i have had a few dreams that i thought were real. in fact, one was so real i even started to get ready to go to work one day when, as i was putting on my shoes, i realized i don't have a job. d'oh! at one point during my life my dreams were becoming so real i began having a really hard time distinguishing when i was dreaming from when i was awake, while i was awake. so i told my brain to dumb down my dreams to the 8-bit variety, and it did for a while, until they finally returned to normal dreams that were unclear enough that i could tell they were dreams but detailed enough that i could enjoy them.
~kakkarot
Secret of Secrets
One day I was having a lucid dream and often I go shopping in lucid dreams. Usually I buy candy but can rarely eat it before waking up. In less lucid moments I buy books. One day I was out at a place where I had accepted a job in a previous lucid dream. The manager was puzzled and angry because after very successfully completing my first shift I stopped coming to work. She insisted on giving me a check for that one shift even after being told that I was in a dream and could not take it with me.
Only a few items are really clear at a time in dreams for me. Just like when I'm awake. Everything else is just there.
Most of my dreams are slightly fuzzy and unclear when I try to recall them. However on the few lucid moments I have had they were extreamly clear out to a certain distance. Every thing inside a certain distance was clear because it was important to the LD, but after that when the enviroment was no longer a factor to what was going on everything seems to just fade into the distance. In the one projection I had everything was clear. However instead of things going to a certain distance a fading out they just abruptly ended into the black background.
An eample of that being it was at a castle orginally. The entire castle and grounds inside were intact and very clear, almost completely realistic. But there was just black at say 5 feet beyond the exterior wall. I knew there were things beyond it because I could hear the ocean but I could not see it.
David Rogalski
cainam_nazier@hotmail.com
I am he who walks in the light but is masked by the shadows.
Generally, my lucid dreams are extremely vibrant and clear. In fact, my most lucid dreams are somehow more clear than my everyday vision, which is 20/20.
Amazing stuff when I do have them.
The dreams that I usually remember are the ones that are most vivid. To this day I can't tell whether some things I remember were real life, dreams, or OBEs. I mean colour, smell, touch, sound, all just like real life but some details betray that it may just have been a dream.
But I'm not complaining, they are some of the best memories I have even if they turn out to be dreams.
Has anyone else ever had a dream about waking up and finding that they are still dreaming and THEN waking up and realizing that they're still dreaming. Something like a metadream or some such critter.
Jouni
Hi Jilola,
I had a false awakening in a recent travel. Weird stuff! Two in the same dream would be even weirder.
Hi Lone wolf,
Some of my lucid dreams stay with the dreamscape in which I become lucid. Although I am lucid, I don't always think to see how clear the vision is past my own immediate focus. This is true in waking life as well.
Some of my LD's have a drastic shift in the dreamscape. One I posted recently, was where I was caught in a net - I knew I was dreaming and worked myself free and fell into a void. When I landed I decided to pose a question (What is the meaning of life?) and a shopping mall appeared, which I entered and which was completely detailed (albeit strangely designed.). Surrounding the shopping mall was nothing but black void. So in that particular LD, there was an obvious focus within otherwise emptiness. What was inside was clearly equivalent to a physical setting.
(Incidentally, through the experiences inside the mall, and input from several dreaming boards, I have come to think that the 'answer' I got to my question was that our beliefs closely relate to the meaning of our lives. I do not know if hat is really the meaning of life, or if it is just that I believe that is the meaning of life.)
Patty
Most of the LDs(?) I've had where I've tried to change the dream have resulted in a separate LD(?) with the topic or subject matter later . I've noticed that for me it's almost impossible to radically change a dream. Minor modifications and gently directing works but any big change is played out in a separate dream.
Patty: How do you interpret the mall as a response to the question (unless it's personal)?
I think that the answers we get are meaningful if we can only come up with the right questions (a bit Adamsquesque: What is the answer to life, universe and all that? 42)
Jouni
G'day
Thank you everyone for your replies.
I noticed last night that one of my dreams was very detailed. That was followed by another dream in which I was having trouble seeing.
Of course, if I try to recall an image from either dream it is distorted and fogy. But that is the same for all my memories.
That has always been my biggest clue to the fact that I'm dreaming. Whenever I have a great deal of trouble seeing something I realise that it's a dream. Well, sometimes anyway.
It does make sense that our brain would only give detail to objects that are important to the story of our dream. I'd just like my brain to stop being so lazy and fill in the blanks. I will not tolerate laziness, even if I am supposed to be asleep. :-)
From
Michael
Hi Jouni,
You can email me if you would like a long answer (I can't access an email for you) otherwise, here's the short form. I posted the dream in this forum under something like "any dream analysts out there?" and I posted it on another forum as well. Due to length I don't want to repost it, but in a nutshell I walked through the mall and had several encounters with people ranging from zombie-like shoppers to higher beings to friends that I know who were also lucid. It was an interesting trip to the mall!
I appreciated all the input I got on the dream, here and elsewhere.
The one response that made a lightbulb go off for me (because I didn't know HOW to interpret a MALL as a response to the meaning of life) was on another board:
quote:
Dear Patty,
What I get out of that is this: That life has no penultimate, written-in-stone purpose. It has many possible purposes, and in a certain way, no purpose, beyond that which we give it. So, what will it be? You create your own reality, purpose included. Beyond that, I personally feel the only intrinsic purpose is simply the experience itself, for the same reason one climbs a mountain (because it's there). And, perhaps to create something new, that will last beyond the illusion.
In short, Patty, you asked for the purpose of life, and your answer was, it is created by your beliefs.
One reason I'm responding here to you, is because your quote on the OBE discussion forum about how we create our lives (or something, a finnish saying) fits well with this interpretation. Also, you and I posted 5 minutes apart, so temporally speaking we were both speaking of this concept at the same time. Neat!
Anyway, I don't want to divert the original post. Email me if you like!
Patty
A quicky on how the brain and eyes function together in reguards to memory.
First off your brain is a 24/7 recording device. Everthing, all the information you gather from all of your senses is stored and can be remembered. However all of our memories that we try to recal are effected by interpitation. Even though our brains record everything most often you can only remember what was important at the time since that too is recorded. And because of such you tend to only remember the thing directly associated with what was important as well.
But there is hope. Memory recall can be learned to a certain degree. But unfortunatly you can never get as good as the memory recall of hypnosis. That is unless you are gifted with a "photo-graphic" memory. Most people truely effect like this consider it more of a hinderance than a gift. This being largly due to the amount of information that is stored by the brain. They often find it easier to remember one specific detail during recall vs tryingto remember the whole day, also due largely to the amount of information. Most suffer from frequent headaches and migrains.
Now, most people remember things based on one of the five sences. IE, you remember it being cold out side but can't remember what the smell was. Memory is most often recalled by what was the strongest sence at the time. Also recall is effect by other memories you have as well. For instance, cops have lots of problems with this one, A man runs a red light driving a white ford probe. Joe Smoe sees it and tells the cops so they ask him to describe the car. He tells the cops it was a "GREY" ford probe "LIKE" the one his uncle has. His memory recall functioned like this. Hey thats a ford probe (end of actual data), "LIKE MY UNCLES" = grey. But such is the human mind.
Not every thing that we remember seeing is what was actually there or the same. Depending the value of sight at the time will determin how clearly it is recalled, however all the information is there.
To prove a point. Stand up and look straight ahead. Now turn 180 deg, (behind you) around and look at the first thing you see. Do this before reading further.
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Do you remember what you were looking at when you started? Do you remember what you were looking at when you finished? Do you remember "seeing" anything in between? Most likely not, what you do remember is vauge and/or is recalled because you are in a familiar location and know everything that is there already. But think hard, did you actually see anything this time?
This is because what you were seeing in the middle was not part of the task at the time and there for not important. This information could be obtained throught hypnosis though. But for you since the task and destination were what was important every thing in the middle gets fuzzy.
Okay so I lied about this being quick.
David Rogalski
cainam_nazier@hotmail.com
I am he who walks in the light but is masked by the shadows.
i havent had a wild yet but i can only guess that the clarity would be the same as an ld. i could be wrong but it makes sense that they would be the same. as for increasing clarity, this is a very simple technique though i can't remember exactly what it's called. before you go to sleep make a firm intention to have exceptional clarity duruing your dream state. it uses the same idea as in praying. praying for certain things to come true in your dream state just strenthens intent for them to happen. if you have a god then pray to him/her. if you don't then pray to your shoe. as long as you wholeheartedly intend to have increasing clarity it should help. i personally do not have a god right now or anything to pray to so i just wish upon myself to have a lucid dream before i go to sleep. i dont actually wish as in hope, i just say to myself "may i have a lucid dream tonight". as if i were saying it to someone else. remember this also, your vision is only limited by your imagination in your dream. your dream body is a manifestation of your mind that is used to having a human physical form. if you truly believe you can see a thousand miles in your dream, you can. we are all so used to only being able to see directly in front of us because our eyes are only capable of doing so. take a moment to imagine, w/out the use of your physical eyes, what it would be like to be able to perceive a perfectly clear 360 degree image of the room that you are in right now. the trick is not to try and picture it w/ your eyes but inside your head. if you do it enough you will start to get a very cool icture in your head and if you can do this now, then when you are dreaming you can actually see in every direction. directly below and above and 360 degrees. i guess if you imagine that you are a point of consciousness in yoru dream w/out any physical limitations, and that you are capable of being aware and perceiving everything everywhere, that would be the way to go about doing it. hope this helps, good luck.
I don't have experience with 360 degree vision.
My vision is about 100 degree vision.
I wonder is there a difference between a lucid dream and a normal dream.
Both are interpretable.
The difference is that in a lucid dream, everything is more real than in a normal dream...
Actually, the more I dare to be present in my waking state, the more lucid dreams I get I think....
There is an analogy between dreams and waking state....
One would think my consciousness is at high level in waking state but it may bot be. It may be just as high as in a dream.
So my dream is fuzzy, my waking life is fuzzy as well.
Also, taking more responsibility for my life produces more vivid dreams..
It is the same. I dare to be more present, so I am present.
And presence seems to be a relative property. It may change from momemt to moment and it may be energy based..
The more energy I have, the more I can be present...
G'day
I was wondering how clear the average LD is for everyone else.
My LD's always seem to lack detail, or I'm surrounded by some sort of fog or haze. It's hard to see anything off in the distance and even things that are close to me seem noticeably featureless. It's almost like my brain lacks the processing power required to generate a real world environment.
Part of the problem may be that I only ever have an LD when my body is starting to wake up to begin the new day. So perhaps by the time I realize that I'm in a dream, my dream world has already started to disintegrate. For that reason I'm going to start focusing more on inducing a WILD.
But for now, what do other people experience with regards to their vision clarity in LD's? How detailed is your world? Is a WILD any more realistic than an LD?
For those of you who also have OBE's, how much difference is there between LD's and OBE's?
And of course, does anybody have any tips on increasing clarity in a LD?
Sorry to put fourth so many questions in one post, thank you in advance for any replies.
From
Michael