Lucid Dreaming

It must be something about the way my brain came wired.

As a child, I lucid dreamed chronically. And at will. I could drop myself into a 'day'-dream if I chose. And through early teen years, I would constantly just find myself 'somewhere', know I was dreaming, and wait to see where I was and what was going on.

As my teen years progressed, my lucid dreaming (and what I later understood were called "out of body" experiences) were still chronic but the "invoke at will "capacity seemed to fade.

When I was 18, I read a book about both lucid dreaming and out of body experiences. It was a disaster. It might have been reverse psychology; the authors spent so much effort telling everybody how it was possible it had almost the reverse effect; it was clear they did not truly expect people to believe that, fundamentally.

It might be that it moved it from something I never thought about -- "a given" I thought was normal to everybody -- to something kind of "woo woo". I was something of an official skeptic, left-brain snotty intellectual around that era of life, and it threw it into "that side" of my mental models which it had never faced before.

It might be that it invoked some hidden fears I didn't know I had. For example, all my life, I could sleep in any position except my right side. No idea why. Just couldn't do it. The day I read the OBE book, it mentioned something like that this was less common if people were sleeping on their right. I was unable to sleep in any position but on my right side for years after that point!

After that time, I still had lucid dreams and out of body experiences -- I was glad to have names for these experiences -- but they were more 'common-occasional' than chronic. As I got older, they became more occasional than chronic. And gradually they started getting fairly rare.

By now, at age 43, it's something unusual when I actually have either one.

Remote Viewing when sleep deprived brought on a spate of "nested" lucid dreams a couple years ago. I had a crazy number of sessions I never even begun. I would sit down with my lab book to view and the minute I relaxed, I'd be deeply asleep. I'd wake up the next morning in the exact position I went to sleep in -- sitting up with the light on and my lab book in my lap. I wanted to view desperately, but I also wanted to accomplish something online. I worked more than full time and I had a full time job worth of hours for 'online RV hobby projects' (programming, communicating, design), and I have a pre-teen who wants pretty much every minute I am willing to give her. If I wanted to do even a tiny fraction of the programming work I had to deduct those hours out of my sleep. Then when I'd finally pull off the miracle of making time to view, I couldn't do it.

I started feeling like a poser just talking about RV. The number of unfinished and usually unstarted sessions built up until I had nearly a few hundred, over the course of over a year when I tried almost daily and sometimes more than once. I'd cry about it in frustration sometimes when I woke up. I realized that I had simply trained myself to sit down with a lab book and go to sleep, eventually. It was probably my angst about this and my wish to stay awake despite my body's demands that brought them on.

I would sit down to view, and do a whole session. It felt good. I couldn't wait to see feedback. So I start opening the envelope -- and wake up. And realize I dreamed all of it -- session included. But a session inside a lucid dream might still work. So I decided I would write it all down. I didn't remember it quite as well of course, but still pretty good. So I would write down everything that I recalled, including that it was a lucid dream, and then I would open feedback. Or try. Then I would wake up again, and realize that, too, had been in another layer of dream.

By now I would remember maybe half of the data. And be a little upset because it had all seemed so real. It makes you question reality, frankly. But grim and annoyed, I would determine to capture as much of that data as possible and write it down THIS time, now that I was finally awake. So I would write it down, frustrated that I couldn't recall it all, and in some sad disappointment, go to open feedback -- and wake up. Was it real?

Was this life, or Memorex? I would have no idea. It didn't feel any more or less real than any of the others. What about the session? I didn't remember any of the data at all. I'd be seriously pissed off about that, and very weirded out by the "layers of reality" experience. That went on for a few months, until I realized it was probably a side effect of my so adamantly wanting to view that I was dragging it into the sleep that was happening whether I wanted it to or not. I decided I would not do that anymore and it stopped.

I haven't had a lucid dream since, probably for a year, I think the longest time in my life I've ever gone without lucid dreaming. Usually a "degree" of it is often present even when full blown lucidity isn't, but not the last year.

Today I fell asleep in the daytime. I was sleep deprived and had a blood sugar crash (knew I shouldn't have eaten that chicken pot-pie!) and there I went. I woke up in the normal position -- sitting up with my laptop computer and the light on.

But I had lucid dreamed. The novelty of it was great. I wonder if the brain-stim stuff has something to do with this? I'm embarrassed to admit it wasn't even a great dream. Usually when I'm lucid it has some feeling you might call 'grander' than a normal dream.

This was as proletarian as they come. I was in a dream and this woman was being a total bitch to me for some reason I can't recall. Real snotty. She'd done something bad like kill someone and was implying she was going to blame it on me. (My pathological artificial guilt complex, if it doesn't have enough complete BS to project it on, will drag it into dreams. It's a childhood blame/shame side-effect I've learned to recognize.) I grabbed my cell phone and dialed 911 -- but messed up the dialing.

Focus!, I told myself sternly. Go slow, get it right. I was very careful, and I got it right, but when I looked at the number on the cell phone screen, it was all messed up again -- not even all numbers.

I'm dreaming!, I realized out loud. Well, that seemed to solve everything. I put my cellphone in my pocket and walked toward her, said, "Hey!" and when she turned around, I punched her in the head as hard as I could. Then I just punched her repeatedly until she wasn't getting up again soon.

I turned around and stomped over to find the person she had allegedly killed, but I didn't find any body. I went outside and some guy started harrassing me about how I couldn't go outside. "But I'm dreaming!," I explained to him so reasonably, and then punched him in the head.

And here most people think lucid dreaming is some kind of spiritual evolution. LOL.

That's all I remember! After a whole life of LD I don't think I ever remember using getting lucid as an excuse to beat people up. That's kind of novel!

Anyway, I wondered if going to sleep with these delta programs that have all the lights on the eyes could be resulting in these. I'm an exceptional hypnotic subject and I have a high tendency to lucidity even when in impossibly deep trance or sleep -- I had years of problems once I attribute now to some kind of "delta activity while waking" (among other things) -- maybe light that seems to keep me awake a bit and sound that helps put me asleep contributed. I had listened to that last night -- but not this afternoon when I fell asleep spontaneously about 40 minutes after eating.

PJ

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