Lucid dreaming questions ( Christians only, please... or dont go against us. )

Well, I am a Christian, obviously, and I just had things I really wanted to discuss with other Christians... I'll make a list.

1. Are you the sort that just knows about Jesus or do you actually love him and follow him?

2. What do you do in Lucid dreams?

For me, my philosophy for lucid dreams is don't do anything in them you wouldn't do in real life ( when it comes to sin, im not saying anything about flying or anything, im just saying that sin inside dreams is a form of sin, and it's not just excused because no one got hurt, just like how you attempted to murder someone in real life, and didn't succeed, it's still murder to God, or at least some sin. I also believe that Jesus Christ will forgive any sins if you will repent of them and ask for forgiveness and admit you were wrong to do it. ) and don't get incredibly indulgent to the point where you like it more than real life and start to abuse it and do the whole escapism thing, basically I think that lucid dreaming can be taken either way depending on the circumstances, like food. or sleep. or talking. with food you can eat too much and get into the whole gluttony thing, but food itself isn't bad, it goes for the other things too, that's how I view lucid dreaming, you should not take any lucid dream as a form of advice or believe any dream characters in it, and ALWAYS test to make sure there isn't anything ungodly in it, like " dream guides " A.K.A. " spirit guides " the only spirit that should be directing you is the Holy Spirit of God. and if he tells you to stay away from lucid dreaming, DO IT. he is always right, just because lucid dreaming is alright for one Christian does not mean it is alright for another. God ( Jesus Christ ) overrides all. remember that.

Glad to find another brother in Christ here :)

1. The latter; I love Him and follow Him

2. Many things, but nothing that I feel would be sinful for me to conceive of.

My philosophy about lucid dreaming is slightly different than yours, however, I will admit. Like you bring up the issue of murder. Obviously I wouldn't murder someone in real life, and yet I've killed many a DC before. To me it's not an issue of 'no one gets hurt' as it is 'no one existed in the first place'. And honestly, a lot of times lucid dreaming is like the ultimate movie experience for me, so so in all the combat that has taken place, it's been so that I can enjoy pulling off incredible acrobatic moves in an epic environment, not because there's hatred or bloodlust. That's why I believe it's not a sin. Real-life murder involves one of those two things, while lucid dreams do not have to.

I'm not trying to change your position on the matter, though. You should definitely go with your own convictions.

Exactly what form does the Holy Spirit only appear in, and why do you feel that spirit guides or dream guides are ungodly and can not in anyway be the form of the Holy Spirit?

Don't put the Holy Spirit in a lid - it will come in any form it needs to to convey a message, be it an ant :P

I'm a christian but I try to do as much sinning in my dreams as I can.

I'm not going to say I'm part of any belief system (I'm not an atheist though), and I'm certainly not going to go against you.

I think mindless violence in dreams is... pointless. Mindless violence mind you. If a dc attacks you, go ahead, beat them down. If you challenge a DC to a gentlemans duel, by all means, but if you just run in a building, and shoot it up... Thats just a bad idea. Sexually I don't think theres much bad you can do in a dream short of raping a DC. And language? I don't worry about it in dreams.

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Originally Posted by OldManRiver

I'm a christian but I try to do as much sinning in my dreams as I can.

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I'll believe you're a christian when Jesus Christ himself comes to me in person and tells me so.

I'm not a Christian for starters, but I just wanted to point something out. Many violent criminals, of every religion alike, became such because they reached the figurative "boiling point" where you get tired of taking shit from everyone and just go ape on them. Wouldn't it be a good idea to prevent this by using your dreams as an outlet for inevitable rage?

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Originally Posted by Xedan

I'm not a Christian for starters, but I just wanted to point something out. Many violent criminals, of every religion alike, became such because they reached the figurative "boiling point" where you get tired of taking shit from everyone and just go ape on them. Wouldn't it be a good idea to prevent this by using your dreams as an outlet for inevitable rage?

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Well, here's the deal. A true Christian will not have that 'inevitable rage' because their future is secured because of Christ, their past has been forgiven by Christ, and their present made new in Christ. A Christian can still be very angry, to be sure, but it's either an anger at sin or its acting out of character and a sin in itself for that Christian.

All that considered, you wouldn't need to take out your anger on your dreams, because the anger wouldn't be there in the first place :)

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Originally Posted by OldManRiver

I'm a christian but I try to do as much sinning in my dreams as I can.

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lol. Luther said to sin boldly, is this the boldest you can do?

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Originally Posted by juroara

Exactly what form does the Holy Spirit only appear in, and why do you feel that spirit guides or dream guides are ungodly and can not in anyway be the form of the Holy Spirit?

Don't put the Holy Spirit in a lid - it will come in any form it needs to to convey a message, be it an ant :P

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Yea, he COULD use that to tell you something, BUT, not all spirits come from God, just because they claim to be your spirit guide does not necessarily mean they really are, if they don't believe in Jesus Christ and try to make you believe something else, they are NOT from God. What I mean is be VERY VERY cautious when it comes to dealing with spirits, if they ever really come into dreams... and never trust them unless you KNOW that they are from God.

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Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Well, here's the deal. A true Christian will not have that 'inevitable rage' because their future is secured because of Christ, their past has been forgiven by Christ, and their present made new in Christ. A Christian can still be very angry, to be sure, but it's either an anger at sin or its acting out of character and a sin in itself for that Christian.

All that considered, you wouldn't need to take out your anger on your dreams, because the anger wouldn't be there in the first place :)

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then explain why there are so many Christians in jail for violent crimes.

Edit: to clarify, this is not an attack on Christianity, it is merely to hold my stance that sin in dreams is not bad, but in some cases can be rather helpful.

Let's keep it on topic, guys. Xedan, if you want to start an "Are Xtians Immune to Anger?" thread, go ahead, but that's not what this thread is for.

EDIT: If it needs any clarification, while your first post was arguably on topic, if already veering into left field, "Why are so many Christians in jail?" is quite a separate conversation, and obviously not in keeping with the OP's requests. You're welcome to have that discussion, but take it to another thread.

Speaking as a Christian, I think you've got the right idea, patrick45. :)

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Originally Posted by patrick45

Yea, he COULD use that to tell you something, BUT, not all spirits come from God, just because they claim to be your spirit guide does not necessarily mean they really are, if they don't believe in Jesus Christ and try to make you believe something else, they are NOT from God. What I mean is be VERY VERY cautious when it comes to dealing with spirits, if they ever really come into dreams... and never trust them unless you KNOW that they are from God.

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To say that a spirit does not come from God is to say that some other god has the power to create spirit

All spirits come from God, even the fallen angel Lucifer is a creation of God

The question is whether or not such spirit is aligned with God's greater will. Being paranoid that spirits are out to manipulate is a silly fear you shouldn't have. Jesus tells you to have no fear.

The point that I am trying to make is you can not use a logical argument to decide if a spirit is good or evil. Such a decision is felt in your heart. Even if you encounter a spirit who says something that you don't agree with, it doesn't mean they are evil are out to decieve, spirits aren't any different from humans, as humans are in the christian sense spirits in a body. No spirit has the entire truth. YOU SHOULD ALWAYS USE YOUR OWN DISCERNMENT even is said spirit glows radiantly and claims to be the Angel of the Lord.

The point I am trying to make is......God has a million and one forms. You can't put God in a box and make logical argument and decide AHEAD of time and what is and what is not God. Because then you are placing God in a box, which is the same as creating a false idol. Don't ever say, or ever tell anyone how God can or can not appear to you.

How do you know that God has not spoken to a person through a Dream Guide? Can not God speak through any living form? This is the Holy Spirit, and it will speak through any medium.

I had a dream character tell me straight out "I AM GOD!" Should I believe this dream character? Yes? No? There is no logical or intellectual means I can ever use to decipher whether or not this dream character is God.

Now what about a monster in a dream? Is this dream monster automatically a manifestation of something evil? Or can not this monster actually be something genuinely good and holding the spirit of God, wearing a monstrous disguise to teach me something about myself. Nightmares help you, always do they help you to grow and learn

God is in you, and in all forms. There is no such thing as a spirit that does not harbor the essence God. Because God is spirit and all spirits are God. Just, some don't remember this truth.

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Originally Posted by juroara

To say that a spirit does not come from God is to say that some other god has the power to create spirit

All spirits come from God, even the fallen angel Lucifer is a creation of God

The question is whether or not such spirit is aligned with God's greater will. Being paranoid that spirits are out to manipulate is a silly fear you shouldn't have. Jesus tells you to have no fear.

The point that I am trying to make is you can not use a logical argument to decide if a spirit is good or evil. Such a decision is felt in your heart. Even if you encounter a spirit who says something that you don't agree with, it doesn't mean they are evil are out to decieve, spirits aren't any different from humans, as humans are in the christian sense spirits in a body. No spirit has the entire truth. YOU SHOULD ALWAYS USE YOUR OWN DISCERNMENT even is said spirit glows radiantly and claims to be the Angel of the Lord.

The point I am trying to make is......God has a million and one forms. You can't put God in a box and make logical argument and decide AHEAD of time and what is and what is not God. Because then you are placing God in a box, which is the same as creating a false idol. Don't ever say, or ever tell anyone how God can or can not appear to you.

How do you know that God has not spoken to a person through a Dream Guide? Can not God speak through any living form? This is the Holy Spirit, and it will speak through any medium.

I had a dream character tell me straight out "I AM GOD!" Should I believe this dream character? Yes? No? There is no logical or intellectual means I can ever use to decipher whether or not this dream character is God.

Now what about a monster in a dream? Is this dream monster automatically a manifestation of something evil? Or can not this monster actually be something genuinely good and holding the spirit of God, wearing a monstrous disguise to teach me something about myself. Nightmares help you, always do they help you to grow and learn

God is in you, and in all forms. There is no such thing as a spirit that does not harbor the essence God. Because God is spirit and all spirits are God. Just, some don't remember this truth.

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Well, I'm not very good at saying things in a way understandable to others, but I wasn't trying to put God in a box or anything, and when I said that not all spirits come from God, I know that they were created by him, but some chose to turn against Him, as free will allows them to do so, without which real love cannot exist ( free will, I mean ), while all spirits derive their existence from God (as nothing created could have created itself), I don't believe that all spirits ARE God, we are simply his creation, we aren't actually HIM.

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Originally Posted by patrick45

Well, I'm not very good at saying things in a way understandable to others, but I wasn't trying to put God in a box or anything, and when I said that not all spirits come from God, I know that they were created by him, but some chose to turn against Him, as free will allows them to do so, without which real love cannot exist ( free will, I mean ), while all spirits derive their existence from God (as nothing created could have created itself), I don't believe that all spirits ARE God, we are simply his creation, we aren't actually HIM.

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Didn't Jesus profess to be ONE with God?

Didn't Jesus also profess that just as he is within God, Jesus is within YOU? Where does this place God, except within you? Isn't the kingdom of Heaven also within you? Isn't God in heaven? Where does this place God? Except within you? You are the drop of the ocean. You may not be the entire ocean, but you are still fundamentally a part of it. You are not separate from God. The idea that God is up there separate from ourselves is a lie created by the church.

In other words, you are not just a creation of God - you are the expression of God

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Originally Posted by juroara

Didn't Jesus profess to be ONE with God?

Didn't Jesus also profess that just as he is within God, Jesus is within YOU? Where does this place God, except within you? Isn't the kingdom of Heaven also within you? Isn't God in heaven? Where does this place God? Except within you? You are the drop of the ocean. You may not be the entire ocean, but you are still fundamentally a part of it. You are not separate from God. The idea that God is up there separate from ourselves is a lie created by the church.

In other words, you are not just a creation of God - you are the expression of God

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Yes, he did profess to be one with God because the trinity ( father, son, holy spirit ) are all the same thing, just like how width, length, and height makes up volume, the father, the son, and the holy spirit make up what is God, so Jesus IS God, not a creation of God ( just in case you were saying something to that effect ) and Heaven is within Christians, as wherever God is so is Heaven, but God is omnipresent ( but that does not mean heaven is everywhere. ), so there can be a physical place AND at the same time be inside of Christians. As for not being able to be separated from God, as I said with Jesus, you can't use him as an example of a creation being God, as he IS God, not simply a creation like regular humans, he had to take on a human form in order to redeem humankind, but he himself is both divine and human in nature, but that does not mean that we are, because Jesus NEVER committed any form of sin, or else he could not have saved humankind ( and would not be God. ), and humankind NEEDS a savior, as God is perfect, and human beings are imperfect, there cannot be a relation between perfection and imperfection unless something happens to change the imperfection into perfection, so if God is perfect, but yet humankind does imperfect things all the time, human beings cannot possibly be a part of God or else God is imperfect, and this universe would blow up or descend into utter chaos since if God were imperfect there could be no perfect anything, including perfect order of the universe.

I'm an atheist, but I'm not going to rip apart your belief system (for now ;)). Just like to pitch in my two cents about dream sinning...

It's fine. My personal stance is that, as long as you aren't hurting people, you're fine. I fail to see how killing a dream character is going to negatively impact anyone in reality, and in my book, that puts you in the clear. It is my view that dreaming is entirely within the mind; your own mind. Anything you do in the comfort and privacy of your own subconscious is your own business. As Xedan stated, religion or no, people do experience negative emotions, and people do snap. Dreams can provide a nice little outlet to vent one's negativity, to prevent it from manifesting itself in reality.

Besides that, nuking your arch-nemesis is a lot of fun. ^_^

The OP said something about moderation. Aristotle, I think, hit the nail on the head a couple thousand years ago when he came up with the "golden mean." It's easy to tend to either extreme with activities such as eating, but for lucid dreaming, it's usually a pretty self-regulating process. Most people only have a few LD's per month, if that. For those with more than that, I think the novelty begins to wear off. And for those who are just naturally great at it, it'd be very difficult to stop having them altogether. I think lucid dreaming is a bit of an exception to Aristotle's Golden Mean. There are some very proficient LD'ers on the forum, and I don't believe they use LD'ing as a form of escapism most of the time.

As for Dream Guides and Spirit Guides being "ungoldy," I have to disagree. I view these as manifestations of your own subconscious. A DG, in my book, is a DC with more clarity of thought and a more complex character. You also claim to take advice through the Holy Spirit. May I ask how, exactly, you plan to identify said spirit? Keep in mind that, in dreams, literally anything can happen. Trying to distinguish the holy ghost from any other DC would be virtually impossible.

I'm also non-Christian (a lousy Buddhist, fair to middlin' Taoist, and Universalist), but I would say no, don't "sin" in LDs. Granted, my notion of wrongdoing has nothing to do with what any authority can or can't see, or will or won't count, but how one's actions affect one's own consciousness, which is part and parcel of your impact on the world. Obviously, there's no reason LDs would get a pass from this perspective; the most you could argue is that actions in LDs are less harmful than their waking counterparts.

I don't see why it would be any different from a Christian (or, for that matter, wholly secular) viewpoint. Killing a dream character while lucid may not be murder, it's still a negative action undertaken with intent. Like my own past tendency to 'summon beautiful woman,' it's unskillful at the very least: a waste of the lucid experience.

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Originally Posted by Taosaur

I'm also non-Christian (a lousy Buddhist, fair to middlin' Taoist, and Universalist), but I would say no, don't "sin" in LDs. Granted, my notion of wrongdoing has nothing to do with what any authority can or can't see, or will or won't count, but how one's actions affect one's own consciousness, which is part and parcel of your impact on the world. Obviously, there's no reason LDs would get a pass from this perspective; the most you could argue is that actions in LDs are less harmful than their waking counterparts.

I don't see why it would be any different from a Christian (or, for that matter, wholly secular) viewpoint. Killing a dream character while lucid may not be murder, it's still a negative action undertaken with intent. Like my own past tendency to 'summon beautiful woman,' it's unskillful at the very least: a waste of the lucid experience.

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As a Buddhist/Taoistr/Pagan shaman myself I agree not to cause harm, when we have a negative intent to cause harm, whether in a dream or waking life, it harms ourself. Just like all dream characters are really parts of our own self, so are all people in waking life. Even the desire to hurt hurts ourself. Anger hurts. In shamanism sometimes it is called for to defeat an enemy in the dream, but everytime, they reintegrate the energy they have disowned. They re-own it. For example, after a shaman defeats an enemy he will make friends with it. I am talking about shamans who are in alignment with the greatest good of all. Not shamans on the quest for personal power at the expense of others.

A boy in a village in southeast asia was having a recurring nightmare that a tiger was stalking him. He asked the shaman what to do. The shaman said to ask the tiger what it wanted. So that night the boy did.

The tiger said "you know what I want, I want to eat you." So the boy told the shaman the next day and the shaman said "you will have to kill the tiger. I will come in the dream with you to help you."

That night in the dream the boy and the shaman killed the tiger. But the next day the boy was feeling ill and had low energy level. He couldn't eat. The shaman told him that the tiger was his own life energy and since he had killed the tiger he had killed some of his own enery. The thing to do now, he told him, was that night in the dream he had to bar-b-cue the tiger up and share him with the village and eat him. The boy said "Yuk, I don't want to eat the tiger!"
That next night in the dream the boy placed the body of the tiger on the funeral pyre and cremated the tiger. He took the ashes and threw them in the air. As they landed a great garden sprang up and the whole village harvested vegetables to eat from the garded. The next day the boy was better.

Then he had a dream with the tiger again but this time the tiger was friendly and would cuddle with him and be like a pussycat.
The shaman told him that now the tiger was his ally and would protect him and guide him. And he did.

We are all one, all beings, whether plant, mineral, animal, fungus, etc. And we it is not good for us to act from the belief that we are not one. That is what sin is for me, is to believe that we are not one. But I don't think that it is a law given by an authoritarian demiurge god but just a fundamental law of nature and reality. If you go against reality you will suffer. Trying to swim against the current you will exhaust yourself and drown, but going with the current you will arrive refreshed.

Even in dreams this is true.

Patrick 45 is right, though it's not easy achieving. I am a Christian struggling with this very thing. But the real underlying issue here is much deeper. Lucid dreaming is a step towards darkness, where it's possible to meet spirits of wickedness. Before I was saved I had real encounters with real spirits of darkness. Christians should avoid learning to Lucid dream as it opens a door that is very hard to close. Be careful.

In Christ
Marc

Hey there OP, I respect your thread, and I'm really happy for you and imma let you finish, but I gotta do this...

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Originally Posted by MarcUK

Patrick 45 is right, though it's not easy achieving. I am a Christian struggling with this very thing. But the real underlying issue here is much deeper. Lucid dreaming is a step towards darkness, where it's possible to meet spirits of wickedness. Before I was saved I had real encounters with real spirits of darkness. Christians should avoid learning to Lucid dream as it opens a door that is very hard to close. Be careful.

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What the fuck am I reading?

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Originally Posted by Mario92

What the fuck am I reading?

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Twilight Zone material.

I've known people who claimed they've been tempted by evil spirits in their dreams and while they were awake. Guess what, they also had personality disorders. Just saying.

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Originally Posted by MarcUK

Lucid dreaming is a step towards darkness, where it's possible to meet spirits of wickedness. Before I was saved I had real encounters with real spirits of darkness. Christians should avoid learning to Lucid dream as it opens a door that is very hard to close. Be careful.

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Really?

I've had lucid dreams involving very spiritual encounters with God, Jesus, Mary, a few Archangels and Saints.

I was raised Roman Catholic but have not practiced in many years. Even still...some of those dreams caused me to question if I should go back to the faith. I haven't...but how can you say that such a thing would be wicked? Most people who practice a religion will go their entire lives without ever getting to meet their gods or goddesses. Lucid dreaming is truly a wonderful and natural gift, and it's sad that you would try to encourage anyone not to learn or practice this skill. Isn't there something in the bible about it being a sin not to use the gifts that god has given to you?

Lucid dreaming is a tree of knowledge, and damn...the fruit tastes good.