On Dreaming and Flying

[windfish]

Let us speak of flying.

Over the years, I have been able to grasp certain amounts of control over my dreams, if I can realize that I am dreaming. (Strangely, the existence of talking animals doesn't tip me off, but a reorganized desk might.) Usually, if I try to do things that are too complicated, like change the entire setting or teleport myself or other people into the dream, I wake up. However, there are two things I can do with reasonable reliability.

The first and most important is flight.

For some reason, strange and unique rules and limits seem to be created for me the instant I decide that I'm dreaming and take control. Sometimes, I am able to simply kick myself free of the earth (in a different way to Kurtz), and take to the sky. Other times, I must take a running leap, and then glide high. If none of these ways work, "swimming" into the sky is my best bet. Alternately, if for some reason I am unable to completely fly, I can make myself jump or glide great distances.

In more exciting/dangerous dreams, when flight is not enough to solve my difficulties, I can occasionally give myself strange and exciting Powers. Usually, this involves psychokinesis. (Limits are placed on these as well, at the moment I realize I'm dreaming.) Strangely, if I am limited in this, I can make the sound effect of what I want to happen, and the effect will be achieved, without visual proof. It usually works.

Flying is such a habit for me in dreams that it spills over into dreams in which I am unaware of the fact that I'm dreaming. That is, while I still make decisions, I am still dreaming, and thus am largely just along for the ride. I have at least 3 flying dreams per week (that I remember, of course), and usually at least 2 of these were at least partially in my control.

This has all made me a very happy man while sleeping, and slightly more wistful when waking. I often look up during the day and wonder why I can't fly.

In any case, dreaming as we all know can be surprisingly vivid. I know what it feels like to fly of my own power, and needless to say no game has surpassed it as yet.

EDIT: If any of you have similar stories, be welcomed the share them.

 

[Pohlkat]

lucky fellow, i have been quite unsuccessful in the pursuit of lucid dreaming.

 

[windfish]

lucky fellow, i have been quite unsuccessful in the pursuit of lucid dreaming.

I didn't go about the normal way - people speak of checking their watches and flicking lights.

 

[Lord Krunk]

Same here.

 

[imperialwar]

i too have over the years garnered a generalised control of about 75% of my dreams.
i find sometimes even if i have control of my dreamself i am still prone to failure. namely in flying, sometimes i have difficulty taking off, or maintaing the effect.
I also find in combat dreams i am time to time unable to injure my attackers and others i completely destroy them, including breaking of bones etc. my number one bane in combat dreams is syringes, i ALWAYS seem to end being stabbed by one. This too is a concious fear in waking life.
One vivd dream i recall involved me shot with a laser gun, ala star war. The fact that the area still hurt when i sprung awake from being shot was increadibly eerie.
I remember one dream sequence where i lived the same dream five time in a night. 3 times, then i woke up, went back to sleep and had it twice again. I was being chased by a bull and i jumped onto a swing set to get away from it. I was 12, i am now 30, and i STILL remember it.
Precognant dreams are my worst nightmare. I dreamed the concord crash 2 nights before it happened. I dreamed a Tsunami in asia a week before it happened. I even dreamed a probe to Jupiter months before they announced it publically. My latest one from a few days ago was of a nuclear blast
I do have one positive precognant i had when i was 8. I would meet a girl named Laura and marry her. A tall athletic girl, with brownish hair, who wasnt from the same school i went to. 12 years later i met Larissa ( lara for short ) who i fell in love with and married, she is tall with ash blonde hair, an athletic figure and grew up the next suburb over from me, and went to a religious school ( i went to public ).
I HATE having dreams where i find or win money, as i always never want to wake up as i know its a dream. i actually remain unsure on how i would react were i to actually win money in real life. i think i might have a psychotic reaction, not accepting it as reality. fairly similar to my manic depressive step fathers reaction to winning $80,000.

So in my experience dream control can have it's draw backs.

 

[zen5887]

If I remember right, dreaming about flying has a lot to do with freedom.. So like.. If you dream you are flying then you are free, if you are trying to fly - trying to get free.

Also - Dreams which you control are called lucid dream, people believe these to be a connection to the astrial plain. Once you learn to control these you can move freely around the astral plain, doing exciting things and meeting a bunch of rad people.

Just because you are lucid dreaming doesnt mean you are aware you are dreaming. Once you become aware, you wake up. I often dream things like "Oh wow.. Flying pajamas.. This is a dream... Or is it?" but I've allways stayed dreaming but other times were its "ohh it IS a dream" I wake up.. Just before the best parts ><

 

[Lord Krunk]

Can you make these kinds of dreams happen? I want one soooo badly...

 

[windfish]

i too have over the years garnered a generalised control of about 75% of my dreams.
i find sometimes even if i have control of my dreamself i am still prone to failure. namely in flying, sometimes i have difficulty taking off, or maintaing the effect.
I also find in combat dreams i am time to time unable to injure my attackers and others i completely destroy them, including breaking of bones etc. my number one bane in combat dreams is syringes, i ALWAYS seem to end being stabbed by one. This too is a concious fear in waking life.
One vivd dream i recall involved me shot with a laser gun, ala star war. The fact that the area still hurt when i sprung awake from being shot was increadibly eerie.
I remember one dream sequence where i lived the same dream five time in a night. 3 times, then i woke up, went back to sleep and had it twice again. I was being chased by a bull and i jumped onto a swing set to get away from it. I was 12, i am now 30, and i STILL remember it.
Precognant dreams are my worst nightmare. I dreamed the concord crash 2 nights before it happened. I dreamed a Tsunami in asia a week before it happened. I even dreamed a probe to Jupiter months before they announced it publically. My latest one from a few days ago was of a nuclear blast
I do have one positive precognant i had when i was 8. I would meet a girl named Laura and marry her. A tall athletic girl, with brownish hair, who wasnt from the same school i went to. 12 years later i met Larissa ( lara for short ) who i fell in love with and married, she is tall with ash blonde hair, an athletic figure and grew up the next suburb over from me, and went to a religious school ( i went to public ).
I HATE having dreams where i find or win money, as i always never want to wake up as i know its a dream. i actually remain unsure on how i would react were i to actually win money in real life. i think i might have a psychotic reaction, not accepting it as reality. fairly similar to my manic depressive step fathers reaction to winning $80,000.

So in my experience dream control can have it's draw backs.

Wow, that's intense. I'm not sure if I ever precog - Sometimes I feel like I do, but that just might be perfectly normal deja vu. I get control of a similar percentage of dreams, I think - but I don't always remember them. I just remember having them.

 

[Ultrajoe]

I once dreamed i was the greatest person on the planet, a super sexy tyrant who none could best.

And then i woke up.

And it turns out i was right, who knew?

 

[windfish]

Can you make these kinds of dreams happen? I want one soooo badly...

The key is to realize you're dreaming, but not wake up.
Well, I don't know how I started getting control of my dreams, but I've heard of people who have techniques for learning how to do it.

Get in the habit of checking your watch all the time. In dreams, they say that watch faces are blank. so that should be a tell. I don't know, I've never checked. Also, some people flick the lights in every room they enter, so they get in the habit. This can make people think that you're weird. Anyway, supposedly light switches don't work in dreams, so that can be a tell that you're dreaming. Again, I've never tried it, so I don't know if it's true. But people claim that it's Science.

 

[yourkie1921]

I had a dream where the number 2 was all I can see in the form of a monkey ball (like in the crappy games) that gave me the feeling I was on the second level of a video game. and then I was in a mall and I knew I would face no consequences for it and I think I was lucid enough to know no one would get hurt so I decided "rape next girl I see before I wake up" and I woke up, I really hope I wasn't being tested in my dreams. Yea I'm creapy.

Also I had another dream where I was in my school in line to get on the bus (the 5th graders had to do that) and I realized all these cartoon characters were in my line, by the time I found someone from avatar (CURSE DANNY PHANTOM) I woke up.

Those are the saddest dreams ever, where you know you're dreaming and want to do something and you wake up right before it happens.

Also, I had a dream where the pirates of the caribean gave me an xbox 360, just wanted to say that.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Ah, lucid dreaming. What better to relive your deepest fantasies than in your dreams where you control everything?

Too bad I fail at LDing. I fail so hard because of my AD/HD and Asperger syndromes. (Cursed be those syndromes...)

 

[Ares Tyr]

The closest thing I have to lucid dreams is the ability to make descesions within the dream. Like, my favorite dream/nightmare to date was one where the zombie apocalypse had befallen a former small town I used to live in. It was my shift for me to defend the backyard with a steel baseball bat and my dog. We had a fence so things were cool mostly, but there was a broken section that they could get through. So on patrolling from one side to the other, I hung around, and then heard my dog barking at one of the zombies. So I catch a running start from one side of the yard towards the zombie and blast its head in with the bat.

I'd just gotten done reading The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z by Max Brooks, so I had the knowledge to destroy the brain. Afterwards I went inside to tell my Dad what happened and then I woke up.

I wish I hadn't, because that was a bad ass dream.

 

[Copter400]

Wow. Just...fucking...wow. I wish I could do that.

 

[Khedive Rex]

I have lucid dreams all the time. A truly enjoyable way to spend a night.

I don't typically fly but I have a different power. When things don't work right in a lucid dream, I can hit the reset button. It's like something just clicks in my head and I go back to the last point in the dream I was safe or enjoying myself.

Yes, games have invaded my life so much, they are now a part of my subcontious. And It's Awesome.

 

[Ares Tyr]

The closest thing I have to lucid dreams is the ability to make descesions within the dream. Like, my favorite dream/nightmare to date was one where the zombie apocalypse had befallen a former small town I used to live in. It was my shift for me to defend the backyard with a steel baseball bat and my dog. We had a fence so things were cool mostly, but there was a broken section that they could get through. So on patrolling from one side to the other, I hung around, and then heard my dog barking at one of the zombies. So I catch a running start from one side of the yard towards the zombie and blast its head in with the bat.

I'd just gotten done reading The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z by Max Brooks, so I had the knowledge to destroy the brain. Afterwards I went inside to tell my Dad what happened and then I woke up.

I wish I hadn't, because that was a bad ass dream.

Oh? You mean you wouldn't be your usual horndoggy self and just dream up a relatively fine-looking woman and fuck her until her arms fall off?

I'm not saying I wouldn't, I'm saying I can't. This brilliant mind of mine works in mysterious ways.

Also I hate morning wood.

 

[meatloaf231]

Flying has become that one thing that everyone brings up when they are talking about something impossible.

I have decided to replace flying with turning into a hippopotamus.

 

[Ares Tyr]

Flying has become that one thing that everyone brings up when they are talking about something impossible.

I have decided to replace flying with turning into a hippopotamus.

Didn't Freud say something along the lines of dream flying being akin to sexual experiences or desires?

 

[Blackblaze]

I have found myself to be able to dream lucid when I sleep in places that I'm not comfortable in. One time I had to sleep in a loft bed and I didn't like being so high of the ground so I thought about it very much. When I finally fell asleep and was dreaming something random I was still thinking about how scared I was so I realized that I was just dreaming. The first think I tried to do was fly ofcourse but as some of you mentioned it can be hard so I didn't make it. I could swim in the air though.
I thought that maybe I could jump from an high place and maybe I would fly before I reached the ground. I tried to teleport my way to a mountain but it didn't work. What did work though was to imagine a way that led to a mountain. Going on the way and concentrating so it wouldn't disappear I came to a mountain. I didn't have to climb up though because I could see the top, so I just imagined I was there and I was.
As I jumped off though I realized that it wouldn't work so I somehow made the ground work like jelly so when I hit it I just bounced off. After that it turned to a normal dream though.
Dreaming in very dark places also work somewhat well because when I start to dream I remember that it was very dark and wherever I am in the dream it's weird that everything is bright.
But I have only lucid dreamt a few times. I like dreaming in general anyway.

 

[windfish]

Flying has become that one thing that everyone brings up when they are talking about something impossible.

I have decided to replace flying with turning into a hippopotamus.

Didn't Freud say something along the lines of dream flying being akin to sexual experiences or desires?

Freud said EVERYTHING was akin to sexual experiences and desires.

I don't choose to fly because it's impossible. Flying's fun. Also, most other things are too complicated and make me wake up.