Hello, I wanted to reflect on the idea that lucidity is an obstacle to dreaming. Some say that awareness and control corrupt the true insights of dreaming. I want to argue against this by talking about my latest dream.

In the dream, I was in class and everyone had done their homework except for me. I didn't know what to do, I was not prepared. When the teacher got to me, I felt embarrassed and searched my book for a quick answer. I saw that the word "pentagon" rhymed with "table" and said so but that felt off. Even throughout the following dreams, I was trying to make sense of that rhyme, repeating "ta" from "pentagon" and "ta" from "table" and thinking "that's wrong". Also, I met the teacher again who made a sly remark about me being unprepared.

If I were studying my dream for insight or looking at it as a reflection of my life, I might see stress, anxiety, unpreparedness, worthlessness. Yet, I don't think this dream provides such insight. It seems that all the feelings of the dream are not a result of my mentality or my life. It seems to me that they are a mere consequence of my lack of lucidity. It is simply not possible to be prepared for a nonsense homework in a nonsense course. I never had a chance to study or do my homework because the dream began in the class and the topic was nonsense. It seems to me any classroom dream must lead to frustration unless the dream made sense and was about a known topic.

Had I been lucid, I could have understood the nonsense was not a failing on my part and the dream could have gone on, without spiraling into frustration. If dreams have insight, they might be easier to find by being aware that it is a dream and not staying stuck on failings of the dream.

For example, dreams about lost items or difficulty moving are not necessarily insights that you feel lost or out of control, but may simply be due to the nature of dreaming (objects are not really physically somewhere specific in space and you are not actually controlling a physical body).