Lucid dreams?

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the only dreams i've had that i can begin to describe as "semi-lucid" are dreams where i am being loved. i make the dreams go as long as i can, so i can bathe in the love for as long as possible. these dreams are exceedingly rare for me, so i treasure and savor them. they seem to be from on high, as they happen when i have hit bottom in my life.

I've had a few of them when I was lucky, one just this week. I've tried techniques to induce them before but never successfully done it that way, though I have come close.

Same here, I think, only using a more direct thought process. Bad dreams and nightmares were too scary and unpleasant to have, so I just decided to 'step in' and change them. I was quite young, maybe 6, and it took a few tries, but after that, until my mid-twenties, I was often lucidly active in my dreams, sometimes every night. Now it doesn't happen as often. Changing bad dreams was usually easy and fun, although a few really vivid nasty ones still got through.

One that I could never get to or change was the horrible nightmare repeating, with a slightly surreal twist, an unpleasant experience that had actually happened. I had that one every month or so as a kid, re-experiencing how it had been in real-life.
Post-cog dreams? Pointless horribleness.

Reality dreams (semi-lucid probably) as an adult are very strange, especially when life sucks, and the dream-world is very much nicer.

I can recall a very vivid dream when I had a false awakening. I had this dream when I was around grade school age (early 1970s). In the dream I was riding with my parents in our car when we got behind a school bus. We followed the bus over a bridge that was lit in gold lights. On the other side of the bridge was a store with three dresses hanging on unusual arch-shaped hangers in a display window. In front of the store was an attractive 30-something black-haired woman smoking a cigarette in one those cigarette holder pipes that women sometimes used years ago. Then I woke up (in the dream) and had the exact same thing happen with following the bus and seeing the store with the woman. Then I woke up for real.

In truth there is a bridge fitting that description several miles from where I live. It used to be lit in gold lights. And one time Dad took us that way on our way to eat, and there was a building fitting the description of the one in my dream---but it was not a clothing store nor were there dresses hanging in a window. Just a couple years ago my wife and I visited that very store---which was now a different business and now specialized in novelty and expensive household items. Inside the second room was a clothing rack holding vintage style dresses on arched shaped hangers just like the ones I had dreamed about nearly 40 years earlier. And attached to this business in the same building is a beauty academy---and women were outside smoking cigarettes.

Did I have a dream 40 years ago about a future visit to this store? Coincidence---perhaps? Or perhaps I was in the Twilight Zone .

Well, I kind of have. Not naturally lucid dreams though. I read an interesting article on them and how to get started on lucid dreaming and decided eh, that sounded like fun and since I was sick of having nightmares I might as well give it a try. Worked out nicely, though it took some time at first. I didn't maintain the habits needed to keep lucid dreaming though so haven't had a lucid dream in a long while.

I would like to add that last night I had a really strange dream. Being that I am currently having allergy problems, my doctor has put me on a Z-pack and Siloec cough medicine. Those may have contributed to this strange dream last night. In the dream, I dreamed in German Expressionistic style---distorted windows and doors, and many diagonally placed shadows. There was a 1920s looking woman walking toward me. The dream was in color and was quite like the sets used in the silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari from the 1920s.

Most of my dreams are lucid dreams, I considered doing some advanced dream work when I was studying to become (BTW) Wicca, but then I decided that I really couldn't be bothered and have never considered it since so I really don't do that much in my dreams. I'm terrible for false awakening too, more so right now as I press snooze on my alarm clock about ten times before getting up, so going between sleeping/dreaming and waking continuously means my head gets very confused.

I also dream in full sensory - full colour, smell, taste - when I dream about buying pick-n-mix sweets it's equally awesome and depressing at the same time, it does really suck when I wake up to find I have no sweets

Being that you studied Wicca, are you familiar with Dr. Gerald Gardner who died in 1964?

I've been having lucid dreams and false awakenings on a fairly frequent basis for the past several months. And even when my dreams aren't lucid, they're still very vivid and I have an easy time recalling them. The subject matter of said vivid dreams sometimes includes myself engaging in taboo/disgusting activities. As I believe that dreams are a reflection of the subconscious, I may have unresolved issues/feelings that I need to deal with.

I haven't been using illegal drugs or doing meditation either; the dreams have been coming to me on their own.

I do have lucid dreams, but few false awakenings. Lately, however, and now that I am taking Prozac, I find myself strangely compelled to finish saying things out loud right after I wake up even though I know I had just been dreaming. But since my wife is already accustomed to my talking while I am asleep, I just let myself go ahead and finish talking without her ever knowing I am actually awake ... and all of that sure beats the horrendous nightmares and bolt-up awakenings of my past.

Last edited by leejosepho on 19 Feb 2011, 9:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I had my first false awakening the other week. I am so proud.

I've never had a lucid dream. I've had dreams where I think "is this a dream?" and I try to wake myself up or whatever, and it doesn't happen. I don't get the big deal about them.

People use the word lucid about dreams in two ways. One is kinda synonymous with 'vivid'. The other is a dream in which you exert conscious control of the dream, within the dream state.

I find it very hard to pick up the clues that I'm dreaming, and my brain is a master at convincing me that incredibly wacky things are completely plausible.

As one of the founding fathers of Wicca, yes.

I assumed you would have heard of him. I first ran across his name in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in the mid-1970s. There was a museum there called Dr. Gerald Gardner's "Museum of Witchcraft and Magic." I loved that museum. I also found it neat that he died the same year I was born---1964.

I sometimes dream lucidly and love it! So adventurous. "Dreams in a dream" also happen to me.