How Come Lucid Dreaming is not more Mainstream?

It seems like lucid dreaming should be more popular than it is. It is very inexpensive. It is really not that hard (aside from the mental blocks we set up ourselves). It can be very fun. Did I mention cheap?

You can shapeshift, fly, break all the rules of both reality and popular society, without any real consequences. So why is it not more mainstream?

Here’s some of the reasons I came up with. Please post any you all think of, or any problems you have with my interpretation.

  1. Ignornace: People think it is difficult and impossible, or just don’t know about it. Dreams do not play a major role in modern society for various reasons, so people never figure it out. Sometimes fear or barriers based on their religious beliefs can form a barrier. The lucid dreaming movement is still relatively young.

  2. It’s easier for some people to do than for others, and some think that this is because their brain is naturally more active as they fall asleep. I still think most people set up their own mental blocks. I think it is learnable.

  3. What use is it? You can’t package and sell a dream. A dream won’t make you rich or feed your belly… but then again, what use are video games… and WE pay to play those. Pehaps lucid dreams aren’t marketed much because it is hard to get rich off them!..

  4. … but if that’s the case, how come it hasn’t spread through word of mouth? By my experience, the same folks who practice lucid dreams more oftan than not preach all sorts of metaphysical nonsense and nutty Eastern-esque spiritualism… not to mention ESP and precognitive dreams. I think this discourages the public from taking lucid dreams seriously.

Naturally I saved the best for last. I think number four is the main reason. I apologize in advance for offending any of the New Age types out there. I am not the most tactful poster.

No, it isn’t “very inexpensive”. It’s free.

When I try and tell people about it they quickly change the subject like i am crazy or somthing. :eh: Other people seem interested but then they say “well I could never do somthing like that” or they just straight up dont understand it. I am like “imagin you could do anything you ever wanted. you can control your dreams” I begin going into detail in what lucidity is. They treat it like scifi. :grrr: :grrr:

It’s because it’s so different from our Western culture, which is rather materialistically oriented.
You can’t sell LD’s? Well, there is NovaDreamer, but it’s way too expensive. I think that if there was a cheap, easy to use induction device (device, not method, ppl won’t buy a book about method), it’d become popular - but now there’s only NovaDreamer and that stupid Japanese machine for “generating dreams”.

Well there are the build it yourself novadreamer clones. But you need to know electronics to get those to work but they aren’t expensive to build, about 10-20 euros. And then there’s the one in europe that I can’t remember the name of that’s something like 100 euros. But I think that that’s still expensive.

And I think most people just feel that they don’t have time to practice lucid dreaming. Or they just don’t know how fun and real it can be :cool: And then there’s also the ones that doesn’t even know that you can LD. And I think there’s quite a few people that know about it but they don’t talk about it IRL. I have 2 friends that are naturals and I didn’t even know about that until I mentioned lucid dreaming to them.

I vote for this opinion. :wink:

In France, the most popular thread about LD can be found in an hardware & PC forum. On this hardware forum, there are 1200 people : about 600 replied to a poll who titled “Do you have lucid dreams ? (dreams where you know you’re dreaming)”. 200 frequently have LDs. 200 have LD sometimes. It means that 1/3 of the Hardware Forum population knows what LDs are ! :eek:

Every time I speak about LD with some people, there is at least one people who can remember having had a LD once.

But there are only 6 LDers on the LD french forums. :cry:

Why ? Because people don’t think LDing is important : " Oh yes, I have a lot of natural lucid dreams" or “I had one. I saw a monster. I never want to have one again !”. And that’s all. No curiosity. No questions about how it can be possible and what it means and implies.
Human are monkeys. They aren’t interested in lucid dreams because you cannot eat a lucid dream : it’s not a banana. :grrr:

I’m surprised by the number of replies after not even a full twenty four hours passed since my post.

The practice itself is, but books/induction devices (or internet access, for that matter) are not.

That’s the problem I had: part of it is our Western materialistic cultural attitiutes but I think most of it is that lucid dreaming gets tied in with Eastern mysticism and the New Age subculture. Maybe LDing will pass through this phase some day. I mean, look how video games have grown up from a nerdy activity to a part of popular culture (arguably not a good thing, unfortunately… is video game innovation dying?).

If you have the time to sleep, you have the time to practice. :smile: . Not that I sometimes do not have the time to sleep… As for not knowing how fun it can be: I aggree. There’s far more to the practice of lucid dreaming than “yawn now I can control my own dream.” It’s hard to communicate what that is like to the average person.

Sorry, didn’t read the posts above my own.

I think the main reason is because a lot of people do not know of its excistence. And a lot of people that hear about it think that if it really worked, they would have heard about it a long time ago.

I think people who don’t even remember dreams are a reason also.

Also, how would this information be distributed. The only way I ever found out about it was websites. My only idea for more exposure is just make more sites. But people have to have an interest in it, because it takes a medium amount of reading to find out how to do better recall, reality checks, and then it takes practice.

And then of course there are people who don’t even care about their dreams.

I think one of the main things is that people dont really care for their dreams. Even moreso than that, like there is a sort of stigma attached to dreams. Most of the people i talk to get weirded out if i mention the word ‘dream’ let alone ‘dream where i know im dreaming’ (i say that instead of lucid dream because most people dont know what lucid is and so to them it comes off as some jargon). But its obvious that people are in general indifferent if not avoidant of the concept of dreaming.

I think this may have something to do with our obsession with individualism and materialism. Possession of one’s own ‘personal space’ and private space are valuable here (in the US). I mean, its so bad that standing close to someone (even in an elevator where you cant help it) gets people all weirded out, LOL. ahem So its like people are so obsessed with their privacy that they kind of retreat into themselves (inner privacy, thoughts, dreams, etc) that when such is brought up, brought out, the occurrence of contact (my dreams, your dreams. My thoughts, your thoughts, etc) kind of makes people feel vulnerable or exposed.

Then it could also be that people are so tired these days that sleep has lesser meaning for them other than the fact that it will get them energy back. ‘lucid dreaming? who cares, im tired’

I could probably go on but basically it seems like there is more against the popularization of dreaming, than there is for it.

Its hard to understand the point of view of the ignorant. Ignorant not being a bad thing, just being unknowledgeable. They do not know how wonderful lucid dreaming is, because they have never experienced it. We feel frustrated because we are knowledgeable about it (having experience) but its just one of those things that are hard to convey. Think of like your math, biology, english, etc teachers really into their ‘field’ but you not sharing as much interest in it as they are (with some exceptions).

Interesting thread, although I do think the answer is pretty simple.

It is entirely a cultural thing. Over here sleep is something you do to recover from a hard days work and to prepare for another one. People don’t realise there is a whole other world out there (or should I say in there?..) to explore because they are so focussed on the ‘real’ one they see out of their windows every morning.

Ok, I used to say EXACTLY this sort of thing. Like “well, dreams are scientific phenomenon that happen in the brain like everything else”

But this “metaphysical nonsense and nutty Eastern-esque spiritualism” is actually what used to be called ‘Philosophy’ and it is, in its own way, the ‘highest’ form of thought there is. But again in the West true philosophy is not encouraged (one could argue actively discouraged?!) and so it is considered outside the realms of the ‘normal’ and therefore ‘mad’.

You probably can lucid dream for years and never see it as anything more than a toy, a very advanced simulation running on a very advanced biological computer. But I can tell you from my own experience that it can also be a springboard into the realms of philosophy. It can be a fun toy, yes, but it can also be much more than that.

Anyway, one other problem with it catching on in the West is that we don’t value things unless they are a ‘product’ that you can buy… but you can’t directly sell lucid dreaming. The only way to ‘package’ it is to sell an induction device and that just comes across as charlatanism. So there’s really no way it can reach a fast-food, quick consumption culture like ours in a big way. :sad:

That’s a big part of it, it helps contribute to the ignorance of lucid dreaming. As far as word of mouth goes, many people here have had trouble spreading lucid dreams that way. You can’t show someone a lucid dream, they just have to take your word on it and practice a lot, possibly with no success.

Monitor199a: Exactly! Furthermore, if you want to know the REAL causes why we don’t have the right cultural/social/behavioural climate to cultivate the art of LDing, you need to go back to the roots of current Western thinking, which is at the beginning of industrialisation and scientism. Dreams are part of the richness of inner consciousness. They can never be translated fully into scientific terms without losing their meaning. An EEG is a whole other thing than listening to a breathtaking account of someone’s dream. Industrialization marked the point when Western civilization started to devaluate everything into pale surfaces. Inner feelings and experiences became colorless, tasteless, meaningless hormones, enzymes, neurotransmitters and other chemicals… From that point, dreams were seen from that perspective, and from that perspective alone. And that’s the heart of the problem imo. Nowadays, dream researchers only measure brainwaves and levels of certain chemicals, in an attempt to understand dreams… but instead they should listen and help on the search for a decent interpretation (not explanation) of that dream. But industrialization and scientism made this way of viewing things impossible, and interpretation was then reduced to superstitious beliefs, so it could be handled in the same way as horoscopes… It’s a shame really… :sad:

Not only all above…one of the arguments was that people dont care for dreams.I guess thats why lds dont get popular.
And im actually not suprised…what do we know about them?We are still at the stage where we have difficulties saying why and what for are they.We believe it serves spirituall,self progress or fun role.For many people something that is hallucination alike is not spirituall,it wont help them in self development and it just might be not their idea of fun.
And i can understand all of it.
Just because we see a potentiall in it it doesnt mean everyone would.There are many people with many hobbies and beliefs…some choose religion,some career,some sex and for some it will be lucid dreaming.
It doesnt necesary makes them money oriented,blunt,or blind.I for example dont see anything interesting in cars but 70% of males do.
Till its not proved its somehow helpfull in everyday life(im not talking about opinions how dreams helped them in this and that…these are just what ppl say) people will allways treat it as a hobby…some get hooked on it,some dont.
I guess i can take it even further- we dont really know if dreams are to be helpfull as a concious tool.For us they can,they serve heaps of purposes.But truth so far is- propably they are training grounds for us in evolution cycle,helping us to check out different situations while we are safe asleep.Counciousness in them is just element of fun.

The answer is really quite simple: most people have to have experinced one to understand just how good they are. Otherwise they may give up after a little bit.

People find it hard to belive in. People don’t believe jsut how realistic it can be. So they don’t see the point in putting in the effort.

There is also the fact that some people just don’t believe that lucid dreaming is possible.

I think there are a few reasons why.

  1. People are to lazy to put much affort into it. It can take a while for some people and they may not want to wait.

  2. Since you can’t sell it, it doesn’t show up on tv or anything, which would spread it around a lot better.

  3. Some people dont think dreaming is a everyday thing. They rarely remeber them and when they do they might be more of a pain than fun.

I think if you group lucid dreams with normal dreams though, you will find a lot of people have them and like them. Infact there might be a ton more people than you think, and they just don’t talk about it very often.

ehhh i was strongly offended by your last 2 paragraphs but um… i won’t go into detail.

anways, I am glad lucid dreaming isn’t very well known and popular. It is very unique and is something that separates me from the “norm.” and i like that. i also view LDing sacred and should not be done by everyone because that would just take away from how special it really is. It is a way to seek hidden truths.

Its too good to be true.
And all this shaman shit gets packaged with it :sad:
Shared dreaming and the ilk too.

I agree that there is a lot of stuff that people link lucid dreaming to, that I really don’t believe or care about. People who think dreams can tell your future, or the idea of shared dream.

People look at ideas that have no occured to them and think it is impossible. When I first read about lucid dreaming, I didn’t think it was at all possible, I’m just lucky I decided to investigate. Why not? It doesn’t take up anytime because you are going to have to sleep anyways, right?

I don’t think it has anything to do with anyone’s private thoughts. I don’t think many people that don’t think much about dreams, would think of them as such a personal thing.