lucid dreaming

I love lucid dreaming. In grade 8 it was my primary interest. I'm now in my 30s. All this time the most effective way to have one has been as follows. Push on something solid with your hand, like you're going to jam your hand into a pile of snow or sand. Think to yourself.. Am I Dreaming. What this seems to do is work it into your subconscious. I'll often realize I'm dreaming and TEST reality by jamming my hand into a walk back and forth, or ripping out a piece of a wall with my bare hands. Alternatively I COME TO with my hand already in a solid. Early lucid dreams involved herding girls topless, smashing windows, knocking stuff over. Later came sexual stuff. Now I like trying to open a bunch of doors or walk far in one direction. I don't always like what I find. And tho I'm in control it's like my subconscious reasserts itself or blocks me at times. Flying is tricky. I've jumped and floated. Often becoming stuck. This happens far more often than flying. Getting stuck and slowly floating upwards is especially frustrating. Tho an amazing, truly fascinating thing happened once. I floated over a school I had never been on the roof of(I've been on many, for many reasons )and when I floated above it had the outline expected, but where I was ignorant my mind filled in the outline with the patterns of my home school, a roof I had been on top of. It had the domes and pyramids of glass I was used to, fitting the shape of the school I had only seen the sides of(so many times that above it seemed accurate)its like my brain went.... Poo in this pattern /template there has to be something up there. Pour these into that shape. Anyway, once. During my first mucus dream after defeating N64 James Bond, I jumped in my backward towards a friends house 6 blocks away and raced forward at super high speeds. Best flying has been when I wake up already flying. Two mornings ago I crushed a guys head by just putting my hands around where his head was in my line of vision without touching him at all. It's as though I ruptured his insides. He went all purple and died, he threatened me and said he killed some girl. I've woken up after experiencing a movie I was in/wrote, a documentary... I've woken after saying something so eloquent and profound that it killed me I couldn't record it after waking. I dream of a tech that will let us dream at will. And I've wondered about those lights that monitor rapid eye movement and flash red to trigger one to know they're dreaming. Until then I find the pushing thru solid and questioning myself to be more effective than the light switch, or any other method. There's way too much to choose from to pick a favorite lucid dream. But I do have my fave types of events(flipping over buildings with a wave of my hand, such power is never universal or something I carry dream to dream. And trying things in one that worked in another often backfires. ) , bizarre things that happen, interesting roadblocks (call it running into GOD, that being a non supernatural way of explaining dealing with my subconscious forcing a narrative, blocking something, scaring me away ) HAVE YOU HAD ANY / MANY LUCID DREAMS? WHAT METHOD (to trigger lucidity )WORKS FOR YOU? CARE TO SHARE ONE? OR SOME ELEMENTS OF MANY? one last tip. I find grabbing my shoulders with my hands and rocking to be an effective way to *ABORT* AND agree with common consensus, looking at my hands and arms really does work. Mixing up opening my eyes via trying to see better often causes me to end dreams as my eyes actually open. But it's hard to think , open wider.. But not physically and sometimes it's like they are half closed in the dream limiting my vision. Once I start focusing on that too much I'm heading for exit. I wish my vision was always wide open and clear.

>>2313 I haven't had many lucid dreams, but when I do, its usually from realizing im in a dream. I've tried to do the WILD method, but I usually get to scared. My most recent lucid dream ended soon after I realized I was in a dream. I was looking at a mirror, and my face wasn't my face at all. It was just 2 cartoonish feminine eyes (I'm male) and cartoonish feminine lips moving around. Moving closer to the mirror would dissolve the mask and show my actual face covered in white powder. Moving back would cover my face back up with the mask. I covered my nose and breathed to see if I was dreaming and soon after I realized I was, I woke up.

>>2316 The possible symbolism there is amazing. A mask, 2 faces... Shit. I hate dream interpretations cause how can I tell you what a blue door or a black cat means to you. That said we share some symbolism from shared culture. Interesting dream.

>>2313 I've only had one in my life. I was hugging a girl. Then I looked my hands. They were not symmetrical, ad they had too many fingers. I realized I was in a dream. I got too excited and started wishing things and stuff like that and I woke up without doing nothing.

>>2313 I wrote one dream down where I was hang gliding. I've never hang glided in my life, but I was free among the clouds in my hang glider this dream. Someone was alongside me as well, but their face was long forgotten by the time I started writing. I only woke up once I realized how abstract the whole thing was.

I absolutely love lucid dreaming. Although I do not always enter this state whenever I realize I am dreaming, the method I generally use is simply to bite my right hand. If I am in a dream (I always am when I decide to do this) It just doesn't hurt, it feels like my hand is made out of rubber, however, this method sometimes does not put me into a state of lucid dreaming. Generally when I enter lucid dreams I simply realize that I am dreaming. I have sometimes done sexual things in this state, but I just prefer to do other things. The absolute best thing to do in a lucid dream is to stop time (although I do not necessarily have to be in a lucid dream to do that, sometimes it just looks natural to me), it feels like you are standing between the boundary of being awake and sleeping, one little mistake and you wake up, and it is cool in general. I'd love to be able to teleport while in a lucid dream, however, when I do so, my dream just breaks, just like a glitched game with missing models and textures, and I am forced to wake myself up because after that nothing happens (although if I am teleported naturally inside a dream strangely that does not happen).

Biting, interesting. I may try that. I push on a solid while awake and think am I dreaming cause it seems to cause the lucidity. Like... I wake up in a dream with my hand in a wall, or just as often wake up right before and think... Wait a minute. Stick my hand in and out of a wall, then realize for sure I'm dreaming. That's what's amazing to me, it seems to cause the lucidity as well as being a good in dream test. Rubber hands interest me because when I test a wall I often rip out chunks once I am sure I'm dreaming. Rubber hand makes sense cause walks dont break apart like brick, concrete, or even wood. It's like pulling pieces out of a wall of cheese, or gummy candy. The textures are more food like, play-dough like, etc. Textures are very weird in my lucid experiences.

Not a lucid dream perse but stress gave me dreams the closest to that. So I guess it's because of being alarmed constantly what keeps me also alert while dreaming. It isn't pleasant, I wake up tired as hell. But I can see hands and feet clearly. I can see sunrise, the peak point and sunset. In some ocasions I continue my dreams too. I can also remember a lot of visual details, a lot of them. I could go and hour explaning everything in rooms or spaces and people. Nothing is blurred, if there is no detail then a black space covers the missing part. And those missing parts are always floor, roof and walls, never objects or living beings. Sometimes I'm able to choose, but I'm not completely sure of this since the feeling of being aware of dreaming and being in front of two options could also be just part of the dream itself. I will try your method, if works or if I find anything else I'll post about it here.

I have a hard time controlling my lucid dreams, even my own actions. How do I work on this ?

i went into a semi-lucid dream after i dozed back off in the morning. in that dream i was doing something akin to a bobsleigh only through a course that was absolutely not safe or appropriate. i went through it twice and attained almost sickening speeds. whatever. at some point i was in a small forest on a hill or something. you can't really call it a forest; there was some sort of red clay mine right over the hill. anyways. as i floated there i thought something in my mind and the word "astral" popped up. and i started wishing for my third eye to open (i have been obsessed with it for some years and anything i tried failed) then, surprise! something shonky was happening; weird sounds/noises, something like static and buzzing, and flashes of light. as i kept mentally affirming "i want my third eye to open! to open now!" and then, in some sort of a finale, i had the sensation that something opened, and in my (possibly imagined) mind's eye, it was as if i saw a closed eye flash open. and then, obviously, i had the best idea ever and forced myself awake. fuarrrking idiot so. did i open my third eye or did my sluggish mind interpret the manifestations of the onset of astral travel as such? i'm thinking that flashes of light and audio events are very likely to be that. how to know if my third eye is open? how to open it? alternatively, what's the worst experience your subconscious put you through (during lucid dreaming) did you have to fight it?

>2359 I'm not memeing , it could be schizophrenia

>>2359 Sincerely my worst experience with lucid dreaming is pretty lame. I woke up in my bed, as usual. Somehow I realized it was a dream. Everything seemed... fake, but not an obvious type of fake. Everyone was acting normally, as they would on a normal sunday. I tried to wake up, however I couldn't. Any attempts of suicide or self harm would result in nothing. There were dreams where I knew I was dreaming and could not wake up, and those dreams were a lot scarier than this, however this dream made me desperate because there was a point that I thought that I was going to live in this suffocatingly fake version of my house forever.

>>2344 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5875414/ The more neurotic you are in waking life the harder your dreams are to control, apparently. I have the same issue. I become lucid in that some small part of me knows that I am dreaming. I cannot, however, control myself at all. I act instinctually, which is usually very wild and tends to destroy the dream. I have tried meditating and cutting processed sugar out of my diet but that seems to do little for my anxiety. I'm not sure what to do beyond this.

>>2359 >did i open my third eye or did my sluggish mind interpret the manifestations of the onset of astral travel as such? i'm thinking that flashes of light and audio events are very likely to be that. how to know if my third eye is open? how to open it? Was it a bright light and a steadly increasing frequency of audio visual sensations? >and then, obviously, i had the best idea ever and forced myself awake. Aye that wasnt very smart, better luck next time. Dont pussy out, you got this far just keep going. >>2507 >The more neurotic you are in waking life the harder your dreams are to control, apparently. Rip me, ill just keep trying.

>>2359 flashes of light and strange audio is commonly what happens when one falls asleep directly into a lucid dream iirc. i'm not sure what that means in a dream though

>>2533 Yeah but not if it is so intense that its one of the most intense experiences in your life. Like experiencing dying sim on fuil power vr alone in your head without any electronics.

Whenever i notice i'm in a dream it never feels like i have any agency at all, it's more like me knowing i'm in a dream is part of the dream's plot and i'm still being rail-road'd, rather than me becoming truly self-aware and doing whatever i want. Other thing that often happens when i have of these semi-lucid dreams is that i will wake up inside the dream, my brain fooling me into thinking i woke up in reality and that the dream is over, reverting the lucid dream into a normal one. For example last night i was having a nightmare where demons messed with me and my house, making me hear and see things that weren't there. When i realized it was a dream they showed up to fight me. The bizarre part is that after i defeated them with ease, of all things i could do, i raped one of them. When i finished, i woke up to the shameful task of cleaning the wet sheets. Or that's what i thought, i wasn't actually awake, the dream continued as normal with the demons messing with me. The good side is that i didn't ejaculate irl.

So far I've only found myself in a dream once a few years ago in college. I've been trying to achieve lucidity for about 10 years now on and off along with astral projection. most recently I've been listening to guided meditations while trying to get to sleep but I find myself focusing on the words being spoken and not being able to fall asleep on my back, I have to sleep on my side. The one time I found myself inside a dream I was sleeping on my stomach and it wasn't planned, as soon as I realized I was asleep my thoughts went straight to remain calm, don't try to change anything yet so you don't get shut down but it happened anyways and I ended up in another dream unaware it was a dream. My problem I think is I don't stop to question if I'm dreaming, even if the dream is so farfetched it couldn't be real. Could heavy experimentation with psychedelics during college cause issues with lucidity since I'm extremely comfortable with experiences that are not natural? I've got a pretty firm grip on perceived reality and I enjoy psychedelics for the experience, but I always know that those experiences are drug induced so it's okay to go with the flow of it and see where it leads. Perhaps that prevents me from questioning dreams? I think the first thing I want to do upon achieving reliable lucidity is try to talk to myself, that thing that kicks you out of lucidity, and see if I can ask questions and ask for permission to experiment in the sandbox. If the mind (you, yourself) is forcefully removing you from that lucid state, it would seem there is a consciousness there making a decision to half the dream and create a new one, like killing a process and restarting it. If you could communicate with that consciousness, perhaps you could learn quite a lot. Or perhaps it is scared of you being aware, maybe reassure that consciousness that you want to communicate and want to proceed where that entity is comfortable so it doesn't terminate the session. Either that or you're stuck trying to subvert that control mechanism, discretely in a way hiding from it so it doesn't notice you. The crazy thing is, looking at it that way, it makes the matrix theory seem more possible. Does anyone have advice that could help me achieve lucidity?

>>2384 I've had an identical experience and it is truly desperating. I woke up as normal but, as you stated, everything looked fake. My mother looked fake. My brother looked fake. My dog looked fake. Everything looked like a caricature, although that is not exactly how it looked but it is the best way I can describe it. I tried throwing myself downstairs, but it had no effect. I truly do not with to experience that ever again.

i just recently got into lucid dreaming and still have problemes stabalizing my dream, i usually do the WILD method, wich works but sometimes also get lucid with a random reality check. with WILD i can move my hands and feet (tho not totally freely) in total blackness or blured sceneries, verbally stating to clearify won't work because i usually can't talk clearly and loudly and 90% off the time when i try to move my body i wake up. I know to stay calm and even tried meditating in this state wich usually just breaks the dream further for me, it's fuarrrking frustrating. any tips on stabalizing a dream and grounding ma self in it? the most interessting dream i had yet was me sitting in some kind of restaurant and doing a reality check, i uncrontrollably flew out the window and abov a city wich was a beautiful sight, thr i started flying down again under the ground wich looked like when you'r out of bounds in a video game. it scared the soykaf outa me and i found ma self in a false awakining with black/dark-purpleish outlined shadow figures flying towords me, then i woke up for real. will still keeping trying even tho most experiences yet have been scarry as fuarrrk.

Last night I had a strange dream and became lucid. Two people had been murdered, someone had chased them in a vehicle in my neighborhood and ran them over as they were running towards a pond. some time after I saw it happen again, instead of living in my current building I lived on the bottom floor of the building it happened behind and I was on the screened in back porch facing the pond. I heard them screaming and running, the car chasing them, and when they got in front of me I put my hand out and said stop time and everything froze then I instantly realized I was in a dream and instantly woke up. I had been asleep for less than an hour.

Last night I dreamed about making a sculpture of a grain of rice with an inverse proportion to a human being.

I used to look at my hands and count the number of fingers several times per day, and if there were more or fewer I'd know I was dreaming. After a while however, I think my subconsciousness caught on to this, and since then my hands have always looked realistic in my dreams. Flying always came easy to me in dreams, to the point were nowadays I tend to do it in my non-lucid dreams as well. Everything from powered flight, to long floaty jumps, to zero gravity.

>>2313 I have never had a lucid dream or anything like that I just can't imagine what it would be like When you wake up is it really like you experienced the sensations yourself physically? I really would like to experience such a lucid dream myself mainly because I am often hazy and want to get clearer in my thinking but I hardly know where to start I really am at a loss

>>2890 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17472023-a-field-guide-to-lucid-dreaming should I read this? any good books on this subject?

>>2890 it is, if you grab something in your dreamworld for example you really feel the sensation of touching something, same goes for other sensation such as sound or pain etc. best thing is to start writing a dream journal and analysing your dreams, finding patterns between your dreamworld and the real world. get in the habit of doing a reality check everytime some event like that happens. in a lot of my dreams i take or try to take drugs, so i got used to doing a reality check everytime i do something drug related wich eventually carried over to my dreams. doing a small dose of ketamine every now and than before going to sleep also seems to increase the liklyhood of me getting lucid but that might be different for others.

>>2892 There are just way to many things about this subject I don't really understand >Does it help you with clearer thinking or anything like that? >Like can you get to know yourself better and somehow get yourself in a better order? >When you wake up do you really feel like you have been to the places you have been to in your dreams? >Do you prefer the dream world to the physical one?

>>2893 it dosen't help me with clearer thinking. i don't have that many lucid dreams yet, most of the time i do some stupid things like throwing stuff like cars around in a city or just walk around the dreamwolrd and see whats there. in one of my first experiences i looked in the mirror and saw some extreamly distorted face which scared the fuarrk out of me, haven't tried it again since. I twice heard some random song in my dream that i didn't know and don't existed and really like it. it feels very real in the moment when it comes to the senses involved even tho you know it's a dream but feels as real as any other non-lucid dream feels to me after waking up and writing it down. so i don't really feel that i'v been there for real after waking up. I really enjoy dreaming, including non-lucid dreams. but i prefer the real world.

IIRC the last lucid dream I had was me doing mundane tasks at home, untill I had a strong feeling that Im not in a real world which made me realize that its a dream and waked up.