conducted studies that showed that it is possible for a person to learn to become totally aware while you are having a dream, and that it is possible to control the dream with your own thoughts. They call this Lucid Dreaming.”
You also have to be careful about how you describe the experience. If it sounds too “magical” they’ll just brush it off
Of course, a lot of people probably believe it, but see it as something that requires their time - and thus is not for them.
Heres a strange coincidence: I learned about LDing on the internet while researching foods to avoid nightmares. The site I found was a generic dreaming site. I noticed lucid dreaming and was interested. (the scary thing is I almost decided to leave the site without looking in the LD section) the next day I went to tell my dad about what I’d discovered and he said that he’d learned about LDing as a kid and had been having them nightly since around 19. It was just so weird how there are so few people who know about LDing but one of them turned out to be my dad.
When I tell people about LD’ing (often when I’m extatic about a resent lucid dream), they usually say “Can you do that? Wow!” It’s strange it’s so unheard of, especially since everyone, or at least I believe so, has the capacity to have LD’S.
I think that lucid dreaming is unpopular because it clashes with the general materialistic attitudes of today’s developed world. Waking life carries with it so many concerns (education, work, money, etc.) that people aren’t motivated to attempt to interact with their dreamworlds.
Since almost everyone is accustomed to dealing with the real world and ignoring the dream world, lucid dreaming initially takes a lot of work. Even if there is initial interest on the part of an individual, only a handful will ever actually succeed, since most will be put off by their initial lack of success, and having no way of measuring whether or not they are getting any closer to their objective.
I’d say if lucid dreaming were easy, it would be highly publicised and popular. As it stands, it is a challenge - and since it is so abstract and so far removed from waking life (the life which people in general prioritise completely), it is a challenge that most people aren’t motivated to take on. Regardless of how fantastic the end result can be. Consider yourselves privileged to be one of the few oneironauts around
As for telling friends about LDs, I wouldn’t be inclined to tell people about lucid dreaming unless I knew them well and felt that they were open minded. Telling any random person will likely result in negative responses ranging from disbelief to strange looks
Let me put it this way, when talking to people who are my good friends they listen to me, when talking to people who are not so long and good knowing me, they 99% think this is crazy, this is delusional, I am lying or member of the cult, or plain stupid and or crazy. People are too much waking life and too little dream people, but still less then 1% surprise me in having dreams even more and greater then me.
This LD thing is still not known and even condemned, I may guess why, and it is typical for most of the people to don’t believe it is possible.
Nope, I’ve seen LDing described and performed in several TV shows, e.g. Star Trek: Voyager, where Chakotay tries to put a special sign (the moon of earth) into his dream. Upon seeing the moon, he becomes lucid and is able to communicate with some alien who invaded the crew’s dreams… he then wakes himself up and saves everyone. Just when everything seems to have worked out well, he suddenly sees the moon again and realizes he never woke up and just had a FA.
However, LDing is almost always associated with an occult / mysterious background in shows like this. Perhaps that’s why people are so sceptical about it.
Most of my friends and people I meet get the scientific explanation from me, so they know I’m not just making something up. I also always ask them how they think a very effective technology for lucid dreaming could possibly have an effect on society. Almost all of them agree with me that there’s a very real potential for a “push button” lucidity system to create more problems for someone than it can help solve. Strange days are coming
Im surprised more people havnt heard of it, and why in the world would it freak people out? I think it is all TV, why would you need your dreams when you have the TV?
Star trek !
No offence , but star trek aint taken that serious by people who isnt all in it. (read nerds )
And just look to the next things in the show , aliens fx.
Star trek doesn`t help
And that with television instead f ld :
I think some serious programs about LDing actuaslly could help
BUT if everybody tries too:
This forum will get way too much people.
We get wanna-be dreamers who lie (I`ve had an LD ! "sure "…
More people than I expected understand lucid dreaming when I mention it to them, but most people have no clue what I’m talking about.
I find that if the person does know about LD, usually they are kinda “geeky” – like me.
Truly, I think there is a certain personality type that is generally drawn to things such as lucid dreaming, and most of the population doesn’t have that personality type.
I expect there’s skeptical people who confuse lucid dreaming with things like dream meanings which you can always find books on in shops. The majority probably don’t think controlling dreams is worthwhile. They just want to sleep when they get home from work and see dreams as pointless. You’re more likely to become interested in it if you happen to experience a lucid dream just by luck. It’s strange how the subject is so unknown to most people. My family and friends aren’t very interested in it except for my younger cousins, age 10 and 12 think it sounds ‘cool’. The eldest says he had one
Maybe LDing is only interesting for dreamers, so to speak. People who are curious and especially interested in unusual things, even if they don’t seem to have any practical value. Quite fits the geek thing I believe.
LDing is merely the fact that you know you’re dreaming. I think most people have experienced that at least one time they remember. Maybe they didn’t pay that much attention to it, seeing it as a one-time experience that just happened. The problem is that the very vast majority of the same people don’t really see the potential, i.e. that they can take control of it in a significant degree or induce it more or less regularly. Another reason why we who know quite well what this really means as a personal experience (it’s fun!) feel that the “world” isn’t ready for it, is that in all our explenation trying to convince everybody what a thrill this is, we “drown” the simple fact that it is only to be aware that you’re dreaming with explenations and definitions and adjectives and so forth… It basically just boils down to an ability to ask yourself if you’re dreaming from time to time, which is harder to do for someone who doesn’t really know what it feels like to be lucid than we might think.
Definetely agree with that- im not a geek tho Ok maybe a little. And thank god most people arent that type now i think about it- its good to be unique and when LDing takes off as some sort of spiritual fad- we can say we were there when it started- before it got commercial!
Yep my family is the same. I have a brother thats 12 who also thinks its cool, but doesnt really understand it. My family also see dreams as pointless and when i tell anyone about LD’s i tend to start with the dream meanings and by the time i get to LD they have lost interest and wonder why ive been babbling on about it for so long!
I’d say its a combination of bordom, past expeirience of LD, unlimited internet access , the geek gyne and an open mindedness that i often attribute to people on this site!
So as we all agree the world aint ready yet and i personally think this is a good thing. When or if LDing ever takes off commercially we’ll have the last laugh.
I’ve read two books that talk about lucid dreaming:
Tom Clancy’s Net Force, not sure which one in the series.
Doom: Endgame
Both of these books directly refer to lucid dreaming, such as “He had heard of a kind of dream where you know you’re dreaming called a lucid dream. In the dreams you could change whatever you wanted” I would think that I would’ve been interested from this if I hadn’t already known about LDing.