Is lucid a sin?-Part II

Well, let’s see:
1- Are you really doing anything that will do harm of any kind to someone else?
2- There is NO logical reason for Lucid Dreaming to be a sin. Of course, if you want consider sins as thoughts too, the solution is simple: Just control what you want to LD with! If you want to kill people, have lots of sex, steal stuff, all this in your dreams, and you think that the mere thought would be a sin, then don’t do those things! On the other hand, the “normal” stuff is not a problem. What kind of God would He be if say, you wanted to fly around and He’d punish your or something (no offense meant).
3- About the whole satan thing: According to the Christian way of thought (which I disagree mostly… but let’s not get to that, right?) sins would get your near the devil, right? So, if you don’t sin in your LDs, you’re clear. If you believe he can reach and tempt you in your dreams, pray! It’s not because it’s an LD that you can’t have faith :happy: If you have faith, he can’t get ya.

I hope this clears things up :happy:

Wow, thankyou all so much. You have really allowed me to look at this from a more open-minded view. I will continue to experiment with lucid dreaming and embrace it with God in the process :smile:

I also found this article which gave me much re-assurance:
groups.yahoo.com/group/lucid-dre … ssage/4124

Though, the thought of astral projection still makes me weary. God wants for us stay away from evil forces like psychic abilities, and attempting to tell the future. If astral projection is real, and it is what many say it is, then could you be entering a realm of spirits, where evil forces may exist?

Sometimes, when I am weak in my faith, and fall into temptation, I get a feeling of vulnerability for, lets say, evil. I get corrupted in thought and I feel like evil is trying to influence me. More important, I just feel so vulnerable. Now, this is rare for me, but I just can’t stand the thought of being vulnerable to evil.

Now, I have no intentions to try and learn astral projection, but I feel that if I dwelve into my dreams I want to know a little bit more about the extents of dream travel.

Thanks again for your re-assurance, I will be dreaming lucid soon enough, I hope :wink:

Hold on. If you stopped being a Christian would you go out on a killing spree the next day? Would you kidnap children? Would you take over the world?

I know that feeling… it’s pretty overwhelming to feel like evil has overtaken you. But ask, what is evil?

Make a definition.

I don’t think you would ever do evil in your entire life, regardless of if you were a Christian or not.

Maybe there is a deeper reason you are fearful?
according to Jungian psychology we all have a shadow figure lodged in our psyches, which takes in everything we repress, deny, and refuse to think about.

So for a strict celibate catholic, the shadow may be an evil, lustful, disturbingly sexual looking beast… who brings great fear and disgust for the catholic to see.

Well, interestingly, Christians are given shadows by being told about Satan… and that’s a tough one to think about, because they say it’s real. Kind of like saying the Old Hag in SP is real. (and you have to judge… you’re the only one that can determine what is and isn’t real)

but so let’s say you systemtatically, everytime you feel doubt about your faith, shove it into your shadow and force your unconscious to deal with it, pretty soon there gets to be a sensation of something quite “evil” haunting you whenever you question, and it can be pretty strong. But it’s only because you feed it by refusing to allow yourself to feel certain emotions.

This shadow can be interacted with in dreams and hypnotic/psychedelic states, and is often responsible for nightmares, etc.

[googling Ann Shulgin , and Grof will prove some interesting reading on shadows and various psychedelic/hypnotic/dream interactions in order to heal]

What I’m getting at, is this feeling might have a lot to teach you… because you are giving it TREMENDOUS power by hiding from it.

Like, when I was little I got scared playing Sim Ant… it made me afraid of spiders. I systematically hid from spiders until I had a full fledged phobia. For a while they were literally the “devli” to me, the most terrifying, unthinkable, unfaceable thing imaginable! They were a clear shadow of mine, that I kept feeding and making stronger, always following me everywhere I go and influencing my behavior.

however… i was also made afraid of snakes because of my mother, but shortly after the fear developed, reading rainbow had an episode about them, and I watched and learned right away that snakes weren’t scary at all.

had I faced my spider fear when it was still “small” I would not have had a phobia.

In this way to me, this is how “Satan” is created and given power over the individual. It does not mean he is real, it means that he is everything you repress in your psyche. [but he is “real” in the sense that a dream character is]

Note that most people are tempted by trivial things like “Man that girl is hot” (and I consider lust very demeaning to women! don’t get me wrong!) or “I really really want to eat a ton of food but it’s wasteful” or “man that guy is a jerk, I hate him”

not “man tomorrow I want to start a genocide up and go vandalize my neighbors car!”

you may have a ton to learn if you let yourself doubt and pay attention to how it makes you feel. It doesn’t mean to not be a Christian, that is your choice and yours alone. It means to consider all possibilities, so you can be the sanest and healthiest individual possible

The right faith is one which completely frees your very soul in this current life that you are living. All people have morals and inclinations to resist “evil” regardless of their doctrine. Atheists do. Even practicing witches, wiccans, pagans, medicine men, etc.

so if you get those feelings, you can just breathe deep and explore, and say… “why, what causes this, and what do I think is happening?” let yourself doubt, till the problem is resolved. then you won’t doubt anymore!

Im a taoist myself, but I still read the bible sometimes, because there is great wisdom in it, allthough I may not use it. Im into the “New age”… Which brings me to a question I have… is New age a religion? It seems to me that lucid dreaming is a New age practice, and sometimes the New age way can easily become overwhelming, because it gives me a more direct line to God. I was angry with alot of the Christain ways methods, such as scaring you streight by telling you, if you have too much fun youll burn in hell forever. I didnt want to be angry with Christianity, because it would go agienst who Im trying to become on my spiritual path. I cant tell you what to do, but I myself believe it is OK to LD. It talks alot about dreams in the bible, and LDing does require effort, and dissaplen, and to me those are two possitive words.

Now what follows is just my point of view. It has nothing to do with religion and what religious people may think and I won’t look at things from a christian point of view. BTW I suppose that my opinion is mainly influenced by Gestalt and Jungian psychologies.

As for me, I don’t believe in AP’s. As LD’s content depends heavily on what you believe, and you’ll mainly find in them what you expect to find or what you’ve read about, I just think that AP’s are LD’s made by people who believe in AP.

IMO, the “evil” forces that AP’ers meet sometimes are dream characters made from their own fears or desires. I think it’s a good thing to consider those DC’s in this way and to not believe they could be “real” entities, spirits, etc. And I don’t think you can develop psychic abilities with LD’ing. Dreams are just dreams and I find it not healthy to see them in another way.

I’m another blasphemer who hopefully can throw a useful assortment of words on the pile for you to digest.

First off, Holy Reality and Larry Boy tried to push forward the idea that lucid dreaming and astral projection are related or even the same thing, and I’m inclined to say the same - not that lucid dreams are astral projections, but that APs are particularly psychadelic LDs. I know it’s super easy to start lacing lucid dreaming with mysticality since most of the people who practice it are engaged in other new age activities, but I need to stress that LDs are scientifically documented phenomena which have no innate interconnectedness with more occult or new age “temptations.” If someone is so inlined to color their LD experiences with such things then they can, but I for one (attempt to) lucid dream for lucid dreaming’s sake, and I consider trash like inner light and astral bodies and OBEs and supertranscendental akashic hyperjourney spirit guides to be, well… just that, trash. Long story short, please don’t worry that by LDing you are in any way shape or form putting yourself in a closer vicinity to fuzzy new ageism. Lucid dreaming is documented, scientific, and there is nothing esoteric about it.

You already said that you’d go ahead and explore what LDs have to offer, which is great, but I’ll keep on justifying for the heck of it. You said earlier that you knew LDs would be a way for Satan to tempt you… let’s try an experiment.

Eating is just a way for Satan to tempt us; indulge too much and we become gluttons and fall from God’s graces.
Holding a gun is just a way for Satan to tempt us; we might shoot someone with it.
Having a million dollars is just a way for Satan to tempt us; we might spend it on less-than-godly things.

These are all ridiculous statements, right? Obviously you have to eat to live, you could donate a million dollars to charity, and you can enjoy the fine hobby of skeet-shooting with that gun. The tool is not the means by which Satan corrupts you; it is you, but only if you so let him. LDs can be used for unchristian things like people have said, but so can knives, sun lamps, and pillows. Don’t be afraid to do something because the potential for doing misdeeds is there, because that potential comes from you and not that activity. Hold yourself in check and live according to God’s word and you can do no wrong - LDing or otherwise. So jump in and test the waters, or at least try to - I’m living proof that having a lucid dream is not always the spontaneously-occurring walk in the park that lots of people make it out to be.

(5 bloody years!)

Inner light is very real and I have experienced it first hand while awake. It is profound and related to a constant uninterupted attention upon energy flow. I obtained it initially on “accident” and then brought it back 2-3 more times.

[you may be interested in reading “DMT: The Spirit Molecule” if you are skeptical to the existence of trasncendent experiences. It goes into great length (scientifically) about how the brain’s pineal gland (aka mystical “third eye”) produces DMT, an extremely potent hallucinagen. from near death experience. from extreme shock. from religious practice.]

i theorize that if astral projection is real, it requires some sort of effort to separate oneself from the subjective dream world, such as perhaps by going back into the body and raising a large amount of energy.

OR simply trashing the dream and going into a hypnagogic state, to observe how dreams are created.

I just want to thank everyone. You have all opened my eyes in some way and have helped me tremendously with my insecurities. I will confront lucid dreams with an open mind, while keeping God in mind.

If you are interested in seeing my progress, I have a post in the “First Steps to Lucidity” board.

Thanks to everyone who put in the time and effort to write long answers and really get me thinking. (cough…cough…Holy Reality, Basilus West…cough…) :content:

Seriously though, you have made a huge difference! :happy:

It’s all a matter of opinion. If you’re uncomfortable with the whole sex or murder type thing in lucid dreams, just don’t do them. You could view this from a perspective that the dream world is similar to waking life, only with limitless possiblities.

God created man in his image, so does that mean God can lucid dream?

Does your wise friend actually completly understand the concept of lucid dreaming? Or is he just pretending to know everything? In life, I’ve run into a lot of those type of people. Don’t be a follower, decide this one for yourself. By this guys logic, if lucid dreams can be used by Satan to tempt us, wouldn’t normal dreams be the same? Would it be a sin to sleep then, if dreaming is a sin? God created man. He gave us wonderful gifts, like love, beauty, and the human mind. Use these gifts, damnit. Don’t always live life in fear, just because something in the Bible says its a sin. A life lived in fear is a life wasted.

Glad to hear it slinger, good luck in your endeavors…

Thank you and good luck! :smile:

I don’t mean offense, as I’m a devout follower of Christ myself, but when I read your posts it depresses me. I get a sense that you are a devout follower in the worst way. That is, you seem to make major decisions based entirely on the opinions and ideas of others. True faith is never blindly trusting, but rather studies, questions and doubts what they trust objectively and constantly in order to continuously verify its truth.

Blind trusters are just asking to be abused, manipulated and decieved. Just look at extremists on in the Muslim world as an example. Know that this can happen to Christians just as easily, the inquisiton is proof enough. Not that I have ever caused harm to someone in that way, but I can tell you from personal experiance that it’s not that hard to do with a bit of patience. All I have to do is establish myself as a “wise man” whom you trust, and I can have you eating out my hand in no time. Incidentally, the greatest villians of society are highly intelligent charismatic people. They’re the kind of people that can establish trust and the “wise man” relationship easily. Of course, having this ability is not bad, but abusing it can lead to things like Nazism, the KKK, sucide cults, terrorist groups and their ilk. The responsibile person makes sure their faith is never blind, so that they can avoid these subtle and manipulative psycological predators.

God gave us a rational brain so that we could think for ourselves, not base our decision on the edicts, fatwahs, proclamations and whims of others. Jesus, for example, always told people not to blindly follow the “wise men” in the Jewish comminity at the time, the pharisees and such. He didn’t say everything they did was wrong, but rather stressed that people need to think for themselves to sort through right and wrong. His Apostles surely understood this, as they were able to continue doing great works without Jesus being around to explain things to them. There are still going to be leaders and followers though, but one would hope the followers follow because they know for sure that the leader is going in the right direction.

Of course, in regards to lucid dreaming, I assume that it is simple enough to lay bare the logical implications of it. This may not be the case for everyone though. I know my level of intelligence is far above average, and this will likely bias my perspective. However, at least I’m aware of it, and not blindly believing that my capability applies to everyone as some elitists do.

Life is like walking a very broad path in pitch darkness with most of it leading to damnation. Thus, it would be insane to blindly commit to a particular direction, without getting down to the ground and feeling out the terrain every step of the way. Although, I do admit that if you hap-hazardly choose the right direction and charge at it with full speed, you will make it to the end much faster. It’s just that that’s an incredibly risky and foolish thing to do.

For example, with temptations I don’t blindly label them as “Satanic” influnces, because more often then not they are actually errent behaviours and destructive memories embedded within me. When I confront a temptation, I don’t surpress or dismiss it, instead I seek out its source. I try to understand it.

Almost always, there is some reasonable kernal of thought that has been distorted and manipulated into the temptation or errant behaviour. Like with bondage and submission, there is a beautiful essence of trust and a realisation that too much responsibility can destroy a person. However, these two truths have been distorted by other factors into something quite disturbing. They have been warped into a fear and dislike of responsibility with the blind trust to give another complete control of one’s person. The sexuality of it is almost incidental.

Once you clear away the distortions, you can turn the “Satanic” behaviour into something beautiful. Bondage can become a loving relationship. Submission can become a way to judge when you are overloaded with responsibilities. Sure, Satan probably takes advantage of these root distortions to tempt you, but the fact is that the distortions themselves lie only within you. If you never solve and remove them, you’ll never close the door to Satan, and in order to do that, you have to understand them. Along the way, you might realise that they are not quite so evil after all, just very very bizarre.

Google things like cognitive therapy, meditation, hypnotism and NLP to see what I mean. I have saved some other posts where I have overviews (and personal theory) of the entire process, if you want to read them. I make no claim that they are absolutely correct though.

First of all I 100% agree with the essence and basic point of what you’re saying, I only have conflict with a few points you made.
Number one I found it humourous that you decided to post that your intelligence is so much higher than the average person, as if we needed to know that. Secondly I find that you made a lot assumption concerning slinger. You pretend to know the struggles, thoughts, doubts, and the whole process of how he/she came to make his/her decision. You don’t know much he/she doubted and questioned, and thought the whole decision over so how can you be sure it was totally I quick sway towards the side of the crowd. Thirdly you overlook the fact that by asking this forum for advice slinger actually made a step away from following the crowd, as hard as it may be to believe. The poster could have simply blindly followed the advice of the crowd that has much more influence on us than some silly message board, the people we know in real life. Instead slinger asked questions, is lucid dreaming really evil, does that really oppose Christianity, is what I’m being told by the people around me totally true?

While I do agree totally that you should never follow the crowd just for the sake following the crowd, I do not believe it hurts to ask questions of other people and make decision based on the answers, especially the very persuasive and logical answers given by both Bassilus West and Holy Reality. The bible says in countless places to seek council and wisdom, and to learn from other people, as well as questioning them for yourself.

So in this sense I both agree and disagree with you…

First of all, how would it be any better if I said that I was good at football or a skilled lucid dreamer? No doubt you would have taken little heed to that. Yet, somehow if I state in the most humble and accomodating of ways that I have intelligence, it becomes questionable! It’s outrageous that I should have to bite my tongue when it comes to mentioning my cerebral qualities. After all, the football jock has no such restriction. I only argue that each person should be recognised for the gifts they have without unjust discrimination. Yet still you mock me.

Furthermore, I can only hypothesize that this belief is due to the mis-perception that intelligence is unchangeable. Naturally, those without large amounts of it become envious of what they think they cannot have. “Think” is the keyword here! The fact is, incredible memory skills, critical thought, quality analysis and related abilities are accessible to all people if only they work at it. Sure, some poeple will have a natural advantage, but the notion that intelligence is fixed and absolute is ridiculous. It’s not unlike lucid dreaming or countless other skills in this regard.

It’s not that I blame you entirely for this absurd judgement. It’s a much larger social construct, which you no doubt learned from your peers. Regardless, the stigmata against intellectualism still sickens me, and I only argue so vehemently because it’s so widespread. Then again, maybe you realise this, and the prejudice is just something stuck in your mind from ages past. I really don’t know, but I can categorically say that your remark is baseless and unwarrented. People are just so irrationally PC these days. I can only hope that this honest critisim doesn’t perturb you also.

Despite this, I realise that my post may seem harsh at first glance. However, I do realise that this person is reaching out, and I only seek to take hold with a strong grip and a strong post. Slinger may question now, timidly, but does (s)he have the realisation that such questioning is perfectly OK and even responsible? Is it strong enough to stand the test of time? I simply didn’t get that feeling, so I made a post to illustrate it more clearly and hopefully inspire that strength. I’d rather be blunt then subtle and manipulative.

Obviously, you are misunderstanding what I wrote. No where do I say that you shouldn’t get advice. The world is not that black and white, so don’t read my post that way. I am saying that you should look at that advice objectively, in order to accurately evaluate it’s truthfulness. In other words, I only argue that you shouldn’t follow the crowd for it’s own sake, which you clearly agree with.

As I said, I am a humble person who is comfortable with their abilites. This is why I have the patience to deal with such misinterpretations as your own. I will not toss your opinions aside or treat you like some inconsequential philistine. I am no elitest, as I have specifically stated earlier. However, I still have the confidence to take untruths upfront, and stab them in the face! (I mean this in a slapstick way) Although, I must admit I have a very difficult calculus exam coming up, so at the moment my patience is thinner then usual.

Allright, I am a Christian and I’m getting annoyed at all of the derogitory comments torwards Christians in general and God, I don’t think dreaming is evil at all, I don’t think Lucid dreaming is evil either but it depends on what you DO in them and the choices YOU make, I don’t think you should go out of your way to kill people or anything like that, if you are purposely going out and doing sinful things in LD’s I would consider that a sin which is why I pretty much act the same in LD’s as I would in real life, (aside from you know, giving myself powers and stuff, :universe: :grin: ) I’ve always been interested in dreams, ever since I was very little I can remember having dreams and getting excited about them, I don’t believe in all the “astral projection” and all the rest of the crazy stuff on this site, (that is not meant to offend people, I just don’t believe in it,) I joined because I love dreams and it’s fun to talk about them and no other reason. So in general I think LD’s are a good thing as long as you don’t abuse them, (just like guns or knives can be very good things but also very bad things in the wrong hands,) :puh:

Just out of curiosity, and not wanting to start a giant, off-topic debate, when is a gun a good thing?

In defence of yourself, in defence of someone else, and in defence of your people (family, friends, town, country…)

Off-topic: That was a really stupid argument. You mean a gun is good when it kills people who are not you or your loved ones?

On-topic: Does Christianity condemn action or thought or both? Cause dreams are certainly not actions, and nobody will feel any worse if I commit oneirocide. Would it be fair to condemn me for that? A Monthy Python sketch of the Spanish Inquisition comes to mind… “heresy of thought”, how do they know?

huggkruka … as mentioned earlier (in this topic I think or it could have been a similar topic at LD4all) it always depends on your own conscience and beliefs, when it comes down to actions in dreams.
IMO the more you try to live a christian life, the more that certain actions in dreams would feel wrong to you.

Somewhere it said if you committed an action in your heart you had done it already…

I was about to ask the very same question.

Now now… Let us all remember that God is not The Bureaucracy, in fact, his written legislation is as short as ten commandments (the bible itself was written by people, not by God, and they remind you of that thoughout it so you can always remember God has made no compromise whatsoever nor has he signed a contract attesting that anything in the bible is his word for real.

Why am I remembering everyone of this for the 1165487987th time? Well, because if you skim through the bible, you can easily see a couple of things like: 1) God gave you free will; 2) God created humans, and we didn’t change our own nature, so we should be nowadays exactly like He designed us—thus, the lucid dreaming capacities are inbuilt in the system; 3) God’s law basically comes down to: have some commonsense and respect other people and the world. Of course, we humans are bureaucratic and need to fins the edges so we can step on them to later tell God “but we didn’t walk through it!” But it seems to me that lucid dreaming is as OK as it gets—you can practise lucid dreaming, I mean it, go wild, there’s people killing each other and plotting against others and destroying the nature, it doesn’t seem clear to me why exactly would God even bother about what you’ve been doing with your dreams with so many of this real life stuff to be worried about already.

Now, islamism is a bit different. For starters because the islamic book IS a legislation (it seems God decided humankind will not keep it simple, so he might as well just tell them where are the limits and remind them that they should be having fun and being nice to each other instead of trying to go as far as they can without being sent to hell). I haven’t read it all yet, I’m halfway through, but I get the feeling that muslims shouldn’t go killing people in dreams either because thought is somewhat more precious to islamism and peace, more valuable (come on, when the bible says “don’t kill people,” it means REAL people; and even so, God himself tells the people of place X—like America, according to its presidents—to attack place Y every now and then).

So there we go. Christians and Jews, go wild, and kill people in dreams if you want to, God might be sad about it because you could be doing something more useful (think about it for a second), but hey, you’re not killing real people, so why complain?

Muslims: lucid dream at will, just don’t be violent—you can and will be judged for the person you are and that includes your thoughts and desires. Now don’t get insane if you kill someone in a not lucid dream, that’s a matter between God and your subconscious, not between God and yourself.

People from other religions: refer to your own tradition or ask here. :wink: