Social Dream management

[Your Account]

Is it possible and how ?
I recongized that a lot of dreams are having topics and participants from our day to day lives ,but , we cant do anything about it in the sense of changing our reaction compared to what we would normally do.
Eg.
you dream a situation from high school,there was a bully that bothered you and others,now in the dream its all quite the same ,but your reaction to those situation in dream is also the same like in real life...theres the fear, and all other emotions like you are in real life not in the dream..
Why ?
Even when we have that feeling something is off like maybe we are dreaming ,we cant infuence on the dream in a way that we dream we fly ,or we give ourselves superpower or we kick the bully or whatever...its like we dont have any control in the dream....
Even when we think and imagine we can direct that and imagine...but in dream its like we are passive observers but at the same time experience it like its happening

 

[Phlog]

You can train yourself to lucid dream so that all of your dreams are at your control.

Lucidity in a dream is awareness of dreaming and the ability to consciously decide what happens.

 

[SoberAwakening]

Knew a pilot who swore by not only lucid dreaming, but also astral projection. He was telling me how him and his brother go into each others dreams, meet up and talk and do stuff. Then they talk about how cool it was the next day.

 

[GSP_37]

A few times I made a point to be extra naughty in my dream.

 

[Tone C]

I thought this was a thread about who you'd like to be your boss at work.

Was thinking Salma Hayek.

 

[Sobek]

Yeah there are books on developing your ability to lucid dream if you wish to develop it (and astral projection)

 

[Kowboy On Sherdog]

 

[dirtypablo]

Yes, it's possible. It's a skill and just like any other skill it requires consistent practice, but you can absolutely take control of your dreams and use them to explore your subconscious mind, practice real world things or just have fun screwing around. I've dabbled with it a bit over the years but it's been quite a while since I explored it as a serious practice.

The first step is learning to become aware that you're dreaming, and this is done by integrating some sort of dream checks into your daily life. A really simple one is looking at text - when you're in a dream and look at text, the characters are usually all jumbled and moving around. So, in your normal waking life start the practice of noting whether or not you're dreaming anytime you see written text. You look down at your watch and correctly see the time, mindfully make note - I can clearly see the text and thus know I'm not dreaming. The key is that you have to do this regularly so that it's a normal part of your life, AND you need to seriously check each time you do it. That is, if you just look at text and mindlessly say, not dreaming, that's what will happen in the dream. But if you actually check and do it frequently enough, eventually this will happen in a dream. If your habit is to really check, you will notice that you're dreaming, but if your habit isn't being mindful when you check, you will likely do this in a dream but without actually performing the test, and will thus just continue without noticing that you're dreaming. There are several other types of dream tests you can do, again the key is doing them consistently enough in waking life to ensure you do them in the dream world. It is also possible to maintain a continuity of awareness from the time you fall asleep until the time you start dreaming, but this requires years of meditation practice. I've had this occur at a very faint level a few times while on meditation retreats, but it was more a secondary effect of trying to maintain continuity of mindfulness rather than what I was aiming at.

Once you've realized you're dreaming, the next challenge is maintaining and increasing your awareness and control, without waking yourself up. At first, it's normal to either immediately wake up, or just be aware of the fact that you're dreaming without any degree of control, but with practice you can eventually take full control. This ranges from being able to control yourself as you would in real life while still being a character in the scene, all the way to being able to fully manifest the totality of any scene you can imagine. I never got to that level of control, but I'm confident it's possible based on where I did get and what others have written about. There's plenty of books on the subject if you're really interested, I would probably pick up the one by Stephen LaBerge, he's well regarded as one of the leading experts in the field (or at least he was a decade ago when I was into it). Starting a meditation practice will also really help.

 

[dirtypablo]

I will say one of the really interesting aspects of exploring lucid dreaming can be the interactions with other dream characters. Often when you tell a character that they're in your dream, they will get quite upset and instead insist that it is you who are the character in their dream.

 

[shunyata]

I will say one of the really interesting aspects of exploring lucid dreaming can be the interactions with other dream characters. Often when you tell a character that they're in your dream, they will get quite upset and instead insist that it is you who are the character in their dream.

I've never had that kind of pushback in a lucid dream, for me when I pointed out that a dead relative in a dream was a dream character they just stared at me like they never heard that sentence. Couldn't register it at all. They could discuss anything else, but not that.

 

[Zer]

Because of my messed up sleep patterns (I can generally only sleep for like 4-5 hours every night, and I'll wake up at like 3-4am and sleepily lay in bed for hours until I gotta get up for work), I have a lot of dreams where I'm like half awake and half asleep. Honestly I love it because I have the most entertaining dreams sometimes, and they often feel 100% real no matter how silly they get (Although often I'm amazed at how coherent and grounded in reality they are. The human mind is an incredible thing, even a messed up retarded mind like mine).

I hear a good practice to encourage lucid dreaming is to write down your dreams after they happen and note as much detail as possible (Because I'll forget most if not all of a dream after a couple hours). But when it's like 4am and I'm all comfy in my bed I can never be fucked to get up and start writing

 

[Renard]

I find that intention is what makes the most difference. As you're getting into bed, tell yourself that soon you'll be in a dream and you'll realize it. Also remind yourself to be on the lookout for signs that indicate you're in a dream and to be critical of what you're seeing and experiencing. If all goes to plan, at some point your brain will be like "Wait, wasn't I supposed to watch out if I'm in a dream?" something outrageous will happen in the dream and you'll realize. The hard part is that when you're dreaming you're largely unconscious, so you have to try to rev back up your critical faculties by questioning what you see. However, since you're unconscious, your critical faculties are offline. The only thing that saves you is that little automatic reminder "Hey, weren't we supposed to check if this is real?" then once you start questioning what you see your level of consciousness increases. It's not an exact science, it can take a several days. It tends to happen as you're getting closer to morning and your brain is waking up. Some people use a more organized approach by using reality checks throughout the day but I'm too lazy to do that.

 

[revoltub]

Lucid dreaming is fun but i wonder if it defeats the actual purpose of dreams to filter things out of your brain.

 

[dirtypablo]

I've never had that kind of pushback in a lucid dream, for me when I pointed out that a dead relative in a dream was a dream character they just stared at me like they never heard that sentence. Couldn't register it at all. They could discuss anything else, but not that.

Googling it a bit it seems like I may have overstated the frequency of the, no, you're in my dream response, but it does sound like some variant of not wanting to accept it is pretty normal. I could have sworn I read that was a common occurrence in either LaBerges book, or Lucid Dreaming:Gateway to the Inner Self* but I might be mistaken.

*This is another good book on the subject for anyone interested, but this book focuses more on things to do once you're dreaming, rather than how to start lucid dreaming.

 

[dirtypablo]

Lucid dreaming is fun but i wonder if it defeats the actual purpose of dreams to filter things out of your brain.

This is part of why I stopped doing it - it felt like going to sleep was an exercise where I was 'working' each night, and even if I didn't have a lucid dream I didn't feel as though I got as much rest, because there was a part of my mind felt like it needed to be on alert to induce lucidity. The depth of my meditation practice has increased exponentially since the period where I was really into this, so I'm curious about whether or not it would have the same effect now, or if I could manage my energy levels better but haven't ever gone back to actually taking it seriously as a practice.

 

[shunyata]

Lucid dreaming is fun but i wonder if it defeats the actual purpose of dreams to filter things out of your brain.

Interesting question but I never felt any deficit from it. Also never worked that hard at it either though.

Most of the time, in the dreams I remembered on waking, if I became aware of the dream I'd just walk out of whatever scene was going on and go flying.

The first jump bounding you 40 ft into the air and by the second or third jump just taking off and cruising through blue skies.

 

[revoltub]

Interesting question but I never felt any deficit from it. Also never worked that hard at it either though.

Most of the time, in the dreams I remembered on waking, if I became aware of the dream I'd just walk out of whatever scene was going on and go flying.

The first jump bounding you 40 ft into the air and by the second or third jump just taking off and cruising through blue skies.

Hmm I think in that case or a case when you are going lucid accidentally it might not be as big of a problem. As long as you got a sufficient amount of regular dreaming inbetween.

 

[revoltub]

This is part of why I stopped doing it - it felt like going to sleep was an exercise where I was 'working' each night, and even if I didn't have a lucid dream I didn't feel as though I got as much rest, because there was a part of my mind felt like it needed to be on alert to induce lucidity. The depth of my meditation practice has increased exponentially since the period where I was really into this, so I'm curious about whether or not it would have the same effect now, or if I could manage my energy levels better but haven't ever gone back to actually taking it seriously as a practice.

Yeah I attempted to try using it as a tool when napping instead of during nighttime sleep. I've heard of monks and yogi getting so good at it that they were able to practice techniques while in the dream state.

But it is incredibly difficult to get into a lucid dream with a WILD (wake induced lucid dream) when you're tired let alone trying to do it through meditation. So I pretty much gave up on that early.

 

[TribalDrumz]

I hate vivid dreaming so much

 

[666]

Start playing Mortal Kombat at least 3 hours before you go to bed each night. The uppercuts will transfer into your dreams and you just uppercut the shit out of everything.