Beginner's Apprehension

Greetings all. I’ve recently been lurking on these boards and may presently be on the verge of delving deeper into dreaming. However, I am somewhat undecided as to whether or not I actually want to develop the ability to dream lucidly…

I am lucky in that I am able to recall a fair amount of my dreams, and I have some pretty crazy and captivating excursions almost every night, particularly these past few months. Going to sleep has lately become like buying a cinema ticket. My sleeping mind serves up things I couldn’t think up no matter how hard I try, things which inspire me creatively and intellectually, things which I treasure.

Now, the source of my apprehension at the thought of using lucid dreaming is: what if these wonderful things stop coming? Will I be able to derive such valuable visions from my dreams if they are dictated by my conscious mind rather than left wholly unconscious? I don’t want my dreams to become simply the work of my imagination, albeit more immersive.

Why seize control of the car when it’s already taking me to cool places without me having my hands on the wheel?

Is this a valid concern?

I’d say any concern is a valid one, the fact you have a concern could cause problems for you if you decided to develope your LDing ability.

Not at all. Not every dream you will have will be lucid and even if you became lucid you can chose not to take any control and allow the dream to fall back into the hands of your subconscious mind. Remember, Lucidity means being aware not neccessarily taking any control.

This may change in your lucid dreams yes, but the none lucid dreams you will have, should remain how they are now. Remember though with lucidity you can experience more than you might in normal dreams, while the ride maybe slightly different depending on how lucid you are and how much control you have.

I very much like to be driven by my dreams, I enjoy not know what is going to happen. Sometimes when I become lucid, I just sit back and watch rather than use the lucidity to take control, many of my dreams get the heart pumping, I often meet a tornado in my dreams and when I’m not lucid I like the rush of fear I get thinking I’m in danger. If that was ever to change because of Lucid Dreaming I would stop.

Thankfully that’s not an issue, my ND’s are as random and fun as they always were. But if I become lucid and the dream I was in wasn’t entertaining, why not grab the wheel and go some where you might never have been other wise.
The one thing I have planned next LD is to become the tornado, I can’t imagine that happening non-lucid.

Just because you practice lucidity doesn’t mean you have to be lucid all the time. Sometimes it’s fun just to enjoy the ride of your subconscious mind :smile:

Welcome!

Well, if you’re satisfied with your dreams, I see no reason for you to pursue lucid dreaming. However, I doubt there’s a single person alive who can honestly say they’ve never wished they’d done something differently in a dream. Lucidity allows you to make changes to the dream as desired–you don’t have to radically alter your surroundings. The creative flow won’t stop simply because you know it’s a dream. In fact, it may increase because you’ll be able to summon creativity in whatever area you want.

Let’s say you become lucid and you decide you want to compose a piece of music. You can pop in a new CD in the dream and your brain will spontaneously compose new music for you. You could do the same thing with a book or DVD.

Keep in mind that LDing does take some effort. You will never become lucid in a significant percentage of your dreams without trying to. If you feel that, for some reason, lucidity is impacting your creativity, you can simply stop trying.

Valid concern? Of course. Just remember that LDing won’t make any irreversible changes to your brain, so trying can’t hurt.

Good luck!

Hi Knox! Welcome to the forum! :wave:

Generally you don’t have so much LD’s in a month and they don’t last very long. So I think it’s worthy to have a try, it won’t make your normal dreams disappear. :wink:

Thanks all for the input, much appreciated. I suppose I am being a little overly cautious, clinging to the old maxim of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. And after all it’s not like I’m even remotely accomplished at LD yet.

Ideally I would like 100% dream recollection (I don’t recall ever experiencing a boring dream), and if lucidity is possible, well that’s a pleasant bonus. It’s reassuring to know that it’s always optional.

This seems like a congenial place to hang out. I’ll take some time to post here in the future :smile:.

If the car ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But it can’t hurt to learn to drive the car in case you ever want or need to. :wink:

100% dream recall is a lofty goal, but you say your recall is naturally good, so achieving 95% shouldn’t be too difficult.

One thing I’ve learned is that there’s a good reason we forget some of our dreams–many of the ones we normally forget are pretty boring. My recall is significantly better than it used to be as a result of the techniques I’ve been doing, and I’m realizing that many of my would-be-unremembered dreams aren’t that fantastic. It’s the ones that I naturally remember that usually stand out a lot. (Of course, there are great dreams that I naturally forget and there are boring dreams that I inexplicably remember. There are exceptions.)

It sounds to me like you’re extremely fortunate to have so many interesting dreams. It’s good that you actually appreciate this, too. If fascinating NDs are good enough for you, that’s great. Nothing wrong with that. But if you ever feel like you want to take dreams to the next level, it’s never too late. :smile:

If you already have great recall, then try writing your dreams down. I found that I went from having great dream recall (sometimes remembering 4 dreams a night) to having almost 100% recall (7-13 dreams remembered in a night) just by the act of recording them. I dont know why but writing them down helped me remember dreams that ran on from another one that I had previously forgotten.

My dreams are very vivid and entertaining which is why I dont do any induction techniques to try and LD. Except for reality checks when I first started a couple of years ago, I do nothing and still get a few DILDs a month.

And trust me LDs are fun even if your dreams are already great because its just a really good feeling having complete conciousness in a dream and knowing you can do whatever you want.

I’m actually not so much interested in deriving any typical forms of excitement or fantastic vistas from my dreams; I just enjoy the texture of the experience so much, no matter what it is about (not that they could be said to be ‘about’ anything). The smallest event can leave a profound resonance that I find I can later draw on as a tremendous source of creative inspiration.

Now that I dwell on it, I shouldn’t have compared my dreams to buying a cinema ticket - they’re more like a visit to an art gallery, a procession of random images that for some inexplicable reason leaves one richer and more enlightened. Something as mundane as a spiral staircase decorated with potted plants, or a glass cabinet full of antique figurines, or a park pathway enclosed by overgrown hedges - commonplace sights for sure, yet for some reason deeply inspirational to me in the way I saw them, somehow far deeper than the scope of any waking experience (and these are just the mundane scenes, to say nothing of the more baroque and fantastical ones).

This is why I have been nervous of messing with my dreaming, because it has become so important and enjoyable for me, seemingly no matter what I dream about. If this is the case, I guess my apprehension was for nothing - a nightlong dream of watching paint dry would for me border on the mystical :wink:.