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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

It sort of just happened to me a few years ago. It’s neat—flying is fun. (As is the opposite, when it just doesn’t work and I wake up sort of laughing at myself for having spent, presumably, hours jumping around in my dream.)

But at least for me, the price was dreams, the moment I go lucid, ceasing to be self directed. I get that I’m in a movie, and I have to always create the next step. Nothing surprises or horrifies anymore. (If I’m lucid.) I have to kind of create my own magic, which isn’t particularly restful.

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> I get that I’m in a movie, and I have to always create the next step. Nothing surprises or horrifies anymore.

I haven't lucid dreamt since a child, but I recall everything about the dream continuing to be autonomous as before becoming lucid, but if I wanted to do something, I could add that element. I definitely could still be surprised, as the dream fulfilled wishes like a genie would, meeting it technically but perhaps not as I meant when I willed the change. The few times I reigned my subconscious so I had full power and there were no longer any surprises, I would wake up.

> everything about the dream continuing to be autonomous as before becoming lucid, but if I wanted to do something, I could add that element. I definitely could still be surprised

I may have overstated what I said. The environment continues to be dynamic, and characters enter and exit and cause their usual mayhem (alongside me). But if something unexpected happens, there is–in my mind–a theatrical explanation for it and thus a plot-driven solution. The stuffed animals are upset I'm going to wake up and kill them, so I put them in a zoo where they believe they continue to exist after I stop dreaming, et cetera. (And sure enough, they're there next time I'm in that "place".) If you're trapped somewhere, you know an exit will materialise because you're the main character, and sure enough, it eventually does. If I break something I love, I know something will happen that makes it whole again. When anything that happens can be undone, action is robs of its meaning.

Yep, same. The dream gets incredibly boring after you get control of it.

but but, you can do whatever you want?

I've had limited experience (n~20) but no... that's not how it worked for me, interested in others' experiences.

"flying" was limited. I didn't have full control and sometimes felt dynamically pinned to the top of a 2D scrolling video game as if there were driver incompatabilities.

drifting off to sleep in a session, it was very disturbing- i felt like i was being dragged by my ankle across the bed before lucid dreaming began, "here it comes..."

Sometimes there would be ominious sounds/visuals that I could not influence that scared me so much I was glad I could wake up because it felt like a nightmare was approaching.

Two big tells I'm lucid dreaming: I'm with a group of people who can't answer a very obvious question ("why is the sky blue?") or, I look at my hand - as if it were LLM it absolutely does not render well... like a tree trunk with a bunch of branches.

> I'm with a group of people who can't answer a very obvious question ("why is the sky blue?")

Super interesting, because I have the same thing. Also none of my technology works. I usually try to do something on my phone a few times, fail because the UI is putty, and then remember that smartphones don’t work in my dreams.

Well, yeah. But it's what you want in the moment which can be very unpredictable even when you're "guiding" the dream. The subconscious is still in the driver's seat there and can go to some weird, wacky places.

Not if you are an aphantast.

> dream gets incredibly boring after you get control of it

Wouldn’t go that far. But you have to consciously make it interesting by creating the weirdness.

Maybe it works differently for different people, but I found my creativity incredibly limited once I got the control of the dream. It's like everything just stopped and I could do whatever I wanted, but nothing in the environment reacted to the things I did, just stopped working.

Are your other characters still sentient? Or do they go ragdoll?

They just go ragdoll. The whole world just stops generating anything new. It's really weird and I stopped trying to "wake up" within the dream because it just gets damn boring instantly.

My wife and I were just talking about this the other day. She lucid dreams very regularly, and she says she spends a lot of that time flying.

I, on the other hand, never lucid dreamed, so a few years ago, I spent a lot of time journaling and doing wakefulness tests to see if I could learn to do it. One night, I did -- I was dreaming and then had an 'awakening' in which I realized I was asleep. Finally, a lucid dream! Naturally, the first thing I did was start to fly. About five seconds in, I told myself, "Wait a sec... People can't fly." That took the wind out of my sails, so to speak, and I couldn't fly again in the dream. I believe I woke shortly after, too.

I keep wanting to get back to it and try it out, but I'd love a more efficient way to get there instead of constant wakefulness checks and first-thing-in-the-morning journaling.

> Wait a sec... People can't fly." That took the wind out of my sails, so to speak, and I couldn't fly again in the dream

There is a Peter Pan tendency, at least to my dreams. You know you can’t fly. But then you remember you have, and believing it’s true makes it happens.

That’s what I was getting at with the film-script effect. I’ll be in a bind and then realize that there “must” be a solution in a particular form, otherwise the dream wouldn’t make sense, and that sort of conjures that thing into existence.

Maybe fortunately, maybe sadly, the one thing I’ve not been able to do is conjure up lost loved ones. I’ll get a bunch of puppies who know my dog, but he just couldn’t show up, or I’ll get strangers or living loved ones who know my grandmother or best friend; they’re just constantly indisposed.

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