Lucid Dreaming and The Scientific Method

Perhaps, basic introductions with "Hi. My name is .... " "Who are you?" ... would have worked. Honestly, I have no idea ... but it seems based of their reactions, they didn't like the deep questions you were asking. Maybe we (or at least ... you) are not suppose to know these answers while we're alive and the way they chose to discourage you from asking these questions, is to present you their many scary faces. I'm only speculating at this point.

Worth a try! Though I'm also curious to try asking those same questions again, and see what the result is. Unfortunately, my lucid dreams are still pretty sporadic. It can be a few months in between them. I'm trying to reinstate my regular meditation routine though so hopefully that will help me have them more often! I keep on meaning to regularly ask myself when I'm awake whether I'm awake and then look at the time, but then I forget to do it.
 
That's funny. I have chronic acid reflux and I never had a heartburn problem taking melatonin. Perhaps, my daily regiment of taking pump reducers help keep the heartburn at bay even when I take the melatonin. Either way ... it does help me sleep but I'm still not having the lucid dreams I used to have. Perhaps I should try taking it in the middle of the night as suggested.

Yeah, I used to be on a good one myself, but had to switch because it conflicted with some other medication I take. Unfortunately, the substitute doesn't seem to help much at all. Luckily, I'm not getting it too often these days from food (which is why the corelation just a few minutes after I took the melatonin each time leads me to believe that that is what sparked it).

Again, it could be that I bought a crappy brand that put other crap in it.
 
Had my first lucid dream in awhile last night. I hadn't done an induction but had fallen asleep to a guided mindfulness meditation, so that might have helped.

It was notable for being my longest one yet. I was coming out of it two or three times. On one of them, I felt myself getting excited and coming out of it so I consciously slowed down my breathing and was able to stay lucid. Another time I actually thought I'd woken up then realized I was still dreaming and came back into it.

With my lucid dreaming, as part of my informal tests of just how much control I actually have, I try and have at least one preplanned thing that I intend to do the next time I LD. About half way through the dream I remembered what I had planned for this one. I can't remember if I read this on Skeptiko or somewhere else, but someone had recommended seeking answers during a LD. Asking what one needed to know. This also keys in with attempting to connect with something psi like out there - if such a thing exists.
This sounds really interesting and constructive. My only lucid dream - as a kid - was just a few seconds long. I was walking along a long corridor searching in rooms off to one-side, and suddenly I realised it was a dream. I woke up seconds later.

I wonder if it would be better to ask for something more specific - something you could check afterwards. For example, if you don't do the lottery, you could ask for last week's lottery numbers. If you got the answer, you would be pretty sure some genuine information had been passed to you, but like so many pieces of evidence, everyone else would say, "Oh nothing remarkable - he saw the number somewhere!"

David
 
About two years ago I was getting lucid to semi-lucid dreams somewhat regularly. What I mean by regularly, is about once a month. Then this past year, for some reason, I didn't recall hardly any dreams, much less lucid. Perhaps the changes in my life, and the added stress, helped facilitate my sleep patterns where I wasn't able to sleep deeply enough to perhaps have lucid dreams.

After reading this thread, I decided to buy a bottle of Melatonin (5mg) and take it every night before I fall asleep. The one thing I had noticed is that I seem to be sleeping deeper through the night now. Anyway, It may be a placebo effect but I like to think that the Melatonin is working as I am now also starting receiving semi-lucid dreams in the morning. At least the ones I remember are in the morning.

The one I had recently was I dreamed I woke up and proceeded to walk into my bathroom where I noticed everything looked different. At that moment I had realized that I was dreaming. And then I opened the door to the living room and the entire room was a lot larger with a bunch of people I didn't recognize. Then, there was one guy with a red shirt started running after me and I decided to fly out of there but I hit my head on the ceiling and woke up. I remember yelling "Dammit!" right after I became physically conscious because I wanted to see where this dream was going. That, and I wanted to fly but I woke up prematurely. Anyway, I wanted to share that Melatonin may actually work.

Nice that it worked for you. Melatonin isn't a homoeopathic, or some other alternative medicine, with questionable ingredients (or non-ingiridents) in it. It is a body produced hormone that regulates sleep, and has shown to induce deeper and more vivid dreams. So there is no question about a placebo-effect, and/or expectation-bias.
"Melatonin users report an increase in vivid dreaming. Extremely high doses of melatonin (50 mg) dramatically increased REM sleep time and dream activity in people"

The thing you mention about seeing familiar places, like your home, workplace, hometown etc, that is slightly changed in its details (like different colours, different wallpapers, different furnitures, or mirror-reversed versions of your home, etc) is extremely common.

It will get easier to control your lucid-dreams the more often you have them.
 
Had my first lucid dream in awhile last night. I hadn't done an induction but had fallen asleep to a guided mindfulness meditation, so that might have helped.

It was notable for being my longest one yet. I was coming out of it two or three times. On one of them, I felt myself getting excited and coming out of it so I consciously slowed down my breathing and was able to stay lucid. Another time I actually thought I'd woken up then realized I was still dreaming and came back into it.

With my lucid dreaming, as part of my informal tests of just how much control I actually have, I try and have at least one preplanned thing that I intend to do the next time I LD. About half way through the dream I remembered what I had planned for this one. I can't remember if I read this on Skeptiko or somewhere else, but someone had recommended seeking answers during a LD. Asking what one needed to know. This also keys in with attempting to connect with something psi like out there - if such a thing exists.

This is where things got a bit weird and disturbing, and I'm wondering if anyone else has had this happen when trying something like this. I should have actually planned on specific questions in advance, but I hadn't and in the moment just came up with "what is the answer?" I was thinking in terms of the life, the universe and everything sense. I didn't get answer (not even 42, which would have been pretty cool). Rather, suddenly I had all these faces coming at me turning into evil snarls! Kind of like how vampires faces transform on tv shows and movies. Pretty horrific and scary. I think I thought something like calm down and tried again - same result. I gave a last try by switching it up and asked "what do I need to know?" again the horrible faces came at me. I didn't recognize any particular faces, but it seemed like a hoard of them. When I stopped asking questions they went away. The rest of the dream was fine.

Anyone else have something like this happen? This has been the only time during my lucid dreams where something frightening has happened. But it wasn't like a nightmare in the sense of an ongoing scary adventure. The horrors only lasted a for a few seconds after each time I asked a question. I was able to send them away pretty quickly. So it wasn't scary in the general way that nightmares are. I wasn't exactly frightened. More startled. Kind of a "woah, boy, this didn't work!" reaction.

Anyone have any good suggestions for my next LD? I'm trying to keep my mind way open in terms of inducing some sort of psi related effect, and am pretty well open to trying pretty much anything!

(Edited for some auto-correct typos!)

Nice that you had some lucid dreams. Not so nice that they were scary, though. Those scary faces, and the hostility you felt - when you tried to convey some verifiable facts from TPTB - is interesting. Made me think of the "Machine Elves"
But also thought of the reports from EVP-sessions where they made contact with something/someone who are reluctant to show further physical proof of their presence - or reveal general information about the conditions and "function" of the afterlife when one are stuck in limbo. They answered the questions with; "I'm not allowed to say that" or "They don't want me to reveal that" - like there was some automatic safeguard, that went in to action against them, if they tried to convey certain information. Like we are only allowed to get "teasers" & "snippets", but never the unquestionable truth, or proof.

Well, who knows!?!

I read that you tried Melatonin, and I have another tip for you, of something that might work even better. It did for me anyway. I got some really vivid and fully structured LD with this. It is called Passionflower or; Passiflora. It's a natural supplement. But should be taken with moderation, and not in combination with other particular medications. But, as I said, it gave me one of the most vivid and "clear" lucid dreams I ever had.

Read up on it, and decide for yourself.
It is not an illegal drug, or something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_elf#.22Machine_Elves.22
 
Inception-dreaming
I mentioned using this Passionflower-supplement earlier, to get more vivid LD's. This was not the case when I had the following LD though. This one I had totally "clean".

I remember I used the "clock-trick" and became aware in a big flat that I've never seen before. It looked like one of those old, really big, fashionable apartments - that used to take up a whole floor in older 18th-19th century buildings - with long corridors and 15 feet ceiling heights, etc. Anyway, while walking around there I smelled smoke, and then saw that the hallway to the front door was on fire, and I could really feel the smoke in my lungs. I went for some windows and saw that, for some reason, there was fire outside them too. I felt slightly panicked, but reminded myself it was just a lucid dream, and tried to take control and wake myself up.

Now, this strange thing happened. Instead of waking up, I "woke up" in another lucid dream, with full memory of the previous one, with the apartment on fire. Now I found myself on a somewhat small fishing-boat on the sea, in the middle of the night, with an autumn-storm raging around me - and the boat was about to capsize. Not a particularly nice place to be - alone in the dark, wet, cold, and just about to drown. Now I felt quite panicked. Not from the storm, but from the fact that I didn't woke up IR, at my earlier attempt, and instead got "out of the frying pan, into the fire", so to speak.

I really tried to focus now, with full intention, to wake up, and tried to "bolt out of there". But, once again I failed, and was now in my third lucid dream. This was not a frightening or threatening dream though. It was an ordinary street in an unknown town. But nevertheless it was really frightening because I begin to think I might never wake up anymore, and just bounce between dreams like this. I even entertained the thought that I might be dead. Anyway, I begun walking around the streets there and people that I met had slightly morphed features. Something like this>>

They didn't take notice with me, and I avoided contact, while thinking how I would get out of this. Then suddenly, I walked by a big store-window and tried to look in. In the window, though, I saw my own reflection, and that, somehow resonated deeper in me. The "realness" of seeing myself and collect my thoughts around my body and self, instead of just the mind, somehow acted like a trigger, and I immediately woke up in my bed.

I felt really concerned that day - if this was something that would be an ongoing theme in my dreams, from now on. But luckily, the next night sleep, was totally dream-free (at least not caught in my memory).

One thing I thought about the day after, was that the dreams I had was a somewhat Inception-like dream, in 3 layers. I wondered; "iIf I get stuck in a dream sequence like that again, should I listen and try to hear Edith Piaf's - Non, Je ne regrette rien, and just wait for the "kick"??" ;)
Those of you who have seen the movie Inception knows what I mean. :)

 
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Now, this strange thing happened. Instead of waking up, I "woke up" in another lucid dream, with full memory of the previous one, with the apartment on fire. Now I found myself on a somewhat small fishing-boat on the sea, in the middle of the night, with an autumn-storm raging around me - and the boat was about to capsize. Not a particularly nice place to be - alone in the dark, wet, cold, and just about to drown. Now I felt quite panicked. Not from the storm, but from the fact that I didn't woke up IR, at my earlier attempt, and instead got "out of the frying pan, into the fire", so to speak.

I really tried to focus now, with full intention, to wake up, and tried to "bolt out of there". But, once again I failed, and was now in my third lucid dream.

Have you tried just sending whatever you don't like away? I've only had 5 or 6 full fledged lucid dreams, including the ones I've described, but one thing I seem to be able to consistently do is change the images I don't want. I think things like "Now let's try ____", or, in the case I described above of the horrible faces (I had described it as the ways vampires faces transform but your facial distortion example is pretty close as well) I think I thought "go away" or something like that. That is: rather than try and escape the dream - change the dream.

It generally changes to something like what I was aiming at, though not necessarily bang on. On a few of them, I would get a result that wasn't quite what I had aimed at so that's when the "now let's try ___" seemed to work to switch it up - whether its a person, or the general setting, etc.
 
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Have you tried just sending whatever you don't like away? I've only had 5 or 6 full fledged lucid dreams, including the ones I've described, but one thing I seem to be able to consistently do is change the images I don't want. I think things like "Now let's try ____", or, in the case I described above of the horrible faces (I had described it as the ways vampires faces transform but your facial distortion example is pretty close as well) I think I thought "go away" or something like that. That is: rather than try and escape the dream - change the dream.

It generally changes to something like what I was aiming at, though not necessarily band on. On a few of them, I would get a result that wasn't quite what I had aimed at so that's when the "now let's try ___" seemed to work to switch it up - whether its a person, or the general setting, etc.

Interesting. I think my dream, I mentioned, was a out-of-control mix of a good 'ol nightmare that turned lucid. In "normal" nightmare one often feel that one cant get away from what's chasing you - or any kind of a threatening situation. Like when you try to run it feels like you are stuck in mud or glue - and/if you get lose then there is something else that hinders you from getting away - all up to the point when you wake up sweaty with your heart pounding. Maybe the "go-away"-trick might have worked for me, but I was eager to just wake up because it felt really uncomfortable, and not like a "normal" LD, where one have control. This was more of an LD that was out of my control, but me being lucid in it nonetheless.

The Machine Elfs I mentioned earlier, are often a central part in DMT-users dream-state/trip. They often look and act similar for almost everyone coming in contact with them. And that is really weird. If we say that they are just a drug induced hallucination; how, and why, could/would they look the same, and act the same, for that many and different range of people? Is there a part of the evolutionary brain - that are fixed and unchangeable - and creates just that particular hallucination, with just that particular drug? How could that be??
 
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I am reminded of my first lucid dream (or at least semi-lucid) that I can actually remember. It was about 25 years ago when I was a teenager. Anyway, in this dream, I was walking down the country road I grew up on. The dream turned into a nightmare where I was all of a sudden surrounded by a large pack of wolves. Then the thought occurred to me that this is impossible as no wolves that live around here. At that moment I actually realized this was a dream but, for some reason, the only way out of this mess was to kill myself. So, I thought of a car headed towards me. And the car actually appears where I decided to let the car hit me knowing that it will wake me up. And it did.

It is funny I still remember that dream after all these years.
 
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