So how can you problem-solve in a dream?
Although any kind of problem can make a breakthrough in a dream, the two categories that really crop up a lot are things where the solution benefits from being represented visually, because the dreams are so vivid in their visual-spatial imagery, and when you're stuck because the conventional wisdom is just plain wrong.
You may have heard the example of August Kekulé and the benzene ring, which represents both these themes. He was thinking that in all nonchemical molecules, the atoms were lined up in some kind of straight line with 90-degree side chains coming off it. Once he knew the atoms in benzene, he was trying to come up with arrangements of them that were straight lines with side chains and it just wasn't working. Then he dreamt of the atoms forming as a snake, eventually reaching around with the snake's tail in its mouth. It seems exactly related to the fact that the prefrontal lobes that control censorship are, on average, much less active during dreams.
If you want to problem-solve in a dream, you should first of all think of the problem before bed, and if it lends itself to an image, hold it in your mind and let it be the last thing in your mind before falling asleep. For extra credit assemble something on your bedside table that makes an image of the problem. If it's a personal problem, it might be the person you have the conflict with. If you're an artist, it might be a blank canvas. If you're a scientist, the device you're working on that's half assembled or a mathematical proof you've been writing through versions of.
Equally important, don't jump out of bed when you wake up—almost half of dream content is lost if you get distracted. Lie there, don't do anything else. If you don't recall a dream immediately, see if you feel a particular emotion—the whole dream would come flooding back. [In a weeklong study I did with students that followed this protocol] 50 percent dreamed of the problem and a fourth solved them—so that's a pretty good guideline, that half of people would have some effect from doing this for a week.
What about if you want to, say, dream of a certain person or about a particular experience—how can you do that?
If you're just trying to dream about an issue or you want to dream of a person who's deceased or you haven't seen in a long time, you'd use very similar bedtime incubation suggestions as you would for problem solving: a concise verbal statement of what you want to dream about or a visual image of it to look at. Very often it's a person someone wants to dream of, and just a simple photo is an ideal trigger. If you used to have flying dreams and you haven't had one in a long time and you miss them, find a photo of a human flying.
Image-rehearsal therapy has gotten attention as a strategy to overcome nightmares. How does this technique work, and is it effective?
Different people mean different things by that. The details are different but the techniques are very similar—they all grow out of the observation that when people are having bad, repetitive post-traumatic nightmares, a certain proportion seem to move on to having some kind of mastery dream spontaneously. The same way the nightmares had been re-traumatizing them, the mastery dream seemed to carry over into helping them feel much safer and more healed in their daytime state.
[Therapists or researchers] have the person work out an alternate scenario they want the dream to take, where they might ask them to close their eyes and imagine and generally talk them through a kind of vivid enactment of it. Usually the person incorporates some degree of the rehearsed scenario at bedtime or listens to a tape where the therapist or researcher is recounting the alternate scenario.
Barry Krakow does this in a group format and gets statistically significant, positive outcomes. He gets a remarkably high number of people who don't report the mastery nightmare and yet their nightmares stop and/or their daytime anxiety gets much better. We can't know whether they had a mastery dream and don't recall it or if something else about that positive, soothing imagery as you're falling asleep—even if it does not carry over into the dream—carries over into decreasing the number of the nightmares or the daytime anxiety, heightened startle response and flashbacks. In the one-on-one clinical studies there seems to be a much higher rate of actually having the rather dramatic mastery dream.
In the case of the successful techniques, what may be happening in the brain that allows these dream-control strategies to work?
Only if you're buying this idea that dreams should all be random or are being generated in the lower brain stem is there anything we need to explain about why you'd remember a suggestion you'd made to yourself for dream content or that intensely studying a problem before you fell asleep wouldn't be likely to turn up in your dream. Our ability to request that of ourselves at some point in the future is very analogous to what we might do awake. When it happens in a dream, it's happening in a state that by its nature is more vivid, much more intuitive and an emotional kind of thinking, and much less linear in its logic and much less verbal in orientation. That we're going to respond to this request from this very different biochemical state is what makes it such that sometimes we'll kind of respond but it will be in this vaguely nonsensical kind of way; other times it will be that we have this amazing breakthrough because we're thinking about this problem we've had this false bias about how to solve when we're awake.
Can we dream that we're dreaming?
Yes. That is the most common definition of a lucid dream—a dream where you know you're dreaming as the dream is occurring. A few writers on lucidity have chosen to make some degree of dream control part of the definition, but most choose to see that as a separate, additional element. Lucid dreams are infrequent—less than 1 percent of dreams in most studies—but they certainly do crop up in any large collection of lots of people's dreams.
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Add CommentFYI - I've never been able to remember my dreams, beyond an occasional very short lived vague recollection. I was always curious about them, feeling that I was somehow missing out on some secret knowledge.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, I quit smoking this year, using a 3 stage nicotine patch. After about a week of (for me at least) remarkably lucid dreams, I checked the patch doc and discovered lucid dreams were a common side effect. After completion of the nicotine treatment, I returned to my prior non-remembrance of dreams, with no particular interest in them. They turned out to be pretty dull, which might explain why I don't remember them.
I've actually been able to control what happens in my dreams, and change them if I don't like the way they are going. I've been able to do this since puberty, and it's pretty effortless. Sometimes I can the dream as it's happening, other times I wake up in the middle of it, think about what I want to happen, and then when I fall back asleep, it happens as I imagined. It's a very strange, but I have very few nightmares because of this. The only recurring dream I've never been able to control is that old cliche....the "falling" dream. I can never stop the fall once it begins.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are ways to train up this ability. It takes time and persistence. No gizmo other than the Mind and brain are required.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't recommend any book or known method since personal creativity is part of the process.
I'll name just one game I play. With eyes closed, superposing simple visual elements on the random visual synaptic firing.
There are also cathartic dreams where self awareness of the psyche's self healing processes can be bring dramatic changes in one's life.
I fought a representation of all my life accumulated fears. I was prone to night terror from childhood until that night.
I won a fist and foot karate style fight against a demonic figure and the following night I didn't require lights anymore and could open a door without a feeling of imminence. I was 45... it took a while. lolz.
I used to suffer from terrible nightmares as a kid. Around the age of 12, I picked up a book on "lucid dreaming". I used the techniques in the book to learn how to do it. I havent had a problem with nightmares since.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is an easier way to become lucid in your dreams... set your snooze button for about 20 minutes! You are far more likely to become lucid in that small area of time between waking to the alarm, drifting back to sleep and then waking to the alarm again. This is because by this point, you've already gone through all your stages of sleep throughout the night and within that small 20 minute window, you aren't going to go deep enough to completely lose your conscious mind and will therefore easily become lucid. Try it! It works!! www.thedreamzone.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEdgar Cayce said dreams are a manifestation of the soul. I asked my soul to send me a clear message of its existence in the form of a dream. The dream had to be easily understood and contain verifiable proof of my soul’s existence. The odds of delivering on this difficult task were very high- first there has to be a dream, a dream I can decipher and dream that stands the proof test by others.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe dream. I was physically at a business meeting. The meeting was about acquiring a company of a friend. The name “Vitkis” was used over and over in the meeting and etched in my brain. I sent my friend an email about the dream. He replied the company was in acquisition meetings.
After sending the email, I decided to look for an executive named Vitkis, Vitkas, Vitkos, Vitkus, or Vitkes on the web and here’s what I found:
1. Vitkis: My first impression as to the spelling was- vitkis
a) Practitioners are called Vitkis.They use symbols to manipulate elemental and subconscious forces through conscious will. It is a very powerful form of magic and very dangerous if practiced without proper training and attention.
b) The Story of a Viking large bowls, and the vitkis blessed the gathering with their ... that his soul might find its way to the afterlife in that manner. ...
2. Vitkas: turning to finer tuning of thirteen, the number of which vitkis* and vitkas fly and dream.
3. Vitkus:
a) Academy of the Soul, Earth Campus. $34.99 - Accent on Science (4).. by John Vitkus.
b) Voices stir the heart and soul ... Marci Vitkus of the Jewish Center of Venice
4. Vitkos: a) By equating Mind with Soul Vitkos apparently believes that he has succeeded in negating the soul
5. Vitkes: The email for this site is The Witches Gathering is a non-profit organization here to help the people of our Mother Earth. We protect there freedom of life and religion.,
What are the odds of being given only one word to remember and then using 5 different spellings to get soul references each time. Later my friend contacted me and he told me an executive named Vitcos from the acquiring company met with him.
It seems my soul delivered on multiple levels- 1. The dream was accurate about an impending acquisition which was provable. 2. It was provable in that my friend found the offer appealing, 3. Provable that five spelling of Vitkis turned up soul or related references. 4. There was a provable Vitcos involved in the acquisition. I’d call that indisputable proof. Is it indisputable proof for you? I went on to have several other dreams that answered questions on how to be a better person. One of the dreams resulted in a major intentional behavior modification.
"Is it indisputable proof for you?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNope, it's completely disputable. First, you're a random, anonymous commenter on the web. I therefore have no reason to believe there isn't a single word in your comment that isn't made up.
Second, you seem to be the kind of person who is interested in woo (specifically soul-themed woo), so it's entirely likely that in your readings of woo-books you've encountered the word "vitkus" before and it just came up in your subconscious. In fact, I decided to do a quick search of Edgar Cayce & vitkus, and most of the links were for Cayce' books being sold alongside the work of John Vitkus. If you've shopped for Cayce' work on the web, you've no doubt seen the word before.
Third, it's possible that you'd heard from your friend or connected friends about the acquisition and that happened to be the subject of your dream. Perhaps you zipped past his status of "Vitcos Inc wants to buy my company! Wooo!" on Facebook without paying close attention to it?
Oh, and if the word "vitkus" is a soul-related word, it doesn't seem all that improbable that searching for it would find soul-related themes. Although, #5 is stretching it...
Here's the problem: you're attempting to apply some level of skeptical and/or scientific thinking to your query, and that's commendable! The problem is you failed fundamentally on many levels. You have no controls. You have a limited dataset (a single person's single dream). Worse, YOU are the dataset. Your researcher (you) is already heavily biased towards trying to find a soul. You already concluded there was a soul, and you were going to prove it to everyone else. So, you performed a single experiment, found results that fit your data and made your conclusions. The problem is, there are other, rather mundane, possible reasons for your dream as I've laid out above.
You have to come up with some better, tighter parameters to your experiment before even you should believe the outcome, let alone expect anyone else to. Allow me to suggest you watch "The problem with anecdotes" by QualiaSoup on YouTube as a good starting point. It's a good, 10-minute overview of the problems with your "study":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPqerbz8KDc
"People who can read in a dream will still report that the text is not stable; if they look away and then back, it says something different or there's no longer any writing there"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI read in my dreams all the time, and it is usually pretty stable, and it is always an enjoyable text, but not very logically written(now i know why).
There is a lack of scientific knowledge about dreams among psychologists. Perception is the interaction of the field set up by our sense organs with the fields set up by the external objects. The sense organs are like ions. Once they interact with the external field, they change their charge and transmit the response in the opposite direction. These stored charges (like a stable atom) are memory. Perception interacts with this memory to create what is called knowledge. During dreams, this interaction with the external field is cut off. Hence the memories recombine in various stages leading to a different type of perception just like the internal dynamics of an atom. Since these are not related to external fields, they are free from the limitations imposed by these fields. Thus, we see many scenes in dream that are physically impossible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrying to manipulate dreams is nothing but attempts to tamper with the memory. Since it cannot be controlled (as we do not and cannot have the knowledge of the total dynamics affecting the sense organs at any given instant - something akin to the uncertainty relation of physics), it can be dangerous. In fact it is unethical and should be banned as a criminal offence.
More on this can be had from mbasudeba@gmail.com.
2 things: If I wake up for some reason before some dreams can conclude their story/meaning, I have terrible piercing headaches. It is absolutely necessary to go back to sleep to complete the message. Secondly, I know that I must find some aspect of relevant personal meaning in that dream, it keeps coming to mind when I'm awake, until I have a light bulb moment, In addition, my dreams are always analogous such that light bulb moments or pertinence comes only via reflection and interpretation. My dream content seems to me to be a lesson in a confusing, sometimes repetitive story, and when I am open to them even throughout the day, a meaning may 'pop' from out of the blue. There have been instances when these pops occur years later and I am amazed at the clever analogy and at the consolation the dream offered me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy dreams are supportive of me, never condemning, sometimes bringing clarity to emotional issues I haven't thought about for a long time - like it was waiting all this time for a gentler moment; kind in essence and totally unrelenting. To me, it seems there really is an other entity to my 'I'; a smart one, albeit circuitous and confusing to the awakened me. Sounds rather dis-associative, that.
The Bible speaks repeatedly of Yahveh inducing dreams in his prophets, and promises his people that they will dream special dreams. The teach yourself sorcerer course in the Carlos Castaneda series of books advises to watch your own hands in a dream as a way to activate the power of dreaming. I've heard repeatedly: "Be careful of what you desire, as desires are most often fulfilled". For a self-administered wild psychoanalisis of dreaming, watch the movie "Forbidden Planet". Salud +
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly one mention of Stephen LaBerge in the entire article.... Well, I guess that would make sense as it's not about lucid dreams, but is about controlling one's dreams.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've had a number of lucid dreams and can say it's everything it's cracked up to be. You're living in a whole other world in your mind. Not to sound like a bot, but you can learn a whole lot more about lucid dreams and opportunities to control (not just influence) your dreams at the Dream Views online lucid dreaming community: http://www.dreamviews.com/
Well there you go... I used to think that everyone had lucid dreams...from the minute my head hits the pillow I can see geometric designs evolving on my eyelids, I just relax and I can feel the dreams starting...of course I dont know the timing of this, I have directed dreams, put music in, made the wind blow, once made heavy farm equipment "dance" on the streets of Vancouver just in front of the Art Gallery, had the sun go down... these dreams are very satisfying but not as restful as just a regular dream where you can tweak odd things happening...bring in a certain person in a scene , just because it looks good, or taste something, because you have been reading an atmospheric book like The Fig Eater, I consider myself lucky and skilled at dreaming and it almost always gives me 2 days in 24 hours
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClyde Machine - Good point re. dream control. It could be my fault: I entered comment #1 about not remembering dreams except temporarily during nicotine patch smoking cessation therapy, which produced lucid dreams (wearing the patch during sleep). You see, if you can't remember your dreams there's no way to control them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIMO, there's no motivation to control your dreams if you don't remember them.
Moreover, since my more than 30 year career as a creative problem solver was highly successful, I personally can only conclude that controlling dreams is not necessary to solve very difficult problems.
From this perspective, I suggest that people who remember their dreams can become troubled by them and feel that they must 'resolve' the issues encountered in their dreams to improve their lives. Perhaps some researchers should develop a method to prevent people from remembering their dreams. That should resolve people's issues with dreams and might even sell a few books.
For the longest time I thought that everyone could change their dreams...I started when I was in grade 6...too much Twilight Zone,,,50 years ago that was heavy stuff...anyway I kept having nightmares...dolls calling me from the attic...one night it just came to me that I was able to shift the movie ever so slightly and move past the s cary stuff..Since then Ive learned how to direct a dream, adding music, tasting food,bringing up the sun, adding or deleting characters, while I can direct a dream, right now I am working on the predream part... feeling the move from the geometric pictures on your inner eyelids as you relax totally moving into the dream "proper"maybe unknowing self hypnosis?? dont know but 95 % of the time I look forward to a delightful, srtange dream...I thought dreams were just your inner self entertaing you...taking you to other places and situations so you can decide how to respond in a safe place
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe rampant LSD use in the 1960s changed western culture forever. This next decade there will be a DMT revolution. It's already started. Do some research. Read about it. Try it if someone offers it to you. Be ready. Next level of humanity on the way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere's a Tibetan Buddhist practice called 'dream yoga' which involves intense meditational concentration in the process of falling asleep, it can result in lucid dreaming as one of the outcomes. My only experience of trying this on a retreat led to a strange feeling of having been partially aware through the whole night, yet feeling refreshed as after a long, deep sleep, with a lucid interval in which I was able to 'float' between waking and sleeping states and have some control on events in the dream. Interesting article and line of research.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's funny but this subject came up a few weeks ago when my wife and I were talking. I can control the path of the dream when it starts to head in a direction I don't want. It's like a conscious decision that I don't like the direction and this is where we're going to go instead.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just assumed everyone could do this but apparently not!
Here's my two cents: I have had many lucid dreams, but only remembered to try to control a few, and have only had partial success at control once. In that dream, I realized I was dreaming while standing on a ladder (like one to get out of a pool) outside a large gazebo (about the width of a residential street, maybe 20 feet tall) with lots of rock structures inside it. I started levitating (as has happened in previous dreams) and flew into the gazebo. I tried to control what direction I was flying in, and had some success, being able to change direction by focusing on a specific location, but I couldn't really control speed and would crash into the structures. It was as if I was fighting for control over my body with someone else, and the next day I had a somewhat nasty dream, which I jokingly chalk up to part of my brain getting revenge for me taking the controls from it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI really hope someone comes up with a way to record dreams, so that I could record my dreams and show them to my friends (cheaper than going to the movies, and usually far more interesting).
I have had lucid dreams, quite nice. The level of detail is as the real world, with flowers having fragrances and the detail incredible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also measured the length of the dream and calculated 1 minute in the dream world is equivalent to 1 second in the real-world. I did this by finding out the longest ever recorded dream was 20 seconds. So assuming this was correct and my own time keeping was good this figure is accurate, I did not use a watch, much like i dont need to in real life to measure time.
Other intersting dream things ive tested and done include :
1.dying.. this is quite interesting. My favourite was fighting a bunch of ninja's. Unfortunately i didnt know how to use a sword and subsequently died. Next time ill do some dream training before hand...
2. Joining 2 dreams together, basically going back into the same dream and continuing it after it has finished and you know you are coming out of it.
3. sleep walking. Again interesting, you have full control, know youre in the dream state yet the view you see is the real world, not the lucid dream world. You have knowledge of action and consequence in it. So people who kill people in a sleep-walk know what they are doing, enough said on that defence. They may not know afterwards...but during you do.
Once in the lucid state i found it easy to get whatever i wanted, just by thinking about it in the dream and there it was when i turned or looked for it. Its one of the best traits of lucid dreaming.
Sigmund Freud discovery about dreaming was that dreams are just symbolic or not so hidden fulfillment of desires, the code linking the symbols to the things they represent being known only to the dreamer, besides some universal and culture-specific symbols. Ramon Sarro, MD, proposed that delusions and hallucinations of psychotics were daytime dreams, acting also as fulfillment of desires. Psychiatrists spent years trying to understand the symbolization inside delusions and hallucinations; when drugs able to blunt these symptoms appeared, all interest in interpretation was lost, and now the study of neuromediators and genes takes the lead
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjgrosay - IMO, there is no benefit to dream manipulation other than making one feel less disturbed by remembered dream events and preventing sleep disruption.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIMO, these benefits can be more directly gained if dreams are not remembered.
I suspect that much of what occurs during sleep and dreaming is directly analogous to the offline maintenance and reorganization databases. During online operation, data is stored as quickly as possible, with little regard to efficient storage use or retrieval performance. During offline maintenance, unnecessary data is deleted and data is reorganized to optimize retrieval performance and/or minimize storage usage.
This optimization can include establishing links between related information and further encoding repetitive data. During this process, an anecdotal event memory could become a series of links to common experiences. In this way past memories can become slightly altered to represent new memories. Many other processes and effects could be attributed to sleep state memory optimization.
Conscious awareness of these processes is not likely necessary. Dreams may represent merely an entertaining distraction while the necessary memory maintenance is being performed. They may also include snippets of memories being recalled for use in new memory storage.
It may even be possible that the repetition of old memories during dream sequences promotes their priority storage, increasing the probability of future recall. In this way simply allowing the necessary optimization of memories during sleep without conscious dreaming can by itself relieve self induced perpetuation of disturbing memories.
At any rate, I do not think that dream remembrances or dream management and control likely offers any significant benefit to the dreamer.
I suggest that anyone who has a extremely difficult problem that must be solved, such as the development of a grand unified theory of physics, try LSD therapy. I expect it could produce more imaginative problem solutions.
jtdwyer...Howdy! I went through a stage a few years ago, and smoking pot makes dreams much harder to remember. When you quit, the dreams become extremely vivid for awhile. I've also confirmed this with others.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen something goes wrong in a dream, when falling for example, I find that I can always wake myself up. Sometimes it is a struggle, but it always works. I also seem to always have awareness that I am dreaming, especially when a dead person is in the dream.
Rain 3 evenings in a row!!!
Cheers.
For me, usually 1 out of 8 dreams has been partly lucid, but I can't actually control anything in the dream, and then pretty soon I forget that I'm just dreaming, and the dream isn't lucid anymore. I'd really like to start controlling my lucid dreams.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnotslic - Howdy back to ya! Right around 1970 I discovered pot in Viet Nam, then hashish in Germany. It's been a long time now, but from what I remember waking and dream states can vividly converge...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs sleep seems like such a waste of what little time we have on this planet, I relish dreaming, as it's an opportunity to 'experience' while sleeping.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have found that taking the amino acid tryptophan before going to bed helps me dream more. (If you're having uncontrollable nightmares, you might not want to try it.)
I've tried to have lucid dreams after I first read the article, but I haven't had much luck. Any other ways to have lucid dreams?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFreud's book on dreams (100 years ag0) demonstrated tht drams can be manufactured to order
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am still trying to figure out what the reason behind wanting controlling the dreams. Dreams according to psychologists are supposed to be for an outlet of emotional feelings and being able figure out situations subconsciously
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI lucid dream all the time and I love it. I have never tried to produce it, it just happens. The topic of my dreams vary widely. Most if the time something irrational happens, back in school, quick change of place, cars I don't own, etc.. That is my clue that if it isn't possible or rational it must be a dream and I start to have fun with it. When a dream plays out differently than I would like, I simply rewind it like a tape and start the dream over and change it so it has a different out come. I also have what I call recursive dreaming. In my dream I fall asleep and then I have a real dream where I don't know it is a dream. When I wake up in the dream it takes me a few minutes to realize that I didn't really wake up from dreaming, I woke up from a dream with-in a dream. It is fun,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder if most people don't dream this way and the difference is that I remember it and they don't.
Please, let's all ignore the postings of jerks like the one above for Nikeshoes.....they are just another form of SPAM and should be treated like any other unauthorized intruder by loyal Scientific American readers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThose adds are most annoying. I always hit "Report Abuse", but it doesn't seem to do any good.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just hope I don't start having nightmares about it......
i find that logging my dreams in a notebook by my bedside - first thing when i wake up is very helpful in influencing my dreams. first, it made me realize how much i really dream and that i can influence the type and quality of my dreams a lot. i've noticed not only how my waking state influences my dreams, but how much my dreams influence my waking state.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnce I had experienced lucid dreaming I found my dreams were rather dull and uninformative. I can recommend the film "Waking Life" as a more entertaining and interesting presentation than I could muster.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot discussed in the interview are some of the other interesting things that can happen while asleep.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have had many hundreds of "visions", somewhat similar to dreams, of future events. Sometimes they are like a color moving picture, showing in sharp detail exactly the experience I will be seeing in the future, while other times they are more like normal dreams, but warning me of future threats to my well being.
I know that some of those who do not experience these things have hyothesized that these types of dreams are sparked by concerns we unknowingly have of imminent events, but I have had dreams warning me of specific things that can potentially happen, with people I have not met yet and in places I have not been to yet, many decades into the future. As a senior citizen, it has been remarkable to see things come to pass that I dreamt about, in detail, thirty and more years previously.
I think these sorts of things happen in families, since I have seen things come to pass that my Father warned me about decades ago. Likewise, my Mother and child have experienced amazing, "impossible", things.
So for me the discussion is not so much about dreams and dreaming, but about the tremendous, mostly untapped potential of the brain to do things that we have barely begun to understand.
I would love to have some feedback. I have attempted to start conversations with trained professionals many times over the years, and it seems that not enough is known in this field to even have a conversation.
About half of my dreams are lucid and have been so for decades. Yet in a large majority of the dreams I do not exert control over the lucid dreams. I think both the frequency of my lucid dreams and letting the dream flow without control comes from 39 years of practicing Buddhist vipassana insight meditation. In concentration meditation you exert super control over the wandering mind to focus exclusively on one object, a word, image, breath, body movement, etc. In mindfulness insight meditation after achieving a fairly strong level of concentration on one primary object you observe how all body movements, sensations, thoughts, emotions, images, intentions arise and fade away avoiding enablement in perceptional content. The method goes to the millisecond level of mental process beyond the labeling mind to experience the spike waves of the sensory and thought process of the nervous system. This is called the rise and fall level of insight. Deeper insights at smaller units of time follow leading to the First Path moment of Nirvana. Often when there is danger in my dreams without intent suddenly it is not longer my figure in the dream but someone with whom I am identifying who gets the trouble or death. I think this ability to detach but stay observing the dream come from the detachment of insight meditation. I often have prophetic dream about future world events. I dreamed about the 9-11 terrorism two night before. People who meditate tend to have more prophetic dreams. Someone should research the role of meditation on dreams. While generally the images in dreams should be interpreted as aspects of ones own mind and behavior there is the collective aspect like Jung emphasized. For example once a friend on a camp out suggested that we both affirm at bedtime that we contact each other in our dreams. In both of our dreams there was a segment in which the scene changes and he comes giving me a book. Then the scene gets back to the former scenario. Dream contact with other humans and other beings in other realms of existence are common. The night Dr. Carl Jung died his friend Sir Laurens Vander Post on board a ship at sea dreamed he saw Jung on a high mountain pass at the top of a mountain with light shining on him and Jung waved at Laurens and then turned and went over the pass out of sight. In dreams and meditation our personal subconscious can access transpersonal levels of insight.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI learned to control my dreams at an early age do to numerous night terrors involving abduction by aliens. In order to escape the horror of the abduction I would look for a way to escape the dream..... I learn to search within a dream for a departure point . I found that by jumping off buildings within my dream would reawaken me to this reality. The cases of night terrors did not decrease however my fear decreased enabling me to remain in the dream in a state of lucidity . I gained the ability to fly in my dreams and control other factors within the dream. As time went by I could also feel things ....cold versus hot , movement sensations when flying, taste,(ate bacon ) smell and hear things. I also could read text and hold dream positions in order to prevent change of dream content.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I was older I came across books written by Carlos Castaneda called "THE ART OF DREAMING". In this books it speaks of lucid dreaming but moves much deeper into the idea of alternate realities and the movement of what is called the assemblage point. One of the keys to lucid dreaming being the stabilization of one dream by focusing on an object in your dream like your hands. Another interesting side to lucid dream control is the levels of dreams you can enter in order to move into dream realities with much more intense impressions of lucidity or reality. Once you can control your dreams try to choose within the dream to fall asleep within that dream . Upon doing so you wake up in another dream which is even more real than the previous. This is different than just changing the dream content or plot it has overtures to different realities.
Okay...someone tell me why I was dreaming that my brother was just getting home and he was unlocking the door; Then i wake up and seconds later he is at the back door trying to get in. That's weird?!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSeveral commentators claim to have controlled their lucid dreams at an early age. I claim to have not remembered my dreams for many decades. However, I do recall repeated nights when I was young when, just after going to bed, I found myself floating in the air near the ceiling. I could look around and see the window and everything in the room in normal detail. I presumed I had entered some special conscious state, but I could have been dreaming. Another thing I noticed was that my family's voices seemed really loud, like they were screaming and violently arguing. However, one night I screamed at them to stop arguing so I could get some sleep - my Mom opened my door to calmly tell me I was just having a bad dream. Dream or not, I don't really think they were talking loudly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt any rate, after becoming frustrated by these weird incidents I just made my mind up to not repeat them. And I didn't. And, I hardly ever remembered my dreams, either. Or, perhaps I had also controlled my dreams at an early age...
if you are able to control emotions and divert them in creative thought , dreams may vanished, giving yoy good sound sleep. for contR.olling thought one should practice VIPASANYA
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe author states that dreams sometimes respond in a "vaguely nonsensical kind of way". My clinical observation is that dreams seem never to be nonsensical, only obscure. When I analyze a patient's dream using a disciplined approach which includes seeking the patient's spontaneous associations to each important image (and accepting the first association which is linked to affect) then the dream has an uncanny ability to pinpoint psychological issues which the patient needs to explore, and to offer commentary which is presently accessible and useful to that patient. I only consider an interpretation to be accurate if the patient has a sudden emotional or visceral response to it ("Oh yes! that's right!" or a sudden blush or tears or relaxation of muscle tension). This approach to dream interpretation was developed by Jung and, in America, by Edward Whitmont. Jung's use of associations differed from Freud's. I explain dream interpretation in more detail in, for example, an online paper at www.jungny.com/quad4web.html (under the subheading "Purpose and dreams").
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaxson J McDowell
www.jungny.com
I have found that I can test for whether I'm dreaming by simply closing my eyes - if the scene changes when I open them, I'm dreaming. Over the years, I've found that doing anything other than gently steering the dream will awaken me. However, I can change the channel, as it were, by closing/opening my eyes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo actually confirm an event as real needs lots of people experiencing the events. Then using statistical analysis you can get a probability of it being an actual event.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom a relativity perspective you can see the future/past and have it interact with you and it will not change the present.
Some of the posts over here simply don't talk about dreams, but about OBE (Out of the Body Experiences); like the one up here that says that he remembers himself floating in his bedroom or the one that talks about "alien abductions". There is a big difference between dreaming and having an OBE; You can have control over the total experience in an OBE and go wherever you want to go but you cannot do that in a dream. The article (and the movie itself) talks about dreaming but mixing it out w/ things that can only happen in an OBE.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi Mainthing - I can identify with ur experience
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI recently had confirmation of the science of my dream experiences when I watched Gregg Bradens video about the "Divine Matrix" on youtube
why someone would like to control his dreams? is the only part of our life where we are free of any control. I don`t understand..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhy someone would like to control his dreams? is the only part of our life where we are free of any control. I don`t understand..And if someone has nightmares it means that the cause is in our awakened controled life, not in our dreams
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisControlling our nightmares is something the CIA is most skilled at.. and installing repetitive thoughts as in commercial jingles that control our daydreams....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswe can Control Dreams!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisif want see your lover or etc.... on dream
when you sleep turn on alarm(30 minute) then sleep, when it will on Turn Off and think about your lover think
think then u see your dream.
wow is all i have to say that is an amazing artical i hope the writer is reading this!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisvjklsdklfsdjfjaljdilfjkljklsjljkljkljlcrui5pe4ig7e95itkigododktuiruitououioueiouoeiocujkljojnouq8opfpopw[ koptillloiopioojl
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI really liked 2 learn how 2 control dreams or not. u see when i grow up i want 2 be a marine biologist and study the brain activity of the deep sea creatures and studing this has helping me 2 undersand what i need 2 study.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIm not reealy sure what i want to accomplish by posting this just dont really know anyone who dreams like i have.When i was really young i had a reoccuring dream of just simply the dark path i had to walk with the scary vibrant neon lighting just barely giving off reflections off little objects along the path and my grandmother told me that if i was scared in my dream i could wake myself by shutting my eyes as hard as i could in my dream and when i opened them i would wake.well it worked and started me on a journey through dreams my entire life.The shutting my eyes trick worked in every dream.This being said i was now aware i was dreaming every dream i had after that.I noticed that throughout my life every reoccuring dream wouldnt go away until i solved the problem. I looked at them as levels in a video game just realistic.Every level i progressed,produced a harder and much more realistic atmosphere.the second reoccuring dream was the normal scary man chasing u and u running for dear life scenario.i didnt like this dream at all even though i had an escape at my will and knowing it was just a dream.it was just thha creepy feeling that i didnt like i was young lol.I haadto turn around and makee friends with him..happened to be a freddy looking character.but it was that simple just to man up and take control.On to the next level.This Level actaully lasted through at least two years of my life.every dream started in the front yard of my grandmothers house at this point the dreams i was having had a slight haze not true Hi-def but visible.I ventured anywhere and everywhere.Doing something new every time i would dream.Grandmas yard was getting boring walking into houses going into backyards breaking rules because i knew no consequences in my world so being curious and not fond of authority i would just do it.Cant remember exactly how i came into a weeble wobble flight that landed me some 20 30 feet from grannys yard but that got my atttention quick. So from then on every bit of dreaming was spent trying to fly from my grandmas yard.In my dreams i alsoo coach myself kinda talk to myself like thinking out loud so to speak.I was having problems flying and would get frustrated in dream grunting and straining.No va or no go rather. The best id get was a wobly float then drop..until without thought just did it.That ended my grannys front yard level.Ill tell u wat im running out of room to write but my dreams after grandmas is what led me to believe that all the lucid dream practice starting young opened the TRUE HD dreams..not 4 the weak
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisContinued from below..My very next reoccuring dream was by far the biggest jump i wasnt expecting.In this dream So crystal clear unlike any dream i had prior.This one my ability to escape was takin away it was so real. took place on a SandDune in really clean Sand but miles of it like an arabian desert from aladdin with high dunes. It was a bunch of my friends and it kinda had the face of a bunker built in the dune but i wasnt paying attention to iit the first time i was paying attention to military jeep driving erratic in the distance with a gunner shooting towards us.I noticed my friend a lil down from me and being used to escaping you get used to just reacting without fear. So my first instinct was to run down towards my friend also towards the oncoming jeep and big bullets.Mind you this dream was crystal clear hi-def sound picture feelings of heat...i overshot my friend and decided to run towards the gunner kinda do a run and dive into a bit of sand with gimmick and abort mission..well wouldnt work.I heard the bullets hitting the sand right past each ear i then felt the hit to one shoulder then the next and the last bullet hit my chest waking me up drenched entire bed body soaked.took me three times to figure this one out.hah again simply just had to forget the gunner and lead my friendss into the bunker not even a long journey just went in around the other side of dune.Bunker entrance led me into a house nothing xtravagent dream ended. no more dunes.I had two more dreams and didnt want to dream anymore till i read some blogs this evening.The next dream i walked into a hospital room where my grandfather was lifeless i knelt beside his bed and just cried i didnt see him before he passed and that was wat brought the overwhelming feeling of sadness and thats all i did the entire dream i woke up with tears in my eyes. A week later grandpa was picked up rushed to emergency in an ambulance having trouble breathing.I didnt go cause i was not even trying to have my first premonition and it be my grandfathers passing..no thanks..hes ok today.weak but alive :}. The last level i experienced I didnt know i fell asleep lying on my back next to my GF.I couldnt talk couldnt move but i was watching from above able to see myself and my gf with her back to me.I didnt like the lack of freedom nor the feeling that something was going to happen to me if i didnt figure this one out.The only idea i had was to try to concentrate on a body part and try to twitch or make noise to be woken.struggled.i watched my gf roll over slow and wake me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thislast post....That was the most scarred i had been in any dream or real life for that matter..After this experience i came up with a theory..How far fetched is it..that through lucid dreaming possibly opening up more use of the brain maby exposing or opening you to a more spiritual tuneup with ur body. Like normal dreamers kinda just sit back press play and watch the movie whether u seen it or not still the same ending..Well n theory wouldnt lucid dreamers create new endings every time they dream.like those pick ur own adventure books.Wouldnt lucid dreamers that have been practicing a long time such as myself be working out there brain alot more for instance lets say i am having the same reoccuring dream as you at the same time. u press play and ur brain goes couch potato where i might be bored of the dream and decide to enter my neighbors house ive never been in before..thus makin my brain randomly generate the people what they look like and for every room or unexplored territory i go to my brain would be forced to create detailed people i might never of met.im sure its possible my brain could have a storage of every person i loook at passing by in a car or whatever,that it can recreate on a whim to fill the random journeys id go on but point being brain is working over time and my out of body experience and the gradual increase in dream difficulty tests as i figured each dream puzzle out really pushed my belief in my theory from personal experience.I believe that some people couldnt handle seeing the future or handle the pressure mentaly. Maby dreams open a gateway or subject u to higher levels of feelings or ur ESP depending on how much u can handle mentally.Tested through dreams maby lucid dreaming is how ur brain opens the harder the tests the more u train ur brain to be able to handle . The human brain is the bigest mystery of all..Any thoughts or information personal knowledge is much appreciated..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, what causes dreaming is DMT in your body. It's just like what they call a 'drug'. When you intake DMT in a strong amount, it puts you in a dream state, but awake. The more DMT you intake, smoke, the less you remember of the dream. So, the less the more you remember. Same with dreams while asleep. It's just the brain's natural DMT.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, what causes dreaming is DMT in your body. It's just like what they call a 'drug'. When you intake DMT in a strong amount, it puts you in a dream state, but awake. The more DMT you intake, smoke, the less you remember of the dream. So, the less the more you remember. Same with dreams while asleep. It's just the brain's natural DMT.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst - being fully rested is not conducive to lucid dreaming. In fact, that is why most narcoleptics experience sleep paralysis and lucid dreams, etc. They don't get adequate sleep which leaves the line between sleep and awake very blurred. Second - I don't get why people don't use narcoleptics to experiment in this area as they are doing these things every night on their own without any help or influence from anyone. It's just the way they are built. Such a big duh...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPer-maybe-impossible, say there were rational grounds for believing lucid dreams could not exist? How, for a start, would so many who believe they've had them, respond? Well, inquisitively, throwing caution to the wind (whose colo/ur have the dreams of the blind) here's one such mischievous effort.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe difference between imagining you're flying/drowning and dreaming you are, is that unlike imagining it, when you're dreaming you're flying/drowning, you're not aware that you're not flying/drowning. Be it from the abeyance of one's critical acumen or not, the dreamer, qua dreamer, embraces the "reality" of the dream sequence's content. A (non-Sartrean) existential affirmation, if you like. And, it makes nightmares seriously possible.
However, since the standard idea of a dream is that normally what therein appears to be the case actually isn't, at the same time to lucidly recognise your dream as just that, is to stop believing it, or affirming its content as "real". But, there cannot be both an existential denial and affirmation of the same experienced dream content at the same time. So lucid dreams can't exist.
Something's wrong. I suspect the time factor, let alone the presumed singularity of subjective integrity.
I do not agree with moenus in that you cannot realize the dream is not real while still dreaming because as he says you are not dreaming if you are not in a state of existential denial. You can be dreaming, know at parts of the dream you are dreaming, and therefore lead the outcome of the dream and still be dreaming. I guess my response is that I don’t believe you have to be in a state of "existential denial" to be in a dream state.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo I wanted to share my short story and see if it is of any interest to anyone.
I am 50 now, and when I was in Junior high school I was fairly happy, had friends and was in a fairly healthy environment in an upper middle class family. When I got in 11th grade someone started some false rumors about me that made me very self-conscious in school. I drew away from my friends and lost my confidence and began to drink heavy and party for the next few years. Needless to say I struggled my first 2 years in college and was not happy other than the partying I thought was fun at the time.
I transferred schools and in my third year of college I started to get my act together and took some very interesting courses, one on cults and religions, which dealt some in dreams, another in behavioral psychology.
Over the next 3 years I was able to have dreams that I was able to control the outcome. I would dream about my high school days but I dreamed I was friends with everyone and was very popular and was great in sports. I would also dream I could float above my body and I would float throughout my house while sleeping. Within the first time I started dreaming that way I gained a ton of self-confidence and my life changed dramiticly. I got all good grades from there out, made many friends in real life and became very successful in my job after college. I went on to law school and have enjoyed my practice for 24 years now, am happily married with 3 kids. But I no longer can dream like that.
In 2002 I was in serious car accident and was on heavy pain medication for years. I still have to take various medications. I believe that has kept me from having solid viable dreams for years now. My dreams are more like colors now or just emotions and moving around people.
I wish I could do what I did back then. In the early 80s at the time I did a decent amount of cocaine and booze on the weekends and then usually just rested on Sundays. It was usually Sunday and Monday nights that I had the best dreams. But alas that was many years ago and I only take what the doc prescribes now. I wonder if I will ever have great dreams like I did in the early to mid 80s.
I have actually been able to control my dreams. The point leading up to it is the point I do not understand. Usually, before I am able to control a dream, I am close to waking up. It just randomly occurs to me while I am dreaming, that I am dreaming. This point is random and I have no clue what influences it. But as soon as I realise I am dreaming, I am able to control my dream just fine. I have made people disappear, and I have done some random things. It is actually pretty fun being able to control your dream, and I would do it more often if I could, but as I said, I do not know how to get to that point. Any ideas?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI usually stop the falling by making some sort of giant bird (usually it's an eagle) fly under me and pick me up and fly off.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with your suggestions for BUOFBO's approach. What stood out to me in keeping with your findings is the subject of following what I believe you may have been alluding to: the Scientific Process. If a hypothesis (BUO's bias) is not balanced with a null-hypothesis pursued with equal vigor, then as I am sure you're both aware of, see which wins. Everything else Spoon that you said I agree with as well. It only sounded like you were starting on the "scientific process" on a less formal "study". So anyway, I figure thats why you didn't find what I've mentioned here applicable. A tip of the hat to both of you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs long as I can remember, I've been having this dream about a pool filled with sharks and me always being afraid to jump in. After getting fed up with this reoccurring dream, I made a mental note to jump in. And when I had the dream again, something told me I HAD TO jump in so I did and after that, I haven't dreamed about it since :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey say we cannot control our dreams. Is it just that some people can and some can't? I have controlled plenty of my dreams. I have always been a lucid dreamer. I got to the point where I could make my dream be what I wanted it to be about, and change some factors if I wished. If I wasn't focused on the dream, then the dream just carried me. I always thought that was weird, being able to control your dreams.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI love to see that global awareness about lucid dreaming is growing every day all around the world. Many people started playing with it just because of curiosity but after some time realized it is a part of bigger picture like meditation and spirituality is. World is changing, many times i feel it is going wrong way but events and people like these are bringing back hope that eventually truth and general well being will be on first place. I am editor of website about lucid dreaming where I tend to teach people about this phenomena. Many don't even know about it, some heard but didn't know what it is and big majority is thrilled when figure out that everyone can learn to be lucid. If you are interested, [url=http://lucid-dreaming-guide.com]Lucid Dreaming Guide[/url] by Emma Rose.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCheers
lucid-dreaming-guide.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisever sense i can remember i have been able to control my dreams,it stared when i was say 5 or so.In my dream i would be in my bed looking at my dad stand in the door way watching me and then this beast would appear above me,the beast would squeeze my rips so hard i could feel the pain it actually hurt i would scream out for help but my dad would do nothing. I had that dream every night till i was 9 or 10 then i learned hey im dreaming and i don't like this so what i would do in that dream was make a snow angel while this beast was squeezing me and i would wake up, never had that dream again. Then something weird happened, every time i would dream i would know i was dreaming i could do anything, but the people in my dream also knew i was dreaming they would all say "Hey its Justin this is his dream" and they all wanted to meet me. I'm 24 now and i have created a complete dream world with people i know and people i don't know (in real life)it is almost like another world these people in my dreams will go on and tell me about their day while i was awake like they were real and living a real life. sometimes i even will get mad at these people and tell them "you are not real this is just a dream" and they will respond "what do you know about reality." My dreams are like everyday real life meaning they continue where they left off the night before, day to day like real life. I love dreaming :) any replies are appreciated
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo how are some ways to help control your dreams. Because I sometimes to have dreams or that i dont just remember? but please give me some ways
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting article. I'm a long time lucid dreamer myself, and I've also practiced various dream control techniques. I agree with the group of experts claiming that dreams aren't really mirrors of our subconsciousness. They are models of the world, formed by our assumptions, motivations and expectations. We CAN and SHOULD alter these models if there is something wrong with them (e.g. managing nightmares or solving problems).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the other side, creating or seeing dream characters in our dreams might be a truly interesting insight into our own self, as in many cases they represent certain elements of our psyche.
________________________
"We need men who can dream of things that never were."John F. Kennedy
Learn <a href="http://howtocontroldreams.com">How To Control Dreams</a>
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