Is lucid a sin?-Part II

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:

That right there, (forget I ever said it though because I don’t want to start a big stupid debate that will cause friction between everybody, I thought about that after I posted it and I suppose fire would be better to use in this case,) It’s good because there’s a perverted stalker after me and my sisters and when my parents are gone that might be the only thing seperating me or my siblings from death or something else, I will NOT let myself become a victim. (although I still would never KILL anybody, injure if I or my family was being threatened, but I wouldn’t kill someone,) That’s all I have to say about that, I suggest we don’t start a fight over it because it’s been my experience with these kind of things before that both sides never back down so it’s really just a waste of breath… :yes: I’m not trying to be mean or anything, really, I’m not, but I just get tired of having arguments with people so I want to cut to the chase ok? :shrug:

Thank you Moogle, gives you a cookie :cookiemon: :gni:

Bruno, I don’t know if I’ve ever disagreed with you, but there’s a first time for everything, right? :content:

Check it out:

Genesis 6:5
And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Mark 7:20-23
That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. " "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, " "Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: " "All these evil things come from within, and defile the man

:meh: …I’m finding these verses by searching for words like purity, thought, and mind on my computer Bible, and I’m offically sick of weeding through verses to find more, but moogle is right, there is a verse that says if do something in thought, you may as well have done it IRL. There is much more about purity of thought and heart.

Leviticus 19:26 You shall not eat with blood. You shall not divine nor observe dreams.

Interperet this how you like but to me this verse means paying any attention to (or “observing”) your dreams is a sin, and therefore it dosn’t matter what you do in a dream it’s a sin.

Well, Daniel, that’s exactly my point. Both verses said you might do IRL what you do in dreams, so you should be careful with dreams.

Now, the Bible says ad nauseam that humans are by nature evil, or inherently tempred by evil, so telling us dreams can be evil is no big news, as long as you can control yourself and not do evil stuff in waking life, you’re not sinning.

PhoenixMaenad, observe there most probably has a sense of abiding by what dreams say or taking them for true. Then again, even a prophet of the old testment himself interpreted dreams… Go figure.

But it speaks so much of purity of heart. Your dream memories and real memories are stored in the same place, and part of “the heart”.

I think the simplest thing to do is to go to whoever it is that heads your church in your area (pastor, bishop, whatever) and ask him if he thinks lucid dreaming is in harmony with the teachings of your church. Remember that the Savior said thinking about committing a sin is similar to actually committing it. So excersise self control in an LD. I think it’d be easier if churches took official positions on the subject. Like what some have done with hypnotism.

No, no not at all. Your pastor or bishop has no more real communication with God than you do. He is a man, and makes errors. His interpretation of this Bible is no more valid than anyone else’s. Decide for yourself, read the Bible, do not rely on another to interpret your spirituallity.

Hey, God hasn’t abandoned us on the earth to decide for ourselves how we think he thinks we should be. Why should a correct idea for one person be and incorrect idea for another? He has said that he is unchanging. In the past, he has given revelation to the righteous. If he doesn’t anymore, that means he’s changed. Therefore, he still does. Just not to any random person. It’s given to those who live the gospel he gave us, not the gosple someone decided worked for them better. What you do is come to a decision, and ask the Lord if you made the right one. If you sincerely want to know and do your part to find it, He will give you an answer one way or another. That’s the best way. The simplest way, as I said, is asking someone who is supposed to represent the Lord’s gospel if LDing is in harmony with the gospel.

If none’s interpretation of the Bible is valid, what the point of even having the book?