http://www.wikihow.com/Lucid-Dream

Has anyone tried this? If you could control your dreams well enough, you could use it for loads of awesome things!! It would be like being a god in your own little world =D

I just love the way the idea works. Basically, you force yourself to get into a habit of checking whether or not you are dreaming or not. By doing these "reality check" (For example, checking that you have 10 fingers, etc), this habit should pass onto your dreams. When these reality checks "fail" in your dreams you should realize that you are dreaming and become "lucid", where you know that you are dreaming and can control your dream.

There are some obvious usages for this But you could use the time in which you are dreaming, to construct scenarios to practice your Japanese? You could force your dream to be in Japanese, rewind it, pause, completely change it. What do you think?

Btw Lucid Dreaming isn't just some spiritual mumbo jumbo, it has been proven scientifically and there are many people who can do it. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream )

Let's ask bodhisamaya, I think he has an experience with Dream Yoga, a similar practice to LD.

I know that sometimes when I have studied japanese maybe like more than 8 hours a day then I will dream in japanese and be speaking it. this has happened to me several times. I dont think it's considered a lucid dream though but it's definately something pretty cool to go try and do. 24/7 study time

When you are in an environment where you have all the powers of a god, do you really want to study Japanese?

It's not as flexible as you might hope, in terms of retaining cognitive abilities.

If you want to try it, I recommend you to use the WBTB method along with MILD.

This looks interesting. Kind of kicks of my question about hypnosis again. Does anyone have substantial information regarding lucid dreaming or hypnosis?

EDIT: Ohh and there is polyphasic sleep, which is kind of crazy.

EDIT2: Another thing, I haven't been able to do for a long time is this: if you go to bed, laying on your back, don't move and try to think about nothing, (imagine being in a black box, completely light-less works) after some time you should be able to feel loosing your feeling about body parts. If you move, you'll get feeling again. Feeling should die off from your extremities towards your head... I have no idea what this is, if it's good for anything. And as said above, I haven't been able to do that for a long time. Mostly due to to much work and the lack of patience (I guess).

bodhisamaya Wrote:When you are in an environment where you all the powers of a god, do you really want to study Japanese?

That's what I was going to say -- if the best you can come up with for a lucid dream is to study Japanese, you need to get out more

yudantaiteki Wrote:

bodhisamaya Wrote:When you are in an environment where you all the powers of a god, do you really want to study Japanese?

That's what I was going to say -- if the best you can come up with for a lucid dream is to study Japanese, you need to get out more

Well of course there are other obvious use's as well

Lucid Dreaming is one of the Yogas of Naropa in Tibetan Buddhism and a requirement for becoming a teacher (Lama). The lamas practice it in their 40 month training by sleeping while sitting in meditation posture all night (well, the four hours they are allowed to sleep anyways). I have practiced it a little, but never accomplished the goal of using it for spiritual development. I just get caught up in distractions like flying and sex.

LD is amazing. I have been doing it on and off for many years. And I think it could be used very effectively to study Japanese. "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" by Stephen LaBerge and Howard Reingold is a must read imo. Over the years I have had maybe 5 or 6 copies of it, and always give it away to a friend (have a library copy of it on my desk right now).

I think of Lucid dreaming as a skill like any other, it takes practice and effort, and some people will have a greater natural aptitude for it than others. But anyone can learn it if motivated.

In my experience with LD, I have always worked on mastery of flight. My ability to sustain and control the dream has improved with practice. I have done it enough to sometimes sustain LD for over an hour. But I have barley scratched the surface as to it's possibilities. I seem to be quite addicted to flying! There are different "levels" of lucidity. Sometimes you know you are dreaming, but can't quite control it, and some times you are "god" so to speak. Walk through walls, transform objects, levitate things.....sky’s the limit. And sometimes there is a hyper-reality that is simply an incredible thing to experience.

The tricky part for me is maintaining a disciplined practice. The "reality check" or critical state test works well. It’s remembering to do it throughout the day that is the hard part for me. But I think I just need to organize and implement the practice, and be disciplined about it like I am with Japanese. My favorite reality test is to hop. In a dream, you will float a tiny bit. When this happens you know it's a dream (and then take off flying!). I also need to remember to try Japanese out in LD. I think it would be fun and possibly a great way learn.

Dream Yoga is a whole other level of awareness that includes LD. I have read an excellent book about it, and aspire to be that consciously bad ass someday!

Thanks for the thread about one of my favorite things! I hope you try it, and would enjoy hearing about the experience.

@angerman - What you describe makes me think of "OBE", out of body experience. I may be wrong here, but that sounds like the early stage of inducing OBE. I have not tried this or experimented with it (yet). But I think it is a fascinating practice. I am reading the book "My Big T.O.E." by Thomas Campbell, a physicist who did many experiments with out of body travel. There is information out there that can teach you all about it.

ruiner Wrote:I found the most effective method when I started was a dream journal, focusing on greater and greater details. That's for normal lucid dreaming. I've since 'invented' a new kind of lucid dreaming just for me, neener neener.

When I write in my "dream journal" often, I start writing in it inside my dreams, which is extremely frustrating :/

One time when I realized I was asleep and didn't want to wake up, I noticed that my "mind" was settled at the back of my head and knew that if it moved forward, I would wake up. Sure enough, it moved forward and I woke up. I don't know what that means, but it makes me really curious about focusing your mind on different areas of the brain. Like, when I'm trying not to think, I can feel the focus moving away from the front of my brain.

ruiner Wrote:As for the dream journal, the underlying mechanism I think is the 'desire' and 'awareness' you're cultivating, and it's less about the words, in my opinion, than simply engaging and reliving the dreams when waking until they're situated in their proper context. You must get in touch with your homunculus! hehe

That sounds about right. Actually, I went though a period of not having dreams worth writing down, and came out of it with the ability to remember the rare good dream fully(well, more or less) until I got up and could right it down properly. Since I'm not worried about writing it down immediately, my "writing dreams inside dreams" problem has faded. Instead, I review my dream inside my dream...more productive and less frustrating.

@TaylorSan Thanks for the pointer.

This thread is starting to seriously attract my attention. Still, does anyone know how hypnosis relate to this and maybe even have experience with it?

angerman Wrote:if you go to bed, laying on your back, don't move and try to think about nothing, (imagine being in a black box, completely light-less works) after some time you should be able to feel loosing your feeling about body parts. If you move, you'll get feeling again. Feeling should die off from your extremities towards your head...

After that you will either fall asleep or feel vibrations pulsating through your body. If you managed to keep yourself calm physically and mentally, you will end up floating out of your body (OBE) but this has nothing to do with LD.

@ahibba, sorry. I have next to no experience with this. How do dejavu experiences relate to this?

Well, while we're just throwing stuff out there...

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/1...cinations/

IceCream may be referring to binaural beats perhaps?

Since I was a child I am able to remember most of my dreams and I had sometimes lucid dreams without knowing about the term. After founding some information about "lucid dreaming" in the internet I tried successfully to induce more lucid dreams. But to be honest, I don't think it is that great. After some while lucid dreams got more boring than normal dreams.
Walking around, knowing that is just a dreams spoils alot of fun. It is like playing a game with cheats.. godmode as it makes you some sort of god. But when you realize its just a dream, then you realize everything is not real.... its just your imagination. That makes you a god in an empty world.. or an world that is just "you" (sometimes i compare it with daydreaming). People are only empty "hulls", you control them like puppets on a string. There is no need to be afraid or to show any emotions. And by having a very clear mind, you deactivate all the random craziness which makes dreams so different and interesting. Besides empty "living objects" you can play with the surrounding, create new worlds as you like, which I found really difficult and it didn't worked out most of the time and. Interactions with "living objects" are more important to me in dreams anyway.

Many people want to have lucid dreams to "learn" flying but technically you can fly in normal dreams, too. Its more a problem of your imagination, if you need lucid dreams to try out new things. I have to admit, that lucid dreaming was helpfully to add some "new" abilities to my normal repertoire, but it hasn't much use after that. Take for example 'phasing', the ability to go through solid matter like walls. You can use it for your tactical advantage, to hide from people, get access to different areas or surprise people just for fun. Nothing of this makes really sense if you are lucid dreaming. You can't surprise people which don't exist (as you know) and even if the are surprised you know its just some act, triggered by your expectations. You don't need to hide from things which aren't real... and so on.
More interesting are some sort of "half" lucid dreams (that is what most people claim as lucid dreaming too) where you know that it is a dream but without really realizing all the consequences. But I gave up lucid dreaming after a while as I want to be entertained in the night... with the whole range of emotions, with tragedies, action, killing suspense and many new crazy ideas.

thorstenu Wrote:Many people want to have lucid dreams to "learn" flying but technically you can fly in normal dreams, too. Its more a problem of your imagination, if you need lucid dreams to try out new things.

It's about control. I can't just wait for the dream I want to happen. Chances are, I'm never going to have a flying dream unless I can take control and make it happen.
I find it odd that you lose motivation completely just because dreams aren't "real". They're still enjoyable...

thorstenu Wrote:Take for example 'phasing', the ability to go through solid matter like walls. You can use it for your tactical advantage, to hide from people, get access to different areas or surprise people just for fun.

What, do your dreams take the format of a video game? These situations never happen in my dreams, and often I'm not in my dreams.

thorstenu Wrote:...godmode as it makes you some sort of god. But when you realize its just a dream, then you realize everything is not real.... its just your imagination. That makes you a god in an empty world.. or an world that is just "you".

Very close to the realization that is supposed to be achieved in Dream Yoga when one compares normal waking life to the Dream world where the senses and sense objects don't actually exist. The other beings and the environment seem to be separate from you in this dream world as well, but they are all you.

IceCream Wrote:i think Thorstenu's right, if you can't experience it as totally real, then it's going to water down the quality of the feeling...

I'm not so sure. I can't speak from experience, but those who claim they can control the dream experience claim the quality goes exponentially beyond what we currently understand true happy feelings to be. They do seem to be much happier than me in waking life as well.

yukamina Wrote:It's about control. I can't just wait for the dream I want to happen. Chances are, I'm never going to have a flying dream unless I can take control and make it happen.
I find it odd that you lose motivation completely just because dreams aren't "real". They're still enjoyable...

As i said, I dreamed a lot in my life. And the concpet of flying is not new... not in the real world nor was it new in my dreams. Normally, you think of things.. care about things and then they appear in your dreams. As the media like movies and computer (games and classic books, too) provided me with thousands of things to dream about I dreamed about thousand things and I wasn't able to think about something new , when I was in control (or before that). Its more, that the normal dream with its crazy randomness is able to provide me with new ideas and concepts.
About flying, I learned a new technique through lucid dreaming but as I was flying before it didn't made a great differences.

yukamina Wrote:What, do your dreams take the format of a video game? These situations never happen in my dreams, and often I'm not in my dreams.

Yeah, you could say they do... or like movies. The phasing was just an example, because its really cool and helpful. But I am surprised that you have a lot of dreams without some sort of self. I know this only from dreams when I am sick.

bodhisamaya Wrote:Very close to the realization that is supposed to be achieved in Dream Yoga when one compares normal waking life to the Dream world where the senses and sense objects don't actually exist. The other beings and the environment seem to be separate from you in this dream world as well, but they are all you.

Interesting.. so that makes my experience a spiritual one after all?

@IceCream
I am glad you understand what I meant. I had some of my most extreme feelings in dreams and I am glad I had them but I wish that those (somehow extreme) situations never happen in my real life.

IceCream Wrote:yukamina: isn't it the really strong feelings that dreams cause the thing that is interesting about them? It's not about what the situation is, but why that situation has that particular feeling or effect on you. Even logical impossibilities.
i think Thorstenu's right, if you can't experience it as totally real, then it's going to water down the quality of the feeling...

I haven't had much going in terms of lucid dreams, so I maybe wrong, but I imagine dreams on a similar level to, say, being immersed in a book. Knowing that the book isn't real doesn't make it less interesting to me. The times I've been vaguely aware while having a really good dream, I just feel psyched and happy that I'm having such a good dream. I think it's all in how you look at it. However, I don't think I'd ever want to replace all natural dreams with lucid dreams; I'd miss the randomness, the unpredictability, and all that creativity... I see stuff in dreams that I'd never come up with consciously.