Living in a Lucid Dream

> Curious if this is universal or if other people who lucid dream do always know the details of their actual true reality -- their age, what city and home they live in, current job, etc.

I have lucid dreams somewhat frequently since I was maybe 8 or 9 after I started getting prescribed medication to help me sleep (initially it had been almost nightly, but it reduced over the years to the point where it happens maybe a couple times a month now a couple decades later), and generally I do remember the details of my life in lucid dream, but I sometimes have trouble determining whether they're details of my life in the past or the present. If in my dream I'm back at school, it's usually not the case that I don't remember graduating, getting a job, and moving; often times I have a vague sense that all of that had happened, but then some issue was discovered with my records that forced me have to go back and retake a class or two. (This obviously is pretty implausible, but dream logic isn't always airtight!)

> What I find interesting, however, is that if I have a dream I forgot to study for my test, or I'm naked at school because I left my clothes somewhere else, or the school play starts tonight and I haven't memorized a single line... the fact that I know I'm dreaming doesn't help at all.

Having real world knowledge doesn't always mitigate the "issue" in the dream though; in my lucid dreams, I don't have any control over what happens beyond my own actions, so a teacher expecting me to hand in some assignment won't generally accept "it's a dream so I don't have to" as an excuse. There is a way that knowing that I'm dreaming helps though; I can just choose to wake up! I'm not sure whether being able to forcibly wake up is typical or not for people dreaming lucidly, but I've never had much trouble doing it. Sometimes I'll end up back in the same scenario if I fall back asleep again after though, so it might end up being worth it to suffer through the imaginary misfortune to get the real world benefit of sufficient sleep.

This is fascinating. I had a period where I was really trying to be able to lucid dream but never could. It’s interesting that this sounds so much like my normal dreams, but just adding that you do realize it’s a dream. I didn’t think it would be so similar.

When I have lucid dream, I know that i'm sleeping in my bed (street location, city) and which day of week it is. So I have access to real life knowledge.

So I believe there is different level of lucidity, depending on each individuals.

Mine are like yours in that I am never certain where and when I am in real life. But they don't last very long, I become too conscious and wakeup or just go with the flow and forget being lucid. They rarely last very long to think and experiment.

But in situations like yours, I am never sure where I am in my real life. I know that its a dream and I am sleep, but where and when are never certain.

Same for the most part. I get the rare "super lucid" dream where it's almost 1:1 to being awake, but 99% of the time it's like how you describe.

I think this is because our brains will happily "predict the next token". We've never evolved to have to consider doing anything else. So when you're asleep and placed into a scenario with some context associated with yourself, the brain does the natural thing and performs prediction.

Similar to my experience. I also find my control of my body is still somewhat linked to my real body.

For example, one way of maintaining and strengthening the lucid experience is supposedly spinning around in place with your arms spread. When I do that, I find a dream sensation that feels a bit like my arms trying to move out from under my pillow or caught in the sheets. I then wake up shortly after that.

Other times I'll know I'm lucid and can do some tricks, but still feel a bit limited, whether by the dream or my beliefs of what I think I can do in the dream. I cannot manifest scenery or people. Mostly I can get a small hop glide for flying, sometimes I can shoot a magic projectile. This may be due to limited control and practice.

I’ve explored it in my 30s and it wasn’t like you described. Once I’m aware, I can change the plot by soft transition, remove the eerie elements, somewhat control flights, etc. But not too much because something monitors “glitches the matrix” and disconnects me for cheating. Not that I didn’t know who I am or what is or isn’t absurd, but thinking about it long enough wakes me up. I believe your lucidness is not too deep or something. Maybe you just found a way to see dreams in which you believe it’s lucid but it’s really not? Maybe this whole lucid dreaming thing is just a coincidence - we remember being aware, but it’s just a dream of us being aware, and mine for some reason has this “not too much” rule.

> But during my lucid dream, there's absolutely no way of knowing. Curious if this is universal or if other people who lucid dream do always know the details of their actual true reality -- their age, what city and home they live in, current job, etc.

This is referred to as different levels of lucidity. While lucidity is technically a binary state (know or don't know), it can sometimes be better described as a spectrum where you can "know" but not fully understand what it means.

Some levels you might think of are: Thinking it's 100% real. Having a "feeling" something is off. "Feeling" its a dream. Consciously expressing its a dream. Understanding its a dream. And then actually understanding the full consequences that its a dream.

Usually this comes down to a matter of thought clarity, not memories. If you understand its a dream, then it has no consequences period. Even if you think the worry is real, you still can't affect the physical world in a dream. Perhaps you could try practicing/studying in your dream, and writing stuff down when you awake, or just forcing yourself awake in order to study/practice more. However, outside of that, nothing you do affects the real world, so there's no logical reason to worry about it, even if you don't have the memories to understand "oh its entirely fabricated".

As for others, it obviously depends on the dream, as each have their own level of lucidity, but I can personally say I know basic facts that don't require any specific memory, like my dad being alive is impossible, because he passed. I probably couldn't take a quiz though. I can also remember specific goals, though again, more as a natural feeling than a specific memory.

If you want to try to get out of the dream's story, you have to be willing to accept that if something is impossible, no story can explain it; it has to just not be real.

I've had a handful of clear lucid dreams with different levels of awareness/control. In most of them I know that there's no real consequences but I rarely try things that would seem dangerous/extreme. One time I was flying and knew it was a dream, I could control how/where I was flying but for whatever reason I couldn't fly above a certain height like there was yet another unconscious limit to my lucid dream control. At least in that one I was trying and testing what I could do in the dream.

In most other cases after I wake up, I think to myself I knew I was dreaming why didn't I try more stuff?! Waking up from lucid dreaming can be very smooth fade-out/fade-in and sometimes I can extend the lucid dream state after partially waking up by reimagining the world I was leaving then on finally waking up I just wish I could have stayed longer but is no surprise at all.

I used to have lucid dreams regularly until I was 17, until I told a friend and never had a "real" one since. I am not sure if it is connected. I mostly used it to avoid nightmares as a child, unfortunately after a while, I got psychological nightmares instead. Waking up multiple times within a dream (There is no Limbo from Inception for me) with something really stressful having happened (dead body under the bed and police knocking on the door, it's just a dream there are no police, but the body is there, type stuff). I still have partially aware lucid-dreams occationally.

Interesting. I lucid dream quite frequently, and not only am I perfectly aware of my waking reality, but I have full dual body control. Like if I’m flying around but I can tell that my real leg is uncomfortable I can make the adjustment without thinking twice about it.

Did you ever try though? Did you try to initiate a lucid dream with the conscious intention of recalling your waking state?

A lot of limits in lucid dreams are entirely self-imposed and often broken through or bypassed with conscious intention.

I participated in lucid dream research years ago, and definitely could recall exactly where I was sleeping and more details about my waking state, while executing the experiment task inside the lucid dream.

That is far from a definitive experiment. It's not testing the perception of time, just visual acuity during unrelated stress event.

That experiment seems a bit silly. Is anyone expecting time perception to actually take the form of basic sensory/cognitive processes running as if “overclocked”?

I certainly wouldn’t expect basic stuff like perceiving blinking messages to change, since nothing is really changing optically (at least controlled for other things like pupil dilation).

That’s just as silly as expecting someone to be able lift heavier weights when they’re perceiving time more slowly, since their muscles would exert the same energy in a shorter period of time (again, controlled for things like adrenaline).

It's possible, but completely anecdotally I was in a six car pileup and watched the stuff move from my backseat to the window to smash against it in what felt like 20-30 seconds.

I remember clearly having several thoughts in what could not have been more than 1 second between getting hit and my entire car smashing into another at 60 mph.

  "Oh, that's my kleenex box, dang that's just hanging there huh?"
  "What's that noise? Oh, its me screaming."
  "I better hold my self against the steering wheel for the airbag... wait, if I am thinking this that means there's no airbag"
  

I remember watching my seatbelt break and snap across my chest, moving like a languid snake, barely motivated to snap back to the wall.

However, many other times in my life in extreme situations nothing like that happened, so I don't know if just jumping off a cliff is enough trauma or fear of death to cause it reliably.

That's funny, I stopped lucid dreaming, exactly for the same reasons : I waked up not rested and stressed, because often I had false awakening happening in series.

Everything is best enjoyed in moderation. The current consensus among the LD community is the same: Lucid dreams aren't as charging as normal ones. There's no scientific definitive answer but many think it's because the prefrontal cortex is 'turned on' in LD while it remains off in normal dreams.

Yesterday I was a having a very visual trip down the memory lane (2 decade old) while in the process of sleeping. And this memory was triggered by a smell. I was enjoying the memory (an old house and streets I was trying to remember in detail). This didn't make me lucid though, wasn't even trying to be anyway.

But having actually followed the process, I can now understand how it can help with lucidity.

I’ve been taking magnesium for a couple months now and one thing a I’ve noticed is that the line between wakefulness and asleep has blurred. I will sometimes watch some TV and I’ll be sitting there watching an episode and don’t realize I’ve fallen asleep and this is a dream until weird things start happening in the show. I often imagine floating outside my house (similar to what the article describes) as a method to fall asleep and since starting magnesium my thoughts softly blend into full blown dreams. My dreams in general have been far more lucid.

I’ve only noticed one other side effect. I normally experience hypnogogic jerk and since starting magnesium, a few times the jerk itself has pulled me out of the descent into sleep.

Feels like you found yourself some states similar to sleep paralysis.

What are your tricks?

Usually Wake-Initiated Lucid Dream involves remaining completely static, to make your body believe it's sleeping. Never worked for me.

I've had a handful of lucid dreams and I always try to fly. It works great for a little while but you're right, once you get too far away, it usually wakes you up or sometimes for me the flying just stops working and I come back down.

I learned to look closely at something nearby for a short while before looking around and doing things, this seems to give the simulation more time to load. Maybe because I was new to it.

Did you try moving & touching stuff while flying far away?

The thing about flying very far is that you're probably in the same fixed Superman position, not really moving your dream body anymore. If you don't move, your consciousness shifts awareness towards your physical body and you wake up. Try it next time: just stop & don't move, don't do anything, you're likely to wake up.

So doing the opposite, moving your dream body a lot & touching dream stuffs, tends to prolong your dream. That's why teleportation works better for moving to different areas.

Funny enough, not moving your body is also how your consciousness shifts and enters the dream state when awake.

I have a very similar experience. A worthy distinction is that in my dreams I'm either a) fully aware it's a dream but have no control or b) fully in control of myself without realising it's a dream.

Only once I was both aware and in control, but it didn't last long.

First site: "For the security of our visitors and to avoid abuse of the site, this website runs a zero VPN, Tor, or Proxy.

They must have extremely valuable info? Then i checked it through a cache, almost no content, affiliate links, a shop and huge popup.

Is that site a complete joke or is this some new anti AI thing?

As a child, for a few years I had a recurring nightmare with multiple false awakenings, sometimes five or six until I would wake up for real.

I would wake up in bed, get up and at a specific point, an overwhelming feeling of impending doom would overcome me. Then at the peak of this emotion, a monster would grab me by my ankles and violently drag me back up the stairs and into bed. I would then wake up and repeat the process.

Sometimes, I was not sure anymore if I landed in reality or if this existence will turn into horror again.

I'm (not) Jerry A. White, and I approve this message.-

Lots. The internet is full of them. Most center around making a habit of periodically doing a "reality check" throughout the day, like reading a word from a note and then re-reading it to check whether it changed or not. I carried a note saying "Wake up!" in the pocket and after a few days of maybe a dozen checks a day, the check (like all daily habits) occurred in a dream. The realization when the inevitable discrepancy is discovered is pretty amazing, because it's so completely unexpected and has such deep implications for the experience of the moment. It's definitely worth experimenting with this stuff.

I haven't been into lucid dreaming for a while, but I used to use a technique called SSILD that worked great for me. Search for that name and you'll find discussions about it. You basically cycle between (with your eyes shut) "do I see anything abnormal?", "do I hear anything abnormal?" and "do I feel anything abnormal?" and just keep cycling between those, trying not to actually think about them too hard as you are falling asleep. If you're lucky, you'll end up transitioning into a dream straight from waking consciousness (wake induced lucid dream or WILD technique) or, failing that, you will fall asleep and have a much better chance or realizing you are dreaming (dream induced lucid dream or DILD), and failing that if you wake up in the middle of the night you can stay awake for a short while and then go back to sleep and have a good chance to fall into a dream you can become awake in (wake back to bed or WBTB) and if you do end up having a lucid dream and you wake up if you stay still you might just fall back into it (dream exit induced lucid dream or DEILD).

I had quite a few lucid dreams using this technique, but it has a drawback that you end up having "false awakenings" where you think you just woke up but are actually still dreaming. I've had 7 or 8 of those in a row before. If you have a good reality test (my go-to was holding my nose closed and seeing if breathing lightly would still work) then they are kind of nice because now you have just become lucid again and go do whatever you want.

The whole thing got to be too mentally exhausting for me and I was not feeling refreshed when I woke up so I stopped doing it. I occasionally try to start it up again, but I haven't had the gumption to continue it for very long.

As you can see, there is a huge rabbit hole you can fall down if you look into this stuff, and a lot of places on the internet where people discuss it or give pointers.

Also different people have better luck with different techniques. This one just happened to be my thing, I guess.

It's pretty easy. If you're the type of person who rarely dreams, it takes about a month or so.

First consciously cultivate interest in your own dreams (through dream journaling, and consciously looking forward to your dreams before sleep). That's the basis.

Then, if it doesn't happen spontaneously, to force a breakthrough you can always set multiple alarms (tip: a smart watch with a vibratory alarm, or... make a baby), to wake yourself and keep yourself on the edge of sleep - into that hypnopompic state (between 2-4 AM works best for most people). It takes a lot of effort, concentration & patience. The only thing about this way of entering a lucid dream, is that you're likely to consciously experience sleep paralysis first, and many people don't like that even though it's harmless and a perfect gateway into lucid dreams.

Me too. I did have a couple of LD in my early life and the experience was amazing that I remember it to this day. But I can't seem to be able to experience it again

>I usually fall asleep fast, sleep through the night and wake up without any recollection of dreaming. I guess it’s usually a good thing, but it feels like im missing this whole thing a lot of other people experience.

Probably depends on people, but dreams can mess your entire next day up, it does not happen often to me but I have bad dreams like I lost my child in a crowed, or something bad happened and someone I loved died. This emotional pain in the dream I think causes something in the body to trigger sicne the next day I am still feeling like shit.

Then you might have good dreams, where all is perfect and happey and you have the thing you desired but then you wake up and you realized that it is not real and things are not good.

And for soem god dam reason like many others there is the dream with the exams.

It’s all about flying and meeting beautiful women.

there are technique to stabilize your dream

like rubbing your hands or turning around