(September 24, 2015 at 8:32 am)mh.brewer Wrote: When I start dreaming of chain saws I know in the dream that I am snoring and need to roll over before I get the elbow in the ribs. Does this count?
It's hard to explain exactly what they are but I'll try. A lucid dream is when you have conscious awareness just like in waking life but in a dream, and you are aware that it's a dream. In other words you have the lucidity of waking consciousness, which would usually navigate the real world, now navigating the dream world. It's amazing because you can take control of the dream and do anything you can imagine. You just will things to happen in the dream and they do - essentially saying I'm bored of this place, let's go somewhere else etc. Or instead of taking control you can just go with the flow but still aware that it's a dream. But I found that it was delicate - will too much and the whole thing would crumble and you'd wake up so more like a case of guiding the dream. But when you're in that state you think just like you do in waking life - so any thoughts you could have in waking life you could also have there... so I've had lucid dreams where I've solved problems and took the solutions back out into waking life etc, because just as your waking consciousness is in full operation in a lucid dream, so it seems is your memory. Basically it's more like real life than a dream, but it just happens to be taking place within a dream world which you control.
