I Mastered Lucid Dreaming
I don't have complete lucid dreaming (most lucid dreamers don't) but I can control the dream to an extent. I can fly whenever I want to, though I usually just hover. I've been able to do that for several years. Within the last year I've also developed telekinesis and pyrokinesis. For some reason my dreams are often a lot like video games or action movies, so these skills come quite in handy for fighting zombie hordes and so on. None of these skills are 100% successful. Rather, I have to effortfully concentrate on using them, in the same way one concentrates on a math problem, to make them work. If I don't pay attention, for example, I will float down to the ground while flying.
I have never fully realized I'm dreaming, but often I have thoughts that are external to the dream. For example, last night upon failing to throw fire at a vampire I thought "Well, that fire throwing didn't work how I wanted it to. Oh well, I'll just pretend it did and keep going as if it had." At that point the vampire was out of the scene. A couple of nights ago I dreamed I was being bombed by some high tech looking planes flying overhead. I thought, "Hmm, what country would it make sense for those to be from in the context of this story?" For some reason I decided it must be China. Confusingly, I often think upon taking flight, "Oh yeah, why did I think I couldn't fly? Of course I can." This is strange because I seem to be remembering real life (in which I sadly realize every morning that I can't fly), at the same time as thinking that I am in real life.
Oh yes. I also seem to have what is called "REM sleep disorder", in which I act out the most effortful actions of my dreams. So I often shout/yell in my sleep, and have knocked over my lamp and the painting above my bed countless times. I can usually tell when I have done this and even tell observers what it was I was yelling, as it's always something I was concentrating very hard on in the dream. As though I had to work really hard to overcome some barrier. I have no idea if that is connected to my lucid dreaming, which started long before I started yelling in my sleep. Funnily enough, people who aren't familiar with my little problem often think someone is trying to murder me in my bed. Har har.
I don't know what advice I can give anyone who wants to lucid dream, but here are some things I've done. I often spend a long time upon waking thinking about my dreams and what they might have been inspired by, and sometimes I write them down. The ability to recall the dream diminishes rapidly over time, so that I might produce a page if I write immediately, but if I wait till that evening I will get a couple sentences. If I read over a dream I wrote about before, however, I will be able to recall everything that I wrote about. The memory is still there, but hidden. I think perhaps going over these memories repeatedly might forge some connections between the conscious and unconscious mind. Also, I have very strong powers of concentration (I am a mathematician!). Whenever I have a dream about having some superpower, I practice several times while I am falling asleep the next night performing those actions mentally and thinking about wanting to have a similar dream. Hope that helps!
I have never fully realized I'm dreaming, but often I have thoughts that are external to the dream. For example, last night upon failing to throw fire at a vampire I thought "Well, that fire throwing didn't work how I wanted it to. Oh well, I'll just pretend it did and keep going as if it had." At that point the vampire was out of the scene. A couple of nights ago I dreamed I was being bombed by some high tech looking planes flying overhead. I thought, "Hmm, what country would it make sense for those to be from in the context of this story?" For some reason I decided it must be China. Confusingly, I often think upon taking flight, "Oh yeah, why did I think I couldn't fly? Of course I can." This is strange because I seem to be remembering real life (in which I sadly realize every morning that I can't fly), at the same time as thinking that I am in real life.
Oh yes. I also seem to have what is called "REM sleep disorder", in which I act out the most effortful actions of my dreams. So I often shout/yell in my sleep, and have knocked over my lamp and the painting above my bed countless times. I can usually tell when I have done this and even tell observers what it was I was yelling, as it's always something I was concentrating very hard on in the dream. As though I had to work really hard to overcome some barrier. I have no idea if that is connected to my lucid dreaming, which started long before I started yelling in my sleep. Funnily enough, people who aren't familiar with my little problem often think someone is trying to murder me in my bed. Har har.
I don't know what advice I can give anyone who wants to lucid dream, but here are some things I've done. I often spend a long time upon waking thinking about my dreams and what they might have been inspired by, and sometimes I write them down. The ability to recall the dream diminishes rapidly over time, so that I might produce a page if I write immediately, but if I wait till that evening I will get a couple sentences. If I read over a dream I wrote about before, however, I will be able to recall everything that I wrote about. The memory is still there, but hidden. I think perhaps going over these memories repeatedly might forge some connections between the conscious and unconscious mind. Also, I have very strong powers of concentration (I am a mathematician!). Whenever I have a dream about having some superpower, I practice several times while I am falling asleep the next night performing those actions mentally and thinking about wanting to have a similar dream. Hope that helps!