My theory as to why we can't LD at will.

[Atheist]

I'd hate to point out the obvious here, but lucid dreaming doesn't replace REM sleep, it occurs at the same time. Sure, you can't live without REM sleep, but when you LD you are experiencing REM sleep. Regardless of whether you're conscious or not, nothing is being missed out when you convert a normal dream to a lucid one.

I don't think normal dreams are essential for our mental health. Instead, we simply develop such a strong routine to sleep normally that it takes us quite a long time to retrain ourselves to sleep differently. Some people develop and hold on to this ability from an early age (we call them 'naturals), but most of us simply ignore the potential until much later.

[Technodreamer]

[sage]

[bowelfish]

Why is nobody looking at this from an evolutionary point of view?
That's how homo sapiens came to be the way they are...

It's fairly obvious that being able to go lucid at will would allow you to escape somewhat from confronting the never ending drives, desires, urges, emotions, fears, responsibilities etc. of waking life, all the things that with their pains and rewards, cause animals to ensure the survival of their genes.

Any individual lucky enough to have LDing genes would be unlikely to be a slave to the spread of their genes, so the LDing trait would never become common.

[Dreamfortehwinz]

Ed, I don't think I understand you. I've never had a lucid(conscious) dream where I wasn't in control. Are you talking about just very vivid dreams maybe?

Conscious dreams do occur during REM sleep, but areas that are recovering during normal dreams are active during conscious dreams. As far as I know no one has researched what affect this has on you, but in theory too much conscious dreaming w/out supplemented normal dream cycles could be unhealthy.

[Ed Case]

Sorry, I can't remember what I read and can't be bothered to read it, so I don't know either.



Ed.

[TimeLess]

nice topic i wonder why i didnt stumble here before.

ummm a few things. we DO need sleep. well actally it isnt sllep that we need but it is rem that we need. and whyy doesnt this topic view go abck through the pages bah oh well.

we need REM full stop and it isnt just humans. as was posted before rats die with out it and i wont go into an of the real detial about this it would lose track of where i am actally going. Humans act diffrent to animals when we are deprived of rem. animals become panic and all that but humans ii guess our brains are a littlre more... defined any way. we see things, speach slurs we become angry after many days and soon taht wares off and we just go compleatly well blank. our blood pressure drops along with our body temp. when we actally do get some rem back into us we have rem rebound where our brains catch up on waht we have missed out on. after waking, our mind is very much diffrent depending on how long we went with out rem. mostly we become more angry cant think straight and tend to make poor choices in important matters. when before we might have been very good at all that.

we do dream in non rem sleep. ok that sounds strange. in NREM we still dream it is just not as active. in REM it is just as if we were awake. we are all actally dreaming right now. and you can try your RT if u want but the point is we are. behind our thoughts we are dreaming. we have little images flitter past. a day dream i guess is us just focusing on it.

So that makes me think, our dreams are our thoughts. ok that is simple enough, and our logical part of our brian switches off for most people in their dreams, so that could explain why we have such strange dreams and we dont notice it. but could it be that natural lucid dreamers keep their logic part of their brain active? hmm could be an idea for a device to induce lucidity.

For a long time i wanted to have a lucid dream in every rem stage. so i trained. the closer i got to y goal teh more scared i got, the more that i was held back by somthing. and to this day i still have no clue waht wass holding me back. but i gave it up. now i aim for two a night not 6.

i am not sure about this but the first period of rem is very diffrent from the rest, the brain acts diffrently and is more... chaotic. as the night progresses it smooths out and the dreams last longer and all that. i have been lucid in the very first stage of rem and i found it very strange, the world was incompleate. it felt diffrent and empty. has any one else ever had this and could this be a reason why we dont go lucid in everydream? for we need that time for our brains to shut down, so we dont experince somthing like that. like trying to remember a great deal of pain, our brains block it out, do our brians block out our lucid abilty on the main for dreams that are not compleate where our mind is acting diffrent to the rest of the dreams tha we will have through the rest of the night.

ok now that i have totaly lost where i was going i am gonna post that i hope it makes as much sence to you as it does me. and i bet my spelling is going to make it that much eaiser too

cheers

Richard

[Pedro]

I don't think "normal" dreams are any different from LD's in that sense. They ARE different in many ways but I think someone could have 4 LD's every night for their whole life and not come out any worse than someone else who doesn't. Infact, most LDers should come out a lot better if they use their lucid time to good use! I do see why people would believe that normal dreams are needed but it's just my opinion that they aren't. Just the way I feel.

[Ego Tripping]

I think the only reason our "normal" dreams are the way they are is because we AREN'T lucid. Almost like a signal being sent to you but you have no way to decode it. Becoming Lucid lets you finally 'crack the code' and start using dreams for what they are intended to. In this theory, our "normal" dreams are actually abnormal and mere side effects of a failed exercise, like running a program on a computer that can't read that particular coding language.

[WaNnAbE]

[DaturaSpectrum]

I agree with you sage that makes sense, i mean the mind can do amazing things and if trained can be a powerful tool to get us to worlds and other places that we cant imagine, i believe that knowledge is only the start.

[Presence of Light]

[Presence of Light]

[toadstool]

Not to discredit anyone, but the reason I think we can't LD at will has nothing to do with any biological reasons, but because our subconcious is running the show and every in the dreams is created by the subconcious so of course everything seems pretty normal, real and plausible to the subconcious. If our concious was in charge when we dreamed we would be lucid every night all night.

[KirbyMeister]

You know, one of LaBerge's theories is that the reason why LDing is so hard is that we dont learn early. He attributes it to language: how many of you find it hard to learn a 2nd language fluently in your 20s or 30s? We arent exactly taught from birth how to lucid dream, and thats why the basic assumption is that dream control is impossible. Teach lucid dreaming to your kids.

And, just because REM sleep is important doesnt mean that LDing is bad for your health: LDs occur during REM sleep, and, except for the fact that you know you are dreaming, LDing is the same (biologically) as a dream. So I dont think that LDing interferes with normal REM sleep. In fact, it enhances it.