New to Lucid dreaming, What are the limitations?

I've recently started training myself to Lucid Dream not so I can sleep with anyone or fly....but so I can go on a pokemon journey! Dorky I know but I've been a fan since 1998. I've dreamed about them before where I have actually touched them and what not but it's hard to explain how it felt because it was only one part and it's simple to know what that would have felt like (like pressing a rock into your palm) one of my most important questions is can I continue lucid dreams? For instance, it's not much of a journey if I have to start over every single time:p I have read where people said they had lucid dreams like this, but I'm new so I'm still trying to figure out where the limitations are...Has anyone ever done something like backpacking in a lucid dream? or some kind of journey? Has anyone ever had a lucid dream about being a pokemon trainer? haha Also, do you feel pain in lucid dreams? Another reason I want to lucid dream is to spar people in my dreams. I wont be deterred or anything if you can feel pain I'm just curious

The limitations of lucid dreaming all depend on your expectations of limitations, and the limitations of your experience and imagination. What do I mean by that: if your mind firmly believes out of some reason that flying is impossible and that even though you are dreaming it should not be possible, you may not be able to succeed in flying in a dream even though most people can, or you may then need a gadget to fly (for example a superman like cape) because your mind may expect that. :)

if you have not experience with what the Great Wall of China really looks like, your dream interpretation of it will not be very realistic. However, if you have a great dream imagination, you can just imagine it any way you like, and it can be awesome, and who cares whether it is realistic since this is your dream, and if you think of it as the Great Wall of China then for you in your dreams, it is. By the way, you do not need to be artistic in waking life to have very imaginary vivid dreams, but good memory and good imagination help.

Yes, you feel pain in dreams. But usually I think it won't be as painful as real life pain, so if you loose a battle and get seriously hurt, you might feel a bit of pain, but your mind will not choose to recreate excruciating pain most likely. In fact, it could also not hurt at all. It is a dream, so the rule of "I am hurt, therefore I feel pain." Does not necessarily apply, nor does it necessarily not apply. It's all based on your expectations, and it being your dream it may be even more important what your subconscious and not your conscious expectations are.

just because you become lucid, does not mean your conscious mind will be fully in control. Now we have some dream views members who have been LDing for 30 or 35 years (or maybe shorter) who can fully control their lucid dreams, but for most beginners one starts out with limited control, and one needs to work on improving control. Early on beginners often have only very brief LDs, which may only have limited awareness or very limited control. This is not necessarily the case I think but it is frequent, and how far and how fast you progress in LD depends on each individual dreamer - LD is a skill which has a learning curve.

I think going on a journey in LDs is a great idea, and why not Pokemon. :) No, there is no rule that you must start at the beginning every time. You can start wherever you expect to start. if you expect to start where you left off last, you are much more likely to go there. If your subconscious mind however expects to start at the beginning every time out of some strange reason, then overcoming that will be a challenge for you. :)

Your limitations are the same as every other dreamer on here.

Fear.

Lack of motivation.

Inexperience.

Wrong technique.

Wrong teachers.

State of mind before sleeping.

Lots of other things will limit you, or help you.
For example, the question you posed .----- Already concerned that you can not accomplish a task.

You should read all the posts that catch your interest, then only try the ones you think will work for you.
Take your own path. You may be surprised how quickly you advance compared to other peoples guidance.

Do not use this site as your only source of information ! Do a google search, and watch lots of vids.
Some real nut jobs out there though - Be careful

Ignore this reply, or take it to heart. The choice is yours, and yours alone.

Best piece of advice I can give is

HAVE FUN :)

Cheers,
Phil

Yeah I definitely have a bit of work to do and some things to overcome. But they'll all go away the first time I get a brief taste of lucidity. Another thing I'm curious about is the environment. For example, when we dream, the enviroment or setting or the place of our dream is somewhat preset, like we don't have to construct it piece by piece. Is that how a lucid dream is or do we have to envision what we want our surroundings to look like?

The environment will already be formed, same as a regular dream - unless you're WILDing and creating the dream from HI (something I haven't been able to do yet). If the dream begins as an FA then you'll probably be in a dream version of your bedroom or wherever you are sleeping, or possibly in a previous house - my FA's often take place in the house where I grew up and I don't even notice most of the time. Or sometime's Ill have an FA in weird places, like waking up in the middle of a parking lot or something. But in any event, the dream environment will already be there. Same for a DILD - except in that case you'll already be dreaming non-lucidly and suddenly become lucid, and then of course you'll be in whatever environment you were already in.

is it possible for a dream to start as a lucid dream? Id imagine thatd be pretty difficult

I Just read your OP and now I see what you're looking for -

Yes, you can start a dream already lucid - look into the techniques known as WILD and DEILD to learn how. WILD is a more advanced technique and not easy for beginners, but DEILD is pretty easy to do as long as you've had 5 or so hours of sleep already and wake remembering a dream.

Here's the cool stuff - if you want to dream of Pokemon, and say you just woke from a dream of something totally different - you wake up without moving or opening your eyes (this is an important part of the DEILD technique) and you let yourself fall back alseep but visualising the dream you were just having, as if you're still in it. If the DEILD works then you'll quickly be back in the dream but now lucid, and you can proceed to change it to a dream about Pokemon. The best way I know of to change a dream scene is to walk through a couple of doors expecting to get somewhere specific - you'll soon find yourself there. To make a Pokemon appear in your dream you just have to believe there's one already in your pocket or wherever, then reach in and pull it out. It doesn't work to expect something to just appear right before your eyes - dreams donb't work like that. But it's pretty easy to make it appear someplace where you're not looking - behind a closed door or in your pocket or whatever.

Read up on DEILD and on dream incubation as well.

Absolutely! That's precisely what the WILD technique is. It involves carrying your waking consciousness immediately into a dream by allowing your physical body to fall asleep and keeping your mental body or awareness active. I'm no expert, being that I prefer the DILD technique and have only tried WILD once or twice. (Both attempts were unsuccessful) There is no supreme technique, though. Your choice of technique should be based on preference. If you're more comfortable with one technique than another, then so be it.

So if I wanted to like go to the pokemon professors lab to choose my starter and get my pokedex first I would have to like walk through a door way or two? then one of the doors would be like the door to his building? and if I wanted a wild pokemon or just a person to appear I would have to like look away first cause they can't just appear before my eyes?

For making a person appear it's better to open a door expecting them to be behind it. Or go around a coner expecting them to be there. If you try to make them appear in front of you as you look away then you already know what's there and it's not that person, so it's hard to fool your mind into believing they'll be there. I've also heard of a technique where you call their name and hold your hand out behind you (not having already seen what's there) and expect them to take your hand. It's all about understanding how dreams work and using certain techniques to effectively trick your mind. You'll learn a lot more about it as you read through various threads and tutorials. Search the forum using search terms like 'portal', 'make people appear', 'change dream environment' etc.

There's not really any limitations in lucid dreaming, though expectations do play great role, returning to a dream where you left off is possible as well as pain. Whether you would feel pain or not might be changed as well during dream with some dream control i guess too. As for starting lucid, as Darkmatters mentioned, WILD or DEILD is a way to go, though all of my lucid dreams that way start as false awakenings, i know from reading some DJ's that it's possible to start WILD or DEILD in the dreamscene of choice. :zzz:
Also i have made an DC appear right in front of me before(though my view was slightly obscured by an object), so for your goal you can try expecting/imagining pokemon appearing from behind a tree or some other object, it's not necessarily have to be behind you or something. :peek:

That just gave me a good idea for a technique for making people or things appear! :O You could have something form into their body. For example, you could imagine the Oak manifests himself by the earth below him shaping into his body and becoming him. Or sand from a sandstorm/snow from a blizzard, etc... I understand though that this could break some immersion for you being that Oak isn't made of dirt, or sand, or snow... Eh, it's an idea.

being a pokemon fan back in my childhood and a lucid dreamer even longer you've got me imagining how it could be done;

I imagine it would help to keep track of your progress in a dream journal which would act like a pokedex, keeping records each time you dream of which pokemon you have seen and fought, which you have caught and how your progress as a trainer is going. (A dream journal is something you write down your memories from the dreams in to improve recall, in this case you should keep it organized with all the data the pokedex would offer, plus anything else that happens in your adventures and notes on plans for future expeditions.)

Leveling up wouldn't be so mechanical, I'd imagine more like the anime than the game, since progress would be based on how well your dream control can get the pokemon to use certain abilities, you would be training with the pokemon to better know their ins and outs and lead them in battle, victory determined by your ingenuity to overpower and outsmart the opponent. What's great about this is the subconscious naturally has a certain autonomy that would give it the ability to play along with you in this world, from trying to catch pokemon and their attempt to escape the pokeball as a battle of willpower, to the dream character pokemon and trainers having a life of their own to really put up a challenge.

It would definitely take dedication to stabalize such a complex dream, from knowing the make-up of the pokemon world well enough that the subconscious can build a working map, to actually getting it to stay consistant with the world. But if you put enough of the right effort in it is definitely a plausible endeavor, the subconscious is a powerful tool and can surely handle this task if you train it to.

Yeah it's definitely not a lucid dream I'll be having anytime soon, but it's the ultimate goal I'm working towards. A dream journal would be a necessity for this. I have really good dream recall already but I'm getting myself in the habit of writing down my dreams so when I can achieve my goal lucid dream I wont forget to. It's definitely a complex dream

Also, being that it seems you're trying to create a persistent realm, there's a DJ post here on DV you might like to read.
Persistent realms and other lucid dreaming techniques I use. - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views
It's a wall of text but (imo at least) it's an amazing post.

Unrelated, but i apparently had pokemon related dream from reading this thread, lol. :cheeky: