What insight can be gained from lucid dreams?

**Johannes** · 10-23-2011, 09:38 PM

I've always heard on other forums dedicated to the subject that one can gain personal insight from lucid dreams. Has this ever happened to any of you? I don't know one could learn about oneself in that scenario, but I am ignorant.

**Episteme** · 10-23-2011, 10:04 PM

I used to lucid dream frequently. A change of sleep meds and loss of interest pretty much ended that. The only insight I gained is that I'm a big freakin goofball.

The last one I remember involved me protecting a group of kids in this run down town with zombies everywhere. We had to get away and the only way through was a morgue. Almost through and predictably, they come to life. I'm rushing the kids out and holding the door back and it hits me, "no way this is real... wahoo!" So I back up, let the zombies rush at me, and proceed to use Jedi powers to send them flying... yeah, I was playing a star wars game at the time. I woke up laughing. Usually I would ruin the dreams by doing something crazy and waking myself (and occasionally my husband) up. Flying was probably the most fun.

**BuShinJu** · 10-23-2011, 10:21 PM

If you can make a whole world in your head while you are asleep, what is going on while you are awake? Does the part that makes the dream world go to sleep while you are awake?

**Grimace** · 10-23-2011, 10:36 PM

My experiences with Lucid Dreams have been pretty intense and trippy: OBE's, Autoscopy, sense of being in multiple places at once, what seem to be discussions about the nature of reality with dimensional travellers, contact with dead relatives.

Do all these things demand a certain skepticism? Of course.

But I will say this: Lucid dreaming has been the single most powerful undermining of my latent empiricism. A good experience for an atheist INTJ, I think. In fact, I self-identity as more "spiritual" these days than, say, five years ago, I would have ever even remotely thought possible.

But for people who aren't natural Lucid dreamers, it can take a lot of dedication and practice, and time, to get good at them. Is it worth it? I'd say fuck yea (with the fuck yea meme face). Explore alternate realities while you sleep? Yes please.

**DeaconSyre** · 10-23-2011, 10:44 PM

Originally Posted by Grimace
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

But I will say this: Lucid dreaming has been the single most powerful undermining of my latent empiricism. A good experience for an atheist INTJ, I think. In fact, I self-identity as more "spiritual" these days than, say, five years ago, I would have ever even remotely thought possible.

But for people who aren't natural Lucid dreamers, it can take a lot of dedication and practice, and time, to get good at them. Is it worth it? I'd say fuck yea (with the fuck yea meme face). Explore alternate realities while you sleep? Yes please.

This is interesting, I agree with you completely that it's an experience every atheist INTJ needs to experience but I consider myself less spiritual than five years ago.

I'm haven't really thought about why/how my spirituality may have declined in five years and what that means. I think I'll go do that.

**Dru** · 10-23-2011, 10:48 PM

what insight can be gained by thinking about your thoughts?

same answer.

**spect** · 10-23-2011, 10:57 PM

i cant. similar, but not the same, i sometimes log my dreams for analysis.

	Originally Posted by Dru To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	what insight can be gained by thinking about your thoughts?

you can think about your unconsicous?

**Grimace** · 10-23-2011, 11:01 PM

	Originally Posted by Dru To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	what insight can be gained by thinking about your thoughts? same answer.

This is under the assumption that transcendent dream experiences are empirical and or contained in and a result of your thoughts. I think we understand dreams less than we understand the mind, and we are long way off from understanding the mind.

**Dru** · 10-23-2011, 11:01 PM

lucid dreaming is no longer part of the subconscious, or you would not be aware of it.

	Originally Posted by Grimace To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	This is under the assumption that transcendent dream experiences are empirical and or contained and a result of your thoughts. I think we understand dreams less than we understand the mind, and we are long way off from understanding the mind.

when you assume you make an ass out of... well, you know the rest. i hope?

lucid dreaming is the awareness that you are dreaming - and when you're aware of something, you think about it. a thought is a thought.

**DeaconSyre** · 10-23-2011, 11:08 PM

	Originally Posted by Grimace To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	This is under the assumption that transcendent dream experiences are empirical and or contained in and a result of your thoughts. I think we understand dreams less than we understand the mind, and we are long way off from understanding the mind.

Lucid dreams are part of the mind. It is impossible to understand them less than the mind.

As for what insight can be gained from thinking about your thoughts:
- AI theory
- Psychological Theory
- Cognitive Therapy

**Grimace** · 10-23-2011, 11:23 PM

	Originally Posted by Dru To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	when you assume you make an ass out of... well, you know the rest. i hope? lucid dreaming is the awareness that you are dreaming - and when you're aware of something, you think about it. a thought is a thought.

I was referring to your assumption in the quoted post (I'd "hoped" that was clear). Are you, by chance, a lucid dreamer? What I mean is, Lucid states within dreams, and other strange phenomena, are "altered" states of consciousness, since, obviously they lack some of the traditional things that define it (ie. wakefullness, ability to verbally report in medias res, a slightly different sense of selfhood, and of course that your experience is vastly more subjective than that of a person who is awake, as in (short of so called shared dreaming, which I'm dubious of) it isn't and could never possibly be experienced by anybody else.)

Essentially it's very very strange. I just want to hear peoples experiences. I have too much marking to do to get into a trite back and forth with you, Dru, though that sometimes does seem the sole result of this forum.

One of the most interesting things is the tactile feeling of physically interacting with a world that has no physicality.

**DeaconSyre** · 10-23-2011, 11:27 PM

	Originally Posted by Grimace To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	One of the most interesting things is the tactile feeling of physically interacting with a world that has no physicality.

I find that there's this very definite past-ness to my dreams. I tend to 'know' things instead of remember or experience them.

I'm not really sure what that's about.

**PlungingHornets** · 10-24-2011, 09:40 AM

	Originally Posted by Grimace To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	In fact, I self-identity as more "spiritual" these days than, say, five years ago, I would have ever even remotely thought possible.

It seems to have loosened my grip on reality, in a good way. I'm more open to experiences and when something bad happens, its a little less real. Is there or is there not a god? Don't really care. Am I ever going to figure out ultimate reality? Probably not. It's better to just let it all go than to sit around worrying.

**Grimace** · 10-24-2011, 04:29 PM

	Originally Posted by PlungingHornets To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	It seems to have loosened my grip on reality, in a good way. I'm more open to experiences and when something bad happens, its a little less real. Is there or is there not a god? Don't really care. Am I ever going to figure out ultimate reality? Probably not. It's better to just let it all go than to sit around worrying.

Pretty much exactly what you said. Now when I think about the world (this material world, that is) I have this sense that its just "one-of-several'. I don't know if this is a good thing necessarily, but it's certainly helped reduce certain stressors I used to feed into.

**SarcasticVlad** · 10-24-2011, 05:59 PM

Bears don't go away!

Allow me to elaborate. I had a lucid dream last month. And the whole time I knew I was dreaming, there was a bear, and I could control almost every aspect of my dream. But that stupid bear wouldn't go. No matter what I did the bear was always there. So I decided to wake up. Go ahead dream analyzers. Analyze the bear.

**Quito** · 10-24-2011, 06:42 PM

	Originally Posted by SarcasticVlad To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Bears don't go away! Allow me to elaborate. I had a lucid dream last month. And the whole time I knew I was dreaming, there was a bear, and I could control almost every aspect of my dream. But that stupid bear wouldn't go. No matter what I did the bear was always there. So I decided to wake up. Go ahead dream analyzers. Analyze the bear.

You should have like, totally approached the bear and hugged it man.

**Episteme** · 10-24-2011, 07:52 PM

	Originally Posted by Quito To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	You should have like, totally approached the bear and hugged it man.

Pooh bear!

I don't understand how you could know you were dreaming and not be able to do something... I've never had that experience.

**mllebrie** · 10-24-2011, 08:07 PM

I had a terrifyingly lucid dream a few months ago, and the insight gained was that keeping the back door locked is the best way to keep the hyenas from getting inside the house...

Daoist · 10-24-2011, 08:31 PM

I think we're confusing the definitions here. Lucid dreams means when you know it's a dream. That doesn't mean it's realistic - it could be the opposite.

I occasionally have dreams I know are dreams. One time, recently, I remember thinking to myself, you always wake up when you know you're going to die. Doesn't that kind of defeat the point? So I felt the warm blood run down my chest...and then I woke up.

---------- Post added 10-24-2011 at 08:43 PM ----------

Does this mean I'm trying to toughen myself up or something?

**Grimace** · 10-25-2011, 01:24 AM

I've definitely died and gone to some semblance of an afterlife in a dream (albiet non-lucid, of course) but I was, you know, anguished, and incredibly sad, fully believing I was dead.

On another occasion, this time in a very vivid and strange lucid dream, I sat around this strange stone table with like 4-5 other people who were wearing very strange clothing and robes, and discussed how we'd arrived at that spot. I was startled when all of them, as we discussed the location and who they were (though I only vaguely remember this segment because I didn't write that part down), assumed I was dead, kind of casually, like "well of course you are dead," and that was how I'd accessed wherever it was that we were (nearby was this strange shop of glass figurines, which we'd destroyed as some kind of right of passage before sitting down to talk, like smashing every single piece of glass in as short a time as possible; very strange in retrospect) They all talked about how they were dimensional travelers and where quite confounded when I maintained that I was not, in fact, dead, and that my corporeal body was asleep in our material reality, which I tried to explain; and of course, that I was dreaming. As the conversation progressed I felt the dream weakening and desperately tried to ask as many questions as I could before it collapsed. I was very sad. I'd experienced a profound sense of revelation and wonderment (though with infinite questions). I'm still trying to get back that place (I'd accessed it by what seemed to be my university campus 100's of years in the future, ie it was abandoned and overgrown with ivy and vines, cracked rock etc.)

These types of radiant and revelatory lucid dreams only happen to me rarely (many of my lucid dreams are of, I guess I describe them as having less depth, less vividness, and without characters who engage in complex dialogues with me, saying things I can't place as either in my vocabulary or things that seem to stem from my own experiences or thoughts) and they only happen a few times a year usually, depending on how often I take the time (and a certain chunk out of my sleep) to create enough opportunity for them.

They are really something else, though. They utterly baffle and interest me.

Dancingqueen · 10-25-2011, 06:55 AM

To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

**Johannes** · 10-25-2011, 02:10 PM

Damn I love that movie, Dancingqueen. I saw it about a month ago.

Daoist · 10-25-2011, 10:54 PM

^^^This (discussion about death) kind of reminds of this. (And I actually think I saw this comic before I had my dream).

To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

**ModernLit** · 10-25-2011, 10:58 PM

i would die over and over in my dreams... it was terrifying. this wasnt exactly lucid, but one time i put a textbook under my pillow and i dreamed i was reading it and studying, and i woke up *knowing more material than i had gone to sleep* :D that was pretty awesome.

Daoist · 10-25-2011, 11:10 PM

You probably read it while awake and daydreaming or something. (Or perhaps you didn't really learn anything, you just felt more comfortable with it. That deja vu feeling, which in my experience always goes away when I try to think too hard about when it was I actually saw it before.)

I remember someone once told me you're not fluent in a foreign language until you start to have dreams in that language. So, I proceeded to have a dream in Chinese, saying to myself, "I'm having a dream in Chinese." Sadly, that didn't make me fluent.

10-23-2011, 09:38 PM	#1
Johannes New Member [01%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 53	I've always heard on other forums dedicated to the subject that one can gain personal insight from lucid dreams. Has this ever happened to any of you? I don't know one could learn about oneself in that scenario, but I am ignorant.
Johannes is offline post a comment

10-23-2011, 10:04 PM	#2
Episteme Member [02%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Feb 2010 Posts: 97	I used to lucid dream frequently. A change of sleep meds and loss of interest pretty much ended that. The only insight I gained is that I'm a big freakin goofball. The last one I remember involved me protecting a group of kids in this run down town with zombies everywhere. We had to get away and the only way through was a morgue. Almost through and predictably, they come to life. I'm rushing the kids out and holding the door back and it hits me, "no way this is real... wahoo!" So I back up, let the zombies rush at me, and proceed to use Jedi powers to send them flying... yeah, I was playing a star wars game at the time. I woke up laughing. Usually I would ruin the dreams by doing something crazy and waking myself (and occasionally my husband) up. Flying was probably the most fun.
Episteme is offline post a comment

10-23-2011, 10:21 PM	#3
BuShinJu Member [43%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Sep 2009 Posts: 1,734	If you can make a whole world in your head while you are asleep, what is going on while you are awake? Does the part that makes the dream world go to sleep while you are awake?
BuShinJu is offline post a comment

10-23-2011, 10:36 PM	#4
Grimace Member [12%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Jan 2010 Posts: 486	My experiences with Lucid Dreams have been pretty intense and trippy: OBE's, Autoscopy, sense of being in multiple places at once, what seem to be discussions about the nature of reality with dimensional travellers, contact with dead relatives. Do all these things demand a certain skepticism? Of course. But I will say this: Lucid dreaming has been the single most powerful undermining of my latent empiricism. A good experience for an atheist INTJ, I think. In fact, I self-identity as more "spiritual" these days than, say, five years ago, I would have ever even remotely thought possible. But for people who aren't natural Lucid dreamers, it can take a lot of dedication and practice, and time, to get good at them. Is it worth it? I'd say fuck yea (with the fuck yea meme face). Explore alternate realities while you sleep? Yes please.
Grimace is offline post a comment

10-23-2011, 10:48 PM	#6
Dru Core Member [250%] MBTI: INTP Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 10,016	what insight can be gained by thinking about your thoughts? same answer.
Dru is online post a comment

10-24-2011, 05:59 PM	#15
SarcasticVlad Veteran Member [63%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 2,528	Bears don't go away! Allow me to elaborate. I had a lucid dream last month. And the whole time I knew I was dreaming, there was a bear, and I could control almost every aspect of my dream. But that stupid bear wouldn't go. No matter what I did the bear was always there. So I decided to wake up. Go ahead dream analyzers. Analyze the bear.
SarcasticVlad is offline post a comment

10-24-2011, 08:07 PM	#18
mllebrie Member [37%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 1,510	I had a terrifyingly lucid dream a few months ago, and the insight gained was that keeping the back door locked is the best way to keep the hyenas from getting inside the house...
mllebrie is offline post a comment

10-24-2011, 08:31 PM	#19
Daoist Veteran Member [78%] MBTI: INTP Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 3,128	I think we're confusing the definitions here. Lucid dreams means when you know it's a dream. That doesn't mean it's realistic - it could be the opposite. I occasionally have dreams I know are dreams. One time, recently, I remember thinking to myself, you always wake up when you know you're going to die. Doesn't that kind of defeat the point? So I felt the warm blood run down my chest...and then I woke up. ---------- Post added 10-24-2011 at 08:43 PM ---------- Does this mean I'm trying to toughen myself up or something?
Daoist is online post a comment

10-25-2011, 01:24 AM	#20
Grimace Member [12%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Jan 2010 Posts: 486	I've definitely died and gone to some semblance of an afterlife in a dream (albiet non-lucid, of course) but I was, you know, anguished, and incredibly sad, fully believing I was dead. On another occasion, this time in a very vivid and strange lucid dream, I sat around this strange stone table with like 4-5 other people who were wearing very strange clothing and robes, and discussed how we'd arrived at that spot. I was startled when all of them, as we discussed the location and who they were (though I only vaguely remember this segment because I didn't write that part down), assumed I was dead, kind of casually, like "well of course you are dead," and that was how I'd accessed wherever it was that we were (nearby was this strange shop of glass figurines, which we'd destroyed as some kind of right of passage before sitting down to talk, like smashing every single piece of glass in as short a time as possible; very strange in retrospect) They all talked about how they were dimensional travelers and where quite confounded when I maintained that I was not, in fact, dead, and that my corporeal body was asleep in our material reality, which I tried to explain; and of course, that I was dreaming. As the conversation progressed I felt the dream weakening and desperately tried to ask as many questions as I could before it collapsed. I was very sad. I'd experienced a profound sense of revelation and wonderment (though with infinite questions). I'm still trying to get back that place (I'd accessed it by what seemed to be my university campus 100's of years in the future, ie it was abandoned and overgrown with ivy and vines, cracked rock etc.) These types of radiant and revelatory lucid dreams only happen to me rarely (many of my lucid dreams are of, I guess I describe them as having less depth, less vividness, and without characters who engage in complex dialogues with me, saying things I can't place as either in my vocabulary or things that seem to stem from my own experiences or thoughts) and they only happen a few times a year usually, depending on how often I take the time (and a certain chunk out of my sleep) to create enough opportunity for them. They are really something else, though. They utterly baffle and interest me.
Grimace is offline post a comment

10-25-2011, 06:55 AM	#21
Dancingqueen Core Member [127%] MBTI: iNTJ Join Date: Sep 2011 Posts: 5,080	To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
Dancingqueen is offline post a comment

10-25-2011, 02:10 PM	#22
Johannes New Member [01%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 53	Damn I love that movie, Dancingqueen. I saw it about a month ago.
Johannes is offline post a comment

10-25-2011, 10:54 PM	#23
Daoist Veteran Member [78%] MBTI: INTP Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 3,128	^^^This (discussion about death) kind of reminds of this. (And I actually think I saw this comic before I had my dream). To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
Daoist is online post a comment

10-25-2011, 10:58 PM	#24
ModernLit Core Member [181%] MBTI: INTJ Join Date: Apr 2010 Posts: 7,279	i would die over and over in my dreams... it was terrifying. this wasnt exactly lucid, but one time i put a textbook under my pillow and i dreamed i was reading it and studying, and i woke up knowing more material than i had gone to sleep :D that was pretty awesome.
ModernLit is offline post a comment

10-25-2011, 11:10 PM	#25
Daoist Veteran Member [78%] MBTI: INTP Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 3,128	You probably read it while awake and daydreaming or something. (Or perhaps you didn't really learn anything, you just felt more comfortable with it. That deja vu feeling, which in my experience always goes away when I try to think too hard about when it was I actually saw it before.) I remember someone once told me you're not fluent in a foreign language until you start to have dreams in that language. So, I proceeded to have a dream in Chinese, saying to myself, "I'm having a dream in Chinese." Sadly, that didn't make me fluent.
Daoist is online post a comment