You can learn to lucid dream. Most everyone I assume. Once you do, you can establish different places or scenes where you play things out regularly, and then you start being able to remember things a bit better, because it’s like you actually went on a visit to this place, there’s something to keep jogging the memory onward to “what I was doing last night.” I can tell you what my past few years of dreams have been like as they gradually shifted and changed, but that’d be very boring.
Even with lucid dreaming, there is an element of randomness, and a big part of that is “today’s consolidated memories” so expect those things to come up as plotlines, sometimes in very amusing ways.
These days I don’t take control but I do still have the places, so it’s interesting seeing my subconscious resolve things in these places. Lot more other people in my dreams now, reflective of my improved mental health and social connectedness.
I don’t want full lucidity, because I like seeing what my subconscious comes up with. I have enough control to steer dreams away from things I find unpleasant, and I’m happy with that.
But I also have recurring “places” I go to in my dreams. There’s one particular place I enjoy going to, which feels like close to Florida (in my mental GPS) and has an eastern coast, but its geography otherwise is more like southern California, with mountains and rocky beaches/islands. It has the games, rides, and boardwalks of New Jersey, as well as an unlit stretch of a moonless beach that I once experienced in Delaware. (I was a child, and I vividly remember walking into a pitch black void, hearing the waves crashing, but not knowing how far away the water was. My family was ahead of me and kept telling me to keep going. That moment comes up a lot when I think about the future.)
Anyway, I’ve spent dream times all over that place. Sometimes it’s part of a road trip and I’m just traveling through, sometimes I’m visiting people who live there, sometimes there are events going on, or I need to navigate a busy, multi-story shopping mall.
I learned as a kid to deal with nightmares. I would be scared, and then wonder if this was a dream, and poof. I was free.
Can’t do it anymore though :(. I think, as a kid, it just kinda started happening. It wasn’t intentional at all; a natural solution to recurring nightmares I guess. It made for some cool times.
A couple years of working on it. Lots of “intention” work, going to bed with the idea that you’ll be lucid this time. Find things in your dreams that ONLY happen in dreams, use these as cues. The more you deepen these thoughts, the more likely you are to, one day, go “Oh I’m dreaming!”
The first time lasts maybe 1-2 seconds before you forget you’re dreaming again. But each time you do it, it can get longer and longer, and then you can try things, like flying or fantasy sex.
You can learn to lucid dream. Most everyone I assume. Once you do, you can establish different places or scenes where you play things out regularly, and then you start being able to remember things a bit better, because it’s like you actually went on a visit to this place, there’s something to keep jogging the memory onward to “what I was doing last night.” I can tell you what my past few years of dreams have been like as they gradually shifted and changed, but that’d be very boring.
Even with lucid dreaming, there is an element of randomness, and a big part of that is “today’s consolidated memories” so expect those things to come up as plotlines, sometimes in very amusing ways.
These days I don’t take control but I do still have the places, so it’s interesting seeing my subconscious resolve things in these places. Lot more other people in my dreams now, reflective of my improved mental health and social connectedness.
If i start lucid dreaming i might start programming even in my dreams…and i fear that
I don’t want full lucidity, because I like seeing what my subconscious comes up with. I have enough control to steer dreams away from things I find unpleasant, and I’m happy with that.
But I also have recurring “places” I go to in my dreams. There’s one particular place I enjoy going to, which feels like close to Florida (in my mental GPS) and has an eastern coast, but its geography otherwise is more like southern California, with mountains and rocky beaches/islands. It has the games, rides, and boardwalks of New Jersey, as well as an unlit stretch of a moonless beach that I once experienced in Delaware. (I was a child, and I vividly remember walking into a pitch black void, hearing the waves crashing, but not knowing how far away the water was. My family was ahead of me and kept telling me to keep going. That moment comes up a lot when I think about the future.)
Anyway, I’ve spent dream times all over that place. Sometimes it’s part of a road trip and I’m just traveling through, sometimes I’m visiting people who live there, sometimes there are events going on, or I need to navigate a busy, multi-story shopping mall.
It’s a pretty pleasant place, honestly.
How long did it take for you to be able to choose when to lucid dream?
I learned as a kid to deal with nightmares. I would be scared, and then wonder if this was a dream, and poof. I was free.
Can’t do it anymore though :(. I think, as a kid, it just kinda started happening. It wasn’t intentional at all; a natural solution to recurring nightmares I guess. It made for some cool times.
A couple years of working on it. Lots of “intention” work, going to bed with the idea that you’ll be lucid this time. Find things in your dreams that ONLY happen in dreams, use these as cues. The more you deepen these thoughts, the more likely you are to, one day, go “Oh I’m dreaming!”
The first time lasts maybe 1-2 seconds before you forget you’re dreaming again. But each time you do it, it can get longer and longer, and then you can try things, like flying or fantasy sex.
a few months, but i’ve always had a sleeptime paracosm. i was very ill, on a lot of drugs, and living somewhere awful enough i preferred dreaming.