Why don't we lucid dream all the time?

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Based on the strange things that happen in dreams, why do we usually think it's real when we're dreaming?

Maybe it is.You most likely have heard this old saying."Last night I dreamed I was a butterfly.Am I a man dreaming of being a butterfly? Or am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man?"

Great topic. I came within an inch of buying some special lucid dreaming goggles one time. You wear it sorta like a blindfold but over your eyes are two little red lights which start blinking when you start dreaming..detected by eye lid flutter I think. Anyway the things flash in your dreams and you cant help but notice it and realize your just dreaming so you can have fun and explore all your options..jump on off the cliff etc. Was supposed to make folks break out with new inventions and brilliant ideas etc. Never did get up enough courage to buy some. Hoax? or maybe dream technology has surpassed the concept by now. Its been a good while back since seeing the goggles advertised.

In Lucid Dreaming the dreamer knows he is dreaming and he can control the dream.

ruveyn

"Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi."

I had a similar dream. It seemed that I was more awake in my dream than I was in reality.

I can lucid dream at will, but I only use it to stop nightmares from being nightmares. The problem with dreaming lucid is that all the random thoughts that make the dream interesting (and different from anything you could think of yourself) stop, making the dream rather boring.

For example a while ago I had a dream where I was running away from an army of monsters with some dream friends. For some reason we couldn't run fast and the monsters were catching up so I stepped in, turned around, floated up in the air and removed the monsters from existence. After doing that though, I had no clue where the dream was supposed to go, so I just replayed a few scenarios from older dreams until the dreaming stopped.

Can you do the Vulcan Mind Meld?

because critical thinking and self awareness are largely suppressed via underactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex while we are sleeping. the whole point of lucid dreaming is that it is yet possible to trigger neuronal activity there even though everything else is set to dream mode.




there is this fantastic middleground of being fully aware of who you are and that you are currently lying in your bed in a paralyzed rem state but yet having this crazy creativity of the dreaming mind that you would have trouble daring to assume possible when awake.. unfortunately this is very hard to find, at least for me. and i still cant have lucid dreams at will, im just either going to figure it out or not. how do you do that?

I got stuck in the state of being between awake and asleep once or twice in my life. It was very scary. I could see the surroundings but could not move. I tried to make myself wake up but couldnt. I thought the Devil was taking me down under or something. Highly unpleasant. I do not need any more of that stuff..lol.

what you described is called sleep paralysis and completely different from lucid dreaming. there are control mechanisms in the brain that assure you are paralysed while you are dreaming (with the exception of eyemovement) in order to prevent you from actually carrying out the things you are imagining and hurting yourself in the process. sometimes the same paralysis can occur while you are falling asleep or waking up due to a malfunctioning timing of those neuronal processes. it happens to quite some percentage of people at least once in their lifetime, it is frequently related to insomnia, stress and a very unregular sleep schedule and it is not health threatening. however it often coincides with angst and halluzinations of pressure or an evil presence of some kind which is as you said very unpleasant. the term "nightmare" and many cultural beliefs in certain demons stem from this phenomenon.

Well thanks for that info. That tripled what I know about the subtle nuances of dreams.