Is Lucid Dreaming Real?

Just want to apologize in advance if you think this question is too vague. I’m new to all this and really want to become a frequent lucid dreamer. I’ve researched a lot about LD and read plenty of personal experiences online, but it seems almost too good to be true. Also, I tried telling my friends about it but they are pretty convinced that its fake. No matter how much I try to explain to them, they always think that its not possible- they think its a giant hoax. Are LD really what people say it is? It feels like real life, and everything is extremely vivid just like reality, and you can taste, hear, feel, smell, and see everything? Or are people just exaggerating everything? Is it a regular dream (Blurry, not very vivid in any of the senses listed), except for the fact that you know you’re dreaming? Please help me understand all this!

Lucid Dreams are very vivid. It is like you are in real life. They are completely real. For some reason people tend not to accept things they don’t understand that well. Everyone in my family thinks me pursuing the ability to Lucid Dream is stupid. It really isn’t though. I would fully suggest continuing your research and trying to Lucid Dream.

Oh yess it is very real. If you are lucid enough the dream will feel exactly like a real life experience of even more real.

There are various levels of lucidity. The LD’s you ask about are indeed possible and deffinitely more likely to occur the more you practice. But be warned that your first ones may not be that detailed (I’m sure they will be awesome no matter what, though!).

I have some lucid dreams where I can barely see or hear, yet others look so real I’m left in awe and fall on my knees crying (true story, although emotions can be hightened in dreams too :razz:). By the way “normal dreams” can be really vivid too, it’s also a matter of practice.

I suggest you try it out for yourself, but don’t get discouraged if your LD’s aren’t as intense and realistic as you imagined (emphasis on IF as many people have fantastic LD’s right away), since LD’s can be very different one from another!

EDIT: Oh, and welcome to LD4all :happy:

I know how you feel, when I first started trying to have a lucid dream no one would believe that it was real.

I also found a book on lucid dreaming in the “popular beliefs/religion” section of my local library which hit me hard and convinced me that I was probably being made a fool of and made me give up.

…Then 4 months later I had my first Lucid Dream.

Well LD’ing is scientifically proved, so no worries there! :content: Stephen LaBerge proved it and you can make a search on that.

Like other said it’s real as much as you make it real. People usually don’t even pay attention to dreams but sometimes they wake up all sad, angry, edgy but sometimes they are energized and happy. Normally a dreamer would recognize that and give a proper credit to his dreams.

So take the idea of lucid dreaming and imagine how you could be energized and happy most of the mornings because you can control what’s going to happen. When one is experiencing the dream it feels real or better say it is real. Why? Well there was the study that show that when one sees the apple(for example) and when one imagines the apple brain reacts the same. So to the brain = you it feels like you saw an apple even though you just imagined it.

I believe that this we can apply to dreams too. Although I would say that dream is 100% stronger experience than a thought! Of course if you remember your dreams.

It’s very hard to explain to someone things that he doesn’t understand. The best and easiest way is to try it for yourself. Who knows, maybe your friends will experience LD some day and they will return to you with questions! It happened to me! :grin:

Good luck! :content:

It is perfectly real, I don’t understand why they would think it’s fake, all it is, is knowing you’re in a dream.

of course its real. please dont take offence but ur friends sound narrow minded. its not thier fault though its something they dont understand.eather they will block it off and want no part of it or they may want to expore it for them self like i did. i found out it is very real and an very great experience. stand ur ground and when u find out for ur self u can let them now what they are missing out on.

It’s proven by SCIENCE! See Stephen LaBerge. He proved it in a laboratory that it’s real. And, not to start an off-topic flamewar, but scientists? With their billion-dollar educations? Their stringent testing in their labs? Probably live closer to the truth than your friends do. This guy talks about its use in Tibetan Buddhism, only because he’s Buddhist, but also talks a little about the science of it and the personal experience.

Now.

It’s true, that lucid dreaming is difficult to achieve regularly.

And when you do achieve it, sometimes it’s not as vivid: it feels foggy, it feels like a blurry regular dream. This is true.

And sometimes, some people have nonlucid dreams that are very clear and vivid. Have you ever had a nightmare, or heard someone who did, and they say “It felt so real!” And it wasn’t just the emotional effect that lasts, but the actual dream felt so real?

Sometimes you get those kinds of vivid dreams, and you’re also lucid for them.

But, very often, it’s just a regular dream where you know that you’re dreaming-- and then forget even that right away. That can be frustrating. I suppose I just appreciate the good ones so much that they’re the ones that I tend to talk about. But they were real when they happened: I don’t mean to deceive anyone into thinking it’s like that every night! It’s not.

Everyone has said it very nice.

If you’re skeptical… just try it. Won’t be that big of a waste… and atleast you will start having better dream recall.

If you try the different tips and tricks… keep a dream journal… and really want to have a lucid dream.

You will have one.

And this topic will become something you’ll look back at and laugh.

:smile:

Of course lucid dreaming is real. Almost every one of us on the fourms is living proof, just check out the dream journals. Think about it, why would Q the creater of the website take so much of her own time and money to have this site up for us? Why would we all fake it, typing up bogus stories when we have better things to do…

Regards to your questions, yes, it can be very much like how reality feels and even more. This depends a lot on your lucidity state and how stable your dream is. Again, think about it, people have had normal dreams where it’s so real that they feel like they’ve lived the dream moment before, only to wake up to an intense dream. Our minds are quite powerful and mysterious. :content:
Good luck on your quest to lucidity, have some faith~

I remember when I first heard of it… was in an episode of star trek of all things! So I looked it up, found Mr LaBerge’s first book simply entitled “Lucid Dreaming” (people tend to focus on his second book but I find the first is a more… all-encompassing summary of what it is and why it is - recommended) and read the whole thing in that same night. That very night I had my first… I guess sometimes you hear something’s possible and so you just find out of the blue that you can do it too! So stop umming and ahhing about it, worrying “is it real?” “people will think I’m making it up” etc etc, and just DO it :razz: Then you’ll know, and you’ll realise just HOW silly those thoughts / people’s comments were. It’s possible, it’s real, it’s out there for you NOW. Just remember it while you’re sleeping… Or hope and intend to at any rate, who knows - like me you may find that upon realising how astounding a subject it is, you’ll manage one instantaneously :happy:

Good luck… Enjoy your first.

How vivid or realistic the lucid dream is depends on the dreamer. From what I recall as long as you’re aware that you’re dreaming its pretty much a LD. So yes LD’s are real.

[center][spoiler]" And if they aren’t down with that we’ve got two words for em!" -DX-
(Its an old wrestling group’s slogan. I had to take advantage of the moment :cool_raz: no harm intended.) [/spoiler][/center]

I just couldn’t ignore this, I had to share my experience because it is so similar to what you’re describing.
When I just started LD I felt like I was ghost hunting or seeking for UFOs, I was very skeptical, but this forum convinced me to give it a try. The first one I had was probably one of the best ones. Albeit I didn’t do that much because I was so excited that it actually is possible I spent 90 % of the dream time running around the dream world.
If I could give you a bit of advice, Trust in yourself, once you get your first dream you will gain an understanding of the complexity of the human mind.
Forget the naysayers, a beautiful thing about LDs is that they are a personal experience, once you know the truth they wont matter.

I used to love to just walk around and feeling surfaces in my LDs because everything was just like real life and I found it so fascinating :happy:

I sure hope so!

It is real when my parents argue about something…

Main difference to me between a LD and a non-LD is that I know that I’m dreaming, they are among my best-remembered dreams as well, visually it’s very detailed, emotions do not include the undesired ones, such things as fear or sadness, confusion or lack of confidence. These can be largely or completely absent, probably because you know “it’s only a dream”, what on earth could possibly happen to you?

It can still have a lot in common with non-lucid dreaming though (i.e. having emotions, having cognition or some thinking) but the mixture is different. The way we can influence the dream, is according to this different mixture (more conscious thinking, an the awareness that it’s “only” a dream could invoke the wish to manipulate the dream, but you don’t have to). We do also influence our non-lucid dreams but more in accordance with a more automatic way of thinking or feeling about what we dream.

let me tell you about my first LD.
You got to know, I never heard about Lucid dreaming before. I was in a a bar, alone, waiting to order, when i spotted that the wall was somehow weird. it was green and purple, mixing in a vortex, made from some mass, like a liquid rubber. then I thought: what the f…, this is not from my whorld as i know it. I shocked, started thinking what could be the explanation for that and came to conclusion, that i must be dreaming. But how is that possible? everithing around me is so real, no different from awake life… exept the wall… So I went to a first person next me in a bar and told him, that I was dreaming him. He started laughing and said: get awai, weirdo… what is wrong with you? And I said, well I think you, re just my imagination, but he didnt belive me. He almoust convinced me, but then i rememberd, where my body is, I knew exactly where did I fall asleep. I said to myself: Ok, I must wake up to be certain of this. And I did.
Then I was so shocked, that nobody told me before, that such things are possible, that I thought for a while, I was the only one in a world that could controll dreams.
I mean, why wouldn’t people talk about it, it seemd to me to be such a big discovery. If anyone could do that too, It must have been all over the news. Creating your own world, man!!!
Then a friend told me, that long ago he read a book about it, ‘The art of dreaming’ he said…
And I was off to a library…