Let's get lucid

[Ishmael]

You lie in the bed, thinking: "this is so comfortable, I don't want to move" and then you have to turn the lamp off, but you don't want to. Then you DO turn off the lamp, and it's not the same anymore.

'

Had that. It's not nice...

[Bluke4x4]

Man, my dreams are getting wiggety whack. I dreamt the cast of Clerks (animated, not real,) all started to make fun of me. I'd scrounge around in the M$Pain game to find my other freakish dream.

[Pumaman]

I have to say, this is much more difficult than I imagined. Since last weekend I've just been trying to keep a dream diary, but only one morning have I woken up remembering anything at all to write down. I suppose it just takes time and patience.

[Ishmael]

It is hard... I have longer notes from only the past two nights... the others are just a few words or lines...

[Mason]

Ok here are some ideas. (Han't read all replies so sorry if some has already been suggested).

First the most crucial point in getting lucid dreams is remembering your dreams. We all dream every night. The first hours of the night the REM sleep is short. But later on the dreamperiods (REM sleep) gets longer and more frequent. Therefore the more hours you sleep you will experience more dreams and longer dreams. (I recomend 10hours sleep! and perhaps a nap in the afternoon )
Therefore remembering your dreams and having lucid dreams are easier in the morning hours. When you wake up in the morning, lie still (don't get distracted by your room and thoughts about what your going to do etc) and try to remember what you dreamt. Maybe you just get a feeling, write down the feeling. Maybe you just remember a person or something but nothing els, write that down. Often this trigger your brain to remember more. After a while thise will get easier and you'll have no trouble remembering your dreams.

There are good books about lucid dreaming (I'd recomend Experience lucid dreaming, Stephen Laberge? (spelling)).

Here are some extra things that I've found useful:
When you dream you are more or less uncouncious, you just float along and your subconcious keep poping up ideas and images. Your agenda is to get to a state where you are concious (like you are in the daytime) and still have your subcouncious mind intact (dreaming). But think about this how much time in the day are you really concious and how much time are you doing things without thinking! Alot. Take walking for instance. You walk without thinking about the walk, right? When you eat a pizza slice you don't think about chewing, swallowing etc this comes without thinking. If you (for instance 10 minutes a day) try to do things consiously that you normally dont have to think about (subcontious actions?)  you'll probably do that when you dream aswell. This worked really well for me and it was interesting to think about how much stuff we do without thinking.

Another thing is don't neglect your hypnogogic dreams. Hypnogogic dreams are images and thoughts that flash before you just before you fall asleep. If you wake up early in the morning and you can fall asleep again this is a perfect oportunity to experience lucidity. When you feel that you are drifting into sleep try to focus (without thinking) on the hypnogogic imagery that you see. If you train this you'll hopefully drift into a lucid state when the hypnogogic dreams turn to a REM-state. This doesn't work very well when you go to bed since the hypnogogic dreams then wont get you to REM-sleep. But it's still good practise to focus on them then to.      

Another thing that is important to understand is persistance in the lucid state. You may get a feeling when you're dreaming that everything is not right, you start to feel that this is a dream (but you havn't really figure it out yet). Maybe you make a joke in the dream and say: "Hey this is crazy, this must be a dream." This is the time to make a dream test (but you won't make a dream test if you havn't practised it when you're awake, so that is important).
I have often dreamt that when I'm just about to realice that I'm dreaming, someone tries to persuade me that it in fact is not a dream. If you are not persistant you'll exept the explanation, how crazy it may be, and the dream will continue without you getting to a lucid state (very enoying). You have to pass the line between subconsious and consious. It's a hurdle and you really have to puch your way through. Maybe you have to make a dream test several times.

Well that are some of my thoughts anyway, good luck.

Mason

[Robert Eric]

I always find that whatever I go to sleep wearing is what I am wearing in the dream.  Strange thing is, the people in my dreams act like I'm fully clothed.

[Gregjazz]

I have to say, this is much more difficult than I imagined. Since last weekend I've just been trying to keep a dream diary, but only one morning have I woken up remembering anything at all to write down. I suppose it just takes time and patience.

Keep postits or some paper and a pencil in easy access from your bed. In fact, you could probably hang them from the wall or something so it's not too much effort to write down your dream. Sometimes I wake up from a dream and really don't feel like sitting up and getting a nearby pencil and paper.

I had another lucid dream about two days ago, and I tried something. I tried falling backwards. It was weird because I could pull myself back up *right* before I hit the floor. Sorta like in one of those special effects martial arts movies.

Now if only I could do some of that stuff in real life...

[Ishmael]

Something wierd happened to me this morning... It was like, I had just looked at the clock, which was 14:01, and I realized that I was late from school big time. So, I layed there for a few seconds, and looked at the clock again. It was seven. It was half an hour till the alarm clock would go off, so I layed back down, and wierd images started to flow to my mind. I don't remember what I saw, but all these things came from nowhere. I realized, that my brain must have still been dreaming... I layed there for some time in a half-conscious state, and when I felt I had been there for like half an hour, I looked at the clock, and it was only 7:14, so I layed back down again, and the next thing I knew was that my alarm clock was ringing...

[m0ds]

Madness

I agree with Mason, the more sleep you get the better dreams you'll probably have. At the start of last week up until Saturday, I had been going to bed about 2 or 3am, and hadn't remembered any dreams in the mornings.

on Saturday, I went to bed about midnight and the next morning found myself writing three pages worth of dreams. Sunday night I went to bed about 11:30 and had the same luck!

No lucidity yet tho

Weird Phenomena

1) Ever been asleep and dreamt something, like, having a bundle of cash in your wallet - and then woken up in the morning and checked your wallet cos you're sure you remember there being lots of money in it?

I remember once having a dream where someone had seen me do something and was threatening to ring the cops. I woke up the next morning and thought it'd be better if I didn't go into work just in case the police were there or that the person that was trying to tell me off had done something :p But, of course - it was just a dream!

2) One of the most taxing things that comes to mind when it comes to dreams for me, is this:

When you are physically having the dream, it all seems real and you KNOW it's happening (whether you're lucid or not). Like, say, I'm sitting here typing and tomorrow I'll remember that I did this, and that I physically sat through it. However with dreams the next day, what you remember is really bitty. You know you dreamt something and you know at the time it seemed real and was happening there and then, yet you can barely remember it.

It's quite hard to explain.

Anyway, YAY

[Gregjazz]

I seem to have been 'blessed' with another lucid dream last night.

This time I tried spinning around as fast as I could. It's hard to explain -- it's really wierd -- you just have to try it for yourself. And, of course, I had to try that 'falling over' thing again. It's just so fun!

Usually my lucid dreams have been very short of late, though, so that's the disappointing side of it.

[m0ds]

You consider them a blessing? :p

Last night I had a little control over my dream, I believe. I don't think it was lucidity tho. A crack formed in a car park, and I willed it to keep going until a full earthquake situation was going on. Once gas and stuff started spraying out of the ground I willed it to stop. I don't know if that was lucidity or just control over the dream a little, or just the dream itself and neither of those things. There was never a point where I thought "Hey, i'm dreaming, so i'll do this."

Plus, I was being attacked by weird spiders in another dream and I was trying to "reset" or "restart" my dream. But again, I think thats just weirdness rather than lucidity.

[Mason]

First: the book I refered to is called Exploring the world of Lucid dreaming:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/034537410X/103-4285153-3109464?v=glance

It's a practical book that deals with everthing that has to do with lucid dreaming. I can really recommend it.

TK, sounds lika a false awakening to me. You dream that you are awake.
This is a big trouble if you want to get lucid because just when you realise that you are dreaming it's easy to loose focus and you wake up. But often you don't really wake up. You just dream you do.  

To get away from this you need to make a dream test by looking at your alarm clock, turn away and look back again. If the numbers have changed your dreaming. You can train this by doing a dream test every morning when you wake up. I've realised a silly thing, this only works with digital clocks normal clocks seem to work in the dream and therefore you can't make an accurate dreamtest!

Another intresting thing that I found is when you have a "total lucid dream" the dream seem almost more "real" then when your awake. You can feel the texture of things, is it cool,warm. Taste, colours everything seem MORE...if you know what i meen. It makes you think about life...what's reality. Is there life beyond this physical realm? My conclusion after experiencing with lucid dreams is that if I can have experiences that seem more real to me when I don't have to use my physical body or the physical world directly (I use my brain offcourse) then the thought isn't far away for me to believe that I can have experiences after I'm dead as well. You really have to experience a lucid dream for yourself that is so REAL you cant believe it... after that you'll start thinking...    
/Mason

[Ishmael]

TK, sounds lika a false awakening to me. You dream that you are awake.
This is a big trouble if you want to get lucid because just when you realise that you are dreaming it's easy to loose focus and you wake up. But often you don't really wake up. You just dream you do.  

But, I looked at my watch (digital one) - picking it up from the desk next to my bed, then putting it back on a difrent spot, which was 7:01. I layed back down, and I KNEW I was awake. I felt my bed, I heard the air conditioning... everything... when I next time looked at it, it was in the spot where I put it last time. I was awake, or then on really thin thread of dream... because it was just so real. I was sure I was awake. My dream had ended in me looking at my watch, and it being 14:01. That is all I remember of that dream.

[Babar]

I had my first lucid dream in a long time today! It was fun! I was floating around, as if I was swimming in the air, when I realised that what I was doing was not possible. So, I looked at my watch (remembering what was said in these forms about reality checks), which was a silly thing to do because it is not a digital watch. It was not there, which is not usual. Then I got this weird feeling of elation, and I realised that I was about to wake up, so I tried falling back and then spinning (another thing I read here), but it did not work, and my my vision kept switching from what I saw in from my bed and what I saw when I was asleep.
At last I woke up. My sister was there, so I started telling her what had just happened. She was ignoring me and acting like I was stupid, which was weird again. Then, I woke up AGAIN! This time it was real. The dream was weird, like I was controlling a puppet instead of myself

[Creed Malay]

 I used to have this alarm clock that made a weird staticky crunch noise before the radio would come on. After using it for a while, it got so I would wake up as soon as it made the crunch. Then, if during the day I heard a noise that sounded a bit like the noise my alarm clock made, I'd kind of tense and jump, like I was expecting to wake up...
I don't have that alarm clock any more.
I am glad.

Davy