Posted on 06/16/2010 7:08:42 PM PDT by shibumi
Editorial: Wake up dreaming to explore consciousness
AM I awake or am I dreaming?" I ask myself for probably the hundredth time. I am fully awake, just like all the other times I asked, and to be honest I am beginning to feel a bit silly. All week I have been performing this "reality check" in the hope that it will become so ingrained in my mind that I will start asking it in my dreams too.
If I succeed, I will have a lucid dream - a thrilling state of consciousness somewhere between waking and sleeping in which, unlike conventional dreams, you are aware that you are dreaming and able to control your actions. Once you have figured this out, the dream world is theoretically your oyster, and you can act out your fantasies to your heart's content.
Journalistic interest notwithstanding, I am pursuing lucid dreaming for entertainment. To some neuroscientists, however, the phenomenon is of profound interest, and they are using lucid dreamers to explore some of the weirder aspects of the brain's behaviour during the dream state (see "Dream mysteries"). Their results are even shedding light on the way our brains produce our rich and complex conscious experience.
It's a central issue in the study of consciousness. In 1992, Gerald Edelman at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, proposed that there are two possible states of consciousness, which he called primary and secondary consciousness. Primary consciousness is the simple subjective experience of sensory perception and emotions, which could be applied to most animals. It's a state of "just being, feeling, floating", according to Ursula Voss at the University of Frankfurt in Germany.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
I only seem to remember my 6th to 8th hour of sleeps’ dreams...
Thank you. I will probably dream about off-colored hippos all night.
In all seriousness, certain foods trigger better dreaming in my book. Jalepenos after 7:00 p.m. give me the most whacked out dreams. I am also a color dreamer. There is often a color or several that are as prominent as the plot.
How many kids do you care for?
Do you have low blood pressure?
I hear people with that get very real nightmares all the time.
I used to have a reoccurring dream. I used to look forward to having it because it was sooo good it was like going on vacation. Must have had the dream about 8 times.
I don't know what good keeping a journal does, but it helped me to focus my dreams and pay attention to them. I never had a "prophetic" dream, but many of them gave me a sense that I understood something the dream was trying to express.
(This is a FWIW post, of course...)
Attempting to “direct” a lucid dream can take a surprising turn that is sometimes disturbing, in my experience. The altered “reality” of a dream, even guided, has a logic of it’s own.
I’ve had a repetitive dream since late childhood, of being in a sort of hazy, twilight or dawn place, outside of what appears to be somewhat like a church. I’m surrounded by smaller people that aren’t quite ... people, how I know this is not clear, and they want something from me, don’t know what. I realize I’m dreaming, and start jumping up and down, higher and higher until I take flight. I fly into a large tree, looking down upon these beings looking up ... wanting. Then, one of them, somehow harsher than the others, starts jumping up and down, up and down, higher and higher. He (definitely he, don’t know how I know this but he is) takes flight and pursues me from tree to tree, with those others still looking up, wanting.
What’s disturbing is the sense that I’m not the only one in that dream dreaming lucidly. Try something different, works for a while, then it gets countered.
Weird, I know. I’ve probably dreamed that at least twenty times, never turning out the same way before waking. The worst one was nightmarish, he, it, nearly caught me. Vile thing, whatever he is or is supposed to represent.
Thanks for sharing your stories!
I posted this because it’s a subject in which I am highly interested, but also to get some relief from the Usurper and his tar-ball mess.
The resultant reading of all your experiences is fascinating!
Thanks again.
I think I would rather not remember the dreams, although I usually remember snippets.
As a child, I frequently suffered from night paralysis, which is a terrifying experience. People having that think they are awake, but are stuck between dreaming and wakefulness. Often, the state is accompanied by vivid hallucinations.
One 18th century painting I’ve seen depicts the state by showing a sleeping woman with a demon on her chest.
As an adult, the paralysis does not happen often, but is terrifying when it does. A few weeks ago, I had it happen, and would have been screaming in terror—if only I could have controlled my actions. But I couldn’t move. I still managed to make enough sound to wake my husband, who then woke me.
Something that I heard or read so long ago that I can't remember the source, was that people who don't remember their dreams can teach themselves to remember.
The practice, as I recall, is to write down anything at all that you can remember just as soon as you can. This somehow trains part of the brain to treat the dream memories differently so that they don't immediately fade away.
I don't write down my dreams. I frequently note the sensation of waking up and thinking of how interesting my dream was but being unable to remember the content just seconds after deciding that it was interesting.
I, too had night paralysis as a child.
Lucid dreaming started when I made up my mind not to fear, but rather control it.
Now I anxiously look forward to my dream-time.
My understanding of the dream state is that the paralysis is real. The body is disconnected from the will during the dream as a protective mechanism. People who sleepwalk are experiencing the loss of the paralysis and are at risk of injury because they are engaging in actions without complete awareness of the possible consequences.
What you are describing is, perhaps, that you somehow become aware in the dream that you are experiencing paralysis. In most of my dreams I can believe that I am moving though obviously I am not. In your dreams you believe that you can't move and that is probably truly the case. The anxiety comes about because in the dream you don't understand why you can't move.
Perhaps you should do something like another poster suggested. Purposely put yourself into the position that you would be in bed. Then tell yourself, "If I can't move, then I am almost certainly dreaming". Perhaps like the other poster you can learn to control the course of your dream.
Just my 16 year old (boy) and 12 year old (boy). Not that much of a problem at all...don’t think it has anything to do with them...unless it’s being VERY HUNGRY teenagers...
LOL! Gotta show this to hubby...:P
ha!
The paralysis is real. What happens is that the person enters a state just at the edge of dreaming—not asleep, but not awake either.
When it happens, I really do not know that I am asleep. I think that I am awake. I try to do something and find I can’t, then panic because I can’t move. After I begin to panic, then I start to hallucinate—the fragments of dreams that impinge into the semi-waking state, mostly taking on the shape of ghosts crowding around me. I know that if I can relax, I will lose the paralysis, but typically, I’m way too scared.
Cultures all around the world have names for the night paralysis state. It is universally frightening to those who get it. Between 10 and 20% of the population are affected at least once during their life.
I get sleep paralysis. It is indeed terrifying. I’ve actually awakened from a dream and been unable to physically move. Its happened 3 times and involved dreams about natural disasters.
Thats the advantage of being Married...you always have someone there to nudge you back to life again!
(Ray Barone - Everybody loves Raymond)
Just don’t tell them your sub-conscience equates them to rutabega’s...this little piggy went to market....
I can control them once I tell myself I am dreaming.
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