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.