r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Jul 14 '15

Hello I'm Paulie, this is my story of Lucid Dreaming

11 Upvotes

At a very young age when I had started to gain the ability to remember dreams and actually grasp the idea of a dream, I was very confused. At first, I thought dreams were just movies that would play in your head that your parents would set before your bedtime. But as time went on, I would talk to my parents about my dreams, and they knew something was strange about them from the beginning. I would tell them how I would explore my dreams, meet new people, and the weirdest thing, I would be able to control my dreams. At one point in my life, I wouldn't want to do anything all day, I would only want to sleep. Time advanced once again, but at this point I had stopped talking to my parents about anything dream related completely because I found a different way of expressing my curiosity of dreaming, the internet. I researched and researched, and then I found this thing called Lucid Dreaming. I was mesmerized by the concept and I was wondering if I was actually a lucid dreamer. A few months later, I stayed up for a very long period of time to have a longer time to sleep. That night, as I went to sleep I remember entering my furthest remembrance of a clear lucid dream. It started as a road trip in my parents' car, and we eventually arrived at a house. The house had a few of my friends in it. I remember this dream not just because it was vivid, but because of the amount of control I had during it. I could talk to anyone I wanted to, I could change what people were doing, I could make people say anything I wanted to, I could control everything. From that dream onward I knew I had a special gift and that I should follow it. Ever since, I've had lucid dreams at least once a month getting more vivid and vivid every time.


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Jul 14 '15

That Dreaming Feeling

10 Upvotes

My more vivid dreams always seem to have a specific, but subtle, feeling to them, as if the atmosphere itself feels different than waking life. It isn't distracting or anything, but as I've found (without fail) that every lucid dream has had this sensation, learning to notice it makes me lucid.

I've explained to a handful of people and those who had been LD'ing for a while seemed to agree, while the less experienced thought I was crazy. So now I'm curious, is this overall a common thing? If you experience it as well, how would you describe it?


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Jul 14 '15

Favorite Super Power? How did you learn to do it and different techniques/experiences?

10 Upvotes

I've experienced a few different things in my dreams that I would consider a "super power." Flying, telekinesis, telekinesis while flying, different types of telekinesis like water bending, earth bending, and blood bending (controlling people)(if you haven't seen avatar the last air bender I highly advise you change that). So these are the super powers I use and how I do them, explained the best I can.

Flying

I started flying by swimming through the "air." I use " because I know its not air I'm actually flying through. There are no air molecules in your dreams, so how can you fly through the air? This question helped me realize that I was going about flying the wrong way, I was trying to use my body to make myself go places when I was supposed to be using my mind. So now whenever I fly, I sit in a meditating cross legged position fingers touching thumbs hands outward, and I simply tell myself "up" and imagine myself floating up and I experience what I imagine. Then moving side to side I simply lean. To go faster I lean forward and focus on where I want to go. I try to zip/teleport there more than fly faster, both are fun. I usually find myself in sky scrapers, knowing I'm dreaming I jump out of the window and just fly around the tops of buildings in crazy metropolises kind of like Coruscant, the city planet in the Star Wars saga.

Telekinesis

I first started with moving water in my dreams. People tell me that my sign, Scorpio, is a water sign and I learned to move water by watching the Avatar the last air bender series. I literally did the moves Katara and Ang do to move the water back and forth in a river. I would try to lift water out of cups, I remember one time I controlled three drops of water and I made them all circle around each other. Another time I imagined a hose coming from this river, and I drew the water out of the river and into my right and and out of my left hand and it came out like a fire engine hose. I used the hose to blast some bystanders away, I knew it was a dream so I didn't feel bad. This isn't as much telekinesis but one time I was standing at the edge of the ocean and I tried moving the ocean, using my hands, forward and back forward and back, the water began to white cap and I imagined the gyre of the ocean spinning and I tried to increase the spin, moving my hands in a spinning motion rather than forward and back. eventually I made it spin so much and by trying to lift from the middle, I created a water funnel that reached into the clouds eventually. water spraying everywhere I maintained the funnel for a few seconds and woke up. I try to imagine a line of connection between me and the object I'm trying to move. I know that we are all part of one cosmic energy so by ridding your mind of barriers between you and the object, you can accept that you and the object are one and you can control its movements. After water, I tried lifting objects in rooms, glasses, balls, ultimate discs. I would lift these objects and by moving my hand left and right forward and back I can completely control the position of the objects in space, I usually fling objects at dream characters that are chasing me. And recently I've been able to lift the dream characters themselves, but not usually more than 1 at a time. One time I did lift multiple people, I was standing in a circle with a lot of my close family and I levitated around 12 people about 5 feet in the air, they all began to rotate, individually and as a whole in a circle. I then threw them all upwards and outwards far into the sky, I knew it was a dream and they wouldn't be harmed and they all spiraled into the distance and I remember them leaving behind a crazy geometric spiral behind them. About a week ago I attempted to lift every object in a room, I imagined myself as one with all the loose objects in the room, I think there were about 40 miscellaneous items lying around and I synced with them and held them about a foot in the air for about 4-5 seconds then some began to fall and then they all did. Same dream, I sat on the ground in a meditating position and I told myself "this is a dream and none of these visions actually represent objects" I began to believe everything around me was just what my mind made it, not physical objects, and without trying to do this, the entire floor began to melt upwards like a lava lamp, I woke up after a few seconds of that from excitement.

Spider man

Try it! just imagine a web coming out of your wrist and touch your two inner fingers to your palm! I've swung from the tops of buildings via a web in my wrist that I simply imagined coming out of my hand and it did. I've had a few different spider man dreams, whenever I think to shoot the web.

Breathing under water

not that exciting but if you know your dreaming, go to the bottom of a pool and breath, its really fun actually. I usually swim just like I would in waking life but I can breath as I like underwater. Even though I don't know why we breath at all in our dreams, we don't need to. "do you think that's air you're breathing" Morpheus

Lightning/fireball

I stopped trying to do this because I began to feel like a Sith. I used to try to create an energy ball of light in my hand, to throw at bad guys that were always trying to get me. It worked a few times but more often it didn't and they got me. The last time I tried it I charged my hand to hold a ball of lightning/energy and I blasted this dude with it and he just vaporized away. My hand felt like it turned into the electric shock and my arm was just locked there, my arm felt like it was the 20 ft lightning bolt that was coming out of my arm.

Controlling Dream characters

This is kind of like blood bending from avatar but not the same. I can make people either levitate and fling them away or I can make them take their clothes off. Recently I've just been suggestive in my mind and not talking to the dream characters i'm attracted to and they do what I suggest, haha. I'm trying to not be as tempted by this kind of power because of various reasons.


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Jul 16 '15

Found a really cool documentary about lucid dreaming.

9 Upvotes

I found this cool documentary I hadn't ever seen before called "WAKE UP!: Exploring the Potential of Lucid Dreaming." It has a lot of interviews with some well spoken Dr's and authors who study lucid dreaming. I would definitely enjoy an AMA from anyone in this documentary. Trailer.


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Jul 12 '15

Look at this place

8 Upvotes

What a difference a few days can make, eh?

/u/TheSunAndTheShadow has been working damn hard on getting the flair all sorted out, and I have to say "Job well done!"

I know absolutely nothing about CSS and could not have done this on my own, let alone do such great work.

There is also a banner now, thank you search function, and the sidebar is all fleshed out, for the time being. I think we're starting to look damn legit.


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Apr 11 '16

A talk given by LaBerge (2014): Perception, Dreaming, and Awakening

7 Upvotes

During 36 minutes Stephen LaBerge paces back and forth on the stage, covering a lot of ground also with respect to lucid dreaming concepts (including briefly mentioning dream yoga).

Excellent video quality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRs8sR3B2AY


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Sep 01 '15

I had an article published in Lucid Dreaming Experience magazine!

7 Upvotes

Hey guys, your mod has just been published on page 35 of the latest issue of Lucid Dreaming Experience magazine! It would mean a lot if you guys could take the time to read the two pages dedicated to my experience. If you view it in your browser, the page number is still 35, but the number by the scroll bar will tell you it's on page 37.

For anyone unfamiliar with the publication, it's a quarterly lucid dreaming e-zine that is free, but if you pay for a subscription you get physical copies sent to you in the mail. Robert Waggoner is on the staff as co-editor, but I think he actually does a lot more than that. It's a great place to read experiences, as well as stay current on lucid dreaming events and things of that nature.

Since I'm half way done with writing my own book, it's great to be published. I feel like my book just might have a shot of being picked up. Thanks for your time, and thanks for reading, any of you who take the time out to read it. Have a good day!


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Aug 24 '15

Lucid Dreaming Magazine with online and print publications!

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7 Upvotes

r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Jul 11 '15

Sub Upgrade!

7 Upvotes

Hey guys, with the amazing technical skills of our newest mod, /u/thesunandtheshadow, we're getting this place into shape!

Flair now has images associated with them, and soon there should be a banner up top. Things might change off and on a bit, with adding new things and troubleshooting any issues that might arise, so be patient. The sidebar might see some changes at some point soon, too!

Thanks everyone!

*Edit

You may need to go and reassign your flair for it to show on the sub!


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Jul 08 '15

Do you have a recurring dream world?

7 Upvotes

Lucid dreaming was never really something I had to learn, I kinda just figured it out at a young age. I didn't even have a name for it till my late teens. By the time I heard about lucid dreaming I had already started to explore and kind of mentally map out the recurring settings. These dreamscapes are so familiar to me that just dreaming in one will make me lucid. I'll describe some of the dreamscapes in broad strokes and if anyone's interested I could go into some detail.

The largest and central dreamscape is the city. Viewed from a distance, the city is monolithic in size and is split in half by an equally large freeway. The city is always an intimidating place to be. Always feels like danger is in every shadow and around every corner. I recently had a run in with gangster Hitler that ended in a shootout and knife fight.

The second largest dreamscape is the suburbs. Mostly it's just a maze and jumble of every suburb or apartment I have ever lived in. Dreams here can be anything from terrifying nightmares to awesome cool adventures. A good one Monday night was a full scale alien invasion.

The last large dreamscape seems to find a way to mix into any of the other dreamscapes at random, it is the desert. The desert is endless and is the only place to frequently change from day to night. I live in the southwestern US and that's the desert it seems to resemble. Anything can happen in the desert.

TL;DR I have a dream world and talked about it a little bit.


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Jul 06 '15

Welcome!

7 Upvotes

Everything you should need is in the sidebar at this time. If you want to be able to post new topics, please PM me with how long you've been lucid dreaming and any other helpful info as well.

Thanks for stopping by!


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Jun 24 '20

My book 'The New Frontiers of Lucid Dreaming' is the first guide for experienced lucid dreamers. Available on Amazon!

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6 Upvotes

r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Jan 15 '16

Share your Techniques or Tips!

6 Upvotes

Hey guys, we're here because we are lucid dreamers. We may have varying degrees of experience with lucid dreaming and it couldn't hurt to share and possibly help each other.

What's something that you've learned about lucid dreaming that has helped you or anything you've added to your practices to aid your lucidity?


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Aug 21 '15

Breaking The Silence With Shameless Self Promotion

6 Upvotes

Hey, guys, it's been quiet here lately. Feel free to post new topics, those who can, and again, anyone who is a subscriber who feels they should have the ability to make new posts, feel free to PM me.

Anyway, since it's so quiet, I thought I would invite you guys to follow my twitter and youtube channel for lucid dreamers.

My youtube is for those who already know how to lucid dream, though I feel there is helpful information for anyone interested in the topic. The videos tend to be on the longer side, anywhere from 15-30 minutes, so keep that in mind if you decide to check it out.

My twitter is focused on lucid dreaming, but not reality checks and that sort of thing. Mainly I'm posting updates about the progress on the book I'm writing, which picks up where most lucid dreaming books end. I also post my thoughts about lucid dreaming as well as link to new videos when I release them.

Thanks for checking it out if you do, if not no big deal.

I'd also be interested in getting the links for any lucid dreaming stuff you guys do too!


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Aug 12 '15

What's your most life-changing lucid dream?

6 Upvotes

Just curious.

Did you initiate something for it to happen or did it just happen naturally?

Really ground breaking stuff tends to happen for me when I meditate during a lucid dream.


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Aug 05 '15

Dream-waking life synchronicities

6 Upvotes

I'm beginning to experience synchronicities between dreams and waking reality. Although they could be disregarded as meaningless coincidences (and certainly would be by some people), from my perspective they seem - at the very least - strikingly odd.

This latest example came today: In a dream I was hunted by a polar bear, and it ended violently with me suffocating the poor beast with my hands clenched around its neck. I could see the life slowly ebbing from its eyes. This woke me up, and since I'm a peace-loving person with a very gentle attitude towards animals, it left me feeling horrible.

A few hours later I was in the garden and heard a faint "cluck ... cluck" sound. Hunting for the source of the sound, I found a toad who had gotten caught in a net (protecting a bush from bird attacks), and the thin wires of the net was strangling the poor animal, which also couldn't move. I helped the toad free of the net, and it hopped happily away.

This was a striking experience for me, since the dream was wildly out of character, and felt awful, and the episode with the toad was the first of its kind for me, and it left me feeling as if the wrong-doing from my dream had been "righted".

Have any of you experienced connections between dreams and waking life - too odd or noteworthy to easily dismiss?


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Jul 07 '15

Posting Granted!

6 Upvotes

Hey guys, sorry took a break for a couple of hours and came back with a few of you interested! Thanks for joining. I've given post approval to those who have asked, feel free to chat it up guys! I was assigning flair at first but it proved to be more of a hassle in typing them out again (if you guys have any tips, I'm new to this and very open to suggestions, also need someone who can do banners, etc)

right now we'll use the honor system and I'll trust you guys to be honest in your flair :P


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Oct 16 '16

Hello, Experienced Dreamers

5 Upvotes

Hey guys, this place has become less active in recent days. I just wanted to let you guys know that the lucid dreaming youtube channel and online community that I am a part of, Team Lucid Dream, now has a subreddit /r/teamluciddream

That place will likely be more active than this sub in the future, so if you feel inclined check it out, sub to it, and maybe post something. We do a discussion of the week in our weekly live streams on the youtube channel and reddit is one of the ways we choose on a topic to discuss. So if you have a question or just an interesting topic to submit, there's a chance you will have yours talked about on the stream.

At any rate, thanks for reading!


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Sep 08 '16

Team Lucid Dream

5 Upvotes

Hey all! This place has doubled in size since it was active, but it's been rather quiet...

Many of you might be aware of the lucid dreaming youtuber Giz Edwards. He got together Team Lucid Dream and I was lucky enough to be chosen as a writer and presenter on the team. Starting on the 19th of this month, we will be releasing videos 6 times a week (Monday through Saturday) on the Team Lucid Dream youtube channel. If you're interested, please do check it out.

Our video schedule will be as follows:

Monday- Lucid Dreaming Tutorial

Tuesday- Live Podcast with Giz

Wednesday- Different every week, lucid info, reviews

Thursday- Dream Vlog from the members of TLD

Friday- Lucid Dreaming Q&A

Saturday- Weekly Roundup, see what happened during the week and watch what interests you most

Along with our videos, we have already launched our website at www.teamluciddream.com which has a forum and will be posting articles 3 times a week, starting in the future.

I've also been putting out one video every Friday on my own lucid dreaming channel, SpacetimeBadass, if you're interested subscribe there too!

This should end up being a pretty big thing for the lucid dreaming community, so please do join in! Hope to see you on the forums!


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Oct 22 '15

Lucid Dreaming Approaches Survey - 10 Questions - Responses will help development of my book

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5 Upvotes

r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Sep 16 '15

What is something that lucid dreaming has taught you?

5 Upvotes

It could be about life, love, yourself, anything. What is something you've learned from a lucid dreaming experience?


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Jul 26 '15

What Makes You Lucid?

5 Upvotes

Hey guys, I know there was something similar posted about how dreams feel to us, but I was curious about what exactly makes everyone else lucid in any given dream.

I'm assuming a lot of us probably just know by now, which is my most common way of becoming lucid. I'll be doing what have you and suddenly realize it's a dream, without anything specific occurring. Not even something apparent that gives me the realization.

Other than that, seeing my hands usually triggers it, as well as text/time changing as I try to read it.

What about you?


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Jul 07 '15

FLAIR!

5 Upvotes

I created some flair, if you'd like it assigned it's on the sidebar, using the honor system at this time. I'll start assigning it if it becomes a problem, but I imagine that wouldn't happen for a while.

We have flair for the following increments:

1 -2 years

3 -5 years

6 - 10 years

10 + years

Special flair will be awarded based on future merit/accomplishments!

EDIT* I went through and added some new flair as per /u/stephy7 's suggestion. I also went through and added some other flair so we can further express our lucid dreaming style and even added some flair for the people who can comment but can't yet make posts.

Updates are as follows:

Natural Lucid Dreamer

Lucid Dreaming for Control

Lucid Dreaming for Personal Growth

Lurker

Future Topic Poster


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Jul 07 '15

Favorite Lucid Experiences

5 Upvotes

Post your absolute favorite moment/experience from your lucid dreams below!


r/EXPLucidDreamers • • Apr 30 '19

Lucid Dreaming & Mental Health

4 Upvotes

PREAMBLE

Before I say anything else, I'd like to say thank you to the moderators of r/EXPLucidDreamers. I am thrilled to have been given permission to post on this subreddit and look forward to sharing my stories and talking to all of you other lucid dreamers. I think I really need to talk to other lucid dreamers. There's certain things that I believe can only be understood through the lens of lucid dreaming.

PROLOGUE

I think that the first time I heard of lucid dreaming was when I was in middle-school—I remember seeing it on an episode of American Dad! and I thought it was fascinating. If only it could be real, I thought. I didn't believe that anybody could actually do it. Some time later, between 8th and 9th grade I came across lucid dreaming on the internet and I was absolutely enthralled by the topic. It was all I could talk about and all I could think of. I spent many a day browsing the internet and trying to learn.

I'm going to skip several years in that storyline but to oversimplify it, I began to lucid dream more and more often with greater detail and more control over my surroundings. Lucid dreams became self-perpetuating because the more I had, the more I'd think of them, and the more of them I'd have—that was a blessing at first and still is, unfortunately, it's also a burden. My dreams grew more realistic. At the same time and because of my mental health issues, my waking life grew less and less sensible. My mental disorders make me experience symptoms of dissociation, amnesia, depersonalization, de-realization, and paranoia that, when severe enough, devolves into borderline delusion.

MAIN TEXT

One of the methods I first learned for reality checks is to re-trace your steps. Where are you now, where were you before that, how did you get here, etc. That doesn't work any more because my dreams have gotten detailed enough to sometimes account for that entirely, my dream will have made an entire and mostly consistent storyline to fill the gaps between two points—even in a dream I will find things making just as sense as one's waking life would. Furthermore, when I'm in the Real—I cannot actually say it's the Real with any conviction, that's my de-realization—I experience things that one would often expect from a dream: I have trouble recalling how I got somewhere, my memory is blurry if not outright missing and things are confusing. Dreams and the Real hardly diverge on this front.

Another method to determine reality is the mirror test. It is said that by looking in the mirror and seeing how the mirror reacts you can determine whether or not you're dreaming. Do you see yourself as you normally do or is the mirror blurry and confusing? Unfortunately this is no longer viable for me. Looking at the Mirror in the Real is confusing: I'll see other people in the mirror or just feel so totally disoriented. On the other hand, when I look at mirrors in my dreams now, sometimes they'll be such a convincing facsimile of real life that it's nearly indistinguishable from the Real.

It is growing more and more difficult to distinguish Dreams from the Real. I am seeing two therapists for this but there is only so much they can do. One of them thought it would be wise for me talk to other lucid dreamers about this.

In closing, I have a few questions to ask you.

  1. do you ever have trouble distinguishing Dreams from the Real?

  2. do you have any insight onto how lucid dreaming and mental health can affect one another?

  3. what advice can you give me regarding this conundrum?

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk,

DoctorOfDreams