A few years ago I heard about lucid dreaming and was curious. In reading up on it, I discovered this was something I did quite often before the age of 20 and less so after.
It’s fascinating that we can dream and be aware that we are dreaming at the same time. And not just aware, but capable of moving the characters in our dreams like chess pieces. Rewriting the story. Changing the scenery. We can write, direct, and produce from within a dream.
As a child I had nightmares, and as a teenager the nightmares gave way to premonitions that the devil was under my bed, and would come for me. I faced bedtime with a great deal of fear.
It was when my nightmares/premonitions were most terrifying that I developed the ability to change them. The nightmare would progress to a point that I didn’t want to go past and I would say to myself, “no, no, no, I don’t want to dream this anymore,” and the dream became something more pleasant. It was like turning a channel on a television set. It was a way of coping, controlling, and eventually banishing my bad dreams.
Are lucid dreams borne from our psyche’s need to deal with the terrifying imaginations of our mind? When nightmares are so vivid they seem real, maybe being able to manipulate the outcome is what stops us from going mad. It’s not totally known why we have lucid dreams, but awake or asleep, our minds are complex and extraordinary.
If you would like to know more, click Wikipedia.
Most times I wake up talking about the weird dreams I had, but darned if I can ever remember them.
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Isn’t it weird how the dreams we can’t remember make us feel a certain way? We walk around all day feeling strange with no idea why. It’s bizarre!
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I knew a long-term practitioner of Lucid Dreaming, about a decade ago. An amazing poet / storyteller. The clearest dream-likeable stuff I ever read. And as I understood him, his dream manipulation went much further than merely escaping nightmares. From what I could see, this guy was in total control, awake and asleep, so I’m guessing he had plenty of “sweet dreams”.
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Ron, that is interesting. What is his name? I’m interested in reading his work.
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As you say Jane the mind is complex. Interesting how we can wake ourselves from a nightmare when it gets too scary. I remember as a teenager dreaming no ,matter how fast I ran i was getting nowhere. Why this no more? Dunno……
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