# Lucid Dreaming > General Lucid Discussion >  >  Negative Long Term Effects Of Lucid Dreaming?

## daxamite

Hello all,

I am one of those lucky few who has the natural ability to have lucid dreams. So much so, that I had them several times a night (2 out of 3 dreams) every night for a number of weeks. However, I decided to stop because of the potential harm I may have been doing to my brain.

Thus far, I have only witnessed one side-effect from doing this. The continuing use of super-powers in non-lucid dreams. While on the surface this does not seem very negative, it does raise a question about long term effects. 

For example, I felt like I had no creative ability so in my dreams I gave myself the ability to manifest objects. My brain had to compensate and dissolve the objects to get the message across. However, since this can never happen in real life, there is no way from my brain to "drive the message home".

My question is this: Do lucid dreams prevent those powerful "message" dreams from happening, even when the dream isn&#39;t lucid any longer? Those scary dreams where we feel like we are falling or being chased: aren&#39;t those needed? (So the brain can process a feeling?)

What other long-term effects does lucid dreaming have?


Thanks for any info,

James

----------


## Mikekan

lucid dreams dont harm you in any way and there are no negative effects. If anything its healthy

----------


## Oneiro

With a lucid age of 0-2 months, you don&#39;t have the experience to make such a statement.

----------


## tai

Those are actually some very interesting questions.

A girl who taught me a lot about Lucid Dreaming always used to say: "Just make sure that you have regular dreams now and then&#33;"

There must be value to non-lucid dreams - maybe as you say, the brain has to work through stuff.  For myself, even when I am Lucid (which is not every night), I never have total control anyway - there will always be surprises and things I can&#39;t change, so I&#39;ve never worried about it.

You sound like you are among the very small percentage of people who Lucid Dream every night.  So yes, its probably good that you give yourself a break every so often and let yourself have regular dreams.  Like I said, I do believe that non-Lucid dreams are there for a reason.

For most of us, its a lot easier to become un-Lucid than stay Lucid, so I wish you the same luck&#33;   ::wink:: 

And welcome to Dreamviews, by the way&#33;

----------


## italianmonkey

you could just decide "let it go" sometimes for a while. it may feel a little "yess let&#39;s watch that terrible nightmare with a bowl of popcorn", but i suppose it would do the job anyway.
(i don&#39;t really have that problem because, though "natural" too, i have lots of normal dreams,so i did what i wrote very few times - mostly before exams or so on )

----------


## BeautifulDreamer

Lucid Dreams and regular dreams are in no way different besides the fact you know you&#39;re dreaming. Your mind still creates *every single thing.* Even if you &#39;make&#39; something with dream control, it is an expression of yourself, as even if we think we are &#39;concious&#39; in a dream, we never really truly are, there&#39;s still that little part of you stuck in a complete and regular dream.

If it&#39;s message dreams you want, I suggest (if you have moderatley good dream control.) that you make yourself &#39;paralyzed&#39; as in you&#39;re still lucid, but the dream moves you around where it wants you to go, do, etc, but since you&#39;re lucid, you can still observe and think what you want to think.

Message dreams aren&#39;t much of a calling for me. I think dreams mean something, as we know they are still a manestfestation of you&#39;re everyday thoughts and observations. I go to dreammoods.com and interpret most of my dreams, but I don&#39;t think they can predict the future or anything. You call what most think of as nightmares &#39;message dreams&#39; I don&#39;t think you really need them, and nightmares are actually one of the largest reasons why many people decided to try becoming lucid.

Anyways, good luck, and good dreaming&#33;

----------


## Mikekan

> With a lucid age of 0-2 months, you don&#39;t have the experience to make such a statement.
> [/b]



That is simply an age on this forum and in no way determines my experience in anything. Please dont make random assumptions about people

----------


## Tsen

Yeah, Oneiro, the "lucid age" is mostly to give people an idea of how long somebody&#39;s been into LD&#39;ing--NOT to rate their expertise on the matter.  My lucid age is 3-5 years, but there are newbs who LD more than me, such as the topic starter.

Anyway, I&#39;m giving a resounding NO as to whether LD&#39;s can be harmful long-term.  Several people have been in and out of this forum who have LD&#39;d without any effort every single dream for as long as they can remember.  They&#39;re still normal people, they can still process emotions and feelings as usual.  Lucid dreams do not impede your subconscious in any way, for three reasons:

*1*- As mentioned earlier, even when you&#39;re lucid, there&#39;s plenty of subconscious cues that come into your dream.  Your conscious mind is working to maintain lucidity, and alter the dream as you want, but your subconscious is still working to do everything that you don&#39;t consciously do.  When a DC talks to you, that&#39;s completely in the realm of your subconscious, unless you actively attempt to make the DC say something specific.  Scenery is usually up to the subconscious, and even when you create a new set of scenery for your dream, your subconscious is hard at work making that scenery look the way it does--rendering, so to speak, all the blades of grass, the leaves on the trees, etcetera.  

*2*- Your subconscious&#39;s effects are not limited to your dreams.  Subconscious covers a broad spectrum of processes, seeing as how it envelops everything but the limited portion that you&#39;re thinking about that exact moment.  During the day, when you are fully awake and conscious, your subconscious is still hard at work, and can still actively effect you, though perhaps not as  directly as in a dream.  When somebody says something to you in real life, your subconscious glazes over the words before your conscious mind does.  That&#39;s where you pick up on hints and clues people give in their tonality and such.  Your subconscious is adding its own interpretation to the initial message, and your conscious mind then goes over both the initial message and the interpretation from the subconscious simultaneously.  
It&#39;s rather hard to explain this all in a linear fashion, since the conscious and subconscious mind work together in a means that is anything but linear.

*3*- You probably aren&#39;t lucid all the time.  Everybody has dreams they don&#39;t remember.  Even dream masters who remember six or more dreams each night are still forgetting quite a few dreams.  Of these dreams, you probably weren&#39;t lucid in many of them.  Lucid dreams tend to be more memorable, since the mind processes and stores the information from the dreams differently, making the transit to long-term memory easier.  As a result, you forget more non-lucids than lucids.  So the dreams you&#39;re forgetting are still perfectly blank canvases for your subconscious to work on, sending whatever messages it wants to you.  You don&#39;t actively remember these dreams, but they still leave an impact on you.  

In short, I wouldn&#39;t worry about it at all.  Stephen LaBerge and some of the other chaps over at the Lucidity Institute have been working on studying lucid dreaming for over twenty years, with the researchers actively participating in lucid dreaming the entire time.  Throughout all of this, they have found no negative influences on themselves, and not witnessed any negative effects in others.

----------


## Oneiro

Mikekan: "That is simply an age on this forum and in no way determines my experience in anything. Please dont make random assumptions about people."

Then don&#39;t make such ridiculous sweeping statements.

I stand by my original statement..

----------


## .jared.

> Mikekan: "That is simply an age on this forum and in no way determines my experience in anything. Please dont make random assumptions about people."
> 
> Then don&#39;t make such ridiculous sweeping statements.
> 
> I stand by my original statement..
> [/b]



Its not a ridiculous sweeping statement. Its the commonly held belief, here, and most other places online and irl that dreaming cannot hurt you.

----------


## Ne-yo

Perhaps the experience in long term effects are different for that particular individual, as for myself I am a Natural Lucid Dreamer. I&#39;ve had this ability well before I can remember and years of lucid dreaming later I have never noticed any side-effects on a negative level. So Im pretty sure that they do no harm on a long term scale.

----------


## DuB

I used to have a friend who was a natural lucid dreamer. He recognized that he was dreaming in 9 out of 10 dreams, and had done so his whole life. He thought everybody was like that until I told him otherwise. Anyway, he seemed basically pretty normal, except for being a 17-year old heavy drug user who emancipated himself from his parents at 16 and moved away from California to go live in a run-down piece-of-shit house in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.  ::wink:: 

This part is not entirely relevant, but it is interesting. He also had complete control in all of his lucid dreams. He said there was only one time when he couldn&#39;t change something in a dream. He said he was in a dream and he was looking in a mirror, but his reflection was fucked up. So he tried to will it back to normal... but it wouldn&#39;t change. So he kept trying, but his reflection just stayed all fucked-up looking. He got so scared and freaked out that he was unable to control something in his dream that he woke himself up.  ::|:

----------


## JaphyR

> With a lucid age of 0-2 months, you don&#39;t have the experience to make such a statement.[/b]



If Mikekan was accurate with his lucid age when he filled out his profile, Oneiro is right on with this comment.  Where you enter your lucid age, it says "how long you&#39;ve been practicing lucid dreaming".  I think most people interpret this to be how long you&#39;ve been having lucid dreams.  Lucid age is supposed to have nothing to do wtih how long you&#39;ve been on this forum, only how long you&#39;ve been lucid dreaming.

If someone has spent their life climbing mountains, I consider their advice on climbing mountains pretty seriously when I&#39;m about to do a hard mountain.  When I get advice about climbing from someone who&#39;s only climbed two mountains, I consider that advice with a good deal of skepticism, especially when it is given with an air of sweeping authority.

----------


## Marvo

To say dreaming is dangerous is like saying masturbation is dangerous. It&#39;s like humans just thing "It brings alot of joy, it has to be dangerous".

----------


## Ne-yo

> If Mikekan was accurate with his lucid age when he filled out his profile, Oneiro is right on with this comment.  Where you enter your lucid age, it says "how long you&#39;ve been practicing lucid dreaming".  I think most people interpret this to be how long you&#39;ve been having lucid dreams.  Lucid age is supposed to have nothing to do wtih how long you&#39;ve been on this forum, only how long you&#39;ve been lucid dreaming.
> [/b]



I don&#39;t think anyone would misrepresent that age as forum time because the date that you&#39;ve joined the forum is already displayed.

----------


## Oneironaut Zero

I don&#39;t believe lucid dreaming does any "damage." I believe that it has an _affect_ but that affect could be just as much beneficial as many people think it could be detrimental.

Of course, this is all speculation. Despite how sure any of us may be, _none_ of us know for sure.

----------


## Tsen

The lucid age display ONLY shows how long a person has been lucid dreaming, and has NOTHING to do with their level of skill or knowledge.  I completely stand by Mikekan, because he made an entirely accurate statement.
For the rest of you, remember that just because you&#39;re new to the concept does NOT mean that you are necessarily wrong, or that you cannot actively provide better advice than somebody with twice as much time under their belts.

----------


## JaphyR

I like this question, because when we get into lucid dreaming, especially all these induction methods like wbtb and audio induction, we are playing with our minds.  So the answer "it&#39;s completely harmless" is easy to throw out, but not as obvious as it seems.  It also depends on our definitions of harmful and dangerous.  I think most of us agree that there&#39;s no threat of Freddy Krueger killing us in a lucid dream and we die in real life.  But some people have mentioned losing track of whether something happened last week in a lucid dream or in waking life.  Once in a while, that&#39;s kind of funny.  On a regular basis, that can interfere with your waking life.

Lucid age is meaningful to me in these conversations, because on an internet forum we need to be careful about evaluating the reliability of answers we read.  When I read a comment from someone who&#39;s been lucid dreaming for a long time, I know they are basing their response in some part on a good base of experience.  When someone who has had three lucid dreams makes a broad statement, I wonder what they are basing it on.  I don&#39;t completely disregard their thoughts, but I keep in mind that they might be missing something in their assertions.  The opportunity to bring new people&#39;s thoughts together with the experiences of seasoned practitioners in any field is one of the joys of internet forums.

Here&#39;s a quick mathematical example that tempts you with an obvious answer:  If you roll a six-sided die three times, what is the probability you will roll a 6 at least once?

----------


## Jimmie Lynne

um. . . my gut says 50/50. . . what&#39;s the real answer?

----------


## Sortilegio

Hey, I&#39;ve been lucid dreaming since I can remeber and I&#39;m fine, I realise I&#39;m dreamong in 90 to 100% of the dreams I have in a night, there really is no worries about it, I don&#39;t find myself getting tired from lucid dreaming or anything, thing that does happen to me when I have long non-lucid dreams, and making all non-lucids more magical can actually make for very interesting/fun dreams, in my opinion.

----------


## OmnipotentTitan

theres a reason you have a sub-conscious.

----------


## Tsen

And?  Elaborate.  What is the reason you have a subconscious, and how does it affect the discussion at hand?

If you&#39;re suggesting that lucid dreaming interferes with the subconscious, refer to my post on the first page.  Here&#39;s a brief summary of my refutation of that:
-Even when lucid, your subconscious is still present and affecting the dream.  So its not like you&#39;re shutting it out.
-The subconscious isn&#39;t limited to dreams, so even if you COULD shut out all of your subconscious, it would still affect you in other ways.
-You aren&#39;t lucid all the time.  Even natural LD&#39;ers have normal dreams now and then, though they may not remember them as well.

----------


## daxamite

*Tai*, You overestimate me. (I am half tempted not to correct you) I actually can turn them on or off at will. (Much like anyone with enough practice) I would find it amazing if someone had a hard time going un-lucid, but perhaps that&#39;s just my narrow world view. And thanks for the welcome&#33;

*italianmonkey*, good advice. 

*BeautifulDreamer*, I&#39;ve never tried that paralyzed thing. Hahah... I suppose I&#39;ve been to busy coming up with new super powers.

*Tsen*, Interesting correlation between the conscious and sub-conscious minds. What you said reminds me of a parallel between the sun and moon. (PURE SPECULATION HERE) Durning the day, the conscious mind over powers the sub-conscious mind with sensory information. However, during the night, sensory information is minimalized and the sub-conscious mind "rises" and "reflects" the light from the conscious mind.  <--- I think that is neat

*Ne-yo*, I like your Google icon (Screwgle). Got a good laugh out of that&#33;

*Marvo*, comparing sleep to masturbation says this to me: To much of a good thing can be bad&#33; :))

*Oneironaut*, I like that youre a matrix fan. That makes two of us. :)

*JaphyR*, 1 in 6 each time you roll the dice. I do have a question based on your response. If people get confused about past events (were they real or just a dream) does that mean that de-ja-vu increases with Lucid Dreaming?

*Jimmie Lynne*, 50.


(Post Edited for spelling)

----------


## Tsen

The statement you metioned about Deja-Vu IS an interesting subject...

Deja-vu is theorized to be a "glitch" where your mind accidently moves some short-term memory and it gets mixed up with long-term memory, giving you the feeling that you&#39;ve seen/felt something twice:  Once recently from the short-term memory, and once a time ago, from the long-term memory.
This comes heavily into play with dreams, because REM plays around with the short term memory (which is why dreams are hard to remember).  Lucid dreams should actually _reduce_ deja vu, since in a lucid dream, your mind is processing the memory more as if it was awake (hence why lucid dreams are easier to remember).  
So basically,
While lucid you&#39;re processing the memory like normal.  It goes to short term first, then to long term later on.  So you should incur deja-vu at a normal rate, since your mind is processing things like normal.
But when NOT lucid, your short term memory is rather transparent--the memories might go there, but they get erased quickly unless they&#39;re transferred to long term memry.  In this case, deja-vu occurances should increase (at least _appear_ to increase), because each occurance of deja-vu means that the memory goes to long term first, making the deja-vu moment more memorable than the rest of the dream.  This is why I mentioned an _apparent_ increase earlier--you&#39;re not actually having deja-vu more often, its just that you remember the deja-vu moments more than you remember the rest of the dream(s), so it appears that you&#39;re having more deja-vu moments for less time, when really you just don&#39;t remember most of the time spent in-dream.

Anyway.  That turned out quite rant-like.
Conclusion--LD&#39;s should (in theory) _reduce_ the (apparent) occurance of deja-vu.  At the least, it shouldn&#39;t increase it in any way.

----------


## JaphyR

> um. . . my gut says 50/50. . . what&#39;s the real answer?[/b]



In a moment...



> 1 in 6 each time you roll the dice.[/b]



Yes, that&#39;s the easy part.  But I asked about rolling three times.  Knowing there&#39;s a one in six chance of rolling a 6 each time you roll the dice, what is the probability you will get a 6 at least once if you roll the die three times?  I&#39;ll give the answer sometime tomorrow, and it does have something to do with this thread.


Your comments on deja-vu are interesting, and your explanation of how memories are stored helps me understand why it is so much easier to remember ld&#39;s than non-ld&#39;s.

I have nowhere near enough lucid experience to know personally if they have any long-term side effects.  However, even if everyone on DV has no waking-life problems from ld&#39;ing, I would still wonder if there are people out there who have some issues.  This site attracts people who enjoy ld&#39;ing, so we just might not hear from people who have had bad experiences with it.  Some people have dropped in to say they&#39;ve had some bad effects, but I haven&#39;t seen anyone stay long, and it&#39;s also difficult (impossible) to know what else is going on in a person&#39;s life to give them difficulty.  Someone who&#39;s been around here longer may throw some more in on that.

I live in southeast alaska, and this time of year it&#39;s dark and rainy for long periods of time.  When I&#39;ve had to leave my house suddenly after being woken in the night, and drive into town in the driving rain in the dark, I&#39;ve had some funny feelings transitioning from the sleep world to the waking world.  Walking into a friend&#39;s house, I am sure that I&#39;m in waking life, but sitting in a car squinting through big raindrops on the windshield with little but darkness around, I&#39;ve wondered if I could get lost between the dream world and the waking world, just disappear into my own head.  I&#39;ll ramble a little more, since this is my last post of the day.  I once spent 13 months living on a bicycle, traveling and living in a tent.  It was an incredibly peaceful existence, and dreams were a part of that life.  When I returned to living in a city, I felt a little off for a month or so, a little unstable.  I had the feeling I might just sit down on the sidewalk at any moment, and disappear into my head forever.  It was very unsettling, until I realized it was just because I had jumped from an almost monk-like state of living right back into modern society.  Once I realized that and learned which parts of the traveling mindset I could carry over into everyday living within society, I felt a lot more settled and stable.  Whenever we jump back and forth between two very different mindsets, funny things can happen.  The dream and waking states seem like two of those different mindsets.

(I think we&#39;re all perfectly fine to keep right on ld&#39;ing, but it&#39;s interesting stuff to pay attention to.)

----------


## Wolffe

Another key point that I think people are missing is that during a lucid dream, there&#39;s as much subconscious expression as there would be in a non-lucid one. I don&#39;t know about anyone else, but I do as many things I&#39;d perform in a lucid dream as I do in non-lucid ones, if not more, and if my unconscious mind doesn&#39;t like it, it won&#39;t let it happen&#33; Remember that although you have control, your unconscious mind is the one generating the dream, and is only permitting you to interfere&#33;  :smiley:

----------


## Oneiro

Wolffe: "Remember that although you have control, your unconscious mind is the one generating the dream, and is only permitting you to interfere&#33;"

That is pure speculation that you&#39;ve picked up from other like-minded people. You don&#39;t know that.. you can&#39;t do.. you&#39;re just trotting out someone else&#39;s idea.

----------


## Tsen

Oneiro, you&#39;ve bashed other people&#39;s ideas quite frequently, but I have yet to see you post your own.

----------


## Oneiro

I thought my stance was crystal clear.. that no-one should assume anything one way or the other about LD... especially if one hasn&#39;t had very much LD time..

Everything is pure speculation... manifested in sweeping statements that rely on "knowledge" written down in a book or on the web by someone else who is themselves speculating, posted by those who should get a bit of the empirical under their belts.

----------


## Jimmie Lynne

Just a thought. . . I was talking to a friend of mine about lucid dreaming and she claims to be a natural at it. . . here&#39;s where things get odd. She says she&#39;s been doing it since she was a kid but that she doesn&#39;t like to. . . ??? That makes no sense to me. She says that when she becomes aware she&#39;s dreaming she intentionally tries to lose that awareness so she can get back to normal dreaming. That makes very little sense to me and I was wondering if anyone else thinks she&#39;s lying about having done it at all.


Her reasoning is that she shouldn&#39;t be awake while dreaming cause she&#39;ll miss subconcious clues and such. .  .

----------


## Oneiro

Her reasoning sounds nonsensical: "..she&#39;ll miss subconscious clues and such.."

She&#39;ll miss something if she lucid dreams?

Fishy..

----------


## DuB

> Just a thought. . . I was talking to a friend of mine about lucid dreaming and she claims to be a natural at it. . . here&#39;s where things get odd. She says she&#39;s been doing it since she was a kid but that she doesn&#39;t like to. . . ??? That makes no sense to me. She says that when she becomes aware she&#39;s dreaming she intentionally tries to lose that awareness so she can get back to normal dreaming. That makes very little sense to me and I was wondering if anyone else thinks she&#39;s lying about having done it at all.
> Her reasoning is that she shouldn&#39;t be awake while dreaming cause she&#39;ll miss subconcious clues and such. .  .[/b]



She&#39;s not lying. She&#39;s also not the only person with this point of view. In fact, the Dream Views main site specifically addresses this issue on the page "What Is Lucid Dreaming?" Here is what the site says:



> *Misconceptions*
> 
> _Dreams contain messages that are lost with lucid dreaming._
> 
> Finally, many people take an intransigent stance against lucid dreaming based on their belief that our dreams are trying to tell us something, and we lose those messages by trying to alter our dreams. Thats a reasonable position to take, however, that idea is not entirely valid. First of all, most people that endeavour to have lucid dreams only have them occasionallyperhaps a few times a month. Some obviously will have them more often (perhaps several times a week or even in a night) but again for the most part, on average, those who attempt lucid dreaming still have more non-lucid dreams than lucid ones. Perhaps even more valid a point is that becoming proficient at lucid dreaming demands excellent dream recall. Thus, while practicing to become lucid in dreams you are also increasing your ability to remember your dreams, which as a by-product will provide you with more memorable dreams to sift through in search of hidden insight. Therefore one can practice lucid dreaming and still attain enough regular dreams so that he or she need not worry about losing something important.[/b]



Also, there is another very large school of thought regarding dreams that states that dreams are merely a product of subconscious  (or conscious) _expectations_. People adhering to this theory (which includes the rather famous dream researcher Stephen LaBerge) believe that dreams are _not_ "messages from our subconscious," and that attempting to interpret them as such is pointless. Whether or not you believe that is up to you.

I tend to side with LaBerge, but I do believe that in certain cases there can be some value in interpretting dreams.

----------


## Tsen

Oneiro, you seem to be overlooking the fact my answer isn&#39;t based on speculation.  I speculated as to the "why?" component of the answer, but the answer itself is obvious.  The fact is, people have spent their entire lives lucid dreaming.  Several cultures have taken notice of the phenomenon and practiced it intently their entire lives, and NONE have suffered adverse consequences.  True enough, some people DO get tired of LDing, but that is not _harm_, that is only boredom.

----------


## JaphyR

> If you roll a six-sided die three times, what is the probability you will roll a 6 at least once?[/b]



Everybody understands pretty readily that rolling one die one time gives you a probability of 1/6 that you will roll a 6.  So it seems easy, 3 rolls, 1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6 = 3/6, or 50/50.  But it&#39;s not that simple.  In each attempt at the stated problem, you actually get three rolls.  So, if you get a 6 on the first roll, any 6&#39;s on subsequent rolls don&#39;t really help you.

There are 216 possible combinations of rolling a six-sided die three times.  To find the probability of getting a 6 at least once, it&#39;s easier to calculate the probability of not getting a 6 on any of the three rolls, and work from there.  The probability you don&#39;t get a 6 on the first roll is five out of six, or 5/6.  It&#39;s the same for all three rolls, so the probability you don&#39;t roll a 6 on all three rolls is 5/6 * 5/6 * 5/6 = 125/216, which is about 58%.  You have only a 42% chance of getting a 6 on at least one roll&#33;  You could also make a list of all 216 combinations, 1-1-1, 1-1-2, 1-1-3,...6-6-4, 6-6-5, 6-6-6, and count up the combinations that have at least one six in them, and you&#39;d find there are 91 such combinations.  91/216 is about 42%.

This isn&#39;t a math forum, so what does that have to do with this thread?  The dice problem seems like a very straightforward question, to which most people would give a quick answer and think nothing more of it.  But it&#39;s easy to prove that there&#39;s more going on, because you can show mathematically the depth in the question. People ask good questions about lucid dreaming, and get a variety of answers and responses.  Many answers are well thought out, but some are just gut reactions which are defended by saying "It&#39;s obvious."  There&#39;s an Einstein joke that goes "E=mc2; the rest is left as an exercise for the reader."  There is very little in life that is truly obvious, and if it&#39;s obvious to you it may not be obvious to someone else.  If you say it&#39;s obvious and someone asks you to explain your thinking and all you can say is, "It&#39;s obvious", maybe it isn&#39;t so obvious&#33;





> Several cultures have taken notice of the phenomenon and practiced it intently their entire lives, and NONE have suffered adverse consequences.[/b]



Do you really think you can speak for every lucid dreamer in every culture?&#33;  You can&#39;t know how lucid draming affected every individual&#33;  I&#39;m glad people like Oneiro are willing to question the reasoning behind people&#39;s responses.

----------


## Tsen

No, you&#39;re right.  I can&#39;t speak for every single individual.  But for Jeebus&#39;s sake, man&#33;  Monks have been intently training themselves to LD for CENTURIES.  And YES, I do feel perfectly safe in saying that the vast majority, to the point where I cannot find mention of a single case otherwise, have NEVER experienced negative effects from LDing.

I mean, I whole-heartedly support people questioning reasoning, even (perhaps _especially_) my own.  But there&#39;s a point beyond which it is silly.

Here&#39;s the deal.
-NOBODY that I&#39;ve heard of has experienced any harm from LDing.  A few have gotten bored with it to the point where they avoid LDs, but NONE, in nearly three years of experience, research and discussion on this forum, have I met somebody who has actually been harmed, physically or psychologically, by LDing.  NONE.
-There are existing cultures that have an inherent focus on dreams and lucid dreaming.  Of these cultures, there are NO prominent stories, resources or any other type of records suggesting any sort of negative influence.  Now, yes, it IS possible that a few people in those cultures had negative experiences, and we didn&#39;t hear about them.  But at that point it defeats the purpose:  Out of THOUSANDS of people who LD their entire life, there are NO records of any permanent or temporary harm being done to somebody by LD&#39;ing.  This suggests such a massive majority of people who aren&#39;t harmed by LDing that it&#39;s rather frivolous to worry about being harmed long term by LDing.  That&#39;s like avoiding going to the beach for fear you&#39;ll be killed by a falling coconut.
-There is NO rational explanation for why LDing would, in ANY way, be harmful to a person.  Period.

----------


## Neil.....

Oi this is proably wrong like useal but.... when you have a nomral dream dose ur logical side of your brainstop... or like go to sleep... if so wouldnt that mean when your lucid it dosent get to and it might be bad lol?

&#036;20 says im compleatly off lol

----------


## Oneiro

Well you said it:

Tsen: "-NOBODY that I&#39;ve heard of has experienced any harm from LDing. A few have gotten bored with it to the point where they avoid LDs, but NONE, in nearly three years of experience, research and discussion on this forum, have I met somebody who has actually been harmed, physically or psychologically, by LDing. NONE."

Right. For a start, "nearly three years" is nothing. You have hardly any time at all to make the sweeping statements that you do. You are obviously so poorly-read that I&#39;ll have to give you examples from right under your nose:

1) You mention "monks" who&#39;ve been dreaming for ever and who have "never" reported anything dangerous about LD. Well, the only monks I know who practice are Buddhists, and I&#39;ve heard different stories. There&#39;s a book published in the late 70s detailing one of their adherents who had a horrendous "two-year long" LD from which he couldn&#39;t wake up. In the dream, he was a patient in a hospital having had half his face blown off by a shell, confined to a bed. He couldn&#39;t wake himself up and had to endure for a seeming two years. When he eventually did wake up, he was a complete nervous wreck and was confined to a hospital in reality..

And let&#39;s talk a bit more about Buddhists and their practices.. research the word "tulpa" re. Buddhists, and you&#39;ll find that, in their belief, this is one of the most dangerous LD manoeuvres possible. There is not one among them who doesn&#39;t think that LD is dangerous, so I just don&#39;t know how you can make such sweeping statements based on 2-3 years at Dreamviews. Sheesh.

2) You&#39;ve never read anything about possible psychological damage? You&#39;re missing something from right in front of your eyes. Go and check out the "Ways to kill DCs" thread in Dream Control, and then tell me the same. Some of these "people" are obviously sick and LD is only making them worse. The fulfilment of sick fantasies via LD is a very dangerous route to go. Use your eyes.

3) "Toltec Dreamer" by Graham Kane.

I&#39;ve posted this before. It&#39;s a book by a long-term LDer in the Castanedan mould who writes in some detail about the breakdown of his sanity and his fight back, all through his specific way of LD.

Tsen.. before you shoot your mouth off in the future, you should do some proper research before you go putting your foot in it. You don&#39;t know much and you should put some serious years in.

Now go and do some reading.

----------


## Neil.....

If you think its that abd then why are you even at this site?

----------


## mindwalker

> Thus far, I have only witnessed one side-effect from doing this. The continuing use of super-powers in non-lucid dreams. While on the surface this does not seem very negative, it does raise a question about long term effects. 
> [/b]



What if you try practicing Lucid Dreaming without any super powers or dream control. Just stay aware and let the dream go it&#39;s course? Anyone think there might be any negative long term effects of just being aware?






> 2) You&#39;ve never read anything about possible psychological damage? You&#39;re missing something from right in front of your eyes. Go and check out the "Ways to kill DCs" thread in Dream Control, and then tell me the same. Some of these "people" are obviously sick and LD is only making them worse. The fulfilment of sick fantasies via LD is a very dangerous route to go. Use your eyes.
> [/b]



I came to to think that these people are training themselves for randomly killing somebody in the street someday.

----------


## Neil.....

Lol laugh if they pland to shoot a fire ball out of there hands at the person and kil them and then there just standing there in real lise and epople are like WTF lol

----------


## mindwalker

> And let&#39;s talk a bit more about Buddhists and their practices.. research the word "tulpa" re. Buddhists, and you&#39;ll find that, in their belief, this is one of the most dangerous LD manoeuvres possible. There is not one among them who doesn&#39;t think that LD is dangerous, so I just don&#39;t know how you can make such sweeping statements based on 2-3 years at Dreamviews. Sheesh.
> [/b]



I tried to find something about this, but did not find much more than the WikiPedia article. Could you provide some references?

----------


## JaphyR

Tsen, I appreciate your fuller post.  I&#39;ll say again, that I don&#39;t think there&#39;s much "danger" at all in lucid dreaming.  However, I think there might be some pitfalls that are good for people to know about.  When lucid dreaming is a significant part of a people&#39;s culture, there are many people working together on it, and watching out for each other.  If there are pitfalls, they&#39;ll tell each other about them.  We don&#39;t have that in our society, most people who are ld&#39;ing are doing it largely on their own.  DV helps out in that regard; it lets us share our experiences.

----------


## Wolffe

Oneiro, I don&#39;t see what your problem with the part of the speech you quoted. Anyone who&#39;s had 3 or more LDs will have noticed how stubborn their unconscious minds can be. I have tried to many immoral things in my dream, which my mind has completely refused to generate, with the dream characters literally laughing in my face at my failure. I think that&#39;s pretty unspeculative, but perhaps I&#39;m misinterpretting your post.

----------


## Sortilegio

I don&#39;t know if anyone mentioned this, but the first joiner of this site didn&#39;t like lucid dreaming and was a natural, do a search and find the first topic  :tongue2:

----------


## Tsen

> Right. For a start, "nearly three years" is nothing. You have hardly any time at all to make the sweeping statements that you do. You are obviously so poorly-read that I&#39;ll have to give you examples from right under your nose[/b]



And you do?  Trust me, I&#39;ve done my homework when it comes to LDing.





> 1) You mention "monks" who&#39;ve been dreaming for ever and who have "never" reported anything dangerous about LD. Well, the only monks I know who practice are Buddhists, and I&#39;ve heard different stories. There&#39;s a book published in the late 70s detailing one of their adherents who had a horrendous "two-year long" LD from which he couldn&#39;t wake up. In the dream, he was a patient in a hospital having had half his face blown off by a shell, confined to a bed. He couldn&#39;t wake himself up and had to endure for a seeming two years. When he eventually did wake up, he was a complete nervous wreck and was confined to a hospital in reality..[/b]



And I already took care of this:  I mentioned earlier that even IF one or two had bad experiences, it defeats the purpose because they are a tiny minority.  
Further, this just goes to support LDing, not go against it:  Either it wasn&#39;t an LD, or he had NO control.  Either way:  If he was a more experienced LDer, he would have been able to stop the dream.  The dream itself was NOT engendered by the pursuit of LDing, and lucidity would have provided a way out.





> And let&#39;s talk a bit more about Buddhists and their practices.. research the word "tulpa" re. Buddhists, and you&#39;ll find that, in their belief, this is one of the most dangerous LD manoeuvres possible. There is not one among them who doesn&#39;t think that LD is dangerous, so I just don&#39;t know how you can make such sweeping statements based on 2-3 years at Dreamviews. Sheesh.[/b]



I don&#39;t where you&#39;re getting this "dangerous LD manoevres" (sic) from.  According to the Wiki page, a tulpa is an object created out of sheer willpower.  In real life, its nothing more than fantasy.  I don&#39;t care who you are, you can&#39;t do that in real life.  In a lucid dream, that&#39;s commonplace.  I do it all the time, I just did not know it was called a tulpa.  All that is is summoning an object, and doing so can in NO way harm you.  I am VERY interested in your claimed "dangerous LD manoevres" because I cannot think of ANYTHING you could do in an LD that could be considered dangerous.





> 2) You&#39;ve never read anything about possible psychological damage? You&#39;re missing something from right in front of your eyes. Go and check out the "Ways to kill DCs" thread in Dream Control, and then tell me the same. Some of these "people" are obviously sick and LD is only making them worse. The fulfilment of sick fantasies via LD is a very dangerous route to go. Use your eyes.[/b]



So?  I agree, that&#39;s a pretty sick thing to do in an LD.  But how does this make a lucid dream harmful?  The lucid dream isn&#39;t causing any psychological harm in this case, its the dreamer&#39;s decisions that are doing the harm.  But still, its no different from playing a violent video game, or experiencing a particularly violent non-lucid dream.  Again, the LD is NOT causing any harm.





> 3) "Toltec Dreamer" by Graham Kane.
> I&#39;ve posted this before. It&#39;s a book by a long-term LDer in the Castanedan mould who writes in some detail about the breakdown of his sanity and his fight back, all through his specific way of LD.[/b]



I&#39;ll go read the book, I&#39;d never heard of it.  But back to my statement of majority:  This writer represents an extreme minority.  We&#39;ve had several LDers pass through this site who have been LDing their entire lives and have not experienced anythign of the sort.  I&#39;ve had LDs for about 11 years.  For 8, I had them naturally, but eventually that stopped.  A few years later, I found this site and started actively seeking LDs and have (so far) been successfully LDing for another three years.  I have not, EVER, incurred any damage, harm, or anything even moderately resembling such through LDing.  






> Tsen.. before you shoot your mouth off in the future, you should do some proper research before you go putting your foot in it. You don&#39;t know much and you should put some serious years in.
> 
> Now go and do some reading.[/b]



Ditto to you.  
You STILL haven&#39;t given me a concrete "how".  HOW can LDing harm a person?  The Buddhist monk you wrote about wasn&#39;t harmed by LDing.  First off, I&#39;m doubtfull of that entire story and would like to see your reference.  Second, IF he incurred that kind of psychological harm, he could have done the same through a non-lucid dream.  Being fully lucid would have enabled him to end the dream or free himself.
The killing of DCs was a nasty diversion, but again, it&#39;s nothing more than an example of how your choices can damage you psychologically, NOT an example of how a lucid dream can harm you.  The dream itself is not harming them, its what they CHOOSE to do.  If they CHOSE to do that in real life, it would be just as psychologically harmful.  If they CHOSE to do that in a video game, it would be just as harmful.  If they had a non-lucid with themes along those lines, it would be just as harmful.  The addition of lucidity isn&#39;t causing any harm.
Your last reference seems to be a fringe case.  He probably had some lingering, submerged psychological conditions BEFORE he started lucid dreaming, and they were only revealed by LDing, not created by it.  Still, I will refrain from further speculation until I read the book.

----------


## Oneiro

I think I get your point.. LD is not dangerous per se, just some of the people who practice it are.

That&#39;s the "Guns aren&#39;t dangerous" argument..

Right..

----------

