health

One day, you may be able to control your dreams

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There have been numerous times in my life when I've been able to do this. Never a nightmare though.

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Voss does not foresee a commercial market in lucid-dreaming machines.

That's a shame. I could really use something to increase my rate of Lucid Dreaming. At present, I can achieve perhaps five Lucid Dreams per year. For the rest of the time, I have to endure confusing dreams about travel and paranormal abilities, or else face horrific nightmares centred around zombies, alien invasion, warfare, or just the dark side of my personality taking on a form of its own. Often I am afraid to sleep. It's gotten to the stage where I'm trying to become an insomniac, which is having adverse effects on my health. Regular nightmares affect my health as well, so I can't win either way. If I could experience Lucid Dreams, then I could, at the very least, make them normal, as opposed to confusing or terrifying.

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"They also felt as if their dream self was a third party whom they were merely observing." This observation is describing a state of mental dissociation from oneself. Such dissociation is a common symptom of PTSD that is now referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder. These "researchers" appear to have no idea what they are doing to the minds of those they are shocking with electric currents. This reminds me of the experimentation with psychedelic LSD in the 1960s. Timothy Leary warned that each time you try LSD "you put all your marbles on the table and shake them up!"

Dreams have been likened to "thoughtballs" with multiple layers of meaning. Nightmares are often attempts by the mind to bring information to conscious attention that must be understood to heal past dissociated trauma. For example, my first set of repeating nightmares at age 2 to 3, were based on a children's picture book story about the 3 little pigs and the big bad wolf. In the dream I am playing with the piglets when the big bad wolf comes. We run around the pig house and the 3 little pigs run in and close the round door, shutting me out. I continue running but the big bad wolf gets closer and I feel his breath on my neck and then his jaws clench on the back of my skull and chew into my head. I wake up screaming. After a number of such episodes I was no longer bothered by this terrifying nightmare.

Later as an adult I learned that I had been a difficult breach birth, and the inexperienced doctor had crushed my skull bones with metal forceps while turning me and pulling me out. The pictures and story of the 3 little pigs had provided a way for my mind to heal the dissociated traumatic feeling of my skull being crushed, by dreaming of my head being eaten by the wolf. Once such dissociated sensations are consciously processed to be understood for what they are, they become a memory and fade with time. That is the healing process for dissociated traumatic fragments still active in the subconscious mind. Causing another level of dissociation through electrical means is likely to interfere with the mind's natural healing process, and further entrench PTSD, not heal it.

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Recently, because of a painful sciatica problem, I was prescribed certain pain killers. After going to sleep as usual, I begin to have incredibly vivid dreams. I'm sure others have had the same response to these drugs.

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Fox Cloud Lelean - I suggest that you tell yourself before going to sleep, that if you are in trouble you will remember to ask for help in the dream. Also, that if you have a dream with an important message for your healing, you will wake up and remember it. Make a habit of writing such dreams down when you do wake up.

It has been my experience (and that of others I have told this to), that when you call out for help in your dream, help will come. I was having dreams in which bad guys were waiting for me when I went to sleep, and would chase me until I woke up. One night the dream location was in the Old West, and I was on a grassy hill watching as masked gunmen came relentlessly towards me. In desperation, I called out for someone to help. And this elderly white haired man in a white robe suddenly appeared beside me, carrying a small wooden box which he set up on a wooden tripod. It looked sort of like an old camera. There was a hole in the side facing the advancing gunmen, and a button on the back.

I thought that maybe it was some kind of death ray that would zap the bad guys, but when my rescuer pushed the button, a bubble came out of the hole, like someone blowing bubble gum. I was disappointed, thinking what possible good is a bubble? Then it suddenly got bigger and pop! We were inside the bubble and it was so big it had reached the bad guys and they couldn't get through it, and were being pushed back. The white haired gentleman folded up his equipment, smiled, and vanished from my dream.

That was 20 years ago, and the dream shield is still working, as I haven't had any bad dreams since!

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@Jim Poushinsky: When I try to call out for help, my voice vanishes. I can barely hear myself at that stage. I have only myself for protection, and I very rarely manage to do anything at all to prevent the inevitable.

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@Fox Cloud Lelean: I too have had lucid dreams. They are much more than dreams. They are experiences in which our consciousness is in both brain hemispheres simultaneously. Nightmares are something else. Other examples of whole brain consciousness are the hypnagogic state in between asleep and awake, hypnotic trances, out of body experiences, and meditation. Robert Monroe studied these states extensively with brain wave monitors, and found them to be identical. He developed stereo messaging to readily induce this state, which he called Focus 10. It was achieved by relaxing the body and freeing the mind while listening to two different audible signals. When you hear the beat your right and left brain hemispheres are in sync and you are in the hypnagogic state. No electric currents are required! With practice you can achieve this state without any device, simply by meditating. If you'd like to discuss your personal experiences further, write to me on FB.

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