Lucid Dreaming

[The37thElement]

Has anyone ever had a lucid dream? Do you have any tips to achieve one? Any experiences you want to share? I would like to know more about the topic.

[Luminous]

I wish! I've hoped I might have one for a long time but I don't know how, nothing's worked.

[MechaSniper]

I'm trying to achive one.
whoo 500th post.

[ImAurora]

I wish I could have one, it would be awesome.

[ksdnfkfr]

I have them to a degree. Just had one this morning.

[BreakFall]

I have had a couple they are few and far between

[Croconaw]

I've never had one before. I can never tell that I'm dreaming.

[Mushin]

Yeah! All the time. When I was younger I would experience severe sleep paralysis, which is essentially experiencing dreams in a kind of soporific state, without the ability to move (thus the paralysis). Eventually it became so frequent that I got the hang of controlling them. It wasn't as though I could entirely guide my dream state, but I could snap out of it and change the events in very minor ways.

Now that I'm older I've experienced full on lucid dreams in a couple variants. Firstly, the nocturnus lucid dream is the state of semi-consciousness either breaking or preceding REM sleep. This is the kind where you're in a dream state and can alter the events accordingly, so long as it's nothing too drastic as to make you begin thinking in a fully conscious state of mind and therefore waking yourself up. You can achieve this by laying flat on your back at bedtime and going into a meditative state. Try to slow your thought process as much as you can without falling entirely asleep, do not move even in the slightest. Once you've kept this up for around 10-15 minutes, you will entire a state of semi-consciousness and more than likely will begin dreaming without even realizing it. The tricky part is noticing when exactly you're dreaming without becoming too engrossed with the dream and falling into REM sleep.

Secondly is a full out of body experience, otherwise known as astral projection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection). This version does not require sleep and is a lot harder to achieve if you don't have a lot of experience with meditating. Get yourself deep into a transcendental meditation and then start pulling yourself into a state of mindfulness. In order to do this you can't be thinking of anything, nor can you be observing your non-thought with your inner voice. Takes lots of practice. Once you've accomplished that you can lead your state of mindfulness into an open awareness, and 9/10 I guarantee you're going to be floating throughout the cosmos on an incredible and life changing journey.

Lucid dreaming and experiencing OBE's without the use of any psychoactives takes a lot of patience, and even more training. Don't be discouraged if you don't get it on the first few (or even the first hundred) tries. It took me a while.