Lucid Dreaming

also dont look at mirrors while dreaming, DONT FUCKING LOOK AT MIRRORS

Yesterday, when i was trying to sleep, I heard like 2 men talking to eachother and the voices just dissapeared. I tried to ignore it, but, then i heard something right next to my bed and of course I opened my eyes... A tall man with a robe stood next to my bed just staring at me. He dissapeared like 5 seconds later or so but I have no fucking idea how and why I heard and saw these things.

Is this some kind of "lucid dreaming" ?? Oh and this scared the absolute shit out of me...

so close to dark brotherhood membership... argh

Comment of the day

... Why did I get thumbed down for this?

Because if you even tried to Google you would see that lucid dreaming is the act of being conscious of the dream state and having total and absolute control. And that your condition was sleep paralysis combined with NREM hallucination.

While that's true, you could use the term for the midway between complete lucid dreaming and unconsciousness sleep. It's hard to be fully in control of it. The first time I had a lucid dream, I could do some stuff, but when I jumped out my window and tried to fly, I fell like a bitch 2 stories and I could actually feel the pain, which shocked me out of it.

sleep paralysis is kind of reverse lucid dreaming i guess

No... This has nothing to do with lucid dreaming at all? Sleep paralysis is caused by histamine releasing before REM atonia wears off and you are left without motor skills, but with consciousness? Lucid dreaming is just realizing you're awake in a dream and altering the dream world.

And yeah, lucid dreaming is like a muscle. You have to work it out to use it. The reason is because your brain has been wired to do dreaming that way for your entire life. By starting to gain control, your brain has to rewire itself and adjust synapses so that the memory management is completely separated from the dreaming, otherwise lucid dreaming would really dick around with long-term memory.

Indeed, I misread what you were replying to.

You seem to know what you're talking about so I'll run something by I've wondered. When you body freezes up in your sleep (REM atonia I think), it makes it so you can't act out your dreams or move around in your sleep. What if that were to fail, and you started to act out a lucid dream thinking you were safe. Would you just have to hope that something shocked you out of it before you did anything stupid?

neural engineering makes you learn a lot about the brain ;D

Being lucid is a little... odd. It's not something you can mistake for reality, trust me. But you'd probably either go Inception (it's a good reference here) and lose your mind in denial that it's reality, and end up killing yourself to escape the dream.

would you kill yourself in real life? At any point during a lucid dream or any outcome are there any major health risks?

That'll do it haha.

So almost like a self induced schizophrenia ehy?, that's brutal lol. Alright then, I've got one more if you've got the time. What are your thoughts on hypnosis? I know you can't be 'forced' into hypnosis per say, but I've got a hunch that when the hypnotist says that he "can't make you do anything you don't want to", he's just saying that to comfort you.

Not at all. A tulpa is self-induced schizophrenia. But schizophrenia is only bad when out of control. If one recognizes the alternative persona as a separate part of their mind that is only able to operate in the mind (not the physical world) it's actually healthy. I'd recommend trying to create a tulpa if you have free time. Especially if you start lucid dreaming and don't know what to do.

Anyway, yeah, I have time. And it's method, not goal that causes hypnosis. If he uses a proper method, he truly could make you do anything you want, even if you don't want to. Otherwise all tests would be subject to confirmation bias and hypnosis could never be proven as legitimate (which it has).

I couldn't help but think of the movie "beautiful mind". I think I'll try that, now that I know it won't distort reality for me and drive me crazy. That was one of the things I feared when decided to stop attempting lucid dreams, that they'd continue without my consent.

Indeed, I've felt first had the effects of hypnosis, and even hypnotized a public speaking class to make a point. It's hard thing to prove thought I suppose

Not really hard to prove, that's why people said "hypnosis isn't real" and then 5 minutes later they said "oh nevermind!" Haha.

O I completely agree and yet in psychology we learned about some 'social consent' theory or something in regards to it. Basically that it doesn't really work, we just do it because hypnosis gives us the 'ok' to do it because we won't be held accountable. I had the urge to just stop the professor and tell him how wrong I thought that was haha.

The term's called confirmation bias...

Some of my favorite psychology concepts: Proceus Effect, Freudian principle, placebo's, confirmation bias.

Classic case of sleep paralysis, It's happened to me, it's scary as fuck. But yeah, google it like johnnybing here says, it's really interesting.

sleep paralisys
Google it :)

I've only ever looked in a mirror once in a dream, but you see yourself as your subconcious sees you; or at least for me that's how I feel it is.

>Be 10
>lucid dreaming since very young
>Walk by my bathroom in dream
>Look in the mirror
>See the crypt keeper (You know you remember that show, scared the shit out of me)
>Wake up into a sleep paralysis, hes in my room
>Piss the bed
MFW

Why?

what if you fear mirrors?

What did you see? I never had a lucid dream before and i have tried :s

If you're looking to improve upon it, Id suggest a self hypnosis or a meditation cd. Then help train your mind for the kind of focus you need to pull it off

Thanks dude!

No problem! I'm sure you can download something online or whatever. The hardest part is to stay calm when you feel yourself losing control, if you can do that you should be good.

Cool! So what do you do in your dreams?

Well its been a while but I used to to what I aspire to do in the real world, fly B). It took me months before I could do anything but just hover a little, because then I'd get excited and wake myself out. The last time I did it though, I shot up in the air like one of those star blaster rides at amusement parks and then I kept going. It was one of the greatest moments of my life :), even if it wasn't for very long haha. If I take it up again, I think I'll try to envision myself in a new location.

the reflection on the mirror is actually what your subconscious thinks about you, it might be good and it might be bad, if you really want to know who you are, look into a mirror in a dream.

So what did You see in the mirror ?

I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woollen socks.

One can never have enough socks.

i see myself with orange hair winning the house cup

you might see someone else too (what you think of yourself/want you want), i fucking saw EZIO

May i ask why?

How do you personally induce lucid dreaming? I really want to be able to do it on command. There have been multiple occasions where it just randomly happens to me on days where I'm incredibly tired and I absolutely love the feeling of them.

most of my lucid dreams are unintentional too, thats how it started, but then i started asking people and googleing, and bit by bit i almost perfected it, also i fucked Selena Gomez last night :

i'll tell you the simplest way to get a WILD,

1. set your alarm clock 3 hours earlier (if you wake up on 6 AM, set it to 3 AM)
2. after waking up from the alarm clock, do some calculations in your head, or count to 10
3. close your eyes while still counting/equating
4. DONT FUCKING MOVE, you want to make your body think that you're asleep so that it can release DMT and make you dream
5. by this time you'd be in sleep paralysis
6.now you'll start seeing random shapes and liens infront of you, slowly they will become meaningful shapes, like buildings and people, just think that these lines are people, and they will be.



that wasnt very accurate and detailed buy thats the best i can get to describing it.

Just wanted to say with the gif, the helpful instructions and the Selena Gomez thing, your comment is fucking perfect. Have this gif as an award.

But do i have to close my eyes?

if you keep them open you'll see some hallucinations, but as soon as you close your eyes you'll start dreaming

Are you saying that (step 6), when you see all those figures, you're imagining them while you're awake or you're seeing them in the dream?

hypnagogic visions, hypnagogia is the phase between being awake and asleep.

Thanks, I'm gonna try to get this to work and hopefully it does.

I don't like all their techniques, I'll give you some methods. All there WILD stuff is sleep depriving and tedious.
1) Take your vitamins. Certain vitamins (too lazy to Google) increase lucid dreaming.
2) Keep a dream journal, every morning before you do ANYTHING write everything you can possibly remember. It'll teach your brain to remember all of your dreams after a couple weeks of doing it. What fun is lucid dreaming if you can't remember doing it? If you don't remember you'll get frustrated and quit because you think you're failing. Find common things between all of your dreams that will help you identify.
3) Sleep on your back, and while falling asleep start imagining your fantasy world, and every couple seconds repeat "I am dreaming." It'll be the first memory to be loaded into long-term memory, and you'll be more likely to get hints of dreams in it.
4) Dreams are simply the conscious brain interpreting the memory control being done by the subconscious. By spending a few minutes a day planning out your lucid dreams and focusing on them, you'll load up short term memories of your lucid dream to be sent to long-term. Thus at some point the dream will most likely happen and you can identify.
5) You don't need dots, just make it a habit to constantly question yourself. Do this about every couple hours. Do a couple tests each time, what I do is: a) Analyze the reality of a situation. Is this feasible? b) Close your eyes and imagine somewhere else then open them, if you're dreaming you might change scenes. c) Close your eyes and spin, that'll have the same effect a lot. d) Lean against a wall while thinking "this wall isn't even solid." Dreams often have walls that you can go through. and if you KNOW you are dreaming but you still aren't lucid, fold your arms and let yourself fall on your back, Dreams won't let you hit the ground, when you open your eyes you'll be standing somewhere. Even lucid dreaming, mirrors give you nightmares and terrifying reflections.

The WILD method is like learning to program in python by writing "Hello World" in assembly, it's impractical and you get nothing out of it. It ruins 2 of your 4 (if you get enough sleep) sleep cycles, and only works sometimes. The way I give you will give you the ability to remember magnitudes more of your dreams in greater details, and will actually give you the ability to lucid dream the majority of your dreams. AND you get to keep all your sleep unharmed.

And I think the vitamin is an omega? Idk, Google it.

have you looked into a mirror while lucid dreaming? what did you see?

some people say that your reflection in the mirror is actually your soul (thats why vampires have no reflections)

Changes all the time. The first time I woke up. The second time I was thrown into a nightmare where the walls stripped away and my mom ran into the room, then her skin peeled back and some monster started attacking me. Another I just saw, I can't really describe it... It's like... Everything I hated about myself without any of the good (I had low self-confidence). A few other times there were no reflects and then I think another one I just fell into a trance and stared at my own reflection the rest of the dream.

i can recall some unintentional lucid dreaming, but i wake up pretty quick every time. for how long do you lucid dream? and lol, is it worth it?

Okay, I went ahead and did some research. Dreams are capable of lasting theoretically infinitive amounts of time, it's just one of the hardest things to accomplish. Normal dreams pass in a realtime scale usually, and lucid dreams follow suit, you'd need to trick your mind into using a new scale of time. For instance one of my sources used hypnosis to convince a group of people that a minute was an hour, then asked them to design a choreography in their head in an hour. At the end of the hour they had done an hours worth of thought and design relative to the control that barely had the first few moves down. Time is relative to the possessor. Interesting stuff.

Lucid dreaming can last an undefined amount of time. Dreams are weird things, not very detailed studies about them. Some evidence points to the frame of time being defined dynamically by the brain during dreams (an hour in a minute for example) while some evidence points to exact frames of time. I've had lucid dreams where they lasted a week, but in dream time. But then again the days might have been extremely short, everything could have been extremely accelerated. Overall, it's random how long they last.

And yes, I'd say it's worth it. You sleep for 1/3 of your life. Wouldn't it be great if you could experience every fantasy and dream you could ever hope to desire in that time instead of wasting it with random shit that is only SOMETIMES interesting?

I woke up with sleep paralysis it was the most scary thing ever. I fell asleep on the sofa (or couch whatever you call it) the night before and when I woke up in the morning my mum was sat on the chair across the room I couldn't move so I tried to tell her and I couldn't talk I laid scared shitless for five minuets most terrifying thing ever.
I'm british BTW.

try moving your toes bit by bit, or hold your breath to shock yourself out of it. i've personally have had many sleep paralysis episodes, but only one time i got one with hallucinations, that was fucking terrifying, i woke up in my bed, laying on my right side to a wall next to my bed, i couldnt move but i could see on the corner of my eye something moving, and i could hear blood rushing in my ear and my heart pumping, it sounded like giant steps. i closed my eyes so that i dont see whatever was over there and held my breath, then i got up and sat in the corner crying...

1) Sleep paralysis is caused by the halt in the production of monoamines, causing REM atonia (where motor neurons are shut down). Sometimes histamines (as an example) can be released early, causing you to immediately wake up, even though the REM cycle is still in effect (as well as REM atonia).
2) Your brain is designed to make you scared of everything, even things that don't exist. It would rather you stay on your toes with false alarms then die by the one time you aren't afraid.
3) If you ever go to a perfect silence room, the same effect happens with your hearing. You lose all balance and even standing is impossible (literally impossible), heartbeats sound like earthquakes, and you begin to hallucinate wildly. Interesting stuff.

Why say you're British? Out of curiosity?

Anyway, try to look up night terrors. Sleep paralysis may be scary, but imagine a world where it is literally designed by your own subconscious as your personal Hell. Imagine the worst possible thing you could ever do to yourself, and then multiply that by a few (since your subconscious knows you better than you.)

you start to see colors and squared n shit. BUT then, with my eyes still closed my 'vision' turned red, my head started to hurt, and i couldnt breathe. I got scared as fuck, and i'm never gon do it again.

its called hypnagogic hallucination, you actually CAN breath but your mind is amplifying the feeling of gravity on your lunges, so it feels liek something is pushing your chest down, and the red "vision" is light passing through the veins in your eyelids. this will happen if you get a very strong white light and shine it at your eyes while they're closed, you'll see the same red vision. its just your brain amplifying everything around you

Holy shit man, i wish i could do lucid dreaming anytime. Life would be awesome

I wake up paralyzed and hallucinate without trying, it fucking scary sometimes. Ill try the holding breath trick though.

I get that sleep paralysis thing a lot. I use it to induce the lucid dreams though.
Like I lie there for about 30 minutes completely still and eventually this weight comes over me like something is pressing down on my chest. Then eventually I drift off too sleep, but in this time obviously my mind is awake and my body is asleep. So I get those hallucinations you mentioned, it's freaky shit. I heard someone at my window one time which was horrid as I'm on the second floor.

Is that the same as WILD?

that "weight" is just your mind playing tricks on you, you actually CAN breath but your brain is telling you there is something on your chest while there isnt.

I dont know what this is from but it ruined all of lucid dreaming for me.

I was about to type the true purpose to dreams and what they literally are... and then I continued reading and loved it.

TBH I rarely dream about sex... I usually build massive structures, design machines and algorithms, et cetera. Sometimes I'll read books, the few times I dream about people I'm usually very nice, I've always hated treating people in dreams poorly.

when I lucid dream its not because I want sex, its because I want someone to hold me

Have you realized that you jizz in your pants every night then?

thats means if you read this you will instantly think of it....there is the bath salt guy stood behind you

dreams the only time when you can do anything and your on fj (i know ur joking)

Does that mean, I am dreaming? So I'm not awake... Does it means, that I'm a part of your dream, and I'm not a human at all? But what, if It is my dream, and you're in my dream and I never dreamt the dots on you thumbs?

That's fucking brilliant.

this man is going places a thumb for you good sir

I pissed in my dream once....woke up and the rest is history.....

Pisstory *

I actually dreamed that I was pissing in the other day. It felt so real, so satisfying. I was just going to go about my day when I started feeling strange and then I woke up.
I didn't piss myself in real life but the level of how real that dream felt was unbelievable. I actually scared myself when I woke up because I was that immersed in my dream.

You'll never know until you try.

Kill yourself.

(It worked in the movie :) )