I’m curious about the phenomenon of dreaming (apparently) non-lucidly about lucid dreaming. Has anyone here experienced this? Is that even possible? I’ve had conversations/debates with people who believed that it is impossible to dream non-lucidly about lucid dreaming – that by definition, to dream about lucid dreaming necessitates being lucid, to at least some degree. Do you agree with this?
My dream this morning sort of fits into this category: my wife and I are exploring a movie together as if we are in the movie. We are walking around pointing out dreamlike features of the environment, e.g. I point out how an object on the ground is distorted in the way things are in dreams. Liz notes that things are starting to look more realistic, in a manner that indicates we are close to physically waking up. At one point a character has grabbed three other people by their heads and is pulling them along behind him. They are baby-sized but have adult heads, which Liz and I find very funny.
When I woke up this dream did not seem lucid, but on the other hand I was behaving somewhat as if I was in a lucid dream. I’ve also had other dreams that seem non-lucid but in which I do “magical” things “as if I’m in a dream.”
What do you think of such dreams? Could there be a low-level of tacit lucidity or could they be non-lucid dreams in which the content of the dream involves lucid dreaming (or something related, like “we’re in a simulation and that’s why we can do/experience unusual things”)?
Just the other night I had a dream where I did a reality check, and then continued to dream non-lucidly. Not sure if I made any lucidity comments like “is this a dream? this is a dream”. Not sure if that counts as what you’re saying but it seems an important aspect of RCs was missing for me and may be the same for your observations, namely that the feeling of deeply questioning the reality of the situation doesn’t seem to be there, just the outer form of it.
Another possibility I have been considering though is that lucidity may have occurred but a person remembers it later as being non-lucid. Andrew has mentioned that a few times, or at least the idea that a person can just completely forget that they had a lucid dream.
Interesting point, Chloe, that I might be misremembering it as non-lucid after the fact. Having had a lot of lucid dreams over the years I don’t think I have as much of a “WOW” factor on becoming lucid as I did in the early days. Also there seems to be a lot of variability in how much of my “normal” waking consciousness is online during a lucid dream, so if not much of my normal waking consciousness is online, might I misremember it as being non-lucid?
I was just thinking that maybe a way to eliminate the possibility of forgetting that you were lucid is to master that hypnopompic state. Like surf out of it with complete awareness. Tricky tricky though
I was just thinking that maybe a way to eliminate the possibility of forgetting that you were lucid is to master that hypnopompic state. Like surf out of it with complete awareness. Tricky tricky though
Definitely tricky, but a trick I’d like to learn. I think this is going to be a long term project of mine – learning to more consciously experience hypnagogia/hypnopompia…nibbling at the edges of dreamspace. Jennifer Dumpert said it took her years to be able to do that really well.
It is definitely possible to have a non-lucid dream about lucid dreams.
The difference is that lucid dreaming becomes the topic or the content of the still non-lucid perspective or view. The perspective remains non-lucid disregarding what it is looking at, in this case at lucid dreams. In comparison to when lucidity transforms one view and raising its awareness.
I personally had this a couple of times as well, where I would dream about lucid dreams, or talk with someone in a dream about lucid dreams, but which wasn’t enough to trigger my lucidity and I remained non-lucid.
I even heard about lucid dreaming teachers, who experienced similar situations, where the content of their non-lucid dreams where about lucid dreams.
Another dimension next to the perspective being non-lucid or lucid, is the degree of lucidity itself. Robert Waggoner mentions a couple of lucidity levels ranging from pre-lucid, sub-lucid to eventually super lucid.
Your dream would fit into the pre-lucid state, where your actions promote a developing consciousness about the state of affairs.
The other example about doing dream-magic would be sub-lucidity, where the realization is a degree higher and you might manipulate things, but you are still more or less stuck in the plot, not fully realizing the full implications of a lucid dream.
I has some dreams several times. First I think that it is a reflection of what I do during daytime. Since I try to focus on lucid dreaming also during the day and as I talk often to other people about lucid dreaming, I think that it is natural. Once I even had a dream where I was surprised that I van be lucid even the waken sate - because of course, I was convinced that I was awake in my dream only afterwards I saw topics about lucid living as well
Secondly, I think that it is s sign that you are gathering some energy (or maybe bindu ?) to really have a lucid dream. It happened to me several times that after a few nights later finally I succeeded to really recognise that I was dreaming.
I periodically have lucid dreams within dreams which I do not consider fully lucid. When this happens, I’m asleep in a “dream bed,” usually someplace different than my physical waking life bed. The sleeper in the dream bed will have a dream, and become lucid within THAT dream. I have trained myself to recall my waking life as soon as I become lucid, to check for full lucidity. In these dreams within dreams I will recall myself in the dream bed, rather than my waking life self.
The first few times this happened I was very confused as to whether these were real lucid dreams. I later came to think of them as semi-lucid. On the scale of lucidity, I do not consider myself fully lucid unless I can recall my waking physical reality life, including my name, where I’m sleeping, and the intentions I set before bed. In a semi-lucid dream I know I’m dreaming but do not recall my waking life or intentions. The “dreaming of a lucid dream” scenario falls in the semi-lucid category in my scale.
Aside from the lucidity aspect, the Inception-like dreams within dreams, with multiple false awakenings, are always a bit mind blowing!
I haven’t noticed any specific correlations to waking life experiences. I have noticed that the dreams within dreams and false awakenings were more plentiful when I first began practicing lucid dreaming, and have lessened over recent years as my lucid dreams became more of the normal variety. I think I only had one “dreaming I’m lucid” dream in the past year. It took place in my childhood home. I dreamed I was sleeping in the bed I grew up in, and became lucid from there. I’m sure there is some present life interpretation that would explain why I would dream about it now as an adult, but I’m not great at dream analysis so I’m not sure how it relates.
This is my experience too. Recently, I had two dreams. Where I recognized I was dreaming, flying up in the sky looking down and things became suddenly vivid for a moment, then said excitedly, " This is a dream", tried to do a status check but could not because I was flying my car and had my hand on the steering wheel, ha ha go figure! Another, I asked a dream character “What they represent”, and she paid attention only the second time I asked the question, and I don’t remember what the answer was… were these short duration LDs (less than 30 sec)? or non-lucid dreams of LD? Next time I will try to recall a waking time fact as a RC. Problem is if I pre-decide what this check will be, could it seep into my non-lucid dream?
I was wondering if someone can clarify from their experience the difference between a witnessing-type lucid dream and a non-lucid dream about a lucid dream. I have heard Andrew mention that a witnessing lucid dream is when you know you are dreaming but don’t have enough lucidity to control the dream. One dream last night was where I knew I was dreaming, at one point I got shot ( I have never been around guns but watched a world war II in color series on Netflix last night), but before it happened I saw a shadow of the gun and I thought to myself, this should be interesting to see how it feels to die in a dream! ( I was able to confidently do this because I knew I don’t feel as much pain in dreams for some reason). What was slight trepidation at first turned to excitement ( I find my response pretty strange)…I don’t think I had absolute clarity where I can spontaneously change the dream. I simply sat there and watched the whole thing unfold. Was that a witnessing lucid dream?
Aprasad, that sounds like a witnessing type dream to me, insofar as you decided to just let the action unfold and see what happens.
Unless I’m misunderstanding, a witnessing dream is not about not having enough lucidity to control the dream, it’s about choosing not to alter the dream but to just let it unfold and see what happens. I think it’s more about how you approach the dream than how lucid you are. However, I would love to hear @Andrew clarify how he sees this distinction.
I’ve had a couple of dreams lately where I was looking around and thinking that some of the things I am seeing are dreamt and some are not. In one I thought a whole area of the landscape was a dream but the rest was not. Then in another dream I was looking a plate of food and I noticed the sausages were made of sweets. I thought in the dream that these were dream sausages but that everything else was real! These dreams seemed really to be about being about to tip the balance into getting lucid.
I wander if it could be possible to have all the signs of lucid dreaming and yet it is just the theme that is about being lucid. It could be a bit like talking about an experience but without your heart being in it. All the kind of things you might do in a lucid dream are going on but you are just sort of going through the motions and not really feeling it and you have no real presence. Like following a script but not really living it. It maybe an experience which is just on the cusp of actual lucidity?
only afterwards I saw topics about lucid living as well 