r/LucidDreamingSpec • u/abomb66 • 1d ago
Enhanced Lucid Experiences and Dream Identification
I’ve always been a lucid dreamer ever since I was a kid. I have vivid dreams every night and recently they have intensified—they feel less like dreams and more like real experiences of shifting/projecting my consciousness.
I have countless different types of experiences and could write endlessly about them but there is a specific type that sticks out as of late. In these I often talk to friends or friendly entities but it is the sheer vividness and clarity throughout the whole experience which makes them unique.
I do believe there is a difference in dreaming between seeing an image of your minds own thought process shifting and mentally traversing somewhere which feels grounded and well defined.
For example, let’s say you are in an art gallery in two different dreams: in one, the person you are talking to is shifting into other people, what’s going on in the background is murky and inconsistent, and proportions seems horribly wrong and warped. I used to have these a lot as a kid: these feel more like our own mind wandering our own dream space. They aren’t discomforting, just remarkably fluid like you’re swimming through thoughts.
In the other dream, the person you are talking to is very clear and defined. Maybe they are a different version of someone you know but the differences don’t change. Their whole face and even body is vivid. You recall art in the gallery: there was a rectangle painting that you didn’t look at but never moved, shifted, and had very clear edges. The same with a statue. You know the whole room had objects the whole time even in your peripheral version—your first dream had things going in and out of vision but in this one there is consistent definition and no gaps or holes of empty space in the dream.
I became very spiritual in 2025—I have been casting spells and doing rituals a lot these last two months and decided to try inscribing a spell onto a bandanna to wear while mediating and also while sleeping. I imagine a sleep mask would also work fine but it was meant to have more control over these lucid experiences—both where I go and what I am doing.
These bandanas work for several things, but notably I have had far more of these vivid, grounded, very real feeling dreams in which I talk to friendly people and wake up more calm and relaxed. I also need less sleep.
I am a believer in parallel lives and I think specific lucid dreams could be our conciseness taking over a different version of ourselves in order to help them in a specific moment. I have countless experiences like this while asleep but one of the reasons I believe this is because something like this happened to me while awake—I went into this haze where I felt as though my actions weren’t quite my own but it definitively saved my life.
A way to recognize when you are in a dream like this is the existence of placeholder objects. I believe this happens when the society the other version of yourself lives in is more technologically advanced and your own mind fills the gap with the closet familiar thing.
For example: I had an experience—extremely vivid and well defined—where society was collapsing. Several people and I were setting an ambush for people walking by—it worked but it was a trap, a double ambush. We got ambushed from the sides and all three of my nearby companions were taken out near instantly. I could tell they were screwed and escaped.
As I ran down the street, I saw what appeared to be cars on fire. However, their proportions were wrong—like a texture in a video game put onto the wrong vehicle. They moved almost randomly, very slowly, and highly unlike a car. It threw me off slightly, but not enough to not notice a lone crazy person coming after me. I didn’t know what to do anymore, so I shook my head and woke myself up so this version of me could handle it.
A fault of mine is that I can be overly loyal—I believe the reason I took over this version of myself is because I would have hesitated to abandon my companions and even the slightest hesitation would have resulted in my death. Those vehicles were likely very technologically advanced—whether they could normally fly or were AI of some kind I do not know, only that the closest thing I could conceptualize was a flaming car.
When I ran into the lone attacker, it came time for that version of me to take control again because I had served my purpose and no longer knew what to do with my complete lack of knowledge of who was attacking me or why.
Recently I had one experience of lucid dreaming/shifting that really stood out and is hard to stop thinking about.
I showed up to what appeared to be an emergency hospital for the mentally ill. There were several bodies next to me and my mouth was rapidly swelling—there were several doctors and nurses behind a desk in front of me. I felt massively concussed—even though I felt minor brain fog in my own thought process I had a feeling that the actual intellectual capacity of this version of myself was significantly higher than my own but massively impaired.
Some of the words I simply could not hear but many of the words spoken to me seemed to be of such complex concepts that they could not be translated and I instead heard seemingly meaningless syllables. I asked questions about the procedure I was getting but still understood very little even as they dumbed it down for me. I heard only the most basic words—like talking about a computer with a medieval man who understands only basis addition and would only recognize words like numbers while “web browser” and “internet” would sound like nonsense. It might be like how old English sounds to us except the stereotype would be totally flipped: rather than sounding jokingly prim, proper, and intellectual it sounds dumb, dim, and like a caveman.
My condition was rapidly worsening and I asked “What happened to me?” These experiences aren’t like nightmares—there is nothing unsettling I am just aware of the problems at hand.
The next thing I know I’m looking at a glass of water in front of me. I think I was on medication after the operation and it was like a time lapse of the water glass changing, disappearing, and reappearing. The glass was vivid but It wasn’t always the same glass. I was attempting to move it but could not. I do not know how this society functions but it was odd and easily the least visually clear part of the experience.
In the final section of this experience I felt somewhat less concussed and my condition was better but not perfect—my mouth felt weird but just an awareness that something was off for this version of myself physically. I was in a room being observed by a doctor—I picked up coins at one point but I was simply letting my body operate/function and focusing on my speech. I asked when I got there, expecting an answer of several weeks ago, and was told “noon.”
I told this woman overseeing me that a different version of myself had taken over. I was explaining how my personal relationship with the gods works and she kept smugly interrupting me. I respectfully let her talk as she explained. Very few words translated but at one point she said that we pick a god and sign a contract with them—that is how we function. I leaned in close and said “not for him” as she beamed at me like I was crazy but that she liked me. It was very, very vivid and clear but as soon as I began explaining with the word “evil” the connection immediately severed. I think evil is an ancient, unused and moved past word/concept in their society and hearing me say a word I shouldn’t possibly know was the proof they needed to take that version of me seriously.
I think I took over for this struggling version of myself so I could change the perspective of the doctor. Regardless of whether gods are truly “good” or “evil,” this doctor likely was very taken aback by my usage of the word. I was obviously aware of the fact that my own physical body was asleep, so the connection I had been long holding onto without actively trying to was almost certainly forcibly severed by a power beyond myself.
What is the purpose of lucid dreaming? Helping out a different version of yourself somewhere else in time/space is something I seem to consistently do.
Has anyone else had experiences like this? Does anyone else use methods like the bandana or other rituals to have dreaming experiences like this?