Is lucid a sin?-Part II

Oh well Frozenwisper, you’re parents just don’t know what they’re missing :smile:

Hehe, so true :content:

Christianity has just become a form of control ppl.

what has that to do with the question
Is lucid a sin? ?
and the answer depends on the individual’s understanding of sin since what happens when you are lucid just happens in your mind.

The original topic:"I need advice from Christians, please… has been merged into this existing “is lucid a sin” topic, since it is a similar discussion :content:

Okay, heres the thing:

I want to try lucid dreaming but I just cannot tell if God would approve of it. Its obviously a way for Satan to try and get to me, but it could also mean a better understanding of self and possible communication with God in different ways.

I spoke to a wise man, and he said that in a lucid dream, people think that they won’t have to be responsible for their actions because it is “not real” and that they can endulge in their fantasies. However, he said the truth was that we can be tempted in lucid dreams just as in life, and we must turn away from that temptation. He said that the lucid dreams he had were god-given and that he doesn’t believe in encouraging practising lucid dreaming.

Please give an honest opinion of whether or you believe God would approve of this practise. Its an issue I am really struggling with so please be truthful.

God Bless,

Slinger

Well, I’m a little heretic. Anyway, I don’t know how the he…ck they teach religion in that emisphere, but it’s up to you what you do in LD’s. You can play mutilating people or fly over grassy fields, it’s totally up to you. Your mind is in control, and no one else.

Hi Slinger,

I’m not a believer and I don’t agree with your point of view about God and Satan. I prefer to tell you this immediatly and frankly.

Now, if I shared your point of view, here is what I would say.

If you think that LD’ing is “obviously a way for Satan to try and get to me”, then don’t practice LD’ing.

If you think the man you talk with was a “wise man”, it means that you completely agree with him and you find his words to be full of wisdom. Moreover, he’s right when he says that “people think that they won’t have to be responsible for their actions because it is “not real” and that they can endulge in their fantasies.” Then why to doubt what he said?

If you consider that LD’ing is an additionnal way of being tempted by Satan, then avoid this way.

People who have had spiritual experiences in LD’ing or who could better understand themselves through it are only people who are deeply involved in searching God or try to enhance themselves IRL. People who just think about having big cars, fun and sex IRL don’t get enlightment or better understanding in LD’s.

I don’t know if God would approve this practice cause I don’t claim to know God’s thoughts. But I see that according to your conscience, you don’t approve it. Act as you conscience dictates. Try and be closer to God IRL cause if you aren’t IRL, you won’t be closer to Him in LD’s.

Now if you truly expect having a better understanding of yourself and a possible communication with God through LD’s, then pray God for having LD’s. Thus, if He thinks it’s a good thing for you, He will give you LD’s.

(I don’t think your thread is well located here. In this subforum, you’ll mainly find people who believe in paranormal and new age stuff. I’ll ask the Philosopher Cloud mod if he thinks it’s better located in his subforum.)

Sorry to post (another post from a complete heretic), but why do you want to lucid dream anyway? To do those things! Desire is in the nature of humans and all things, you can either live your life in fear of no deity or you can worry about every little tiny thing, then suddenly when you die, you find out you were supposed to be worshipping someone else.
Another point. 100s of the members here are Christians, and more on the point, generally good people. They lucid dream, and yet I doubt they’ll be going to hell. You can decide to follow the wise man, I won’t judge you, but do keep in mind to develope your own opinion, it’s no use living your life being a sheep all the time.
So you can do whatever you like, but at least try it for a few weeks (even murderers get forgiven by God according to the Bible) because what is there to lose?

(Also another point - if you think LDs are evil then you’ll think APs are ways of bonding with Satan)

Well, think about one thing - noone know “for sure” why peolpe has dreams. If this is invention from above, you should enjoy dreams, and lucid dreams olny helps in that. Of course, if in dreams you would do SUCH evil things, it might be sin. But as long you will concentrate on doing things that is not possible in real life, like flying, it isnt bad thing.

and i think that lucid dreams would even help you to satan not get you. Always better to have fun in LDs and when you will wake up, you have feeling that you done a lot better thing than such as drugs.

But i am bit confused in faith, so you dont have to take my respond right. I can be wrong. Olny thing that i can say “as sure” that i am LDing and i dont feel guilty with that.

Have nice day, DD

Why would God create us with the ability to dream lucidly and then send us to some kind of “hell” because we use that ability? That doesn’t make very much sense to me, and the same goes for all other “occult” practices. Moreover, the concept of “Hell” is a very evolved concept, as is the concept of Satan, and a lot of the ideas for these were borrowed from more “primitive” religions (as was more or less everything else in the Christian faith).
This is a very good article on this:

[i]Above all, if there is a God behind this universe, he would be much too wise and much too kind to create anything like hell. That would be the act of a fiend, of something of low intelligence. Can you imagine Einstein saying to himself, “If my student, Mary, doesn’t believe in special relativity I’ll run her over in the parking lot!” Can you imagine God, supposedly so much wiser and grand, saying, “I gave Mary a brain, but if she uses it and concludes that I don’t exist then I’ll roast her forever and ever on my hottest fire!” It doesn’t make any sense, does it? No being worthy of respect could possibly act in that manner.

It might interest you to know that hell is an evolved concept! The authors of the Old Testament believed that when a person died, good or bad, they went to a shadowy underworld, sheol, and lived out some kind of marginal existence. The ancient Greek epic poem, the Odyssey, also written in Old Testament times, reflects that view. Though the King James translation uses the word “hell” in both the Old and New Testaments, the biblical manuscripts use several different words. In almost all of the Old Testament the word translated as “hell” is the Hebrew “sheol.” Hell was short of fuel at that time!

There was no personal judgment in the Old Testament, save by occasional rewards and punishment for the living. Job didn’t get his reward in Heaven! Judgment was usually reserved for nations. In the final judgment, the end-time, all of Israel’s enemies would be crushed. A new, golden era would begin on earth with Israel the top dog.

Unfortunately, the ancient Jewish state took some very nasty knocks, especially when Nebuchadnezzar cleaned out the Temple and took the Jewish elite hostage. That captivity brought them into close association with Babylonian ideas, ideas which pop up in the Genesis creation account and in Noah’s flood, accounts that were written up around that time. (Genesis is not the oldest part of the Bible!)

After the Persian conquest of Babylon by Cyrus, who allowed everyone to return to their homelands, many Jews remained in Babylon by choice, and they became very inundated with Persian philosophy. Persian (Iranian) philosophy dealt with the battle between the dark forces (read devil) and the forces of light, a battle in which the forces of light would eventually prevail. In the end, individuals would be judged by an ordeal of fire, and the wicked would be destroyed. (I could be wrong, but I don’t think the Iranians believed in eternal punishment.)

With the old idea that Yahweh would bless their nation (if they did all the right things) on the rocks, with no light at the end of the tunnel, these new Iranian ideas started seeping into the Jewish consciousness. Ideas from Greece were also becoming influential after Alexander’s great conquest. The Jewish revolt against Antiochus IV, who attempted to totally Hellenize the Jews, temporarily restored the Jewish state for a time before the Romans took over. It was during the persecution by Antiochus IV that, in order to boost moral, the Book of Daniel was written. Its Prophecies relate to that era, not to some indefinite future! Its author made some serious mistakes describing the time of Nebuchadnezzar, supposedly the time Daniel lived. But, the closer the text gets to 164 BC the more accurate it is in its details. That was the time the book was actually written. Its author ventured several more prophecies, real prophecies this time, and they all fell flat! (Fundamentalists try to shift this last bunch of prophecies into the remote future! What else is new?)

The idea that justice would be done after all, in a time yet to come, began taking over. The Jewish idea of a messiah became popular. This messiah, descended from King David, would, with God’s special help, overthrow the Romans (or whatever) and institute a new, golden age for Israel. He would literally be a king and would occupy the Jewish throne. (Note that there was little or no concept of a Jewish messiah prior to the total destruction of the Jewish state by Nebuchadnezzar. Jewish kings were anointed and referred to as “sons of God,” but there was no messiah as such. Messiahs only became popular when things started going sour. The idea that Jesus is the Messiah is an idea advanced by the New Testament authors who simply ripped material out of context from the Old Testament. Suddenly, as far as Christians were concerned, every mention of “messiah” in the Old Testament was attached to Jesus!)

About this time the idea of individual judgment started taking hold, at least for some groups. Between the Old and New Testaments judgment shifts from nations to individuals. God formerly the author of good and evil becomes purely good (as in the Persian counterpart) while the devil, formerly a court functionary in God’s employee, becomes a superstar of evil (as in the Persian counterpart). Thus, individuals would now be judged at the end-time and go to heaven or hell. (By now, hell had warmed up considerably and was definitely a place of punishment, though not necessarily eternal punishment!)

Hell was now compared to the yuggiest place in Israel, namely the dump just outside Jerusalem where rubbish fires were constantly burning. The image of the worm (maggots) fit in nicely with a garbage dump. I suspect that even then the idea of eternal punishment was not universal, a point suggested by certain verses in the Bible. The bad guys would simply be burned up like so much trash, and that would be that. But, alas, those favoring the idea of eternal punishment won out. As a club to be held over the believer’s head, nothing could rival roasting for ever and ever in the big oven. Maybe that had something to do with the view winning out; it was a great recruiter! Later, Dante turned the heat way up, making hell hotter than ever! Lots of red-hot iron tickled one’s tootsies, and the smog was just unbearable–right up there with Mexico City!

Even little kids and babies now roasted in hell! (The latter concept may well be the only original Christian contribution to the Christian religion. Christianity is built virtually entirely on pagan and Jewish rituals, ideas which have been taken over.)

Heaven for climate, hell for good company! (Besides, you can have one helluva marshmallow roast down there.)
Well that’s hell in a peanut shell![/i]

I recommend reading some stuff on this site, it might clear things up: edwardtbabinski.us/skepticism/

I respect your belief in God and I’m not trying to undermine it, but I think you should consider a little the fact that Christianity has distorted the original beliefs tremendously over time.

Right, many times a person or council decided when they weren’t sure enough about something (see resurrection of the flesh) in the past. Add the “damage” caused by the otherwordly bigotedness of the Middle Ages and you should get a picture of the situation. 2 cents.

Thanks for your responses. I found this website:

bebaptized.org/astral.htm

Please tell me what you think about it. Do you think this applies just as equally to lucid dreams?

I have been doing so much research to try and form an opinion on whether or not I should do this. I see many sources embracing and condemning it. Also, theres that “eerie” feeling that comes along with it. Could it be selfish to want control of dreams?

Once about every month someone asks this question, and the answer is always the same. Lucid dreaming does not conflict with any known, established Christian church. There may be some that no one has ever heard of, like the twice reformed amphi-Baptist church (made up, but you get the idea), but no well known sect of Christianity has ever taken a stance on lucid dreaming. At least in recent history.

Oh no, not again.

DeadDuck pickes bebaptized.org, puts in closet, and flushes it.

Astrals and things like that doesnt exists. Lucid dreaming is state of brain, and it doesnt have any connections to things like that. Give a look for link to page called…

Looks crappy for me.

That’s a matter of opinion deadduck…

As a christian myself I say God does allow lucid dreaming. My mom was actually talking to me about this the other day, she also doesn’t believe in it because she says if God was trying to give me a word in my dream I’d be controling it, and that wouldn’t be good. I responded that God can do anything, including interupting my lucid dream to tell me something, and even using it to teach me something from the experience. Yes God approves of lucid dreaming, and I even believe it can lead you closer to God. I don’t know anything about astral projection but I believe if you’re “leaving your body” as people call it you should simply be careful, you will need God’s protection wherever you go.

I also disagree with that website on one major point, the guy says that fear is in us to keep us from doing stupid things, and maybe that’s partly true, but I do not believe fear is from God, fear and caution are different, if you can distinguish between the two than you are ready to take certain risks…

If you’re not embracing Satan, he can’t do anything to you. If you’re being faithful as you are, I think god has no problem with you LDing. As far as you don’t believe in spiritual stuff, it’s only a dream. I’m not Christian neither btw. I see it as metaphors. :smile:

oh really! Has he been whispering in your ear “i can’t wait til you get lucid boy, I’m gonna give you a nightmare and make you a dope fiend!”

How so? Some sort of king (nebuchadnezzar?) in the Bible was in communication with God in his dreams. I am relayed an awful lot of information from “God” and other people when I am partially asleep, especially if I am praying while falling asleep.

it is sometimes profound, sometimes not, often times forgotten. But it generally is informative.

SATAN is FEAR. Fear created by the Bible to make you paranoid. Why would you let fear keep you from doing something amazing and helpful to your mind? If you think SATAN is after you, then he will show up and go “boogey boogey boogey” just like if I think Freddy Krueger is after me he’ll come out of the TV and chase me.

If there were a devil as powerful as God, and he wanted to mess with you, by all means, you would be messed with man, and lucidity would have nothing to do with it. He could try to mess with you probably even better if you weren’t lucid, because you wouldn’t be conscious enough to resist “him”.

Now listen here man. Get 666. out of your head. Get Satan out of you rhead.

If you are a Christian all you need to care about Jesus. And what did this man have to say about matters of the metaphysical… of so called “evil” or “occult” (occult means hidden, not evil) practices…

of things like this:

egodeath.com/images/theologue.jpg

well Jesus had this to say friend.
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

Jesus the Christ, Matthew 6:22 (KJV)

See also Luke 11:34

This is in direct reference to the third eye, located between the eyebrows, responsible for trasncendent, visionary, psychedelic phenomenon, including lucid dreams.

The Bible is clearly in complete advocation of meditational disciplines (of which lucid dreaming is a symptom of, i.e. a proficien tmeditator will have lucid dreams).

Matthew 23:13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

GO IN. do you understand what this means? It means that your “Christian” upbringing, that has you afraid of looking inside your own mind, is a complete hypocrisy! Look at those words, woe unto the pharisees, church hypocrites, you do not go inward into yourselves, nor do you teach others to!

You are afraid of literally nothing!

Here’s more.

“the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21)

within YOU! Do everything you can to be a free, enlightened, liberated, and saved person. Many believe the energy body (holy spirit or for the jews, merkaba [body of light used to travel] can be activated and used during the dream state in order to navigate spiritual planes.

fear is your own enemy, and the devil is only inside of you, a personification of all your fears. nothing more. if you intend to be a light unto this world, how can you not be?

you know, this is actually quite true. the consequences are upon your mind though, they form habits. it’s similar to simply fantasizing about something. eventually you get a fixation over the fantasy and keep doing it.

To think God would disapprove of spiritual practices is rather absurd. It’s part of the Churchey-guilt mongering, and it actually goes against the Biblical teachings in the first place.

If you use your lucid dreams “sinfully” then perhaps, but if you use them improve yourself and to seek out truth, peace, and unison with the unfathomable, then… God will give you a thumbs up.

anyone who says otherwise, remmber matthew, they don’t go within and are acting as an obstacle, controlling and keeping people from accessing the Kingdom of Heaven.

now can I promise lucid dreaming will set you free? No… for some it has. For some it’s just a fun playground. But really, saying not to lucid dream is like saying that you aren’t allowed to pay attention while you are driving, but instead to listen to tons of music and be distracted.

now, we all dream. lucid dreaming is just that your mind is sharp and perceptive enough to realize “wait, I am dreaming” it means your mind is not lazy. It’s similar to how if you are say, reading my reply right now, you might be doing a lot of other things like thinking about your day, wondering what time it is, and not paying tons of attention.

Well, in that way, our lack of attention in the daily world, our lack of mindfulness and appreciation for the holiness of each moment we breathe (and how many times have you inhaled while reading this? do you know? that’s another example) is refleted in the dreamstate.

the only reason we are not naturally lucid is because we don’t pay a lot of attention to things, and are often running on auti-pilot. See the film Waking Life for an excellent illustration.

One of the first real lucid dreams I had, wound up with me stumbling into a place of such incomprehensible beauty that all I could do was break down crying, thanking God so much for letting me see it.

I haven’t had an experience like that really since, but boy was it amazing.

You can choose to read about God, or you can choose to connect to God. Or you can do both. But dude, don’t live your life on auto-pilot. work on being free. work on really manfiesting the symbolic power of Jesus into your life, and bcoming unified with the holy spirit. You can use dreams as a good way to really explore why you do what you do.

There is literally no reason not to be lucid.
Would the devil come after you for doing yoga? What about deep relaxing breathing? What about going on a nature retreat? Well, people use all these things to connect to God… why should dreaming be different?

Frankly I do not think this interpretation makes sense… it is saying that you need to remember God before you die (and your spirit leaves your body for good)!!! what in the world does this have to do with not astral projecting?

there are 3 schools of thought on AP that I am familiar with.

  1. all dreams are astral projections, lucid or not. we are in the astral everytime we dream, because the astral is simply a world of thoughtforms, our own, and other people’s.
  2. astral projection requires a volitional attempt to leave the body and lucid dreaming is not astral projection, you have to be in a lucid dream and desire to reach the astral plane.
  3. there is no astral projection.

now. last night i went and walked over a vast canyon… i flew and bobbed up and down, working energy into my hands to pilot myself. i then shot it out my feet, propelling myself very high, until my elevation lead me to a new “plane” which I was hoping the astral. i then saw my imagination unfold as it showed me some chakras aligning, and i was in my grandparents house hows that for some dangerous “out of body” state ? I chatted with them as to why I often dreamed of being in their house, and my grandmother had me drink some water.

i think the only possible plane i have ever been to was the first one I told you about, the place of beauty… and that… that was a closeness to God.

above all else you really have to come to your own conclusions. I could tell you what to believe, and if you questioned me I could terrify you with verbal abuse, so that you eventually accepted everything I said as ultimate truth, but really… our only source of authority should be GOD himself… not the Bible… not people with agendas… everything else should just be a tool… you read the bible… does it make sense? Does some of it seem nutty? Well, you make your own judgements, and you take it up with GOD.

and if you are channeling God like how Jesus did, then maybe you have the right to tell other people what to think, otherwise you are just the blind leading the blind, and that’s how many many churches and preachers are.

i mean like me. i can just relay what i’ve experienced, and what I think… I’m hoping to help give you some insights, but you should neither completely reject what I am saying because it is foreign and “blasphemous”, nor should you immediately accept it.

truth really, is a state without words, judgements, and labels. to me.

Holy reality, I like you already :colgate: I only wish there were more christians like you, we should talk sometime…

Personally, I think lucid dreaming is morally acceptable (and that’s enough for me). I don’t know whether it is acceptable from a christian dogmatics point of view, but I think it is, and I will try to convince you.

If you use lucid dreaming to indulge in your fantasies, you violate christian principles and ethics. That’s for sure.
If, however, you uphold the same christian principles and ethics you follow in waking life, in your dream, then I don’t see how lucid dreaming could be a sin.
An attempt to assure you even more that lucid dreaming is acceptable: you could use lucid dreaming exclusively to try to become a better christian. You would then be a good christian in waking life as well as in dreaming state. What can be wrong about that?

:grin:

I’m not a Christian really… I’m a confused truth seeker.

I did spend a long time this morning in sleepy prayer to “God” and “Jesus” and it was pretty good…

but you know. I don’t want to jump through hoops. If Jesus, God, Allah, Satan, Yahweh, Vishnu, Shiva, and every other deity under the sun, can be simplified to simply TAO… then tao is what I’m looking for.

but if the deities are all real, including Jesus, then I would probably gravitate toward being a Christian and professing faith in him, because I really like the idea of him being so full of unconditional universal love, that he would die for the whole planet, feeding everyone his Christ-energy so that they can transform and be complete.

but if it’s just a dogmatic way of control… then it isn’t for me at all.

In terms of Christianity I really just stick with what I agree with… I lean towards a gnostic approach with Jesus as an enlightened being, who spoke in ways which his culture could understand. Coming from a Jewish background himself this means that he spoke in terms of “God” (although his speakings were not in English so this is confusing to think about) and he kept it simple… then his disciples simplified it even more so that they could spread it easily.

Somewhere along the way, probably, things were corrupted by evil authority figures… the notion of hell and the devil were probably overemphasized and exagerated, and the true path to gnosis (union with God/Christ) such as forms of meditation and the application of Heaven being on Earth, and inherently a state of mind, were probably suppressed and labeled as “heresy”.

Because really. What mainline Christianity is, is a set of rules and dogmas to follow. I do think that you can “liberate” yourself that way, and borrowing from Buddhism, following scriptures is one way to be free. But a much more direct route is to simply go the journey yourself, and all sorts of practices involving meditation are designed soley for that.

So I lean toward belief systems that are less allegorical, less story-like, less superstitious, and more down to Earth for the guy who actually wants to do what he hears abuot. Buddhism, Taoism, gnostic Christianity.

Really, if you truely want truth, it’s a long road to walk, and it generally requires a lot of deviation from norms, a lot of hard journeying… I think the Christian religion is more just something to point you in how to live your life correctly, and to help you not be afraid of dying. Now if Jesus existed as the way they claim, that complicates it a lot, and then I would question… does this mean the other figures did not exist, and are not valid?

It’s a lot to think of. So really, I seek to condense it down to where if it prodcues results, I could eventually be a “mystic” Christian, and follow Jesus… it’s just that… the Jesus in my mind is so condensed and simplified in the Bible… and there is so much useless stuff in there… why do I care about what nation conquered what nation with God’s “favor” ?

I care about freeing myself, lol.

Love your enemy as yourself. That is a deep teaching.
Turn the other cheek. That is even deeper.

but if you look at the gnostic gospels, such as Thomas (the only one I’ve read) it really is a lot more applicable to the mystical life, to the seeker of truth. and in it Jesus says this “do not stop seeking until you find” he also heavily advocates that Heaven is here, and we just don’t know how to look for it.

if a mod sees this as overtly off topic I would appreciate it if they would copy and paste the entire thing and PM it to me so I don’t lose it, so I can discuss it elsewhere, or ask me to edit it out myself.

It’s a bit of a stretch, but, its very very applicable to how “mystic” practices such as lucid dreaming can cross into Christianity through interpreting the scripture with a different lense and looking more toward the gnostic side of things. My journey may be of help to the topic starter.

I just recently overcame tremendous fear of “Satan” and hell not more than a few months ago…