Is lucid dreaming a controversial subject?

I told lots of people about lucid dreaming. Most of them told me that dreams are messages of god and you shouldn’t mess with them, and others told me that talking about dreams to others will “get you punished in the afterlife”.

Overly religious nitwits.

Kache, it sounds like you live in a fun place.

Anyways, in my personal experience, lucid dreaming hasn’t been terribly controversial. I’ve heard some say that they don’t believe that lucid dreaming exists, and others just think I’m weird for paying attention to dreams.

At the same time, it’s a lot less controversial than it used to be. In TV shows, people talk about having dream journals, though it’s occasionally used in a comedic context as dreams can be embarrassing, and then there are also films that include it, like Inception. If anything, it’s gone from being stereotyped as “weird” or “new age” (which it isn’t) to more of a “nerd” phenomenon. (and that’s using “nerd” in the more general definition, not the comic books/science/BBT/pocket protector image that the word creates)

In fact, I’ve talked to people about lucid dreaming without being aware that they know about it. I have had conversations where it’s just worked in organically as though it’s a common subject. And that’s without having discussed it with people before.

I’m just grateful that it’s lost the new-agey connotations. People I knew used to group it in with things like meditation and spirituality for some odd reason. Now, like others have said, it’s just ignorance. People don’t care about the subject of dreams.

Okay, so maybe it is controversial, I guess. But it’s quickly improving.

It’s actually really unfair for lucid dreaming as a subject to be labelled “New Age”.
It has been known for at least a millenium and can be so beneficial in so many ways.
People have no idea what they are talking about when they consider it “weird” and “not real”.

I have actually posted comments about lucid dreaming on Facebook a couple times in the past, just to possibly stir up some interest, but nobody ever seems to wanna respond to it.

I don’t understand why people aren’t interested in it. I guess they’re either lazy, or try one time and fail and then give up.

Everyone I told about Lucid Dreaming tried, failed and never tried again.

Yes, it seems like this mistake is a little too common among beginners, they seem to forget the fact that lucid dreaming is a whole lifestyle that is completely different from what most of them have lived like until they discovered lucid dreaming.
Of course it’s probably gonna take some time to actually become good at this, expecting a lucid dream after practicing for only a few days is like expecting to become an excellent car driver after taking 2-3 driving lessons.
Lucid dreaming requires a passion for dreaming in general, a mature and patient mindset and the understanding that lucid dreaming is essentially just normal dreams where your awareness has been improved; and it’s up to each lucid dreamer to find their own ways to improve their awareness and critical thinking.
Some of the most famous and successful echniques, like MILD, WBTB and WILD are examples of how to increase your dream awareness, they aren’t something that you actually “have to do” in order to succeed.

I agree and that’s exactly what people don’t understand… Learning is a process as for everything it’s exactly the same way for lucid dreams, sometimes even more.

approximately 80% of the people I have told about lucid dreaming seem to take it with extreme disbelief. Which is a darn shame. The rest of the 20% is divided into two categories, 15% who knew about lucid dreaming beforehand, and the 5% who did not know about the phenomenon before but believe it is possible.

The numbers stated here are illustrative and not entirely accurate.

Huh. I once succeeded in getting a friend with no prior knowledge interested in LDing. Moreover, the friend in question is a devout Catholic.
He did achieve an LD, but he got scared of not waking up and resigned.
Since then I graduated from primary school and moved house, so I don’t know about now.

I only told to 3 persons which are my closest friends. One of them is my brother who doesn’t like dreams because as a kid he had recurring nightmares… Even though this is the perfect tool to stop nightmares he just didn’t interested, I guess he is trying to have as little contact with dreams as possible.

My second best friend showed the most interest but as he says he doesn’t have a time for this which is bull! And my third friend is of course joking around on the subject like he does with everything else.

Later on when I was more into the subject I found out that one of my good school friends is a lucid-ish dreamer and another friend actually had a few LD’s and is interested in the subject actively.

I guess that there are people that are lucid dreamers but they don’t know that they are. Well, I hope I’ll find more people like those… :content:

I think (at least in my region) that the biggest problem people have with Lucid dreaming is that they are afraid that you are playing with things you don’t understand. Some people think that Lucid dreaming might siriously mess up some of your body functions. Specifically memory, personality and other brain workings (although there is no source to back this up. They give the argument that everybody would have lucid dreams naturally all the time if it was suposed to be that way. Now I don’t know why most people only have nd’s for 99% of the time, what it does? However, there are people that have dreamt luicdly naturally for most of their lives and they haven’t suffered any strange diseases or syndromes.

So I think it is mainly ignorance on the subject. But I find the fear quite understandable. The workings of the mind and brain is one of the frontiers of science which is really understood quite poorly. We are only just beginning to unravel the mysteries of the mind and there is still a long road ahead of us. The function of sleep and dreams is really a complete mystery. What people don’t know is what scares them the most! I think this is why it’s a controversial subject. We are all ‘playing’ with the unknown. And although it seems there is no danger to it, we really cannot know… :bored:

We can only hope :bored:

And what is more attractive and interesting then unknown and uncharted?! :content:
And you can experience it every night when you close your eyes…

Exactly.

Well it’s certainly funny to read some skeptics’ comments about lucid dreams on YouTube and the like, they seem to believe it’s some sort of witch-craft or something.
Some of them are even worried that they will die if they try lucid dreaming. :lol:

They also have an irritating tendency to accuse lucid dreams of causing nightmares.
That’s a terribly flawed logic, if anything lucid dreams could help you stop nightmares.

I was looking at some youtube videos, and a comment said something along the lines of “do i have to join a cult to lucid dream? I don’t want to turn evil”

Haha, I’m not surprised, I see similar types of comments all the time on lucid dreaming videos.

I mean sure, I understand that lucid dreaming in hyper-realism can seem overwhelming to those who are unfamiliar with it, but how can anyone believe that they will die or turn evil just because they sleep?

Maybe because some people have died sleeping?

Still, I’ve found this thread quite interesting. Thanks for the posters.

I don’t know if this can be verified. Being a natural myself I can’t tell if I had some disease caused by LDing or if I’m going to get one later.

I couldn’t live my life twice to check the outcomes of LDing or not LDing, how can I be sure if I got sick because of it or it was just unrelated?

Shadow is right here, Laurelindo, we cannot be completely sure it’s safe, I believe it is, but I have never pushed it so hard. Some claim to have had year long dreams or met some alternate realities or foreseen some events (you can find these claims in this same forum).
Maybe we can push harder than they did, and that becomes dangerous.

Still, that wasn’t the topic I wanted to argue when I first came to this thread, I wanted to talk about how people think it’s silly. Sometimes I fell like people think we are a bunch of dangerous drug addicts. That’s my most believed hiphothesis. I think when we say about it they just think “these guys are crazy tampering with their brain” while the rest think “it’s just plain stupid, only exists in movies”.

I would really like to have some statistics on what people think about lucid dreaming. Not that it would change my opinion.

You are right in that we cannot guarantee lucid dreaming to be completely safe - however, there are risks in everything, and I believe that if lucid dreaming indeed was dangerous then I’m sure it would’ve been discovered by now.
And I think the benefits of lucid dreaming FAR outweigh any possible risks.

Here’s how I would explain it if I had to:

“If you didn’t dream, and someone told you they had dreams, would you believe them?”

If they outright say “No,” then don’t bother going any further, they have a very closed mind.

I know my brother had one when he was little, but I don’t know if he remembers. My dad keeps a DJ, but I don’t know if he had /knows about LD’s.

It seems like it would be easier to talk about it now that I’ve had some, but I still haven’t had to…

I live in a very liberal town, so I don’t have to worry about crazy religious people :smile: .

One quick look on random Lucid Dreaming video on YouTube generally shows the following types of comments:

“Is this dangerous?”
“I’m scared to do it”
“I hear people see a scary old hag while in sleep paralysis, help?”
“Can you die if you do this?” - (my personal favourite)
“Is this like taking drugs?”

Oh well.