Use of Powers in Lucid Dreams

Sup Dude, modified 8 Years ago at 8/4/15 10:19 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 8/4/15 10:19 AM

Use of Powers in Lucid Dreams

Posts: 9 Join Date: 7/31/15 Recent Posts
Not really sure which subforum to put this in, so I'm leaving it here.

I dream lucidly sometimes. Whenever I do, I tend to practice flying/levitation. It *does* seem to be a skill, doesn't it? And competency has increased. My flying is stable and consistent. I don't fall or lose altitude when hovering high above the ground unless I want to. One time when I became lucid in a nightmare of sorts, I gained altitude slower than normally, and had a little trouble maintaining altitude. I believe this has to do with concentration, and how this was more difficult to maintatin in such a circumstance.

Since my flying seems quite stable now, I've started practicing telekinesis. No luck so far.

Does anyone else fuck around in their dreams? Are you skillful? Any tips and tricks? Is it magick? Is it not? Discuss
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 8/4/15 11:16 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 8/4/15 11:16 AM

RE: Use of Powers in Lucid Dreams

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
I don't specifically practice lucid dreaming but I do sometimes lucid dream.  The flying thing is an interesting topic.  For many years, even in nonlucid dreams, there has been an experience of learning to fly.  Flying makes for this weird kind of mystical good feeling inside of me that I apparenlty must generate to fly in the dream.  You'd think it was just a dream and flying would be no diff from the rest of the dream so don't ask me to make any logical sense of it.  But in many dreams, my mindset defaults to that I have been for years learning and practicing to fly and have gotten quite good at it.  And  yes, years ago, I really sucked, could only fly short distances low to ground and would often lose it after short seconds.  Although I also have a thing where I sometimes do something that is like skating or sliding instead of just walking, which seems to be easier than flying but somehow a related skill it seems.  Below skating is running fast.  Ever have those dreams where something is chasing you but you can only run really slow?  I don't have those now because i can now run fast LOL!    Again it's as if I needed to learn it over time.  Sometimes in the dreams now, I marvel at how fast I've learned to run with so lilttle effort.  Seems like these things, running fast, skating, and flying are symbolic of something else that is going on with flying being the most difficult and also feeling the most strange inside and needing the most concentration to maintain that strange feeling.  It really makes no logical sense at all but there it is.

As for the rest of lucid dreaming, if I get really lucid, my goal tends to be something more mystic, call or talk to guides, see alternative dimensions of reality, visit aliens, or something other than just trying to alter the dream environs in a normal way.  I don't tend to try do alter it in mundane ways, it's not an area of interest for me.  But even in 'lucidity' my mind function is not the same as wakefullness so thought processes differs, I tend to be quite left brained, logic tends to be weak, etc.  There can often be problems of maintaining concentration and sometimes things I endeaver suddenly end or more like at that point, the recording into my memory banks ends suddenly it seems and I can't remember what happened once I wake up.  Besides lucidity, another problem seems to be remembering.  

Interesting topic, it's been a LONG time since I've deliberately goofed around with lucid dreaming (although it sometimes happens anyway) and such but lately in the last few days, I've been playing more with following the process of falling asleep more just as kind of another thing to do with my time.   
-Eva  
gadrabha, modified 8 Years ago at 8/29/15 6:10 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 8/29/15 6:04 AM

RE: Use of Powers in Lucid Dreams

Posts: 12 Join Date: 5/9/15 Recent Posts
For me, it started from jumping higher and higher, until I could levitate in the air. Then it was learning to use willpower to move in the air (to fly). It´s a skill definitely. Only ones imagination is the limit of what can be done in lucid dreams. I´ve heard that meditating in a lucid dream can turn it into an OBE.
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 8/29/15 11:26 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 8/29/15 11:26 PM

RE: Use of Powers in Lucid Dreams

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
gadrabha:
I´ve heard that meditating in a lucid dream can turn it into an OBE
I would get an OBE from an LD by (in the LD) looking around for a solid surface, a wall, a piller, a fruit stand,whatever, and running or flying at it and saying to myself, when I hit this, I will have an OBE.  It worked great for me and others used the method as well.  Try not to have suppositions about what exactly you will experience or what the OBE will be like because assumptions can be limiting and if too wrong, may be able to block you from experiencing new things.  Every assumption and belief will have power.  If you think you can't then you won't, etc.  OBEs are very zen, you have to learn how to let it happen.  OBEs often tend to be a very right brained type of experience so some people to formulate a game plan in advance and rehearse it mentally so that it's easy to think of the game plan when the time comes, like maybe float up, go to kitchen, go out window (or wall), fly to friend's house, go to the center of the earth, visit the moon, go inside an animal and experience from their perspective, or whatever.   
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 8 Years ago at 8/31/15 2:15 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 8/31/15 2:15 AM

RE: Use of Powers in Lucid Dreams

Posts: 3268 Join Date: 4/20/09 Recent Posts
I have been lucid dreaming and flyind in dreams since I was a young child, and wanting to have more lucid flying dreams was what really got me into meditation in the first place.

I also have pretty magickal dreams, with lots of powers of various kinds. I actually keep a list in my mind of the powers I have done, and rejoice when new ones show up.

My dreams tend to follow a pretty standard pattern: non-lucid part, start to be able to fly/skate/jump far/hover/drop down from a height slowly, or something similar, this gets more intense, dream gets more vivis and lucid, then the dark part begins, flying is harder, running slower, themes more sinister, and then the combat phase begins, typically culminating in a stale-mate of some kind, which then leads to some very lucid and wondrous dream-scape and amazing experiences.

My short list of powers, which is partly redundant with the above:

flying
gliding
jumping very long distances
running really fast
scating on roads and/or water like one would ice-skate but generally faster
falling gently from great heights without injury
levitating without horizontal components of movement
telekinesis
casting lightening
casting fire
firing bullets from my fingers
making things vanish, such as things held in my hand that I squeeze and they disappear
walking through walls/windows/ceilings/floors: which typically results in appearing in some very different realm on the other side, but not always, and as the years have gone on I have gotten a lot better about intending before I do through about where I will end up
killing (just willing beings to die and them just dying)
casting light
phase shifting to other energy/emotional frequencies, such as becoming a being of loving-kindness and thus being able to walk through beings of anger without them harming me
healing
creating items out of nothing
shifting the landscape to suit my tastes
talking with odd entities
radiating various colors and qualities of energy
having out of body full-on travels out of dreams
casting spells of destruction
traveling off the planet to other worlds

Those are some of the major ones.
Anyway, fun times,

Daniel
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CJMacie, modified 8 Years ago at 8/31/15 9:34 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 8/31/15 9:27 AM

RE: Use of Powers in Lucid Dreams

Posts: 856 Join Date: 8/17/14 Recent Posts
re: Sup Dude (8/4/15 8:19 AM)

I had a vividly remembered dream-related experience some 50+ years ago, and have always called it a "hypnogogic vision", but don't remember exactly the source of that term (maybe it was Carl Jung). Noticing this thread, I scanned the Wikipedia entries for both 'Lucid Dream' and 'Hypnagogia' (that came up when googling 'hypnogogic'). Surprisingly they were not really that helpful, as both articles cover a lot of territory and describe of a wide range of possible experiences – in / out /going-in / coming-out / etc. with reference to sleep, from literary, psychological, culture-historical, quasi-scientific etc. perspectives.

Two passages did stand out in the 'Hypnagogia' article:
1) "Imagery representing movement through tunnels of light..."
2) "Hypnagogic phenomena may be interpreted as visions, prophecies, premonitions, apparitions and inspiration (artistic or divine), depending on the experiencers' beliefs and those of their culture" 

The experience I had began in a sort of half sleep, meditating on an imagery with the term "stella maris" (Latin: star of the sea). Can't recall if the words or an image arose first, but there was vividly a star or light over an ocean, then in the water, which began to move closer as through a tunnel, get larger into a ball of light, accelerating and eventually coming in to merge into my right eye, with then a gently startling full awakening. 

Apropos the wikipedia info, that involved light, and had a tunneling like motion; and I considered it (and still do) as some kind of inspirational vision; and it clearly related to the beliefs and experiences of my life at that time (a deeply engrossing and influential period of undergraduate study of music, cultural history, and phenomenology – studying Hegel and Husserl in the original German). 

The Jungian angle may also have played a role (was reading several of those massive Bollinger series books of his writings around that time). Specifically the notion of 'anima', or a subconscious feminine figure that associates with or represents inspiration and creativity – the feminine side of the psyche -- for males (as does a corresponding 'animus' figure for females). I seem to recall the 'stella maris' idea/imagery arose in connection with the thought or image of a particular woman with whom my thoughts were often pre-occupied at that time. 

Actually, a bottom line here is noticing that that experience was profoundly vivid (to this day), and 'meaningful', though I'm not at all sure how or why, but also all that stuff in the Wikipedia articles doesn't begin to really explain it at all. I guess it's another facet of my current interest in phenomenologically 'bracketting' interpretations, viewpoints as to the meaning of experiences, and entertaining the 'aperspectivity' of seeing the conditioned relativity of it all. And, by extension, how all the descriptive analysis and theorizing in language and concepts that we read about, and ourselves write about here in DhO, doesn't really begin to capture the essence of experiences like what we call jhana, vipassana and beyond.
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Dada Kind, modified 8 Years ago at 8/31/15 10:07 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 8/31/15 10:06 PM

RE: Use of Powers in Lucid Dreams

Posts: 633 Join Date: 11/15/13 Recent Posts
I haven't been going lucid much lately, but flying does seem to be a cultivated skill. Interestingly, even when I'm not lucid it seems I still fly in my dreams often, probably using the same cultivated skill.

The skating thing sounds cool. Will try. Remarkable that more than one of you reported it

A few powers I've tried or spontaneously fallen into:
Flying/Gliding/Hovering
Deus ex machina sort of object conjuration
Flying through objects
Putting hand through objects
Changing landscapes

Dan's power list is impressive. It would seem they're only limited by imagination. Makes me wonder what sort of powers we could conceive of and then all try. I've got a few ideas

Changing your body/form or manifesting as several bodies (how many's the limit?)
Invisibility
Fine elemental manipulation
Reading thoughts
Artistic composition
Extraordinary problem-solving

For the last one, Ramanujan claimed to get mathematical results from a family goddess in dreams. It would seem that should be generalizable to any outstanding problem

Cool stuff. New BG podcast about dreaming.
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svmonk, modified 8 Years ago at 9/1/15 2:42 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 9/1/15 2:41 PM

RE: Use of Powers in Lucid Dreams

Posts: 400 Join Date: 8/23/14 Recent Posts
I've had lucid dreams spontaneously over the years. Several years ago, I took a course in lucid dreaming from Stephen LaBerge at Stanford. LaBerge was the first Western psychologist to investigate lucid dreaming, he did his PhD on it in 1980. Unfortunately, I wasn't any more successful at controlling my ability to become lucid than I was before the course, though I did end up lucid dreaming more often. And usually, when I did become lucid, I only stayed that way for a few minutes before dropping back, often as a result of trying to move. That's typically what happens when I try to lucid dream, I can only stay in control of the story for a few minutes before I drop back to the story happening to me.

On the other hand, my dreams during and after particularly deep retreats, while not lucid in the sense that I am not controlling the story, have been so intense as to seem real, often with reality merging into the dream after I wake up. That can lead to problems though.

Something like that happened to me when I was a kid too, maybe 4 or 5. I had a dream about at toy fire truck that was so intense that I woke up grabbing for the fire truck and wondering where it went. emoticon

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