The psych that isn't real: Lucid Dreams

[Leftley]

Lucid Dreaming & Sleep Paralysis

I'm sure everyone on bluelight has heard of Lucid Dreaming, maybe not sleep paralysis.

Lucid Dreaming is when during a dream, you realise that you are dreaming and feel as though you are truely in that dream, after some practise you can even learn to control your dreams.

Sleep Paralysis is when your body thinks its asleep but your mind is awake, you cannot move and you feel as though there is a weight on you, say.. a heavy lead blanket. You can and most probably will have

hypnagogic hallucinations

. I managed to enter sleep paralysis without even knowing about it, although since I didn't take advantage of it I didn't manage to trip very much, I would fade into darkness with purple swirls everywhere and a temple in front of me, and then back to my room. It was weird.

I thought of posting this because I remember seeing a post saying

What if you could trip, without taking any drugs? What if you could train yourself to trip at will?

.

I've been practising Lucid Dreaming lately and managed to have one so far. Everything felt real, but I couldn't take control.

Views on this bluelighters?

 

[Bob Loblaw]

Lucid dreams are awesome. Sleep paralysis is terrible. I've experienced both a few times, but I'd like to continue enjoying the former.

 

[Leftley]

Lucid dreams are awesome. Sleep paralysis is terrible. I've experienced both a few times, but I'd like to continue enjoying the former.

I don't mind Sleep Paralysis if I dont feel the slowed down breathing of my sleeping body. Usually I will attempt to "float" out of my body & begin my dream.

 

[solistus]

Sleep paralysis is sometimes blamed for the origin of many demonic possession and alien abduction stories/myths; the unexplained experience of being unable to control one's body combined with the mind's propensity to hallucinate in such situations makes a natural recipe for fantastical stories about encounters with the supernatural involving the common theme of some external force acting on the body to 'trap' the hapless victim.

Lucid dreaming, on a brighter note, is awesome. You should watch Waking Life if you haven't - very surreal/trippy 'movie' of sorts about lucid dreaming, with some really cool visual effects and interesting philosophic discussions thrown in for good measure. I highly recommend it.

Dreams are weird, huh? I wrote something up about lucid dreaming and how it relates to what I view as sort of its mirror opposite: when external stimuli (like an alarm clock going off) become integrated into a non-lucid dream's content to allow you to ignore it and keep sleeping a bit longer. Instead of reconstructing my ramble I'll just quote Zizek on the subject:

Why do we dream? Freud’s answer is deceptively simple: the ultimate function of the dream is to enable the dreamer to stay asleep. This is usually interpreted as bearing on the kinds of dream we have when some external disturbance – noise, for example – threatens to wake us. In such a situation, the sleeper immediately begins to imagine a situation which incorporates this external stimulus and thereby is able to continue sleeping for a while longer; when the external stimulus becomes too strong, he finally wakes up. Are things really so straightforward? In another famous example from The Interpretation of Dreams, an exhausted father, whose young son has just died, falls asleep and dreams that the child is standing by his bed in flames, whispering the horrifying reproach: ‘Father, can’t you see I’m burning?’ Soon afterwards, the father wakes to discover that a fallen candle has set fire to his dead son’s shroud. He had smelled the smoke while asleep, and incorporated the image of his burning son into his dream to prolong his sleep. Had the father woken up because the external stimulus became too strong to be contained within the dream-scenario? Or was it the obverse, that the father constructed the dream in order to prolong his sleep, but what he encountered in the dream was much more unbearable even than external reality, so that he woke up to escape into that reality.

(from the article Freud Lives!, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n10/slavoj-zizek/freud-lives )

Parting thought: "real" sure is a slippery concept when it comes to psychedelics, eh? I see what you're saying with the title but I'd also like to point out how deliciously counter-intuitive it is to suggest that a mental state that can be achieved naturally through the normal functioning of the mind is less real of a "mind-manifesting" experience than those which require exogenous chemical help to reach. What is real, anyway?

 

[Bob Loblaw]

I don't mind Sleep Paralysis if I dont feel the slowed down breathing of my sleeping body. Usually I will attempt to "float" out of my body & begin my dream.

All of my experiences have consisted of my mind immediately going to dark places...

 

[cerealbowl]

Sometimes I experience a lot of hypnagogic hallucinations (both visual and aural) before falling asleep, occasionally they have been quite disturbing, especially if I'm going to sleep after smoking cannabis.

Lucid dreams are possibly the most amazing thing I've ever experienced though, I remember when I finally was able to have one and I was so incredibly excited that I very quickly woke up from the excitement, I was very disappointed haha.

 

[morbiddoctor]

Lucid dreaming is something I've been very Interested in perfecting for some time now. Whole i haven't made much headway, there has been some success. Lucid dreams are some of the most badass things out there. You can do anything you want. Sleep paralysis sucks though! Sometimes. I don't have nightmares often but a few years ago I had one that is still bugging me. Here's a tale of a lucid dream I had once.

I was having trouble getting to sleep so i was just laying in bed waiting. I closed my eyes at some point and immediatly opened them in my dream. My blanket had fallen off the bed which I was sleeping on the top of a bunk bed. I reached down to get it and was pulled off by something. It immediatly started dragging me backwards across the floor. I was screaming for my brother to wake me up and clawing the floor in resistance. I shook my head furiously from side to side and woke up. This has become a way to abort dreams for me now. Upon waking up agina i was terrified. I caught me breath and chilled a second before closing my eyes again. Just as before, I immediatly started dreaming. I was laying in bed still when I was pushed off and dragged a second time. Screaming for help again I remembered how to abort and woke up after shaking my head. I realized it would be a long night if this continued. Before I knew it I was asleep again. My pillow had fallen between the bed and the wall. I reached down to grab it and was pushed off again. Before even hitting the floor I was being slammed against the wall by the bed. Over and over I'm smashed into the wall as i screamed for my life. Then i shook my head. At some point I drifted off without beinG attacked. But shit. That sucked.

 

[ChronicHD]

Dude I don't know what you're talking about, sleep paralysis sucks. I've had it happen to me in the hundreds of times now, and have never once enjoyed it. While I don't get as scared anymore when it happens, I have never once found it to be a positive experience.

 

[TheAppleCore]

I'm quite prone to sleep paralysis. The experience isn't generally positive for me, nor particularly negative. Just... strange. Used to scare me when I was young though. For me, it often seems to begin, however, with an extremely euphoric and short-lived body rush, very similar to that of nitrous oxide. This never occurred before my experimentation with nitrous.

 

[Leftley]

Dude I don't know what you're talking about, sleep paralysis sucks. I've had it happen to me in the hundreds of times now, and have never once enjoyed it. While I don't get as scared anymore when it happens, I have never once found it to be a positive experience.

TheAppleCore's post explains somewhat, what I feel when I enter sleep paralysis. To each his own I guess.

 

[Public//Enemy]

Good methods I have used are;

Ask yourself throughout the day, Am i dreaming? then look at your hands. Adventually you will find yourself doing this in a dream. when you look at your hands your mind becomes reaches this higher level of awareness and the dream becomes lucid.

Very much resembles your hands on mushrooms. very cool indeed.

 

[johannes kreisler]

I once tried to perform the "reality check" during a lucid dream and decided it would be a good idea to stick a pencil through my palm. - it worked, creeped the shit out of me and I woke up.

another time I managed to bring a serious nightmare to lucidity [which was amazing all alone. imagine yourself telling your worst fears: you are not real, I control you!] and managed to turn it into a wet dream. %)
to be honest: this experience was pretty important and meaningful to me and showed me the place and development I was in at the time...


...and a friend of mine once jumped out of her dream - into the VOID.


I experienced this lead-blanket-paralysis-thing on 4.5g cubes once. was pretty much - - hell

 

[Choronzon333]

I don't mind Sleep Paralysis if I dont feel the slowed down breathing of my sleeping body. Usually I will attempt to "float" out of my body & begin my dream.

usually my sleep paralysis will involve getting taken by alien entities. Real or imagined? I never know bc they always stand somewhere i cant see them but i know they are there and they touch me but i can't look because i can't open my eyes or if i can they make sure they touch me in a way I can't see. Its pretty frightening as i can't move or wake up and whenever i finally wake up it is often in the morning or way later than any time I can remember and I feel really weird.

 

[malakaix]

The first time i experienced sleep paralysis still remains as the most terrifying experience of my life, just my luck i had to be dreaming of 'Hell' before awaking into a paralysis state.. no idea of what was happening having never experienced it before and hearing demonic voice's and crying coming from somewhere in my room..

These days i know what's happening.. its merely a neutral feeling, its not good but it's not bad.. i just recognize that im in this familiar frame of mind once again.

 

[tBirdee]

These days i know what's happening.. its merely a neutral feeling, its not good but it's not bad.. i just recognize that im in this familiar frame of mind once again.

Exactly my situation... Doesn't happen too often though so its all good.

Do you get like a really intense 'electric/vibration'?... and when I try and move it intensifies..

 

[izzy66]

sleep paralysis totally freaks me out even when i know it's sleep paralysis, i'm safe, nothing is gonna get me, etc.
lucid dreaming is so completely different. i cannot cause them to happen -yet-
hopefully i'll catch the brass ring soon
-izzy

 

[Choronzon333]

sleep paralysis totally freaks me out even when i know it's sleep paralysis, i'm safe, nothing is gonna get me, etc.
lucid dreaming is so completely different. i cannot cause them to happen -yet-
hopefully i'll catch the brass ring soon
-izzy

thats what sucks for me. In my sleep paralysis(unless i was actually being abducted) I don't know the aliens are in my dreams(if they are) and so I get really edgy because they are abducting me and I can't move and can't scream to alert my house mates that i am being abducted and to stop them from abducting me against my will... although if they would ask and not sneak up on me i might very well go along.

 

[slackley]

I have managed to have about four lucid dreams. The first one was by accident. I was once incarcerated for a period of about two years. During this time I had some of the most intense and vivid dreams of my life. There was one dream that seemed so real, but I knew that it could not be because it took place at a night club of some sort and not in prison. So I realized that I must be in a dream. So I went over to a pretty blond and pushed her head down by my dick. A few minutes later I came in the dream and I woke up immediately breathing really heavily and I had came in the real world too. My first and only wet dream to date. This was one of the best dreams I ever had because I knew it was a dream and and I had complete control, although I didn't do much with it besides get a much needed BJ. After that I had couple other lucid dreams but not as long or as intense as the first one and none of them were sexual. Since I got out of prison my dreams have not been nearly as vivid or intense. I do not dream as frequently either and when I do dream I do not remember the dreams as well as I did when I was incarcerated.

 

[azgaza]

My dreams are completely lucid about a quarter of the time; in which I'm completely aware of the fact I'm dreaming and can maintain a high level of control over the dream, although occasionally trying to control it fails and it will just not listen but most of the time I can just do anything I want in a completely lucid dream.

If my dreams aren't intirely lucid they're still always overly vivid and realistic and very detailed. I remember them every night and they are usually quite intense and detailed. Most of the time I'm not aware its a dream because it simply seems a little too real with all the details.

For those who like aware lucid dreams; there's a few ways to directly realise you're dreaming: try sticking your finger thróugh your hand, in a dream thats possible while in real life you can't do it. If you while awake occasionally try that it might become routine and once its routine you might accidently try it in a dream, and if it works you just have to focuss on nót waking up, once you manage that you can explore a world where anything is possible

Yes I love lucid dreaming, I'm very glad it comes natural to me. My father also has lucid dreams with a high amount of control over them and I'm glad I cought that trait of him.

 

[drewmandan]

I used to be an active lucid dreamer a year ago, but then I learned about psychedelics...

But I do still lucid dream on rare occasions, because it's really quite easy if you know the technique (yes I said technique, singular) and have the desire. All this stuff about checking if you're dreaming and looking at your hands, I tried all that for months, with some success. However, it will never be as predictable or as effective as most people require. After all, we're not monks. We have lives, and we can't spend hours each day thinking about dreaming.

The technique that I use, and that all serious dreamers use, and that is the only effective technique, is WILD, or some variation of WILD.

Here's a decent enough primer on WILD, although I will preface this by saying that the instructions are too rigid at times. To be a successful dreamer, you have to know your body and be adaptable. Anyway, here's the video series (I don't think there's a part 1):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgJOMqIhvHM&feature=related