Is lucid a sin?-Part II

If you prayed to the ‘wrong God’ I’m sure some would call it a sin.
But you have to admit, a lot of cool things are sins for silly reasons.

Please don’t let a fake god rule your life. Perhaps god does exist in some form, who am I to say it doesn’t? But the portrayal of god and history by organised religions is bull. The only way you can be right is to accept that you can’t possibly hope to know the truth, at least for now. Don’t let fear of an afterlife that church told you about limit your life.

Thats a pretty awesome point.
I mean, we really don’t know what happens after death, and even though some religions profess to know all that stuff, the bottom line is, no one knows. It’d be silly to live a meek, unfullfilled life just to be prepared for an afterlife which may not exist.
Its like Ghandi said, "Learn as if you were to live forever, live as if you were to die tomorrow."

Just some points. I’m not sure where thomas went to church, but I’ve been going to a Methodist church all my life. I’ve never heard the phrase “If it feels good it must be wrong” I might suggest studying other translations (from the original arabic, directly to todays english, without all the editing done by the old monarchs, and the churches ran by the governemnts) I suggest “The Message” Rather than a translation of translations, the author went back to the Arabic, and greek Bibles and translated phrase for phrase, idea for idea. I think you’ll find some interesting differences between what’s said in it, and what the traditions of churches dictate. Several times, what’s been translated as a condemnation to hell is more acurately translated as “learning the hard way” Ie, “why cause yourself others all this grief, trust me, it’s just easier to do it my way”
And I seriously doubt God would have any big hangup over what you dreamed. Just so long as it didn’t twist you mentally for some strange reason.
So that’s my best guess. I like to give God the benefit of the doubt, since he’s been so good to me in my life :smile:

God is not fake, Mike. Yes, it is possible to know the truth because Jesus is the truth Himself. You can get to know Him personally, after you get to discover Him in creation etc… (takes time, no doubt)

Fear of an afterlife? What’s to be feared about heaven? I believe Jesus died on the Cross to give me eternal life starting in the here and now, that’s hardly a limiting concept. It’s up to me as an individual however to make a decision in my life, and nobody should force it on someone.

As for fear of dreams, God speaks to us in dreams too (the ND ones also).
It’s something which has been going on for thousands of years… so God doesn’t condemn dreams, He uses them too.

Well, I believe that there is no hell, there is only heaven, and heaven is a state of mind (very much like dreaming) and that we all can get to heaven whenever we want… well, if this is the case, I don’t believe dreaming can be a sin at all.

From a Christian’s point-of-view, one of the worst realizations of Christianity is that some organized churches tell you all this stuff to create this underlying fear so that you’ll contribute to their causes or act in such a “Christian” way that you’ll recruit other people that you want to “save” so that your ministry or congregation will get bigger and bigger. This is why I dislike organized religion; we don’t even NEED it, and it can be abused so easily.

Of course, not just Christianity is affected by this, nor is all of Christiany like this, but to mostly all of non-Christians, it sure seems that way!

Basically:
If you really feel like your God would consider it a sin to dream, then okay then. However, I think that if the Christian god does exist, he probably wouldn’t make stupid rules against lucid dreaming - especially because, it’s said that around 10% of the world has lucid dreams every night naturally, and that’s kind of silly.

Unless you’re referring to RL sins in LDs, in which case, again, it’s up to you to decide whether your god would frown on that or not. In any case, he’s supposed to always love you anyway. :content:

Well, I’m an Athiest, so I don’t know if my opinion counts, but still…

Lol, Nazca hit it on the head there, and I missed it in my own reply. God loves you, regardless. Sin isn’t a mind game that’s set up to trick people into getting sent to hell. Sin is mearly a seperation that we create on our own. Hell is seperation from God, and we have the choice to come back to him whenever we want. Even after we’re dead. In my opinion, I would think God loves it when we lucid dream, because we’re exploring our own minds, (that He gave us) and it’s only during lucid dreams that we truly understand how free we really can be, once we leave the world, and our bodies, (both described as Anchors at times in the Bible) behind.

“God is not fake, Mike. Yes, it is possible to know the truth because Jesus is the truth Himself. You can get to know Him personally, after you get to discover Him in creation etc… (takes time, no doubt)”

Uh. … and how do you know jesus is the truth himself? you didn’t support your point very well.

anyway, I think that technically lucid dreaming would be considered a minor sin (I don’t remember the actual name for it, it’s NOT a mortal sin). well, that depends on what you do in that dream really. It’s not lucid dr eaming itself, it’s what takes place in that dream that matters. But I will state again that you should not put yourself in hell now to get into heaven later, as it would suck if your life was a waste and there was no heaven, you just. . . no longer exist.

On the other hand, I don’t think god, if he did exist, could send you to hell for just understanding that you can’t know for sure what the truth is, just as long as you have a general respect for whatever may have created the world.

and I just have to bring this up. If god exists, why do we exist? did he get bored and decide to make a large group of people so he could say “you get into heaven, you go to hell” etc? big power trip? and also, how could god possibly fairly judge people?

what happens to all of the non judeo-christian people, do they go to hell? Are people either good or evil at birth? if not, wouldn’t that be based on life experiences that they can’t control? And, if people ARE good or evil at birth. . . they don’t have a chance, and didn’t god create them? So really, god just said “eh I’ll make one who goes to hell” then an evil baby was born.

We also know that the bible can’t be taken literally (anyone who believes otherwise is just plain ignorant, we have already figured out the sun does not revolve around the earth). So how much of the bible CAN you believe? Perhaps it’s all just a big metaphor, god being nature. . . or something. Or maybe it’s just a giant work of fiction. If you claim you know. . . you are just simply wrong. You were not there when the world was created, YOU DON’T KNOW. So anyway, don’t kiss god’s ass to get into heaven.

good christ I typed a lot.

You typed a lot and you also took the Lord’s name in vain when you swore.
Personally I take all the 4 Gospels as 98% truth (that’s allowing for errors in memory when they were compiled). A lot of the questions you asked have already been talked about in other topics on this site. If you can spare 2 hours…“the forum will discuss their views on spiritual life” in the lucid lounge has a more or less 2 sided debate on it.

You’d have to die to get to heaven because even Jesus said it’s a place - He said it has many mansions. So the way I see it is that it isn’t a state of mind at all.

Who actually said that? Not me. Jesus said thinking about a woman was the same as adultery. So he made a rule about thinking which might include lucid dreaming when it involves sex. Unless the fact that it’s not really a woman, you’re thinking about sex with a thought process!

I didn’t know I had to support my point for you to start swearing.

I had some experiences with God which you haven’t had. Can that be
more clear, then?

He’s God, He is love, so He created people to love Him and for Him to love them. No big power trip at all. He can fairly judge people because He is love, He knows all about me and you and our intentions. He can read the heart.

He doesn’t tell you to go to hell. I go to hell if I choose to stay away from Him. Easy.

God gave us free will. Freedom to choose Him or reject Him. People who don’t know Him, but are still essentially good will go to purgatory, I believe.
No, people are neither good or evil at birth. They choose during their life.

First of all swearing does not help your point. The Bible is written in various formats. There are literal accounts and there is even fictional stories (Susanna for instance). There are parts which are very much to be taken literally eg. when Jesus said ‘this is my body’. He never said it of a rock but He said it about the Eucharist. There are other parts which are symbolic.
Genesis is written using a Jewish style of writing which basically shows us what God plans to create, not the actual order and time taken. I do know that. And the message of Genesis is that God loves us and that’s why He created us. YES I KNOW THAT.

I don’t need to be there when the world was created. I’ve experienced God and His love for me, me a sinner with weaknesses.

Note: I think we’ve gone very much off topic now. I’m really sorry that this happened. I think we all understand that different people on the board will have different viewpoints on life especially these matters. So we cannot expect everyone to reason in the same way like ourselves but we should respect them instead.

I spoke with a priest on the subject of sin and LD’s. It seems that my thought, or my original one at least, that in an LD masturbation and sex are the equivalent of bad thoughts was correct i.e. they are sinful thoughts and of course should I do them in an LD (I will try not to!) I will need to go to confession.

It took me some time to explain what LD’s were, but I managed to explain it pretty well that he was able to understand it.

Just to be sure that nobody misunderstands - I’m not saying ALL LD’s are sins. I’m saying what you do within an LD can be the equivalent of a conscious thought - so if you ‘do’ something which would be sinful, then that’s a sinful thought…

Just remember, the word/opinion of a priest doesn’t mean it’s the word/opinion of God. The priest is just another man. A lot of things you have to decide for yourself. Priests may be good as guides, but they can still be wrong. I don’t see how sex in an LD could be considered bad. Oh well. :smile:

LDs themselves aren’t sin, it’s just like any other dream except you know you’re dreaming. And dreams aren’t evil, I don’t think.

What you DO in the dream is another thing entirely. Would God see it as just a though, or an action? I don’t know, and it’s best you decide that for yourself. If you’re worried about it, just play safe. There are plenty of non-sinful things to do in LDs.

This topic has a lot of posts about God existing or whatever, take that to another topic. If you don’t believe in God, you have no advice to give in this situation.

Only actually doing bad things for real is a sin! Whatever these ‘bad things’ are… BUT: bad thoughts are not sins… bad dreams are not sins… doing bad things in LDs is not a sin…
And if these priests don’t agree with me, they can all kiss my… ahem

Seriously Clark, would you really go to confession for having sex in your dreams?
Imagine it, you go to confession and the priest says:
“What are your sins, child?”
And you say:
“I had sex in my lucid dreams!”
And the priest goes:
“In your what?”

No way… even if I go to confession I wouldn’t mention sex in LDs cause it’s not a sin and it’s none of their business!

Normal bad dreams are not sins because you don’t control them…
If you control a dream, your consciousness is active, then the matter is different in my opinion.

I was only talking about myself. I never said anything about forcing anyone to do or think anything.

Of course I would. And he would know what they are, because I explained in detail about them.

You’re right that it’s your business what you do and what you mention. Like it’s my business what I do and what I mention, when I go to confession.

Minako - don’t feel offended. My post/s on this topic were
not intended to be ‘forcing’ anyone.

I am only think of myself in this respect.

Clarkent, maybe this goes off topic a bit, but wouldn’t you feel controlled by having to go and confess for something you did in a dream that quite frankly is the one of the farthest things from ‘sinful’ there could be? (I’m talking about dream sex by the way.)