Lucid Dreaming, perfect for furs :)

[Kaiyoki]

i think i have a problem,lately i havent even been dreaming instead everything will be completely black and it will only seem like its been five minutes then i wake up and its already morning

I got that most nights starting from over 2 years ago, I wasn't aware it was an actual problem...

[Aleya Lunara]

Alright, I had this awkward problem when I slept last. I was in the middle of a nightmare, and I did catch it and enter the lucid state. However, I could not change the contents of the nightmare. The only thing I could do was control myself. I don't know what went wrong, but by the time I did wake up, I was terrified. I was wondering if I could possibly get some advice on changing a nightmare into something else. They seem so much scarier in the lucid state than they do normally.

[Kinshi]

i think i have a problem,lately i havent even been dreaming instead everything will be completely black and it will only seem like its been five minutes then i wake up and its already morning

I got that most nights starting from over 2 years ago, I wasn't aware it was an actual problem...

I used to do that, then i read about lucid dreaming...then i started having dreams. it's weird, i was like I WANT to dream, and then i actually dream, i still don't have control about what i dream, unless it's a lucid of course.
(also, a quick question, I heard that you dream about what you're thinking of when you fall asleep, is this true? because then i could think about the toilet. (seeing as i ALWAYS do reality checks when i'm in the bathroom) Could be pretty handy, so i'd be able to actually force lucids.)

[Greeblig Venn Aridarr]

All of my lucid dreams involve flying. I once became a seagull and flew over the ocean; another time, I purposefully transformed myself into a dragon (I stretched out the webbing between my fingers to form wings.)

More recently, I have been plagued by sleep-paralysis. I occasionally feel as though small children are climbing on me as I lie in bed, and can hear their voices. Once, as I lay in bed, I opened my eyes to see a small, ghostly apparition of a girl floating in the corner of the room. She wafted towards me, and slipped into my mouth like an icy wind. She slipped in and out of my throat several times like this, whispering "Come to me". Each time she entered me, I felt weaker and weaker.

I also have sleep paralysis hallucinations involving caterpillar-like monsters that sodomize me and do other horrible things. It's not as fun as it sounds, trust me... I'm terrified of caterpillars.

[Hayaikawa]

All of my lucid dreams involve flying. I once became a seagull and flew over the ocean; another time, I purposefully transformed myself into a dragon (I stretched out the webbing between my fingers to form wings.)

More recently, I have been plagued by sleep-paralysis. I occasionally feel as though small children are climbing on me as I lie in bed, and can hear their voices. Once, as I lay in bed, I opened my eyes to see a small, ghostly apparition of a girl floating in the corner of the room. She wafted towards me, and slipped into my mouth like an icy wind. She slipped in and out of my throat several times like this, whispering "Come to me". Each time she entered me, I felt weaker and weaker.

I also have sleep paralysis hallucinations involving caterpillar-like monsters that sodomize me and do other horrible things. It's not as fun as it sounds, trust me... I'm terrified of caterpillars.

those sound like some VERY bad hipnagogik hallucinations, the best way to stop those is to instead of fighting them, just ignore them and enter the dream world, alot of the time that can happen with out you even realizing it, and your already in the dream, you just have to realize that none of it is real and only in your mind.

Alright, I had this awkward problem when I slept last. I was in the middle of a nightmare, and I did catch it and enter the lucid state. However, I could not change the contents of the nightmare. The only thing I could do was control myself. I don't know what went wrong, but by the time I did wake up, I was terrified. I was wondering if I could possibly get some advice on changing a nightmare into something else. They seem so much scarier in the lucid state than they do normally.

well when your lucid your mind is spending more energy on the dream, and thus its more realistic and clearer.
 
one of the main reasons people get into lucid dreaming is to FIGHT nightmares, and I mean fight like use your own dream powers to combat the evil in the dream.

If your having trouble with control I suggest to continually remind your self it's a dream, try doing several reality check, and once you've completely convinced yourself that it's a dream, the using powers, like flying away or you can even just yell at what ever bad is happening to stop, and it should. Remember its only a dream and no matter what you think nothing bad can happen to you, it's only in your mind, and since its your mind take back control.

[Aleya Lunara]

I did indeed try to fight my nightmare, but I was quickly and efficiently stomped out no matter many times I tried. I never reached the point of omnipotence, and could not speak, something was preventing all sound from escaping me. I was killed many times before I woke up at the point of extreme terror. For some reason I can't face off against my own nightmares. What would be an effective way of performing a reality check? Thank you for looking at this for me.

[Hayaikawa]

A reality check is something you do to make sure your dreaming these include.

pushing your finger through the palm. In the dream your hand should streatch like rubber or you finger could just go through your hand.

try counting your fingers. In the dream you might have move than five, less than five, they could be disfigured, or be something totally different.

My favorite
you look at a digital clock. It should be going crazy. the numbers could be letters, or there could be 20 digits in the clock all moving and changing.
This one looks really cool

plug you nose and try to breath through it. In the dream since your real hand isn't covering your nose you can breath through it just fine. This is a very strange feeling.

Look at the ground. In the dream It should look different than it normally does. Like its made out of the wrong material.

I came up with this one
Bite your tongue. Since your in the dream world your experience no pain so your tongue should feel numb, You would only be experiencing the pressure not the pain.

if you do these in the dream this will repeatedly prove to you your dreaming, and will increase control rather nicely.

[Greeblig Venn Aridarr]

I lucid-dreamed last night. I tested to see if I was dreaming by trying to alter my body (I made my nose long and pointed.) I tried to transform into a dinosaur, but it only half worked and I ended up moving like a dinosaur, but still human shaped. At one point, I woke up and was paralyzed (I could hear that static-hissing and see my bedroom) I did what you advised me to do, Hayaikawa, and just allowed myself to fall sleep again by not fighting it. I was inside the living room of my house, flying (floating to the ceiling.) I decide to try and get outside, but I can't get through the window. I think I must have managed to make myself float through it somehow, because the next thing I know I'm outside, on a film set containing my house. It's all deserted. I'm still floating, and I see a mirror. I decide to look, so I can see how I really perceive myself in my own mind. I am wearing my ordinary clothes (hat, coat and boots.) My face is unnaturally thin and attenuated, my eyes cold and hard... and the entire right side of my face is pinkish and raw, as though it had been burned recently and was still not healed.

I realize I'm in an office building, and I float out into a corridor. There are workers there, and they are all animals. (a weasel and an elephant I recall vividly)

They are in a board meeting of some kind, and I get fed up so I decide to try and manifest a unicorn. I visualize a door made of plywood, and open it. It there it is! It's pure white, with golden, transparent hooves and pink eyes. But it has an unusually small head, and it doesn't look well. It begins to mutate until it becomes it tiny, white thing resembling an alien-queen chestburster (from the alien movies).

Then I started to get paranoid that I would accidentally manifest a caterpillar, so I woke myself up.

[Hayaikawa]

I lucid-dreamed last night. I tested to see if I was dreaming by trying to alter my body (I made my nose long and pointed.) I tried to transform into a dinosaur, but it only half worked and I ended up moving like a dinosaur, but still human shaped. At one point, I woke up and was paralyzed (I could hear that static-hissing and see my bedroom) I did what you advised me to do, Hayaikawa, and just allowed myself to fall sleep again by not fighting it. I was inside the living room of my house, flying (floating to the ceiling.) I decide to try and get outside, but I can't get through the window. I think I must have managed to make myself float through it somehow, because the next thing I know I'm outside, on a film set containing my house. It's all deserted. I'm still floating, and I see a mirror. I decide to look, so I can see how I really perceive myself in my own mind. I am wearing my ordinary clothes (hat, coat and boots.) My face is unnaturally thin and attenuated, my eyes cold and hard... and the entire right side of my face is pinkish and raw, as though it had been burned recently and was still not healed.

I realize I'm in an office building, and I float out into a corridor. There are workers there, and they are all animals. (a weasel and an elephant I recall vividly)

They are in a board meeting of some kind, and I get fed up so I decide to try and manifest a unicorn. I visualize a door made of plywood, and open it. It there it is! It's pure white, with golden, transparent hooves and pink eyes. But it has an unusually small head, and it doesn't look well. It begins to mutate until it becomes it tiny, white thing resembling an alien-queen chestburster (from the alien movies).

Then I started to get paranoid that I would accidentally manifest a caterpillar, so I woke myself up.

Congratulations, you pulled off quite a few difficult things rather easily.

When you looked into the mirror, that is always a good reality check since it is almost ALWAYS wrong, and just looking into a mirror will get people lucid a lot of the time.

Also kudos on summoning the door and using it effectively, you got the basics down but just need to work on making it exactly what you want instead of similar.

[wingshadow]

Hayaikawa, I wan't to bring up a trick I use.

When you are in a tough spot, fighting for your life, etc, look down at your hands. Somehow, this gives you control. I think it short-circuts something in your sleeping brain. What I mean is, it's like it activates circuits of conscious control. In the dream world, it arms me.

I think that's primal. So look at your hands when you need.

Also, I have noticed that reading will wake me up. In RL, I can read upside down and backwards, but if I try to read something in dreamworld, it always wakes me up.

I believe that reading in dreams activates waking conscious circuits in the brain. That is, you must be conscious to read, so the mind wakes you up so that you can consciously understand. This is a natural function of the language center of the brain.

This is why you can only start to read books in your dreams, but never finish them without waking.

Do you have a different experience?

P.S. It's time we hammered all this stuff out.

- Wingshadows, serial dreamer.

[wingshadow]

Hello Baako, Arbitas: just wanting to remember your dreams will bring that much closer to lucidity.

By desiring to understand yourself, you will set in motion a chain-reaction or whatever you want to call it: the human mind is, amoung other things, a bio-feedback mechanism.

Then you must cross the Abyss. I'm not joking: the time will come when you are afraid to understand your dreams. That is the gulf you must pass.

BY TRYING TO UNDERSTAND YOUR DREAMS, YOU WILL DREAM MORE LUCIDLY. Keep a dream journal. Do you understand?

Most people you meet in the real world are afraid to understand themselves. You must pass beyound this point.

There is enlightenment in here. Your subconscious mind is trying to tell you something important, in the only way that it can. And it is a part of you, never forget that.

And your mind will generate allies in your quest. For me, it was a man and a woman who where very wise.

Seriously, seek and ye shall find.

[Hayaikawa]

Hayaikawa, I wan't to bring up a trick I use.

When you are in a tough spot, fighting for your life, etc, look down at your hands. Somehow, this gives you control. I think it short-circuts something in your sleeping brain. What I mean is, it's like it activates circuits of conscious control. In the dream world, it arms me.

I think that's primal. So look at your hands when you need.

Also, I have noticed that reading will wake me up. In RL, I can read upside down and backwards, but if I try to read something in dreamworld, it always wakes me up.

I believe that reading in dreams activates waking conscious circuits in the brain. That is, you must be conscious to read, so the mind wakes you up so that you can consciously understand. This is a natural function of the language center of the brain.

This is why you can only start to read books in your dreams, but never finish them without waking.

Do you have a different experience?

P.S. It's time we hammered all this stuff out.

- Wingshadows, serial dreamer.

The hands thing is a form of reality check, where most of the time your hands in the dream doesnt lokk right, like you have more fingers or some are short or something, and when you see this you brain tries to  compensate for the messed up visual by making the dream more vivid, and it is this action that leads to increased lucidity and control.

And the exact same thing happens when reading in the dream, words in dreams for what ever reason take a LOT of mental power to visualize and remember, for example take a look at some newspaper artical, can you memorize the whole thing? Probably not, so when your in the dream and try to MAKE the artical you have to have a semi permanent exact memory of the text, and when you try to do that it takes a LOT more brain power to keep the dream going and the dream will usually fail if you try to put  to much effort into reading.

[Leon the Coyote]

I dont seem to have much trouble with reading in dreams, most of the time if i read in a dream either it's been relavent to the dream or something that triggers the lucid, but not rather by making it more vivid but switching it to another subject with me having absolute control...but i think the reading doesnt bother me too much because i devote hours a day to reading and have a photographic memory.

As far as reality checks go yes the hands can be a trigger for a lucid and is quite often a very effective trigger but i found out taht after keeping a dream journal for a while I saw common triggers as to waht starts a lucid dream so now in addition to reality checks I can also pick out things around me that signal when i've entered the dream world, but of course they are personal triggers so these ones in particular are really a me only thing

[wingshadow]

Hayaikawa, are we both saying that using the mind wakes us up?

Chirgath, are you telling me that you can read more than a few pages of a book in your dreams? That floors me, it really does. I spent years fighting through ruins, killing mutants, watching people slaughtered by robots, etc....

All that time I was searching for the enemy plans. I wanted to save the dream people from slaughter. We fought beside each other.

I think i tend to wake up when the message starts to become clear. Chirgath, is the message ever truly explained to you?

[wingshadow]

Let me tell you about the world I dream about. Like all serial dreamers, it is consistant,
although sometimes I have dreams in reverse sequence (end first, then backwards to the
beginning).

As best as I can tell, this is the origen dream: I'm in a hallway, and on the walls are the history of the world. It starts in an unreadreadable script, but as as I walk forward I can start to read it. On my left hand side are pictograms of farmers and battles and cities, then names and dates, but that is unimportant. I follow it up towards modern history. A voice is narrating it to me.

It breaks into English, and now I understand it. I mean, I can read it. I follow it into the nuclear age. I read about Vietnam and stuff. But I mean, I don't care about Atlantis and all the things in the past, I keep going.

The hallway I'm in comes to a stop at one point, and then it takes a sharp left turn. The point it turns at is the present.

To this day I wish I had spent more time looking at the past, because I swear a voice was trying to tell me about Atlantis or something.

Anyway, I turn around the corner, and it goes a few more feet and ends in a blank wall. I mean, it's right there in front of me. History takes a sharp turn and ends.

It goes a few more feet. But I don't recall what's written on it, because I wake up at that point. Horror.

The end is a blank wall. And I hope that part is where I die, instead of everybody. And you just can't dream about what comes after your death. Because it comes to an end.

But, and I want to ask the others about this, I'm not the only one who has had this dream.

For about ten years I've browsed dream forums and I've come across others who also have has the "hallway of history turning left and ending" dream.

[Leon the Coyote]

I can only read when it is relavant to the dream but other then that i really dont read, i just know i have the ability.

Most of my dreams are filled with action, happyness, sadness, and the whole spectrum of emotions, and feelings.

Just a few weeks ago i can remember being in combat with a squad i command and being pinned down by snipers. Next thing i see is my brother dashing in the open so i run to jump tackle him into cover not giving a care as to my well being. The dream takes all sorts of twists and turns after that.(All at my command).but mostly it just involves fighting the enemy in dramatic sequences

That's just one dream of hundreds of action packed dreams which i never know what i'm gonna step into....For my lucid dreaming i preview the dream then alter it to my whim then run through it. Sometimes it's a sandbox world though. It's never the same either at least not for a while. I've visited space, fantasy worlds, fought through zombie infection, Blasted and befriended demons as required, and whole other things that would just blow your mind.

It is through some common factors that all my dreams become quite clear as to what they are, although there is no reality to it. The common factors show what i am and parts of me i would not have found out otherwise. and other parts i knew but the dreams seem to show it by playing out scenarios same or not.

What i found out is taht:
I am a protector, In all dreams the common factor is i protect people, or animals

I am a leader, I knew this but in my dreams i'm always taking point and giving orders.

I am resiliant and stubborn to a fault. Never in my dreams will i ever give up EVER, even if i know the outcome is bad for me.

I am a tactile person, If i'm not building, manipulating or otherwise using something there is something wrong in the dream and i am not having a lucid or it's just a dream where i can relax becaue life is chaos.

Flight is me, 4 of 5 dreams i will posses the power of flight or at leaast some form of it

So really just cause i can read in a dream doesnt mean i do it all the time and just spend the time reading that would be a waste of my dreaming abilities. Now on the other hand it does mean my dreams can be more vivid, with one drawback...I have been locked into a dream and been unable to wake myself up even though i know it's but a dream. These have lead to some scary and tryly awakening moments. Sometimes i have to be shaken awake but most people are happy to since i'm screaming and babling. So really reading in dreams does say something about someone and increases the vividness of the dream vistas visited

[Kaloth]

I have been away from this thread for a while, but I saw a point a while back that I would like to address. Another tip for being able to recall your dreams is to work on your memory. I did this for a good long time, and find my memory incredibly... powerful? Every night before you fall asleep, write down everything that happened during the day. If you want include thoughts and feelings, but the important part is to make sure you get every little detail. The more you work at it the better your memory will become, and the more you will be able to remember dreams. Oh and also a dream journal is a wonderful thing.

[wingshadow]

Chirgath, we have something in common.

Let me tell you about Backworld.

I have a consistant dreamworld setting. Like you I am fighting. Like you I tend to lead small units, or rescue small groups of people from the enemy. Perhaps like you, Backworld is much like the real world, only abandoned and run down.

But the people aren't just gone. I first noticed years ago when I walked into an Albertsons parking-lot, emptied of cars, and there where row after row of skeletons. They had been  lined up and executed. I walked through a parking lot that was turned into a graveyard. People had been rounded up and deliberately shot. And then the truth started to come out.

Genocide is a common theme in Backworld.

And the trains run on time. I've hopped trains, and I've seen the prisoners. And I've watched them roll past me while I watched the tracks.

And it's called Backworld, because that's what the survivors on the outskirts call it, implying that the source is at it's center.

I've tried to penetrate it on many occasions, going in with others, in buses, by train, walking, you name it. By myself, and with other small groups of soldiers.

So let me tell you about the enemy. In my dreams, I face something that could not possibly be a vision of the future. Rather, I'm facing some kind of psychological source of evil.

For instance, my enemies include the undead. I can't conceive of a future where the dead rise from their graves. I once went through Miami on a hijacked tour bus trying to reach the capitol building, and we had to skirt around a family planning clinic. Nothing is more horrifying than walking into an abortion clinic of the undead. And that is just to unreal to be prescient, so it must be somehow psychological.

I suspect my enemy comes from within. My battle against evil is a battle against the Id. And I see that played out nightly in my dreams.

And I have to ask myself: why fight? If this is the inside core of my being, why am I trying to oppose it?

Well, I can't cotton to evil, and somebody is going to get his butt kicked. Somewhere inside my mind, there is some kind of central command bunker or something, and probably somebody is in charge of it. And somehow I know I am being tortured every night by some abstract concept or something that a) needs a good butt-kicking, and b) should stop torturing me.

I hope your situation is better than mine, but anyway, keep dreaming.

[Hayaikawa]

well, as for light to be shed on your dream world,
 to me its just another dream, with just slight differences I'll admit, but still just a dream.

I can give you decent advice on things to try if your lucid in this world, but its up to you to decide on weather or not you want to know them, or feel you can even use them.

[wingshadow]

I want to tell you more about my dreams.It got some furry bits in it, so bear with me.

Chirgath, this may be important to you.

I'm trying to find the "enemy commander" of my combat dreams. I have met leaders before, and I know some kind of hierarchy is present. On the lowest level are dream figures called "Brutons", which are like malformed, neanderthalish people. They have a type of "super-bruton" leader, which carries a small stone on his belt covered with runes. The stone works like a walkie-talkie.

I confronted one after I had slain his squad. He drove up in some kind of police 4x4 vehicle (this happened in a field in the country, surrouned by scrub trees, with a dirt road leading into it), and got out and walked towards me. I shot him in the head with a shotgun, but he kinda' shrugged it off.

I'm using a pump action, so I keep firing. I blow consecutive levels of his face off, knocking him to the ground. I mean, beneath each face is another face. I stand over him, and the final face is that of child, looking back up at me like that scene in "The Empire Strikes Back" where Luke meets Anakin in the place Yoda told him not to go.

Another type of leader is what I used to call "the black-robed sorcerers". They can fly, and infest important building in the ruins, which I suspect they turn into colleges to create more black robed sorcerers.

Anyway, I descided to hunt one down and make him talk. I caught up to one in the ruins, and I wailed on him with my way-cool dream telekinesis (which feels like using a phantom arm - note to self; the next time I corner one it's getting a psychokentic wedgie just for fun .

I expected him to fight back back with magic, but instead he turned into a black cat and ran. So I turned into a fox and chased him. I caught up to him in an allyway, and went straight for his little black cat throat. I chomped him, and then I worried his head off.

I wanted to make sure he was dead, so I carried his head in my little fox jaws to a small living pool, with clear water and plants and stuff. And I dropped his head into it, and a turtle came up and ate it.

Now, I realize that the sorcerers aren't alive at all: no blood. It should have spattered everywhere, and I should have tasted it. The black robed figures are undead necromancers.

Anyway, I want to tell you about my bad-butt dream powers. I can fly, I have telekinesis. I can see in the dark. I can heal the dying by laying on hands and "opening something up", I'm not sure how better to describe that sensation.

And I am one hell of a well armed marksman. And sometimes, I can shrug off weapon hits.

Also, I've become a number of animals. I'm a shape-shifter. I've only been the fox once, but I've been wolves several times, birds a few times, and once a sea serpent.

I've also been a silver scaled Manticore, but that is another story.

I have also died a few times. And come back. And once, I had my right leg amputated by doctors in a hospital. I could *feel* it, as they took my leg away from me.

Anyway, for me vivid dreaming is a mixed back of horror and awesome, and I await with baited breathe any light anybody else can shed on it.

[wingshadow]

Can I get a moderator to delete the poorly formatted version of my above post? Reply #268? I fixed it in reply #270.

I don't wan't anybody to have to suffer through reading that.

Over and out.

[Kobuk]

Can I get a moderator to delete the poorly formatted version of my above post? Reply #268? I fixed it in reply #270.

I don't wan't anybody to have to suffer through reading that.

Over and out.

Fixed.

[wingshadow]

Any advice from fellow lucid dreamers would be welcome, Hayaikawa.

P.S. I just realized I can modify my own posts, so I'm deleting the bad formated one in #268 myself.

[Kobuk]

Too late. Read my post above. I already fixed your problem like you wanted.

[Hayaikawa]

Any advice from fellow lucid dreamers would be welcome, Hayaikawa.

well, if your looking for the source of the dream world, the core of it, I suggest finding your dream guide.

It's basically a manifestation of your subconscious.

there are many ways to summon your dream guide, from just yelling for them to show up, to opening a door and expecting them to be there.

You should be able to ask your dream guide many things, they can even help you with certain tasks.