Lucid Dreaming. Who needs drugs?
I have had lucid dreaming for years. When I was a child I had night terrors which are basically like lucid dreaming whilst also sleep walking.
Lucid dreaming isn’t like usual dreams. It’s maybe like comparing a comic strip to the 3D film, like comparing a melody line to a full blown orchestral arrangement, like comparing the smell of mint to that of a Sunday roast. It’s simply got more depth, more complexity, its experienced with a greater wholeness of one’s entire being.
Lucid dreaming feels more real than waking life. You can feel the temperature under your feet feel the air in your lungs from the room you are in, feel surfaces with extreme tactile sense of anything you touch. You can move the perspective, turning the entire scene upside down, sideways, closeup, at a distance. You can turn sharks into dolphins. You can ever reassure yourself this is just a dream. You can urge yourself to open your eyes and see the physical reality around you then close them and the dream is there again. You can fly with a physicality that gives certainty you have known it not with your mind but your entire body, lungs, skin, nostrils, physical sense of space and movement. Lucid dreaming is mind blowing. It is either a place of extreme sanity or madness, I’m not sure which.
Lucid dreaming can also be immensely spiritual. Dead people visit me in my dreams, and in lucid dreaming. They speak in feelings, silently, a shared knowing. We walk together, we journey through changing atmospheres and space. I have galloped with ghost like fragments of horses, merging with them. I have rushed through long grass with no human body.
Lucid dreaming can be frightening. When some other emotional entity takes you on a tour and you are certain you are truly there in every element of your body and they morph night and day for you to make a cryptic point, illuminate structures and objects and the feel of places that is their story told directly to your heart.
Lucid dreaming is too rich a world for me, like living on rich chocolate cake. I wake wanting crackers. I need a life less tangible than this one that takes me in my sleep. And I am glad for normal dreaming, the stuff that is of consciousness unravelling, not the will-less abandoned plunging into the surrealism and infinite possibilities in my unconscious mind that is the playground of lucid dreaming.
Lucid dreaming is a split consciousness world where the conscious mind knocks now and then to say, ‘you still ok in there’, ‘it is only a dream’.
… Donna Williams *)
author, artist, screenwriter, explorer.
Lucid dreaming is very fascinating for me. I have dreams of hovering over a path in the woods. Floating or gliding on air, about half a metre off the ground. It’s quite an interesting sensation and I can feel it even when asleep. I even feel it when I wake up in the morning after a dream like that. I noticed that I had different dreams about different things while I was at school in Florida, and now that I am back home in Maryland I have lucid dreams about things I dreamt about when I was much younger. Like I had a dream recently about a ski slope. I’d been there so many times in dreams before……I don’t think I had a dream like that in Florida. Could it be that the autistic mind is very sensitive to certain environments, and if the person returns to his or her home, after some time away, that he or she will have familiar recurring dreams? I’ve been having this ski dream since I was little.
Interesting topic, dreams are.
ai
I thought everyone dreamed like that. A few days after a terrifying instance of one, I was listening to a tv show about dreaming and how to control one’s dreams. I was listening & just glancing up from time to time so I don’t even know what the show was. But then I realized it was applicable to me & hopefully stop any further occurrences like the one I’d just had days earlier.
I’d gone to university as an adult & one particular day I’d written 2 sress-induced exams which I was concerned about more than usual. (Turns out I did quite well afterall) So when I got home, I laid down to relax with an easy book but ended up falling asleep. And then I woke up with a start as it was nearing the time to pick the kids up from the day nursery. I got into the car, drove to pick up the kids and they were gone because I was late. Then I realized I was only dreaming and woke up again. Over and over, this constant repetition of waking but not waking occurred. The weather changed from searing heat to icy cold and snow.
I finally did actually wake up and arrived at the day nursery on time.
But it wasn’t til much later I really did acknowledge that I truly was awake this time.
As mentioned, a few days later I heard this program. Near the end of the program they suggested their solution and I breathed a sigh of relief. I decided I’d try it next time I had such a dream. It’s worked for me time and time again since then.
The scientists said that one can not use electricity nor write on a chalkboard while in a dream state. They suggested that if you were in a dream state that you wished to get out of, to try & turn on a light switch in your dream. It will become light in your dream but if you look at the lightbulb/s they won’t be on. The same reaction will occur with any electrically run device…you can not switch it on.
The also suggested one tries to envision onesself near a chalkboard like at school or even giving a presentation of some kind. Then try writing on it. The words may appear but you’re not actually writing them.
They reason that your brain then knows you are not in the real world & then can more easily wake up. But it becomes your choice; sometimes some dreams are nice to remain in for awhile.
I’ve told this to many children – once they realize they are indeed in charge of their dreams & can alter them by trying to turn on their electronic game or tv or light…they can wake up. Especially handy to know if one is being chased by tigers or similar. I was chased by tigers when I was a kid & remember that dream to this day. Kids are told to just have happy dreams but rarely are given a tool to control the dreams. This is a great tool to thwart those nightmares, those livid dreams if one wants to.
So, now I have a choice and that has helped sleep to come a bit more easily. When something inside me tells me that I just might be dreaming, I can double-check. And when I double-check, I do realize I am dreaming. Then I can wake up almost immediately or choose to alter the dream completely without missing any sleep.
An added note which I forgot to put in. When I heard this program, I realized the scientists (?) just might have merit. It occured to me that each of the times I was driving while in a dream state, I hadn’t actually turned the car on. It had just …driven. But when I had actually woken up, I had inserted the key & driven. And I had actually turned the car off when I arrived at the day nursery – I didn’t just appear at the door step.
I used to have night terrors. I woke up in one downstairs after putting on the light switch in my dream. I awoke, screaming at my hand after having turned the real light switch on. As I awoke, the dream disolved.
So much for light switches!
but yes, maybe I was unconsciously trying to do what you say, prove it was just a dream. Who knows.
🙂 Donna Williams *)
I have such problems with lucid dreaming. I notice that when life becomes especially stressful, the lucid dreaming increases. The dreams are so wonderful, I can live out fantasy vacations and events. When I was younger, I could sometimes concentrate on what I wanted to dream before sleeping, and dream it. At some bad points in my life, all I wanted to do was sleep, to be in that eternal state of control, and bliss that is lucid dreaming. I also noticed that when put on Prozac as a late teen, the control became so much easier, and I never wanted to awake. Kinda defeated the purpose of an anti-depressant. The doctor was really curious about the lucid dreaming, though, and made me log all my dreams for 2 months.
Wild about Prozac increasing the lucid dreaming… may tell us something about folks with high seratonin levels being too blissed out to come out of their own world. Sure, there’s those with low seratonin who are in a dark, edgy, hopeless space, but I’ve seen those Mona Lisa smiles too, people la-la-ing their lives away in some preconscious state.
Personally, I swung extremely between both (with a tendency toward Rapid Cycling Bipolar) so I know both spaces and the trouble was I never got long in that middle space – neither chronically self protecting from ‘invasion’ nor merrily blissed on some other mental planet of la-la-la land.
But sure, if one wants to be a cosmonaut of universes of altered consciousness, I was pretty qualified. I still find it hard to stay ‘conscious’ for long, tend to live in a preconscious state, then with peaks of intense self consciousness.
I’m like the remote control with dodgy volume and channel control, but I do a great job painting like a blind man.
🙂 Donna *)
I wish I would have another lucid dream these days. Didn’t have one in years … It’s great when you can control your dreams and create objects or go to places in a sec.
I take Prozac and have lucid dreams. I was surprised to read the preceding comments – I, too wish to be in my “dream-state” because it is fun!! I have loads of friends and have great fun doing about anything I like – I haven’t flown yet, though. One problem – the lucidity has progressed to constant sleeping talking – so much that it wakes my husband. He is starting to recent his lack of sleep – so maybe I could learn how to not talk outloud. The other night I was kicking someone and woke up kicking the wall!! That’s not okay.