Poll: Lucid Dreaming: Have you done it?

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

I honestly get this every day... I wake up slowly, and have a brilliant body clock that will always wake me up on time... During the time before I need to wake up I will be in a half concious state, I am aware of what is going on around me (sounds, movement, light, even smells if there is something out of the ordinary) but I lack the skills to react at this time. Instead I am subject to my dreams, whatever they be at this time, and I can influence events in this dream.

In my life, my job, and as an extension my home life, I am constantly analysing situations, and I like to think up hundreds of outcomes to every forthcoming scenario I am involved with. These dreams I have in the mornings tend to focus on scenarios I am personally going over at the time, either ones that are forthcoming, or going over something that has passed, ie thinking of what I should have done. In the dreams though, as I am so used to the experience, I have learnt to create the ultimate outcome to every situation by influencing things as they come. Most of the time I am a passenger to the scenarios, and it will play out like a movie, and I just make the choices that involve me, or retry a bit I want to change...

When I wake up I tend to forget what thew scenario was after 20 mins or so... I find myself sometimes still thinking of it in the shower, but now they are just thoughts, I am no longer watching it like as I sleep.

Somethines the scenarios are particularily stressful, or require a lot of work, and these will tire out my mind before I wake up. I can wake up feeling incredibly drained, like after a hard day at work, and my head feels all confused. Its pretty cool though!

 

[Smiley Face]

I only very, very rarely remember my dreams, probably because I'm usually sleep deprived to some extent or another. That said, of the dreams I remember, I get lucid dreams every now and again, probably more than once yearly, I don't remember exactly how much as I don't have a good memory. They're particularly likely to occur when I've woken up, but just put my head down and gone back to sleep. They're not long, and I don't do much with them, but I get them, and because I rarely remember my ordinary dreams, I don't really think of them as that unusual, just a little uncommon.

Another funny thing is that of the non-lucid dreams I remember, almost all of them are just me doing ordinary stuff - waking up, reading, going to class, walking from place to place, etc. So I guess lucid dreams just balance it out, eh?

 

[Antitonic]

Frequently. I'd say every night, but you have to give yourself a break to get some normal sleep. It's easy to do once you know how, but getting to that point takes practice. I mostly use it to build on my story/comic ideas.

I can also "store" my dreams, but that's a different topic.

 

[ulzugot]

I find my lucid dreams to be odd. I usually have them once or twice a month. Sometimes I can just control myself and sometimes entire reality (which ends. Once I had a dream in which I was running away from a yellow bastard, and he was catching on too me. I tried to slow him down by folding and twisting the "timespace" but he always was one step behind me.
The creepiest thing is the moment of realization that I dream. This always happens with me having an impulse to look behind me, where I see myself standing bored or annoyed, wearing Black Sabbath t-shirt. Then the other me says something along the lines: "that's a dream, idiot" and I am the other me, while the previous one disappears without me noticing.

Becoming concious in a dream? I've done it twice. Well I had the same dream twice, more a nightmare where some woman was chasing me with a giant hammer intending to kill me.

I apologize but I immediately thought of this and could not stop myself, Have mercy on me.

 

[TakerFoxx]

I've been doing since I was about...eight years old? Nine? Whatever. Used to be able to do it every other night or so back in high school. Not so much anymore, but I do get a good one every couple weeks or so.

Anyway, it's gotten to the point where my dreams have a continuous storyline, with recurring plots and characters that carry on from one dream to the next. A few of them have even developed a sort of sentience and do things that have surprised even me. It's a rather trippy experience, I can tell you that much.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

It normally happens whenever a dream starts turning towards nightmare/bad dream territory. Once the dream gets too negative, I take over and go super-saiyan on whatever is causing the distress. It's kind of funny how quickly a chase dream turns into a dream in which I'm *****-slapping Omega Red. There are also sexy dreams in which I have some amount of control but that's another story.

 

[staika]

I almost did once. It lasted for a very short period where I became aware of it being a dream and where I was able to grant myself the ability to fly. However my subconscious and whatnot took over again immediately and the rest of the dream was me fleeing giant mutant wasps.

[sub]In my dream group [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/The-Escapist-Dreamer-Society] here some of my members know how to lucid dream much better than I do.[/sub]

A dream group? Why was I not informed of such an awesome thing

OT: I have done it a few times but I have a terrible memory for my dreams and I usually forget it minutes after waking up :/

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

Yeah, I made myself have a lucid dream after reading about lucid dreams.

The only reason I figured out it was a dream though was that I was in a shopping centre, and one of the shop banners said 'lucid'. I then got all excited cause I realised I was dreaming.
I could have done anything... for some reason I only chose to fly XD.

But I guess I'm just too 'logical' for proper flight, cause I would always find myself falling. So it was more like gliding I guess. Like an arc where I'd fly up, slow down at a peak, then then start falling back down.
Though whenever I hit the ground I would kinda bump back to the ceiling. (I think I might have actually been falling 'into' the reflected world on the floor tiles, and that's why I kept finding myself back in the air after hitting the floor)


I also remember when I was young I had a dream that I was stuck being bored in class. Suddenly it struck me that it was a dream and I didn't have to stick around being bored, so I ran straight out of the classroom.
The teacher then shouted angrily after me, telling me to get back into the classroom. Naturally my response was to stop and shout back:
"no, this is a dream" and then keep on running. XD

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What's actually more strange is when i realise I'm having a dream but for some reason don't connect this with the repercussions it has.
I can remember a couple of times where i've gone 'hey wait, i'm dreaming...'
then just continued with the dream as if this revelation never occurred, or as if it's entirely irrelevant to what's going on.

 

[XMark]

I had an interesting variation on a lucid dream once. In the dream I was out with some friends, in a big parked van. One of them passed me some kind of drug in pill form and I took it.

Now, I wasn't aware that it was a dream. However, within that dream I had taken a drug, so I was expecting to experience some kind of hallucination. So in a roundabout kind of way I was aware that I was dreaming. And it was the most intense feeling ever. Sudden I was blasting through the universe past the speed of light, seeing swirling galaxies and supernovae and all sorts of awesome galactic shit and some kind of intense rush overcame me. And I was thinking like, wow, I can go anywhere in the universe as long as I'm still dreaming. Then I woke up and I was all sweaty.

 

[guidance]

The problem I have with lucid dreaming is when I can pull it off, I am still fallowing dream logic. So instead of doing something awesome, it just seems like a normal time and I just go with the flow, I just know that I am in a dream.