Lucid dreaming is consciously perceiving and recognizing that one is in a dream while one is sleeping, and having control over the "dreamscape", the faux-reality dream world within a dream. In order for the state of a dreaming person to be lucid, that person must have control over his or her dreamscape. Lucid dreamers are called oneironauts.
Are you a oneironaut? If so what techniques have you developed to achieve a lucid dreaming state intentionally?

I usualy know that I'm dreaming, or I realise it when the dream is nearly over, but I only have control over it in such a way I ahve control of things when I'm awake
this is not always the case, mostly the're jsut nromal dreams,
as to what triggers the "lucid" ones is beyond my knowledge

Occaisonally. It seems like it happens more that I age (I never used to have these that I remember beyond the last few years). When it happens, I am sort of "drunk-like". so, uh, well.... sometimes I do things I probably shouldn't.

No techniques, it just happens - the "wake up in the middle of a dream" type anyway.

Control? I would say moderate. change rooms. Bring in people. Make things appear. Change behavior. Try wierd things just for kicks. Fly. At first it was just the low type "hey, I am dreaming"... then it got better. Moderate because everything does not happen EXACTLY as I want it yet with every little detail.

I am plagued with nightmares, sometimes to the extent of three or four a night, this has been going on all of my life.

About five years ago, I reached a point in them, that I could tell I was dreaming, and I would scream myself awake. Since then, nothing. No headway, no nothing. I know I'm dreaming, and the only thing I can do is wake myself. I cannot control the dreams.

Yet. I am working on it still, but I fear that the intensity of my nightmares may make this difficult for me.

Some people are born with such a talent, I personally do not know how one would develop such a skill though I'd like to

My mother has always been able to control her dreams. She even meets people occasionally. People she's never met before but in her dreams. She tells me funny things about them. She says she knows she's dreaming, and every time these people pop up she says hi. She even told one lady to get another book to read. Apparently this lady had been reading the same book for a while. Anyway. I love hearing about the dreams.

My own dreams a very wierd. I know I'm dreaming, and sometimes I can make myself do things, usually when it's a nightmare. But my mum is amazed at how vividly I remember everything in my dreams, to the smallest detail. It's like watching a movie. I hate nightmares though. When you're between wake and sleep, and you see what ever was in your dreams, in your room!

Morrigan Moochild

I read up a lot on lucid dreaming a few years back. My daughter had horrible nightmares, about tall, black, faceless men staring at her and eating her things. Sometimes she'd dream about them three-four times in one night, she became afraid of falling asleep. So we tried everything we could think of, but nothing worked.

The last straw was to try teaching her the basics of lucid dreaming, help hercontrol her own dreams and break out of them, or change their course. The method I found the simplest, was fairly easy. Choose an image, a symbol. My daughter decided on a rose, it was the prettiest she could think of. (she was three at the time) Every night, before you fall asleep, focus on this image, and it's purpose. It'll be your link to the waking world. When you see it in your dream, you'll know your dreaming. So in my daughters case, I trained her to know that when she saw the rose in her dream, she would know it was a dream, and then she could control it, decide what happened next.

It was a mixed success, she did manage to make the rose work, but she couldn't win over the monster. She would stab it, and it would catch her. She'd call for us, her parents, and it would eat us. She would run, and it would follow. And so on. So eventually we managed to convince her that all the scary monsters had moved to Africa, because they were tired of her lion in the raspberrybush (long story) biting them. And since monsters only gets overrun by cars, they have to travel by foot, so it'd take years before they got there and realised that there were lions in Africa too.

Well I have been able to control my dreams to an extent . .for instance if I find myself being pursued I would create an escape; a waiting plane, a car parked on the next block; things of that natured. Though my mentor has taught me to let some dreams play themselves out. . .I find myself sometimes controlling the process and progress of the dream.

I can also instigate a dream . . which i think most people can do. I want to dream of a particular person doing a particular thing and I make it happen for me in teh dream . . .(mayeb I do have issues) :lol:

Yes in a sense, in the dream I percieve that I exist in two places at the same time. Even "teleporting" back to my body to get out of some situations and than come back some place else "I even wake up for a second when doing this before going back" most often the dream works its self "repeated characters, places, and the landscapes stay the same" unless I decide to got to the dream orbs "a place I left behind in the on going series that is my dreams. in that place I first recognized that I was dreaming and found I could manipulate every thing, after that I journey in a straight line to the edge of the dreams where the land scape becomes pixilated and an invisible wall appears. I eventually found a way through it and up through a drak ocean to the places I am now in when I dream, "still know I am dreamin and can manipulate any number of personal powers but can't manipulate the landscape as much as when I was in the earlier place.
"My dreams are very realistic even to the point I can wake up and actually say, "Now how the hell did I get here?" " its a weird feeling while I am awake I know they are dreams, but while I am dreaming I view it as another reality alltogether "things even seem to change while I am not there, as though the story contnues in this place with or with out me."

Rhuen, I think that falls under astral projection (me thinks) O_O

Porbably. but its not exactly a "human" world.

I always have nightmares, except now they don't feel like them. I can never control my dreams, but I do realise I'm dreaming, but I am powerless to do anything, so simply watch. I don't get scared anymore, which helps, because I can take the dream further, and before I wake up, I get some kind of deja vu. Like I've done it before.

I can recall my dreams very detailed too, and don't really need to write them out. Even dreams I had years ago.

I can only control my dreams to an extent not lucid. As I stated earlier that person must have control over his or her dreamscape, because simply having the mental idea "I am lucid" could be a creation of the subconscious itself and not a real "rational" thought.
Oneironauts have even reported lucid dreams that take on a "hyper reality", that is, a reality that is more "real" than waking life. In these dreams all elements of the dreamscape are amplified. It has been likened to the resolution of a computer screen, where regular dreams are 640x480 and hyper-real lucid dreams are 10,000x10,000 in their sensory detail.
Thats so wierd, a reality more "real" that real?

Yes, but so too could changing your environment and percieving control, right?
Even if it were full control to every exact detail (if the mind could keep up?) it could simply be seen as a dream where one had the power to change everything within it. Just a different reality like when you dream you have some "super" trait you usually do not have in waking life - say levitation, the ability to fly, or turn water into fire with thought.

Not casting doubt on the whole thing here. To me it makes little difference. But given the viewpoint you presented allowing for such a thought to be "non-rational" and a "creation of the subconscious", I am curious why you see control to some degree as being anything more? Is it the combination of the two to you? What is your reasoning?



I've heard of those. Heightened and more defined senses within the dreams. When I said something about it here a while ago, someone (was that you?) brought up that it made sense- that the mind is free from the physical restrictions placed upon it by the normally sensory organ which are normally limited in the waking state. The mind is able to percieve more than these organs can usually provide and in these dreams it is evident.

Yes, it is very wierd. I agree. I love the ones that are like that for touch and feeling. It is unreal. One of the older dream researchers had a theory that nothing can appear in dreams that was not previously experienced in actual life in some way previously because the mind would have no frame of reference - no ability to contruct it. It seems things like this blows that theory away, doesn't it?

I think things can appear if the dreamer or oneironaut is really smart- like a Talented architect, artist, scientist etc.

Some wierd stuff I bet!

Flying Vehicles and spaceships!

Wow, this topic is really good. I never really thought much about my dreams beyond them being dreams. Often times I am aware that what I am having is in fact a dream, have for a very long time. I do also change things in my dreams, or at least I do what 'I' my mind wants to do at the time. I have made people look differently, changed people...changed places...changed actions.

Several times I remember having the same dream several times. Sometimes with a different outcome, sometime with the same.

I always just figured that's how a dream was so never put much thought into it. Kinda weird, your mind playing out stories like that in a sub-conscious zone.

i guess i kinda am. I can only control it until i get a vision or some other type of image in my mind. I usually control my dreams and they end up becoming reality somehow. Even if its only a part of the dream.

That is all quite interesting (especially your daughter's situation, Clearwitch!). I personally find that I need either a set of written-out symbols or a lucid dream to gather enough mental energy to use, well, magic. It allows me to achieve a level of focus unlike any that is possible in the waking world, because it is undeterred by the world's inherent distractions, and therefore, I use it to make my lucid dreams into an influence on reality (this has a huge risk, though, since I don't remember my dreams when I wake up). Of course, only those of sound mind should use lucid dreams for powering spells, since the effects of those magics would be determined by what is desired within the most primal regions of the mind (Freud would call it a conflict between the libido and destrudo, and may be right).

i've had one lucid dream my entire life and it was entirely unintentional. this was right as i started going insane. right before i went to bed, i was kinda hungry, kinda tired. i wished my food was right by my bed. a voice in my head was like "well, if the food was at the base of the stairs, would you walk that far to get it?" ...and i was like "uhhh...probably not." then midway down the hall, then, in my room, then at the foot of my bed. i replied "no" each time. so i went to sleep without eating my mother's delicious lentil soup. so my dream began as i stood by my window, gazing at this strange looking man...reminded me of odysseus or moses in that he had a gray robe, full, gray beard, and cold, gazing (i believe they might have been gray as well) eyes...as well as a long wooden staff. i gazed at him through my bedroom window, attempting to draw energy from this seemingly powerful presence, but as soon as i tried, he disappeared. he reappeared in my room, where i summoned fireballs, swords, energy draining, animals, everything my lucidly dreaming mind could conjure to try to "fight off" this guy who actually did nothing to scare or harm me. he just kept reappearing in different places, teleporting, if you will, before i could attack him. well, it seemed every attack i threw, seemed to drain me immensely. as if he was absorbing all energy i through at him. at the end of the dream, i remember feeling terrible and being completely drained, so i curled up at the foot of my bed and forced the dream away. it worked. weird, eh?

I really cannot say, but you can call it what you want, precognitivity/seer/psychic, whatever...
I actually know what Im going to dream about before I dream, even when the plot and theme of the dream wasnt intentionally created. Even though I intentionally gather thoughts to get my dream started at times, there are occasions where I simply get home and go to bed from the rigorous stress of my job.
At every instant in my dream before anything happens, I already know what is going to happen, even when the event wasnt intentionally made. My mother once woke me from my sleep and asked me, "You already did what?" It was because I repeated , "I already did that... :S" in my dream once, before the exact same thing happened again right after. I dont kno if anyone else can do this, but I can control the speed of my dream... it can be slow motion to the fast and the furious. heh... sigh, glad I got that out.

I always try to stop myself from dreaming of certain things before I fall asleep by simply making it clear in my mind what I don't want to dream about- like all the stuff I had seen on Ogrish.com earlier . It always works (or at least I don't remember dreaming about it).

Back in the day, When I was a Child, My dreams were as easy to control as a well trained toad. Looking back I remember several times the inside of my eye lids looking like hundreds of monitors all of which a positronic reality in and of themselves. Of course it was simple to transition between the areas in the monitors. Inside these various scenic areas of complete randominity doing anything I wanted was easy, Especially starring as the lead character in _______ , My favorite game at the time, Movie, whatever.


Though once I lost my innocence I haven't dreamed, not one time that I can remember for atleast 10 years. I guess thats the price of being jaded.

Oh, you still dream, even if you don't remember it. Every single night.

That's true, Clear, but I have observed some odd effects. I never remember my dreams, and on some nights, there are no dreams. Though I do sleep those nights, I'm still consciously aware, and trapped in several layers of contemplation, oftentimes reliving painful memories. I'm not sure if that's just a symptom of PTSD or a form of lucid dreaming, though I use the more typical lucid dreams to influence my reality or emotionally brace myself for future disappointments/turmoils.

If there is a sense of time having passed, then you have dreamed something even if you don't remember it. When you close your eyes at night and then immediately wake up in the morning with a sensation of just having blinked :that gets the shrinks worried.

There was a time when I came close, when I ventured onto the threshold of being aware that I was dreaming. In fact, the dreams are written down somewhere as I used to keep dream diaries. Sometimes I think I'm dreaming when I'm actually awake.

I've done it with minor success. Alot of my dreams I am not aware of, and the ones that I do become lucid in, well, those are the ones with just that right mix of reality and fantasy that spark it off. I can't control much in the dreams, and the more I try to exert control over the dreamscape, the more unstable it becomes. I've turned wonderful dreams into nightmares because of this, so most of the time I try not to interfere.

On the subject of escaping nightmares: Its an old wives tale but it does work. If ever I became lucid in a dream and wanted it to end, I would just go to sleep. The paradox forces you to lose consciousness and the dream floats back down to your subconscious. Most of the time. Ocasionally I would jerk awake because of it. And I do mean jerk awake- kinda like my spirit got slammed back into the body.

That's a good trick, but I usually just try to take advantage of my condition when in a lucid dream. It's a very convenient way to focus and direct mental energies to influence the world around you, since the mind is most powerful when at rest.

have fun when you become lucid during a nightmare. Sometimes there's no amount of altering you can do to turn a nightmare into a pleasant dream. And personally, I've had enough scary shit happen in my life that if I can avoid my subconcious scaring the hell out of me, I will.

If I become lucid in a nightmare, I simply let the dream end. I tend to gain a great deal of control over my lucid dreaming, though not over the content of said dreams.