Lucid Dreaming
Article
Lucid Dreaming is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between June 16, 2022 and November 11, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “Including Image Rehearsal Therapy, Systematic Desensitization, and Lucid Dreaming - may be helpful”; “I went through a similar dynamic with lucid dreaming”; “I’ve personally tried lucid dreaming and can confirm it’s real!“. It most often appears alongside Scott, jhana, A Mind Without Craving.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: June 16, 2022
- Last seen: November 11, 2022
Appears In
- Peer Review: Nightmares
- Highlights From The Comments On Jhanas
- Contra Resident Contrarian On Unfalsifiable Internal States
Related Pages
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- Scott (3 shared issues)
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- jhana (2 shared issues)
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- A Mind Without Craving (1 shared issues)
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- ACX (1 shared issues)
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- Aella (1 shared issues)
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- Amazon (1 shared issues)
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- Andres Emilsson (1 shared issues)
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- Andres Gomez Emilsson (1 shared issues)
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- anāgāmī (1 shared issues)
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- Argentus (1 shared issues)
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- Artist-Tyrant (1 shared issues)
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- astral projection (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Summary: Nightmares happen when the process of dream generation is biased by ambient stress - or sometimes for other reasons. Anything that decreases stress, increases comfort while sleeping, and deepens sleep quality will also improve nightmares, including colder, darker rooms, less indigestion, and treating any comorbid psychiatric or medical conditions. If that doesn’t work, several kinds of therapy - including Image Rehearsal Therapy, Systematic Desensitization, and Lucid Dreaming - may be helpful. Prazosin is the standard anti-nightmare drug, and can be taken at doses from 1 - 12 mg, but watch out for side effects.
In lucid dreaming therapy, you learn how to lucid dream - that is, how to “wake up” inside your dreams so that you’re fully conscious and in control. Once you’ve reached lucidity, you’re no longer afraid - obviously if you have a recurring nightmare of being chased by wolves, and now you’re being chased by wolves, and you can’t remember going to a national park or anything, it must be a dream. You can then take control and turn the wolves into puppies or shift the scene to a day on the beach or do whatever else you want. This therapy is difficult - it takes a lot of practice to lucid dream - but lucid dreaming is a pretty interesting skill even aside from nightmare prevention, and it could be worth it.
Stephen LaBerge’s Exploring The World Of Lucid Dreaming (Amazon link, free copy with unclear legal status) is a good introduction to lucid dreaming in general, but it’s long and detailed and a lot of work. I don’t know of anything simpler aimed at nightmares in particular. Some people will find lucid dreaming interesting enough that they’ll be willing to put in the many months of work it will take to make it work well; people looking for a specific fix for this specific problem will probably find other methods simpler.
Inline links: Amazon link, free copy with unclear legal status
I went through a similar dynamic with lucid dreaming. For years, for hours every night, I was a god, I could create any world, do any thing, the only limit was my imagination. I explored a lot of things deeply, and I'm glad I did it, but it got ... old. It cured me of the hunger for experiences, or something like that. My ethics are a little odd because I don't believe suffering (or pleasure) is any kind of fundamental entity in moral calculus, and I believe that years of intense, constant lucid dreaming plays a large role in that.
Thank you! I think I was in a similar place with lucid dreaming, as I was with jhana before I read Nick’s tweets: I had heard many people make this claim, but it seemed so crazy that I figured it it were true surely it would have more of an effect on the world. There would be lucid dreaming junkies, people would be shouting from the rooftops “WHY AREN’T YOU LUCID DREAMING MORE? IT’S AMAZING!” - and so I had to be misunderstanding the claim, or people were lying, or something.
But I think maybe it is just that some people can do this amazing thing, that having infinite pleasure gets kind of old after a while, and that since most people are skeptical of this the people who can do it learn not to talk about it too much. Maybe there are dozens of infinite-bliss hacks like jhana or lucid dreaming floating around out there, and we just never hear about them.
You should believe the spoonies! You should believe the DID people! You should believe that people experience astral projection - it’s just a cheap off-brand lucid dream, and I’ve personally tried lucid dreaming and can confirm it’s real! You should believe that people experience auras - see eg Paranormal Misinterpretations Of Vision Phenomena, Colored Halos Around Faces And Emotion-Evoked Colors: A New Form Of Synesthesia (note first author!), the many stories of people seeing auras while on drugs, and my own Lots Of People Going Around With Mild Hallucinations All The Time! You should believe that people experience John Edwards - I think my parents voted for him in 2004!