Thread: Can you purposely lose lucidity?

I've also wondered this. The main reason I want to do it is to see how it feels. But the idea you've come up with is fascinating! I think it's very much worth trying.

Hmm...I don't have any experience with this, but it seems like it should be possible. If all else fails and you know your mind well enough, you could create circumstances that kept the scenario you wanted but caused you to lose lucidity.

This reminds me of the movie "Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind" and I already want to write a script about it, but probably won't get around to doing so.

Originally Posted by oniman7

Well, this has been one of my dream goals for a while, but I haven't figured out how (if) you can do it yet. I'm curious if, upon becoming lucid, you can force yourself to lose lucidity? You may be wondering why I'd want to do it, but there's one big problem I think this could solve. For example, a lot of people get over excited or their lucid dreams don't last long. For this example, you're supposed to steal a diamond from a museum. So you become lucid. You go into a building which is your HQ and you can see the museum from there. You create all the weapons you'd need ( to do it non lucid ) and you create DC's around you to remind you of the task at hand. Then you lose lucidity. At this point, stabilization is no longer an issue. Non lucid dreams generally last longer than lucids, so you'd get more things done. Some people also have problems when they attempt things like sex. This could help solve that as well, because those problems usually don't come up in non lucid dreams. So, tell me what you think.

Your profile thingy says you are male. Most experimenters with non-physical sex, whether you call it astral or just dreaming, report that while women can because the orgasm brain-circuitry is open to spontaneous triggering, the male brain's sexual centers have a different brain-circuitry which makes it nearly impossible for males, despite lucidity or lack thereof.

It's not too hard to be lucid in a dream in a low-key way, letting the dream take place in a natural progression. Nothing says you have to fly, use super powers, or otherwise spoil things. You can simply use lucidity to appreciate the dream more, by being able to think freely as it unfolds.

-Though I don't think I have problems with stability, whatever you mean by that. Or duration, though I've found that lucidity can waver slightly if a dream goes on for long enough, T > 25 (real) minutes. And I lost my excitement many dreams ago.

I don't think he means low key Lucidity, rather no Lucidity at all.

I was at a function, and ended up with a friend and we ran down the street to go smoke a joint. I woke up a few times and used the wild technique to go back to lucidity. Eventually, I finally flew for the first time. I went up into space, although I was injured slightly(I burned my arms). I came back down and tested my ability by flying towards groves of trees and then flying back up. I think that when I went towards the trees I pushed it too far, and lost lucidity.

A couple of nights later, I returned to this environment. It was so weird the dream began with me standing/walking slowly in the middle of the road and I became lucid almost instantly recognizing the road. I flew up and down. I had heard from a friend that breathing underwater is a kick, so I tried to fly into a pool. I swerved down, missed it, two times, and finally landed on the ground next to it. I dove in, and although a bit reluctant breathed underwater twice. When I came out of the water I lost lucidity. But I remember the rest of the dream as running around, apparently I had run out of space. I think I pretty much trapped myself by not even considering what I would do after being shocked by breathing underwater.

you could try chaining scene changes until you have a false awakening. Of course, you cant realize you're having one at the moment.

I can purposely lose lucidity, but when I try to analyze why, I think it might just have a lot to do with my personal way of thinking.

I do a lot of meditation, so I'm really good at focusing completely on one thing and holding that focus for longer periods of time. So in a dream, when I want to lose lucidity, instead of thinking of anything that will remind me that I'm dreaming, I focus hard enough on something in the dream, that the moment I am in becomes my entire awareness. Its a lot like choosing to be distracted by something and then letting go. Or like going off on a tangent until you are no longer thinking of the main point that you got off topic of. At some point along the way I forget that I'm dreaming simply because I am not thinking about the fact that its a dream for a long enough period of time that I can get swept up in the dream again.

For example, back when I was in high school, I had a lucid dream that started off somewhere on campus, and to slip back into the dream state, I went to class, and instead of comparing dream school to school in real life, which would only serve to remind me that I was lucid, I just acted as if it was a normal day at school, and started daydreaming in my dream. Eventually I slipped back into a non-lucid state. Sometimes I focus more on the dream characters than the dream itself and lose lucidity. The trick is to not think of them as dream characters, though, because then you're only reinfocing to yourself the fact that you're dreaming. A characteristic of the non-lucid dreaming mind is acceptance. Accept what is around you as being real, and don't pay it too much attention.

You should know, though, that even if you prepare your dream while lucid, if you fall back into a non lucid state you may very well get distracted and go off to do something else. Even if you prepare the materials you will need and tell dream characters to alert you to what you must do, those materials and those dream characters are part of your own unconscious, which might decide to run the dream in a completely different direction. In fact, when I choose to loose lucidity it is usually because none of my own ideas sound all that appealing to me at the time, and I know that if I slip out of lucidity, my subconscious will likely take me to a more interesting story.

Best of luck!

Hm I think it's easier than the poster above described... Although I only chose to lose lucidity a few times, I always simply decided that I should lose it, and it worked. It must be just like a normal autosuggestion. Or a coincidence.

Originally Posted by Arutad

Hm I think it's easier than the poster above described... Although I only chose to lose lucidity a few times, I always simply decided that I should lose it, and it worked. It must be just like a normal autosuggestion. Or a coincidence.

If you do that enough times, maybe your subconscious woud start learning your new "preference", and reduce your ability to LD at all? If you were really successful at undoing your lucidity, maybe you'd start forgetting your dreams too?

Originally Posted by starry eyes

If you do that enough times, maybe your subconscious woud start learning your new "preference", and reduce your ability to LD at all? If you were really successful at undoing your lucidity, maybe you'd start forgetting your dreams too?

I would think that practicing this would actually give you a better chance of recognizing the dream state.

Originally Posted by starry eyes

If you do that enough times, maybe your subconscious woud start learning your new "preference", and reduce your ability to LD at all? If you were really successful at undoing your lucidity, maybe you'd start forgetting your dreams too?

If you had a reason to lose lucidity in the first place and it would persist all the time, then it's possible that loss of lucidity would establish itself as a kind of habit, imho. But there's nothing to fear, you have to have a good persistent reason first.

I think its readily possible.
You just have to run with the dream and let yourself being drawn into it.

I'd agree triggering false awakenings is a good way to achieve the same.
When I started LDing I had a number of good laughs about how I was tricked by very obvious FA's.

That would be hard, I imagine, as purposely losing lucidity is a bit ironic. It's like trying to forget spoilers you read to a book; The more you try to forget, the stronger the memory becomes. Anyways, I'm not going to try this, as I have a hard enough time getting lucid in the first place

I've done it 5 or 6 times, all you have to do after becoming lucid is think to yourself something like "I'm too tired for this" and slowly let your awareness decrease until you're on non-lucid autopilot. The shift in consciousness, although you don't feel it because you lose awareness when losing lucidity, is a very interesting feeling to look back on when you wake up.