Who have you told?

One of my LD goals is to have a SD, and I think the chances of this are greater when the person you attempt to have one with has some background knowledge in LDing. So I’ve told a few of my friends who I might be interested in SDing with. Here are a few reactions:

  1. [Fake Interest] Wow, that’s pretty cool! (suddenly changes topic)
  2. [Disbelief] o_O (sarcastic tone) Yeah right…
  3. [Indifferent] Oh… that’s great…
  4. [Interested, with little faith] That’d be awesome to do, but it’s probably impossible.

What are the reactions of people you have told about this? (oh and I’m kind of iffy on if I posted this in the right forum…)
It’s the good forum. Though it’s about SD, the main subject (Who have you told?) is not paranormal at all. :smile:

  1. I know you can give yourself good dreams by thinking positively but I don’t think you can actually control your dream.
  2. Oh I have those all the time
  3. (When explained that he actually didn’t have them all the time because he wasn’t actually controlling his dreams) … hmm

I’ve told nobody. Most people seem to be prone to have close minds that can only be opened by axes about this subject. Sharing the knowledge with the others? Screw the others.

I’ve tried explaining it to a friend once…

Her: Really? That’s…cool, Mr.Dream-Freak. But i never dream.
Me: Listen, everyone dreams…You probably just don’t remember them…
Her: Not really, i simply do not dream…i’ve only dreamt once when i was a child, and it scared me, so now i never dream…they are scary
Me: For fucks sake…

I contemplated explaining to her the very basics of dreaming, but then i decided against that and just shut my mouth.

“Ignorance is a bliss, but sometimes it’s just damn stupid”

So did you speak to them of SDs or LDs, or both? The only people I’ve told:

Sister: tried to explain to her why I keep a DJ. She was convinced it was wasted time.
Mother: I asked her if she ever had LDs; she said every now and them. I explained how I was attempting to get them regularly, and she was mostly interested in trying to get me to confess what I might do during an LD (I guess she thought I wanted to do something illicit… which I do!)
Father: Says he has them once or twice a month, mostly uninterested.
Friend 1: He kept on asking what good it was for (DJs and LDs); I told him that he could spend 1/3 of his life unconscious, or he could remember it all and be able to do anything he wants during it. He “agreed” with me, but was obviously incredulous.
Friend 2: Never had them but kept on asking why it was so difficult to get them. He didn’t want to bother trying to get them but kept telling me that if I just really try then it should be as easy as that.

Not very encouraging results. Why? Why are some people not enthralled with having 8 hours a night to do absolutely anything they want?

I have a hard time explaining Lding to people, I mean seriously how do you do it, my conversation usualy starts out like this… "Have you ever heard of lucid dreaming, its where you are aware that your dreaming. Its something I do, there are ways to induce them, its really fun, I do RCs, and keep a DJ. Dream recall is importent, and blah, blah, blah… I cant get anyone to understand what the hell Im talking about. I mean if you didnt know about lucid dreaming, none of what I said would make any sence.

I just gave up trying to explaine it to people. Who cares if others know, as long as I do. Screw my damn ego.

I guess it’s much easier to explain to people who have an interset in ND’s? I mean, it’s probably hard to explain about LD’s if they don’t even understand ND’s (which is probably the case most of the time).

Many people, unfortunatly, don’t give their dreams a second thought (if they remember them), they just take it for granted. But if someone has an interest in ND’s, it’s probably easier for them to comprehend the process and implications of LD?

You have to love the frustration all LDers share in trying to communicate the idea. Atleast were all togeather in the futile attemps. LDing is one of the most underrated hobbies, if not the most.

I’ve told nobody, i wouldn’t like to see their scared faces when i tell them :bored:

I never told anyone, and propably noone who i know heard about anything about that. But propably one day i will have to explain that, by accident. :tongue: (I sometimes stuck into strange situations. I just born with that.) But i dont think that i would explain it like that

I think that everyone saw “Vanilla Sky”. I’d explain that simple, and short, by recalling that movie (or just ending).

But for now, noone needs to know :slight_smile:

My best friend (who lives in Saudi Arabia) believes it can happen and it would be awesome, so does my boyfriend. :cool_laugh: Most other people don’t believe in SDs but believe in LDs. My dad doesn’t believe in either.

When I first learned about LD’s everyone always said they have trouble explaining them to people and I feared I would too. Once people started asking me questions for reason I had and when i told them I was surprised by what they said.

James: WOW! really? ive done that before and you say Its easy any night? A few days later…“i tried that dream meditation thing or WILD or whatever and it worked and I had this awesome dream” . I hate him…lol

Anna: Thats cools, seems to difficult for me to take the time.
Mycool: Jesse thats so great, im gonna have to try
My brother: thats so cool i wish i could do it
my dad: he told me stories all about how he has used them all his life for improvement
my mom was interested, and i actually found out a girl I used to have a crush on had uncontrollable lucid dreams and false awakenings and said she was once in a state caught within dreams and reality. I haven’t met anyone who has doubted me or anything, but most of the people I have talked to I respect a lot so they return it.

Its funny seeing their faces when I talk about this because they do think its for ‘weird’ people and they see me and says ‘thats out of character’ or something I dont get. :eh: :tongue:

My parents know that I practise LD’ing. I just told them: “it’s a dream in which you know that you’re dreaming”. My mother told me: “Ah! I’ve perhaps had some”. My father said nothing cause he doesn’t care.

My brother was interested in astral many years ago. Thus he knows it.

I’ve 5 very good friends which are interested in weird stuff. Thus we talk about this commonly. It took many years before it was possible. I adviced them some books, they didn’t read them during years. When one finally read the book he told this to others, etc. Moreover, one of them had the SP trouble, thus he eventually became very interested in LD’ing.

I’ve told two girls who I like - and who are good friends - that I was a mod on a forum, they asked me what kind of forum? I said about LD’ing, what is LD’ing? etc. One tried a technique during a week, she tried to find Xena the warrior princess in her dreams :happy:, she almost managed to, then it didn’t interest her any more.

Notice that I never spoke about SD’ing, just LD’ing, with the exception of my SP’ed friend. The difficulty lies in finding people who are as much motivated as you are. If you speak once or twice about this and people are not interested in, it’s not worthy to speak again. Some will be interested but they’ll never make any effort. The best IMO is not talking to your friends, unless you think they may be interested in weird stuff and motivated in doing them. The best is finding people who are already interested in weird stuff and making them your friends.

SD, is something I see as possible because of my personal beliefs. I don’t think we need to avoid the subject with our friends. If they are a real friend they will know you are reasonable and have thought about it in a little depth. And if they laugh or make fun of you, then punch them in the head. :cool_laugh:

I only tell members of my family, or anyone who would happen to ask, but I don’t bring it up in conversation, and I’ve never actually tried to have a SD

My mom is a little freaked out about it so she isn’t sure what to think…

My older brother is the one who told me about it, or at least he told me the name of it “lucid” before I described it simply as a “dream where you know you’re dreaming”

My younger brother and my younger sister ridicule me because they both claim to be total naturals in knowing their dreaming, and they’re always surprised when I tell them I’m trying to figure out how to do it because they say they can do it anytime they want but they never feel like it…

And pretty much anyone else who’s heard me say it has no idea what I’m talking about and I feel awkward explaining it, for the most part I live a secret lucid dreaming life.

I think that you may just be using the wrong approach to explaining lucid dreaming in the first place. I’m one of those people who don’t even bother with explaining it to people, just because I have a feeling that I won’t be able to get anybody interested on the subject. On one occasion, however, I’ve asked a couple people a simple question: “Have you ever known that you were dreaming?” Keep in mind that I’ve only asked three people this question, but all of them had responded in the same way. They nodded, but only seemed slightly interested. That was the end of the conversation. That was just more of a survey rather than trying to spread the word on lucid dreaming, though.

Afterwards, I asked my father that same question, but he just thought about it for a while, finally ending with, “I don’t really know.”

Now, onto my mother. I never asked her the question, but I have once listened to her tell me something which was nothing more than just sad. While looking at a book on lucid dreaming, she said to me, “You can’t control your dreams. They just happen.” She has probably never been more wrong about something in her life, and she was also saying that to the wrong person. Just the day before, I had a very vivid lucid dream.

What’s interesting is that she has played almost an oppostire role in some of my own dreams:

Here, a slightly older dream:

I think I may just like my dream mother better than my RL mother sometimes, except for the fact that my dream mother is a terrible driver; she once rammed her car into a moose! I don’t think my real life mother has ever pulled that stunt before. :tongue:

The only person who I’ve really been able to talk to about lucid dreaming was my sister, since she is the only person who I am really close with. I’ve told her about a few of my lucid dreams, and she has asked me, “How do you always know that you’re dreaming?” After explaining lucid dreaming to her, she seemed somewhat interested, but probably not to the extent to which she would try to practice lucid dreaming. She has also shared some of her dreams with me, along with the fact that I’ve shared dreams with her, and we always have fun about it. Talking about some of the weirder dreams often generates plenty of laughter between the two of us. :grin:

That’s about as far as it goes for my sister and I. She doesn’t know that I keep a dream journal, and also isn’t interested in keeping one herself. Knowing her, I also know that she would be too lazy to keep one anyway. Oh, and not to brag, but although she’s older than me, I’m a much better writer anyway. :tongue:

When I told my family, they seemed intersted for about 2 weeks, then forgot all about it. When I told my best freind what a LD was, I had a huge surprise. Turned out he’d already had 5 of them, and been interested in it for 3 months already. He was just as surprised to find I was interested.

Haha! My co-worker says the same thing. She had a “traumatic” dream experience as a child, and simply doesn’t dream anymore. I just feel like saying, “Come on, that’s crap. Everybody dreams. It’s whether you remember the dreams or not that is really important.” Mostly, though, there’s just no point in trying to convince nay-sayers. :tongue:

:ack:

I was going to mention that in my incredibly long post, but I seemed to have forgotten.

You see, I was suprised to hear that some people think that they don’t even dream! Even before lucid dreaming, I’ve been interested in my own dreams, and for several reasons. Although I never kept a dream journal until joining LD4all, I still hade many great dreams, and I loved dreaming, and thinking about my dreams. Some of them are so bizarre that you can’t help but love them, others are just plain entertaining, while others have been filled with many unnamed emotions and feelings, which I love about them. I even liked some of the negative ones. A life without dreams is unthinkable! I love dreaming! :cool_laugh: I’ve had so many great and memorable dream moments in my lifetime, and [color=#059af5]they’re all mine![/color] :yay: