Lucid Dreaming - Deeper

I've been lucid dreaming for about the last 15 years. I don't work as hard as I used to, since waking life seems to require a bit more attention as I get married and focus on my career.

When I first learned lucid dreaming, I used it to control and effectively put an end to nightmares I had since I was a kid. It worked like a charm and I quickly began to have fun with it. In high school I had a dream about a girl i had a crush on for two years. I asked her to talk about the weather with me the next day at school if she remembered this dream. The next day she spoke with me (a first), and asked if i thought it was a nice day. After we started dating, she told me about this dream she had about me...

I used to have dreams quite often about another girlfriend from high school. She was a pen pal and lived in California as I lived in Wisconsin, but we were very close nonetheless. She killed herself when I was 17. For years after i dreamed of her at least once a week. We were always holding hands and no matter how hard i tried, i couldn't see her face. Only her hand in mine, or her feet shuffling along as we walked.

One dream i had which was not lucid at first was that my mom bought a haunted house. I kept seeing something gliding down the hallway past my bedroom door. I finally caught it at the top of the stairs one day. It was a teenage girl in a 50's era gown. She said she was waiting for her date to pick her up. I talked with her a moment, then something changed in her eye. I became immediately aware that 1) i was dreaming, and 2) the girl was Jacqueline, my ex. I said "Jacqueline?" and she said "I love you, Nathan" and glided down the stairs.

Since that dream things got a bit different. I had moved to Salt Lake City and was living with a great girlfriend/roomate. I began to have difficulty waking up. Where controlling myself in my dreams had become second nature, actually waking up was in itself a task. I'd lay there with my eyes closed, moving my head back and forth about an inch, slowly, grunting as i tried to move.

I began to experience things in waking life as well. One such event was at Memory Grove park in Salt Lake City. We were back in the depths of the park where it becomes thick with tree's, good for hiking. It was night but the moon lit up the sky. We came across a courtyard with some crumbled corners where an old small house had been. There was a journal laying on one of the stones and my girlfriend read from it. Depressing things, a lot of things about God, praying, not being able to sleep, etc. At one point i closed my eyes and could suddenly see the park below me as though i were flying over it. I felt rushed at first, but the feeling quickly got darker and i felt the immediate need to have everyone in the courtyard, and not near the tree's or the hiking path. It was like i could see all of my friends and everything in front of me, but i could also see them and myself from above. I felt it swoop down over us and circle up again. I freaked out and high-tailed it ouf of the back woods. We went back to that park many times, but that was the last time i ever went back into the woods.

I've also had sudden moments before sleeping (relaxing, eyes closed) where everything tenses up and i'm flooded wih an onslaught Jacqueline, the ex girlfriend who killed herself years ago.

Most of these things have since died down, and while i find them all intensely interesting, some of them i can do without. I had one out of body experience where i felt like i lost control and was beginning to float away from my own body against my will. Now i just go to sleep, remember all of my dreams, and am lucid in only about half.

I guess my questions go deeper than regular lucid dreaming. Has anyone experienced an increase in paranormal activity since becomming a lucid dreamer? How about different outlooks on daily life, reality, existence? I've seen books about entire different worlds in the dreaming world (Carlos Castaneda?), dream warriors and the like but if that's possible, i never got that far.

Consciousness, dreaming and how our minds interact with physical reality on the quantum scale fascinates me. Has anyone noticed any interesting correlations or observations since becomming a lucid dreamer?

I would have to say that the real diffrence I have noticed is that reality becomes more of a "plastic medium" that seems to be able to be influened in the dream world, and the dream world vice versa. One just has to manipulate one from inside the other...

I guess a very simplistic way to state it would be; our dreams influence our lives, and our lives influence our dreams.


[edit on 17-7-2007 by MystikMushroom]

Is it possible, that our minds can affect things on the quantum level? I mean if you look at the research in that area, it's quite abnormal and seems to not follow any rules in what we know as "true". So take just for a second and think, what if we can control things?

Originally posted by Doctor Pepor
Is it possible, that our minds can affect things on the quantum level? I mean if you look at the research in that area, it's quite abnormal and seems to not follow any rules in what we know as "true". So take just for a second and think, what if we can control things?

Princeton recently ceased operation of a decades-long study about consciousness and its apparent influence on physical reality on a quantum scale. I just recently wrote a blog commentary about the subject, here.

Ive always tried to Lucid Dream and sadly Ive never really succeeded. I could never figure out why, as Ive read enough info on it to think that I too could experience such a thing. The failure of it for me has made me skeptical on its happenings, tho I do not dis-believe that others "believe" that they can do it, its just that I have not known anyone personally or have had the luck in accomplishing the Lucid Dreams.

With you (the OP) being said "15 yrs experienced', what is your recommendations in making Lucid Dreams a success for all those who have tried with out luck?

I even at one time looked into getting those "goggles" with the lights on them to help stimulate the Lucid Dream effect, unfortunately they no longer make or sell those for what I understand and the last time I looked into it a few years back. The books Ive read never did "me" any justice.

Happy Dreaming,
Bzzzzzzz

If there is anything or any shift in the way I am concious of things since lucid dreaming and a few light OBE experiences, It's really simply that it all is meshed together. In other words, the brain and the mind are two different things. Yet the brain is part of our mind. Is our mind really limited to our perception, or is our mind the very universe itself? That's where it all leaves me.

Originally posted by BuzzingOn
With you (the OP) being said "15 yrs experienced', what is your recommendations in making Lucid Dreams a success for all those who have tried with out luck?

It was actually a pretty simple process, looking back. It did require some discipline that i wasn't so good with at first. I bought a book that came with a tape that i played quietly as i went to sleep. I let it act like a hypnotist and it helped me to determine a method to get into that half state right before sleep.

I generally slept naked without a cover over me, arms and legs spread out just far enough from eachother so they're not touching. I close my eyes, focus on my breathing, nice full breaths. Don't worry about how long you breathe for. Let it relax you as much as possible. Then i imagine a warmth-giving light coming up on me and covering me, starting with my toes and slowly moving up. Over a period of say 10 minutes, i became aware that i was unaware of my physical body. That's usually the time where my mental state is vacant. My conscious mind has left the driver seat, and my subconscious was late for work.

From there it's pretty simple. Sometimes i can literally create a dream in this state, and it begins to take on its own sort of life. I don't use a tape anymore, and can usually just go to sleep on my back, relaxed, and have a lucid dream.

I've had a lucid dream on only one occasion, and it didn't last long but happened completely on accident.

In the dream, (I still wasn't "lucid" yet), I was in a forest with bookshelves all over the place. My brother walked up to me and a huge tree just fell on top of him and all the books on the bookshelves fell onto the ground. I bent down to pick the tree up off of him, (it's a dream, remember?), when suddenly I heard my alarm clock going off, but didn't wake up. I had the tree in my arms, had lifted it about a foot off of my brother, and the alarm was still going off, and I said to myself, "Oh, I guess I better wake up". Then I woke up. In other words, the alarm clock was like a signal from "reality" letting me know I was dreaming. Usually the alarm clock wakes me up, but somehow, since my brain was obviously functioning, (since I was dreaming), I was able to make a conscious choice about whether or not to wake up. I chose to wake up since I had to go to school, and then the dream was over.

I have since not had a single lucid dream. At the time I had never heard of lucid dreaming, but when I remembered it after waking up I was mad at myself for not exploring this new-found experience. I began researching it and found some techniques to increase the chance of lucid dreaming. The only technique I actually used was to start keeping a dream journal. By keeping a journal next to me while I slept, I effectively increased the number of dreams that I would wake up remembering. I know keeping a dream journal doesn't sound like a very effective method, but I'm pretty sure if I had kept it up it would've worked.

As for how the lucid dream as affected my life in waking hours? Well, it only happened once so I can't really say anything has changed for me. I would like to start doing it again though.