Extreme Paradox with Recent LDs -- Dream Characters are Lucid! Has anyone else experienced this?

**MatthewMoisen** · 04-22-2013 12:30 AM

This is very, very interesting to me.

Context: It is well known that dream characters have a tendency to deny knowing that you are in a dream or that you are lucid. I've heard lucid dreaming be defined as any of the following: knowing you are in a dream without controlling it, controlling a dream without knowing you are in a dream, or the combination of knowing you are in a dream and controlling the dream. I have been lucid dreaming for around 7 years off and on. Almost without fail I exert control every night I dream, to varying degrees, but I tend to exert a lot of control. About once a week I actually have the proper lucid dream of knowing I am dreaming and controlling my dream. However, I have experienced two dreams which have been extremely different and difficult to categorize.

Dream One:

I had a long dream, which I was not lucid in until about the last "10 minutes". I realized I was dreaming, and flew around for 5 minutes until I noticed my mother. I landed next to her, and once I looked at her, she told me she was lucid dreaming, and I didn't even start the conversation. I was shocked. I firmly believed throughout the dream that we were co-dreaming. I believed this because she told me that we were sharing a dream. My landscapes aren't as awesome as some of the members of this forum, but as soon as she told me that we were co-dreaming, the entire landscape changed into the most brilliant and beautiful that I have ever run accross. I cannot begin to describe it. I told my mom that I have never witnessed this before, and she then told me the change in landscape was due to her because she was able to do this while I was not. This strengthened my conviction that we were sharing a dream 10fold. This lasted about 5 minutes, and then I woke up. Immediately I picked up my phone and called my mom, who didn't answer. Thank fully. Even awake I still thought the dream was shared. While somewhat embarassing, I must admit that it probably took me another half-hour to remember that this is impossible.

The paradox is two-fold: a dream character acknowledged the lucid dream, and the dream character deceived me, while I was lucid, and this deception continued even after I awoke.

I had been amazed by this experience ever sense.

Dream Two:

My first dream pales in comparison to the dream I had last night. It was about "an hour" long dream. I was lucid immediately, from the start. I flew around for less than a minute, before I decided to land next to a group of people. I am not sure what inclined me to do so, as normally I isolate and just fly around in lucid dreams. As soon as I landed they all mentioned that they were lucid dreaming, and that we were co-dreaming. I got so excited because I remembered the event with my mother (but I failed to remember that I was deceived by the dream characters). We all went on an adventure. It was incredible. The entire time all we discussed while walking/flying around was lucid dreaming. Some members were beginners. Some members were advanced. At one point I asked the leader of the group "how is it possible that we are sharing a lucid dream". He explained to me a system, which I understood after I woke up to be very similar to the Matrix, where people in real life had designed technology to enable this, and they had to constantly monitor the shared, lucid dreaming world, because there were essentially hackers trying to disrupt it. However the monitoring occurred inside of the matrix (inside the dream world), as opposed to outside of the matrix (in real life). I was taken on a tour of the technology. I met a cute girl who was a techie in this monitoring laboratory, and she wrote down her number and gave it to me. Shortly after this, some type of alarm system started ringing out, and I was told that hackers were trying to break in, and that they they needed to force me to wake up. I said that I didn't want to leave, and then I felt myself being sucked backwards, into a whole, and I was covered in deep, deep fear, but then I woke up.

I didn't actually wake up. I had a false-awake. I "woke up" in a child hood house, and my first reaction was to say that my dream was impossible, there is no co-dreaming, there is no matrix for co-dreaming, and I was bummed that I didn't actually get that girl's number. I went to my mail box, where I saw a bill that I needed to pay. There was a logo on the front for some kind of dreaming company. Interested, I opened the bill, and saw that I was charged (I can't recall the price). Then, there was a note on the bottom of the bill, and it was from that girl! She wrote down a joke about me not wanting to exit the dream when it was getting hacked, and left her phone number. This was so thrilling. I totally believed again that the matrix/dream world was real as well as co-dreaming. Then, for whatever reason, I went back into my room, which has doors pointing outside, and water was leaking under the doors from rain outside (although it wasn't raining when I went to get the bill). I started to plug it was towels, but it became worse and worse, and I started panicking, eventually waking up, for real.

Again, the paradox is two-fold, dream characters acknowledged the lucid dream, and the dream characters convinced me that we were co-dreaming! While the deception did not continue after I woke, regardless, in my so-called lucid dream I was deceived by dream characters who are supposed to deny being in a dream!!!

Another way to express this is that the dream characters themselves are lucid, that they are aware that they are in a dream, and they are now trying to convince me that they are real people having a dream, and that we are sharing the same dream.

The dream characters seem to take an extreme, active role in these new LDs I have had. Normally, they are extremely passive. I am now being passive, led around my the DCs.

I am truly excited about this. These were so much more interesting that my normal LDs.

Has anyone experienced something similar to this?

It should be noted that I started taking piracetam two weeks ago. The correlation must be relevant. Last week I started taking choline bitartrate and sulbutiamine in addition to the piracetam. While I can't say I've noticed any increase in cognitive abilities, my dreams in general have been much more vivid. And my lucid dreams are starting to be controlled by something other than me.

**RavenOfShadow** · 04-22-2013 01:34 AM

I don't have a solution or even much of a hypothesis - I just want to say that that sounds incredible! Perhaps your subconscious has realized that you are getting slowly bored with your LD's, as it kind of sounded in your post, and it is trying to spice things up? When most people LD, it is much more satisfying when the dream characters refuse to believe they are dreaming. This gives the dreamer more satisfaction when they kill them, have sex with them, mess with them in some way, or just live among them. By them saying its not a dream, your dream feels much more real, and it makes you feel like more of an all-powerful being. By your Dream characters saying "yea, this is a dream", it almost takes away the fun - unless you have run out of ideas and you want your subconscoius to take you on an adventure itself!

Could I be on to anything here?

If you really are getting tired of LDing (which I can't fathom!), there is a great list called "100,000 things to do while lucid dreaming" on Lucidpedia. I would link but i'm too new :/

Subbing to this to see how it goes, very cool!

~Raven

**gab** · 04-22-2013 01:59 AM

Originally Posted by RavenOfShadow

...there is a great list called "100,000 things to do while lucid dreaming" on Lucidpedia. I would link but i'm too new :/

Linking to other lucid dreaming forums is not allowed. But we have our own http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...cid-dream.html Check it out.

**Woodstock** · 04-22-2013 04:28 AM

Originally Posted by gab

Linking to other lucid dreaming forums is not allowed. But we have our own http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...cid-dream.html Check it out.

I don't want to argue with a moderator, but why can't we post links to other lucid dreaming forums? If I find something interesting on ld4all and wanted to talk about it here, who would that hurt?

**RavenOfShadow** · 04-22-2013 04:33 AM

Not allowed to link to other Lucid dreaming forums o.o? Is this North Korea? Haha. Alright I won't in the future, wasn't aware of that! I thought we were supposed to help each other lucid dream by sharing our experience and resources. Ah well. Either way, lets see some more insightful comments on the original post, thats why we're here!

**Scionox** · 04-22-2013 09:53 AM

Originally Posted by MatthewMoisen

I've heard lucid dreaming be defined as any of the following: knowing you are in a dream without controlling it, controlling a dream without knowing you are in a dream, or the combination of knowing you are in a dream and controlling the dream

To correct you, being one's lucid when one's aware that he's dreaming, control is completely separate from that and there can be non-lucid dreams with levels of control.

As for the dream experience, haven't had this particular experience, but dream characters can be surprising sometimes indeed, maybe something shared dreaming related was on your mind recently and subconscious decided to add this into the dream that way? If anything, i believe into possibility of shared dreaming, since everything in dream is possible, if you are interested in it, check out the Beyond Dreaming section, there are some threads about that, and http://www.dreamviews.com/internatio...aming-project/ too.

**JoannaB** · 04-22-2013 11:14 AM

Years ago when I was lucid dreaming regularly, I had one dream in which a dream character tried to unsuccessfully convince me that this was a dream, or rather he was saying that he knew he was dreaming, and ironically I started then to lecture him on lucid dreaming while I remained non-lucid. I had another dream lucid this time, meaning i knew it was a dream, in which me and one of my dream characters had a philosophical discussion on who was the dreamer and who the figment of imagination.

I find it interesting that people have such weird generalized misconceptions such as that dream characters in lucid dreams will and must deny that it is a dream, or that lucid dream characters are boring and mindless. Our non-lucid dreams are not filled with boring mindless dream characters (at least mine are not), why should dream characters become boring once you become lucid? That makes no sense to me and was not my experience when I was a lucid dreamer. It's not like you being conscious in a dream sucks out the fun out of DCs. Also your mind is perfectly capable of developing interesting characters with complex personalities, and why would you when lucid choose to surround yourself with boring puppets? And yet so many people describe their DCs as mindless, that I am beginning to wonder what caused it: is it expectations driven, do people read about mindless DCs and expect them to be mindless in own dreams as a result? Is it a lack of security and confidence in themselves that causes people to create dumb DCs so they do not have perceived competition in dreams? Are you in so much desire to have full control that you usually perceive a dream character who is interesting as a threat to your control? There is no rule that DCs need to be boring. There is no rule that DCs cannot acknowledge that it is a dream. The DCs are a part of your mind as much as your conscious self, but they are more creations of your subconscious mind. However, our subconscious mind is capable of great creativity as evidenced by vivid non-lucid dreams and parts of lucid dreams which we did not consciously create but just experience as already part of the dreamscape. you are now less in control of your lucid dreams than you have been in the past, but maybe that is a good thing because now your subconscious is showing you flaws with your prior lucid dreams, the greatest of which is preconceived notions such as DCs must be boring and must talk and act in predictable way. Your dreams can be so much more interesting if you let dream characters be interesting. If you lived your waking life in a world where you were e only smart person and everybody else was incapable of saying anything smart, over time I bet that would make you dumber and depressed. Why would you want your dreams to be like that then? We are naturally social creatures, and spending our dream lives in a world populated by dumb puppets is no way to live - remember your dreams are also an essential part of your life, and need to be fulfilling.

Edit: Another thing, you say the DC "deceived" you. The only way that would be possible would be if you believe the DC to be a separate entity somehow capable of deception. On the one hand you had given your DCs too little credit by claiming that they cannot be interesting and have to follow a formula such as deny that it is a dream, on the other hand you are giving your DCs too much credit by claiming they can deceive you. Among the possible beliefs that lucid dreamers can hold: (1) some people believe in shared dreaming, and believe that dream characters are entities separate from themselves - you profess to not believe that is possible; (2) some people believe that they are capable of creating tulpas, entities which are creations of their own mind but are entities of their own with own thought processes that are separate from the dreamer - if you believe that dream characters can deceive you, do you believe in tulpas then? (3) the more scientific lucid dreamers believe that everything and everyone you encounter in a dream whether lucid or non-lucid is a creation of the dreamer's own mind. Thus dream characters are your creation, and they are part of you, a part of you that is not consciously controlled by the part of your mind that you choose to consciously identify with. If this is your belief, then DCs cannot deceive you. They say what some part of you is thinking. It could be that a part of you that you are not willing to consciously acknowledge is wondering whether shared dreaming is possible after all. Of course, if it is possible if you are wrong in your belief that it is impossible, and if you have a rational scientific mind, you should be considering the possibility that your beliefs can be wrong, then these DCs could be external entities that are sharing a dream with you trying to convince you that they are real.

The paradox is that science has no way to differentiate between unknown shared dream external entities and subconscious irrational creations of your own design. The distinction is based largely on your belief / your faith in what is going on here. There is no objective evidence to support one claim over the other. But if you are more comfortable thinking that shared dreaming is completely impossible, then you should not claim your DCs are deceiving you. If you do not believe they can be external entities with own minds, then you need to be willing to accept them as your own creations and not assign them motives external to you.

**melanieb** · 04-22-2013 06:53 PM

Originally Posted by gab

Linking to other lucid dreaming forums is not allowed. But we have our own http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...cid-dream.html Check it out.

Originally Posted by Woodstock

I don't want to argue with a moderator, but why can't we post links to other lucid dreaming forums? If I find something interesting on ld4all and wanted to talk about it here, who would that hurt?

Originally Posted by RavenOfShadow

Not allowed to link to other Lucid dreaming forums o.o? Is this North Korea? Haha. Alright I won't in the future, wasn't aware of that! I thought we were supposed to help each other lucid dream by sharing our experience and resources. Ah well. Either way, lets see some more insightful comments on the original post, thats why we're here!

Yes, it is true that linking to other lucid dreaming forums goes against posting rules because it draws visitors away from DreamViews.

It's not that we dislike the other forums, and mentioning them won't get you sent to the gulag.

We really want forum members to stay here, on this site, and we believe you'll find a better overall lucid dreaming experience here than anywhere else on the internet. The off-topic here is also pretty cool.

No, we're not North Korea, and I think you will find staff here to be courteous. Unlike Korea, we have no medium-range ballistic missiles. What we do have is staff who care and members that are worth knowing, and the latter we have in abundance.

You can post links to reference-dreaming sites and blogs as long as nothing is being sold on those sites. We respect our member's privacy and don't want anyone steering them into for-profit sites that could take advantage of them.

Check out that thread gab linked. It's filled with great ideas. You can also find the Task-of-The-Month linked in my signature, both good reasons to stick around DreamViews.

**Sorry to hijack your thread, MatthewMoisen. Your lucid dreaming experiences sound interesting. I hope you decide to start a Dream Journal here.

**RavenOfShadow** · 04-22-2013 09:32 PM

Originally Posted by melanieb

Yes, it is true that linking to other lucid dreaming forums goes against posting rules because it draws visitors away from DreamViews.

It's not that we dislike the other forums, and mentioning them won't get you sent to the gulag.

We really want forum members to stay here, on this site, and we believe you'll find a better overall lucid dreaming experience here than anywhere else on the internet. The off-topic here is also pretty cool.

No, we're not North Korea, and I think you will find staff here to be courteous. Unlike Korea, we have no medium-range ballistic missiles. What we do have is staff who care and members that are worth knowing, and the latter we have in abundance.

You can post links to reference-dreaming sites and blogs as long as nothing is being sold on those sites. We respect our member's privacy and don't want anyone steering them into for-profit sites that could take advantage of them.

Check out that thread gab linked. It's filled with great ideas. You can also find the Task-of-The-Month linked in my signature, both good reasons to stick around DreamViews.

**Sorry to hijack your thread, MatthewMoisen. Your lucid dreaming experiences sound interesting. I hope you decide to start a Dream Journal here.

I'm just giving you a hard time, I understand completely! I really do love it here. A very mature and helpful community in the week i've been here!

**FriendlyFace** · 04-22-2013 09:55 PM

I occasionally accuse other people in my dreams of dreaming. Like I know it's a dream, but I think one of the characters in the dream is dreaming and I'm a character in their dream. Possibly that is the case, who knows.