I had a dream last night and was aware more than usual it least but forgot to actually take control. I dream't that I was at school learning something exactly what I don't know I'd guess something Scientific or even Chemistry. Because before I went to sleep I was looking at your guy's basic Chemistry, I wrote some thing's down but skipped most of it, I would like to at least find out what I have to get and how to do everything but I can't do it here because from what I read the smell can get pretty strong and it doesn't help that I still live with my father lol I'm 23 and work Security that's where I get a lot of time to read and think thing's over. Well on to the dream I can't remember much just the end but I was in school and I was going to take a test or something along those lines, I remember getting in the room and they had the projector on they were just starting so I was just in time but some of the other student's I know none of them even the teacher were joking about how I would always fall asleep and would be late but I know in the dream I didn't fall asleep exactly what I did to be late to the class I don't know maybe I'll remember more throughout the day I'm not sure if you guy's are the same way about dream's but I tend to think they have meaning. I have many other interesting ones I had a long time ago but were usually about zombies lol and I even had one before about the game Deadspace before it was released and before I actually saw any of the animation's I was terrified lol.

June 27th, 2008
I'm just going to throw this out there looking it up on my computer these happened in June and July of 2008. First dream i dont recall what it was about something that involved school.
Second and last dream that night it started I was standing just outside a big room full of mostly students I had known from high school standing alongside me were 8 other people I don't recall there names, but most of the time i was checking to see that no Zombies had got by us we had stopped many and I had watched as many students ran into our room with us standing alongside protecting them, it was a bad idea leaving them unchecked but there was just no order to what we were doing it was all out chaos. But after a time Bryan and four other people I knew show up and tell me that we should get out of here so we step outside the room take a left on the balcony and we see 3 people all running up the stairs screaming I didn't notice anything behind them but with all the chaos that was going on it wasn't surprising. As were walking i tell Bryan Vanesse i bet it's only a matter of time before the room we were just in is overrun Bryan replies no way. As were walking on this balcony we look down over the side of the balcony and see some zombies trying to get in through some window shutters someones in there because I keep seeing the shutters close back up but finally the zombies break through it and take him i thought well im going to put him out of his misery so he doesn't have to suffer but I remember that i ran out of bullets back at the house. As i look up in front of us the two people we were following turned I'm like oh shit! so somehow it's down to only me and Bryan now we start heading back towards the room back where we came from but now that place is overrun I imagine with all the people they kept letting in some were probably infected. So i turn to the side of the balcony as bryan runs into me I say we have to go down the side of the balcony. So I start climbing it down when i get like halfway I look up and he says this is it for me as he's taken down by a horde of zombies on either side of him (I think that's what he said something like that) I touch the ground and surprisingly there are no zombies in sight but I figure it's best that I get as far from this house as possible so I proceed to run off into the dark as it slides back into a third person view of myself....awake
July 1, 2008
First dream was something about infiltrating some base for what I don't know. Second dream i was escaping the base and after I got away im running down this road and I see this old guy on the other side of the road jogging. As im about to pass him he morphs into something and charges at me if I had to compare it to something I would say he looked like one of the Necromorphs I believe there called in Deadspace. Freaked me the fuck out fell when I saw it and didn't wake up till it was right up next to me. I would of had no chance of getting away cause in the dream i was frozen scared.

Hey man,

I dont mean to be rude but i think your post(s) could use some comas and periods and stuff, i found the content fairly interesting for its context and im glad you made a post. I think the topic of dreaming and dream recall is a fairly popular topic on these types of forums, and most people have aleast done some research if not tried it for themselves.

Its hard for me to comment about the meaning of dreams, as im still learning myself, but it seems to me that if there is some universal system of symbols for everyones dreams, that its pretty vague and weak. I think alot of the symbolism in dreams will be personal and have to speak to you, sometimes its not even so much about the imagery as it is about the feeling you have while in a dream situation.

An example, I used to have dreams when i was younger about being chased by something, these were fairly common for me, it would usually be something different each time that was chasing me but it would always be right on my heels, and i would always just barely be getting away. I never relised it back then, but the important message for me had to do with the running and always barely getting away( actually sometimes i didn't). It correlated with a feeling in real life that trouble was always around the corner, if things in my life got good i knew to expect an equal amount of problems sooner then later. Both scenarios are different but the feeling i had was very much the same, and thats part of the way dream symbolism can work.

Also im pretty sure not all dreams have significant(or any) symbolism at all, some dreams are just fluffy fantasy plain and simple. Its not uncommon to have dreams about past parts of your life, and these may be the best ones to relise you are dreaming. But i think there is a stage in dreaming where your not lucid, but at the same time subconsciously you relise your in a situation where you cant really get hurt, or rather its more like you feel like your in a game, where there is a game over start again. And the more that happens, eventually you'll relise that your in a dream, and usualy the instant you relise that you become lucid.

In the end, what worked best for me for lucid dreaming was just thinking about it all the time, after weeks of reading about it... soon i would find myself pondering it in my dreams to! from there its only a matter of time before you get some dialog like this "man, i wish i could have a lucid dream, i wonder what that'd be like... wait a minute there isn't suppose to be another room in my house! im dreaming". I think you get the idea.

Regards

Thanks for the reply, I'll keep that in mind. I tend to be lazy when it comes to Punctuation.

Holy crap that dream or whatever it was scared the shit out of me. It was one I had later but I was going downstairs because I could see something and as I caught up to it it was some spirit. It tried to hide itself from me but when I pointed at it and asked who are you?, it got up and I think it said "where is he" very unclear because I was laying on my right side I can hear real good with my right ear but not my left. So I felt as though I could barely hear him. Fuck no dream has ever freaked me out so much I had lost all control for a minute while I was there. I did actually walk using my legs so I guess just a lucid dream it just seemed so real.
Wow I've never had any dream's about spirit's The former dream death was after us or something along those lines because I observed as it killed one of the people I was with and I was unable to do anything just observe. Except it was weird he didn't like literally attack the person, although he was instrumental in her death. Man if I could just remember more.

Hi Psytherion and Arahantzz.
Do you mind if I jump in with some questions?
I have been trying to achieve some sort of lucid dreaming state for some time now
but without much success.
What is happenning is that I only realize that I dream when I am in some danger in the dream or some kind of very uneasy situation.
Then I realize that I don't have to go through it because I am dreaming, but only in the aim to wake up from the dream.
I never stayed lucid.
And because of these circomstences I only lucid dreamed while having unpleasant dreams.

When I read your post Arahantzz, it rang a bell. In a large proportion of dreams I have I have this feeling of being hauted by a feeling present in waking life but somehow transformed and more symbolic when in dream.
However, I never menaged to get some positive experience, a hint, relief or solution coming from a dream.
Did you have this positive expriences?

Can you really lucid dream, does it happend often, spontaniously or you can induce it?
How this affected your waking life?

Thanks in advance for sharing your experience.

Tijana

I have a couple good methods to initiate lucid dreaming. What you have to do is get in the habit of doing reality checks. Whenever you think of it perform one, and eventually you'll do it and what do you know, reality check fails.

I have two primary ones. In a dream time makes no sense. Look at a digital clock and it will display symbols or nonsense. If it does display a time, it is random. So if you look away and look back it will show a different time. Analog is the same. So one of my reality checks is to glance at a clock, glance away, and glance back. I have woken up in dreams from the analog check a couple times but I haven't with a digital.

My favorite reality check is to simply look at your hands. Your hands are seriously messed up in a dream. You often have more or less fingers. You often are unable to count the number of fingers. Sometimes it is just weirdly out of proportion or otherwise deformed. Confusing but does the trick.

So just get in the habit of performing these 15-20 times a day. Then it is only a matter of time! I woke myself up out of the first 3 or 4 lucid dreams out of sheer surprise. It causes a wee bit of frustration to snap yourself out but it is overshadowed by the excitement! Good luck!

Hi dumbstruck.
Thanks for these tips.
About reality checks, I know, and I try to do them during the day. But I never never got the opportunity to
perform them in a dream! I mean, why I would look at my watch in the dream or why would I look to my hands?
I mean, there must be some concious effort during the dream to induce this actions, and I think my consioussness it burried deep down while I am asleep.

I keep on trying.

How long did it take for you to get to lucid dream after you started trying?


Thanks,
Tijana

I don't remember exactly, but it was around a month. You just have to get in the habit of doing it literally every single time it crosses your mind. If you do it 10 or 15 times an hour then you really will end up doing it in a dream. It seems to let your subconscious take over after it becomes habit, and you don't do it so much consciously anymore. This is when you will be successful.

You can also imagine that if you go through a day and perform 100 reality checks, it will be something that is just kind of in your mind. Dreams just take all those random bits and pieces and make of them something whole -- so it is more likely that these will be incorporated too!

Best of luck, I know you will be successful. It is so worth the effort, and opens up a whole new frontier of fun and exploration to you. I remember being upset I couldn't sleep more in a day!

(long anecdote ahead) Interestingly most of my lucid dreams nowadays are lucid only for a couple minutes. So I wake up in this random situation, I take control in the middle of this environment I did not consciously create interacting with characters I did not ask for. So usually I will start making of it what I wish, for example giving myself the ability to fly. I play around for a couple minutes and I lose lucidity. It becomes semi-lucid. So I now have the ability to fly and the tone of the whole dream has changed significantly.

My dream takes these elements and starts playing with them itself again. So I often find myself, if I was able to fly, now able to jump extremely high. Unfortunately now the falling is a huge tense experience every time I do it. I often after a few more minutes end up running from something or otherwise wanting to get out of an area quickly, so I jump a decent number of times in each jump. Usually after a few of the incredibly intense falls I can pull myself out of the dream (even though I'm not really conscious of being in a dream, some part of me can pull me out. It's LOTS of effort to open the eyes though!), but only in mid jump or mid fall. I guess I need that intensity or something to jolt me awake.

This curious little effect has led to some great insights in myself! I will gain lucidity in some environment and summon a couple friends or other people to interact with. I don't really tell them what to do consciously they just kind of do it so we can have fun interacting. But I will lose lucidity after summoning these people and modifying the environment a bit. So if it was say a cute coworker or something to that effect I might summon her for innocent purposes, but find myself caught up in a steamy situation shortly after losing lucidity. I wake up and think about it. Dreams really give you a wonderful window into the subconscious, and lucid dreaming only expands the possibilities.

edit: Oh. And once lucid dreaming becomes a natural and fluid experience you can drop the waking reality checks. Something or other clicks that you can still notice you are in a dream a decent amount of the time.

Ok, thanks.
I will keep on trying then.
Maybe I can perform a reality check by doing something I do all the time anyway, like looking at my phone.
So I naturally do it anyway. And then asking myself am I dreaming while doing it.
What do you think? Or it has to be something I picked especially for doing the reality check?

Is it enough asking whether I am dreaming, or I need to kind of really question myself deeple every time I do it?

What you describe sounds amazing, too bad they only last for few minutes. Did you try to make them longer?
What is the weirdest thing that happened to you while lucid dreaming?


Thanks again,
Ana

Lucid Dreaming is such a wonderful thing. I've yet to make it consistently happen, but I've found that using dream incubation has helped me achieve lucidity more often when I dream. Wikipedia has a short primer on dream incubation if you get interested!

Hmm. It makes sense that you should be able to use your phone to tell, but I'm not so sure. I often associate things with symbols in my mind and a phone does so many things I don't know if it is as "potent" as symbol as a standard clock. Make sure to check the time and just think "does that make sense?". It will more likely be nonsense rather than a random time.

Another method also occurred to me that has been super successful to snap me in to lucidity. That is simply asking "how did i get here". This works REALLY well, because you can absolutely never remember how you got where you are when you actually stop to think about it. This again seems like one of those things you wouldn't naturally ask yourself in a dream but I suppose it just has to be desired and on your mind a bit and then it will eventually happen. It doesn't take more than a quick surface glance over at the concept, no deep mentation required. I can rarely even remember how I got in to the room I am, let alone the building. Just thinking about where I parked my car has worked a few times.

Back when I was really actively trying to promote them they lasted longer than a few minutes. It is always difficult to tell how long your dreams actually are (though interestingly I've been reading there has been data obtained that say we dream through all stages of sleep, not only REM). Well it is much easier to remember how long you've been dreaming if you're lucid I think since usually there is a progressive transition instead of you just kind of popping out of one environment into another and not really noticing.

The weirdest thing eh. Tricky. I remember being really confused by this one. I was stuck in a dark, wet cave full of moist stalagmites and dripping stalactites. I gained lucidity, somehow, I don't really remember how. The whole dream had this dark emotional overtone. Regardless I ended up summoning a lady friend of mine who I was very close friends with who had been going through some various difficult issues. So I guess I had a lot of... weird emotional baggage attached or something. I only stayed lucid a short while, mostly wandering about having (strange) conversations with her. Well I lost lucidity and the dream became almost like a monster movie. I was running from something or other through the dimly lit caves, splashing through puddles of water and such. Of course I couldn't run as fast as I thought I should and all that. Woke myself up in one of those tense, struggling with all I got to run but have sticky feet type situations.

It was the third or fourth thought after waking up that made me realize I had been a woman. I had noooooo idea where to start deciphering this one, and I was a little timid to look up a Freudian psychologist's interpretation, as I'm sure I could find on the internet for my specific situation. I had been a woman during lucidity too because I remember looking down, seeing my breasts, looking past them and seeing a puddle on the cave floor reflecting the underside of my breasts (with a tight fitting shirt on). And then I just kind of gave them a little squeeze to see how it would feel. Strange. So I may have summoned this gender out myself or it may have just been a part when I became lucid. I'm not really sure. It seemed oddly to have little to do with the content of the dream. It was just an added sort of interesting thing -- wasn't particularly consequential to any single part of the dream.

This is all making me interested again. I'm going to have to start actively trying some more and see where I can get.

Hi.
Thanks for the answer.
By the way I am brewing today my first ayahuasca, and maybe I will have a small test shot today, if everything goes well.
Wish me luck!

Eventually, maybe it will help lucid dreaming!


Tijana