problems with lucid dreaming

[6.6.6]

Reading a few posts on here about lucid dreaming reminded me of my own experiences with it when I was younger,

I think I was around 13-15 years old, when I started to realise I could control certain aspects of my dreams, flying, making things appear and disappear, controling the characters in the dreams etc...I had quite good control of most of what went on, but there was always a slight hint of not being fully in control, for instance, when I lept into the air to fly,it would often take a few attempts to take off, and while in flight I didnt feel like I had much control as to where I flew or at what speed! Often floating back down to the ground against my will! But during the whole time I was fully aware I was dreaming. Another issue was making people appear, I could think "make a naked woman come into the room (bare in mind I was 15) and she would appear but not necessarily do what I wanted! Almost as if she had freedom of choice, now how could this be? If it was my dream, I knew I was dreaming, I had created her, but yet she seemingly had her own independent will and freedom!

Same situation with the flight, it seemed although I could fly, there were so many factors I couldnt control!

......

So this lucid dreaming went on most nights for a year or so and I had many adventures and experiences, then I started using this lucid state to experience more unusual things, I would think "I wonder what it feels like to be on drugs, and I would have feelings of euphoria and total relaxation, (at that point in my life I had no knowledge or experience at all about drugs) but some how my brain created the feeling!

Now during these lucid fantasies, I would also have the ability to wake up at any point I wanted, until one time....for some reason I had thought in my dream "I wonder what its like to be dead" and almost instantly the dream stopped and I was surrounded by total darkness! I could still think and was aware but that was it, there was nothing else, no temperature, no touch, no sence of spacial surrounding, nothing! Just total emptiness and darkness! Needless to say it was abit unnerving so I thought about a different scenario to dream about, but nothing....still darkness, I can remember getting a bit scared and tryed to wake up but couldnt, it felt like an eternity had passed when I finally woke up with my mother shaking me violently as I waa late for school! And since then I have never had a lucid dream again!

So it makes me ponder the question "what really is a lucid dream"??

I mean I had control to create things but not control them, I could experience feelings I had not felt in my conscious state, I could go to places I didnt know existed, and the sensation of death seemingly froze everything in the dream,

But if it was my dream why were there so many variables I couldnt control?

So that leds down to me asking what a dream really is?.. is it the mind making sense of the input it receives through the waking state,

Are dreams some form of inter dimensional travel?

Are they they pathways to spirit world,

Or are they the subconscious world to which we are all connected and interact during our sleeping hours??

Who knows??

Has anybody else experienced these kind of dreams/sensations of lucid dreams but with limited control?

[White Crane Feather]

Reading a few posts on here about lucid dreaming reminded me of my own experiences with it when I was younger,

I think I was around 13-15 years old, when I started to realise I could control certain aspects of my dreams, flying, making things appear and disappear, controling the characters in the dreams etc...I had quite good control of most of what went on, but there was always a slight hint of not being fully in control, for instance, when I lept into the air to fly,it would often take a few attempts to take off, and while in flight I didnt feel like I had much control as to where I flew or at what speed! Often floating back down to the ground against my will! But during the whole time I was fully aware I was dreaming. Another issue was making people appear, I could think "make a naked woman come into the room (bare in mind I was 15) and she would appear but not necessarily do what I wanted! Almost as if she had freedom of choice, now how could this be? If it was my dream, I knew I was dreaming, I had created her, but yet she seemingly had her own independent will and freedom!

Same situation with the flight, it seemed although I could fly, there were so many factors I couldnt control!

......

So this lucid dreaming went on most nights for a year or so and I had many adventures and experiences, then I started using this lucid state to experience more unusual things, I would think "I wonder what it feels like to be on drugs, and I would have feelings of euphoria and total relaxation, (at that point in my life I had no knowledge or experience at all about drugs) but some how my brain created the feeling!

Now during these lucid fantasies, I would also have the ability to wake up at any point I wanted, until one time....for some reason I had thought in my dream "I wonder what its like to be dead" and almost instantly the dream stopped and I was surrounded by total darkness! I could still think and was aware but that was it, there was nothing else, no temperature, no touch, no sence of spacial surrounding, nothing! Just total emptiness and darkness! Needless to say it was abit unnerving so I thought about a different scenario to dream about, but nothing....still darkness, I can remember getting a bit scared and tryed to wake up but couldnt, it felt like an eternity had passed when I finally woke up with my mother shaking me violently as I waa late for school! And since then I have never had a lucid dream again!

So it makes me ponder the question "what really is a lucid dream"??

I mean I had control to create things but not control them, I could experience feelings I had not felt in my conscious state, I could go to places I didnt know existed, and the sensation of death seemingly froze everything in the dream,

But if it was my dream why were there so many variables I couldnt control?

So that leds down to me asking what a dream really is?.. is it the mind making sense of the input it receives through the waking state,

Are dreams some form of inter dimensional travel?

Are they they pathways to spirit world,

Or are they the subconscious world to which we are all connected and interact during our sleeping hours??

Who knows??

Has anybody else experienced these kind of dreams/sensations of lucid dreams but with limited control?

Yes.

Maybe all of those things put together.

[6.6.6]

Id love to hear anybody elses experience and views on it all

[6.6.6]

Yes.

Maybe all of those things put together.

Your Harry Potter phrase is quite fitting ti this subject

[White Crane Feather]

Your Harry Potter phrase is quite fitting ti this subject

Yes it is.

Lots of experiences at your service.

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?app=blog&module=display&section=blog&blogid=2493

[sarah_444]

Most of my lucid dreams have a very limited amount of control. I find that as soon as I focus on controlling too much, I'll wake up. So sometimes, it's fun to let the dream progress and just be aware of it for as long as possible. But I have also experienced that total dark, emptiness that you described once. In my dream, I was stabbed in the throat. I could feel all of the sensations and pain, the struggle to breathe - I fell to the ground and felt myself slipping away, and my fear (dying) brought me to lucidity. I remember yelling at myself to hold on and stay in the dream. Then everything went black. I couldn't see or hear. Couldn't feel the pain, or the desire to breathe that I was fighting for a moment before. Aside from my thoughts, it was just nothingness. I don't know how long I stayed like that, but eventually I "came to" and the my dream was still happening, but there were other people around me now, and I could see an ambulance coming. It was pretty fascinating, for sure, once I woke up and tried to process it all!

[Kazahel]

I think the flying sometimes seems almost a matter of happiness and confidence. So if you think you might fall you will. That's why sometimes if I see an ocean I wont try cross it if for a moment I think I might fall in it. I've already created that doubt so I tend not to risk flying it at that stage. Mind you that also depends on what my goal is and just where I think the dream is trying to take me anyway. So even when lucid I'll still somewhat follow the flow of the dream. With speed though I'm not sure. I tend to fly at a set speed unless I really focus or use "boost" techniques. So I guess thinking about it now you would probably travel at a speed your mind is used to from real life. So if the maximum speed you usually drive is about 100Kph then I guess that's the speed your mind is used to seeing. So it would be harder for it to visualize traveling faster if you haven't got that experience stored in your brain.

That's a part of why I went skydiving when I turned 18 because I was really into lucid dreaming and I thought the experience would help teach me speed/height/falling etc and create memories to use in dreams later for flying. Anyway now days I tend to just let the wind take me where I go. I like to catch the wind and use it almost as a guide. So if I'm running or whatever and I feel the wind blow then I tend to think about flying and I'll just catch it like a sail. I like that feeling better because its like being caressed.

In regards to controlling people I think that would just be because you dont control people in real life. So you might be able to bring people into dreams easy enough by calling for them or whatever but everyone you meet in real life is their own person. So they will naturally seem to have their own freedom and will(being their own characters)during dreams.

Drugs and other new experiences I think would just be taken from what you have heard or seen on tv(or just what you think). And being dead I guess that's just what you might think happens when you die. First time I killed myself in a dream I just sat there as a ghost. Other times it changes or I've woken up. The blackness part is sometimes just a place where you are waiting until the next dream scene is created. I think if you had been given more time the next scene wouldve been created, like waiting in a movie cinema and having the curtain close and waiting for it to open again for the next film. That's basically what used to happen to me when I would lucid dream for ages and the dream would end in blackness. Then it was like I would wait around in blackness until the next one started.

Anyway I wouldn't think anymore of that maybe being a reason on why you haven't lucid dreamt since. You might be stopping yourself so I wouldn't give that any more thought. With the questions you asked at the end you pretty much answered them when you typed "who knows?"

My answer would be though.... they are magickal.

Edited March 8, 2014 by Kazahel

[Illuminate]

When was the last time you had a lucid dream then? and how often did you use to normally have it? I find it so odd that it would just die off like that. Maybe you some how blocked off a subconcious will to lucid dream because you were fearful, and it may have been some form of defense-mechanism?

I am new at lucid dreaming, and having experienced it recently, have been been influenced to write about it. I feel that lucid dreaming is very under questioned and is not as noticed in the science community as it should be. One of my major questions has been what is dreaming, lucid dreaming specifically?

It seems that many scientific individuals believe that what we experience is soley based on past experience. Oblviously, nobody has ever flown, and yet in our lucid dreams we experience it. All people, however, have felt the wind on their skin and most have fallen off from something (maybe not that high) so prehaps your brain puts it together and creates a logical guess on what flying might feel like. So in many cases, I can understand how our lucid dreaming is dependent on what we know and experience. One man called Hervey de Saint Denys learned to have some control over his dreams (he lived in the 1800's when lucid dreaming was not recognized in western culture, but described it as the dreamer being aware that he is dreaming.) He used experiements as he continued to widen his skills and found that all his dreams, whether lucid or not, reflected his experiences and memories. He too tried to experience death by jumping off a building in his lucid dream and still felt that it reflected his memories. Maybe one would have to see what parts of the brain is activated during lucid dreams.

And yet, some times it just feels like that there maybe an outside force, especially when it is hard to control the dream. Is it just the subconcious working while one lucid dreams, explaining why the landscape, and the people are so realistic, or is it something on the outside force that gives characters in a dream an individual personality and choice?

[6.6.6]

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=vPoiU87CLIfpywOAt4HACg&url=http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/first-lucid-dream.html&cd=3&ved=0CDAQFjAC&usg=AFQjCNGBaClL2uBBGS7iuA12NAitXLieMQ

Quite interesting

[sea-dove]

So it makes me ponder the question "what really is a lucid dream"??

Ones subconciousness creates the dreaming state.. but with a lucid dream ones normal waking consciousness is there some too. This makes a lucid dream a mix of subconciousness and consciousness together. Without the subconciousness you cant dream. This leads to why you cant control EVERYTHING in a lucid dream... its cause the subconsciousness is creating the dream too and something one is trying to do consciously, the subconsciousness may have completely different ideas about it.

eg One lucid dream I was trying to get my dream characters to have sex with me but they kept knocking me back!! even ones I'd been sure I'd be able to get interested.

Edited March 24, 2014 by sea-dove