7 ms·

Choose what to dream tonight

94 points by lxm 4y ago

chrisshroba 4y ago
Link without paywall?
- vuln 4y ago
  It's been on archive.is for 2 days. https://archive.is/GtkP8 https://archive.is/GtkP8
maleldil 4y ago
https://archive.is/rs32R https://archive.is/rs32R
muttantt 4y ago
I dry fast regularly (no water, no food). At about day 6 my dreams are so lucid and vivid that I can basically control them if I wake up in the middle of the night (and when you dry fast, waking up and being pretty much alert is common around days 3+ of a dry fast, at least for me). It's pretty crazy and one of the things I look forward to the most each time I dry fast (about 5 times a year, 7 days or so each time).
- karmakurtisaani 4y ago
  Fasting without water and electrolytes sounds incredibly unhealthy. How do you manage that?
  - baal80spam 4y ago
    Uh, username checks out?
- yosito 4y ago
  Seven days without water?! That's incredibly risky. You may be able to survive it, but it would literally kill many people.
  - muttantt 4y ago
    I agree no one should try this as their first fast. I've been dry, water, and grape juice fasting for two decades and can handle 7 days of dry fasting without an issue.
    - yosito 4y ago
      Your health, your choice. But I'm still skeptical that dry fasting for so long is safe, even if you've survived it many times.
- kube-system 4y ago
  are you sure those aren't just hallucinations?
- adave 4y ago
  guess a normal existence is too boring for you?
senthil_rajasek 4y ago
Despite the title "Choose What to Dream Tonight", "Just 10% to 20% of people are regular lucid dreamers". Lucid dream, "is when a person is aware that a dream is happening and can sometimes influence events within it." But you "could" lucid dream if you try, a) setting an intention b) writing it down and repeating a mantra before you sleep c) If you catch yourself lucid dreaming then remind yourself what you wanted to do in your dream and d) after you wake up, write down your dream. Seems like a fun experiment but there is no suggestion of any significant health or other benefits.
- yamazakiwi 4y ago
  I had to stop lucid dreaming because practicing started giving me sleep paralysis.
  - mromanuk 4y ago
    When I was a teenager, I used to have plenty of lucid dreams. Also I had some sleep paralysis events. I remember once "waking up" on my bed, looking around, unable to move. I recall that my window blind looked a bit odd with all the holes forming an "X", at some point I decided to go to sleep. After that I woke up and I was back to my regular bedroom. I would love to have experiences like that, particularly I would love to experience OOBE, but looks really hard to get that. Maybe I can try this way.
    - swader999 4y ago
      Go check out r/astralprojecton it has a lot of info on how to have an OBE. I've been trying for a couple of months now and had one for sure and a couple of close ones.
      - mromanuk 4y ago
        Yes, thank you. I've been trying, read a couple of book (one with esoteric nonsenses) there is another book more promising, called "The phase" with exercises, but for the moment didn't work for me.
swader999 4y ago
Listening to the right binaural beats track or taking L Theanine before bed really kicks up the lucid dreams. And if you want to go off the deep end, try the gateway tapes.
- TigeriusKirk 4y ago
  I some times listen to astral projection / self-hypnosis tracks as I'm falling asleep. It definitely leads to more aware and more vivid dreams for me.
RigelKentaurus 4y ago
Interesting read. I dream a lot, and almost all my dreams are very happy (I'm on a nice trip with my family, hiking in a beautiful place, etc.) Some dreams are based in the future, e.g. celebrating 50th wedding anniversary with my wife, etc. However, I'm not aware that I'm dreaming, and have never been able to control my dreams either. When I wake up, I go, "that was interesting." Question: other than the entertainment aspect, is there a benefit to being able to control one's dreams?
- gmane 4y ago
  I sometimes become aware I'm dreaming during nightmares/unsettling dreams and then I'm able to "switch topics" to something more pleasant. I generally forget what I dream about next. I think being able to escape nightmares is a good benefit, but if you don't have nightmares then it's probably not very useful to you.
- v8xi 4y ago
  I've heard that certain people will use lucid dreaming to solve problems. Basically ask themselves to come up with solutions to things they are working on. Salvador Dali (and other famous people using similar methods) apparently used to fall asleep with a spoon dangling in his hand such that when he fell asleep it would drop and wake him up immediately. The idea being that you would awake in an altered state of increased creativity - apparently it works[1]. I also dream often and vividly and some of the dreams I have had have been so realistic and fulfilling that I wake up in a state of awe, feeling as if I have just lived a wonderful experience inaccessible to waking life. For example, I once had a dream where I traveled to the moon where I woke up feeling, as silly as it might sound, as if I had just returned from the moon - hard to describe how wonderful this experience actually was. So to answer your question, I think there is benefit in altering your state of mind through dreaming to re-align your perspectives and to get a different view on life. I don't think this requires controlling the subject of one's dreams, but having some control over the quality certainly would help. [1] https://www.livescience.com/little-known-sleep-stage-may-be-creative-sweet-spot https://www.livescience.com/little-known-sleep-stage-may-be-...
FailMore 4y ago
It's not such a good idea to choose what you dream. I hold a bit of a niche view on the functionality of dreaming, although I believe eventual research will hold me in good stead. When one looks at the neurology of REM sleep, it is hard not to reach the conclusion that dreams are a form of "inverse anxious mind-wandering". As in the neurology of mind-wandering is activated, however the brain is (surprisingly) in an extremely relaxed state. Norepinephrine (the fight or flight neurotransmitter) levels are 80% below base waking levels (Norepinephrine spikes when you are in a stressful situation), and the amygdala (threat detection) is inactive. When we are awake and performing anxious mind-wandering (with Norepinephrine levels raised and our amygdala active), our mind-wandering has a focus/direction. It imagines the worst and this encourages us to take avoidant action; for example, you might wish to bring something difficult up with a friend, however you brain will imagine all the ways that it can go wrong so you avoid the potential confrontation. From a survival point of view, it is pretty useful for the brain to have a bias towards avoidance when awake. I posit that during dreaming, the brain creates situations in which it would be wise to be unavoidant. However, typically, despite the situation we imagine quite clearly calling for unavoidant behaviour, we take avoidant behaviour. This is because our emotional/episodic memory areas of the brain are activated during REM sleep, and we automatically take the anxious behaviour we have been "trained" to take (our neuroses). This, in my eyes, is the function of dreaming. To highlight our neuroses/unconscious redundant anxieties. For this reason, controlling the content of your dreams would remove their primary function. I wrote a paper on this topic which contains several examples of dreams that fit this structure. (I'm afraid I do not have the time to type an example out now.) It can be read here: https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz It was previously discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590
- com2kid 4y ago
  > This, in my eyes, is the function of dreaming. To highlight our neuroses/unconscious redundant anxieties. For this reason, controlling the content of your dreams would remove their primary function. A large percent of people are lucid dreamers up until their 20s, so there likely isn't any hugely detrimental impact over some level of control over one's dreams. > I posit that during dreaming, the brain creates situations in which it would be wise to be unavoidant. For the longest time, my dreams were on the exciting / dangerous side. Lots of getting shot at, lots of fighting, lots of fun, but high stress situations. I had one dream that always stood out where I was actively terraforming worlds over the course of thousands of years in an attempt to create sentient life that could fight off a slowly progressing alien wave that was sweeping through the galaxy. Lots of fun, at least for my definition of fun. Also had a dream that took place over hundreds+ of years where I was stuck on a spaceship that thanks to relativity, had long since outlived the rest of humanity. That was a rather lonely dream. I've also watched plenty of movies in my dreams, and listened to some amazing concerts. I always wished I knew enough about music so I could transcribe the songs after I wake up. :( One thing that I miss now that I'm older is some of the plot lines from my dreams that had been going on for decades. It sucks to lose contact with some of the characters and places I used to visit.
brucethemoose2 4y ago
Is that an AI generated header image?
moremetadata 4y ago
[dead]
noiv 4y ago
When you read Peter Pan you need no scientific confirmation lucid dreams allow becoming the architect of your dreams and enjoy flying around.
karaterobot 4y ago
> After I told her that I was working on this column, she decided to try to dream about my father, who died last year. For five nights in a row, she says, she looked at pictures of him before bed, whispered his name when she closed her eyes, and snuggled up to “one of his ratty, old T-shirts.” Then she called me, annoyed. “It’s all bunk,” she announced. “Not a damn thing happened.” Surprised to read this little gut punch of a short story right in the middle of a fluff column.
w_for_wumbo 4y ago
A friend gave me melatonin gummies. I don't feel like they help with my sleep, but every time I consume them I become aware that I'm dreaming, and I'm able to control each aspect of my dream. It's been really fun, but at the same time I avoid doing this on weekdays, because otherwise I don't feel like I actually got the chance to rest.
- v8xi 4y ago
  One thing to keep in mind with melatonin supplementation is that the doses are like 10x++ higher than what is ideal. An informative read on it: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th...
  - miguelazo 4y ago
    Very true. Have even heard of smaller people wetting the bed after taking 10mg doses too long.
joegahona 4y ago
There was an article about this same topic in Omni magazine decades ago [1]. I followed its recommendations and was never able to get anywhere. I have lucid dreams maybe 10% of the time now. I also have sleep paralysis, which is a weird kind of lucid limbo state -- I always know when I'm in it, and I have a method for breaking out of it (rubbing my lips together), but I'm very seldom "dreaming" when I'm in that state. [1] Might be this one: https://www.amazon.com/Omni-Magazine-September-1994-Exclusive/dp/B001NXK6EI https://www.amazon.com/Omni-Magazine-September-1994-Exclusiv...
johtso 4y ago
Highly recommend the film Waking Life. Fantastic rotoscoped film, dreamy and through provoking. First time I had a lucid dream was the night after watching it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edrGozs6W_I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edrGozs6W_I
- miguelazo 4y ago
  Seconded. Introduced me to lucid dreaming. Checking the lights (can’t turn them off), trying to look at my hands, were such great tips.
steveylang 4y ago
I think the mystery and ambiguity of our dreams is what makes them so powerful. I personally prefer to let my dreams be, and explore them immediately after waking. I write them down in complete detail first, then slowly let their meanings reveal themselves to me. Inevitably the meaning (by that I mean the relation to my waking life) comes through in the details that seemed inconsequential until I actually wrote them all down. Perhaps if I got to pick the nominal subjects of my dreams, my dream work and exploration would not change that much. But it definitely wouldn't be the same if I were to be able to script everything that happened.
tagami 4y ago
“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.” ― T.E. Lawrence
iLoveOncall 4y ago
Why is the Wall Street Journal posting some New Age BS?

94 points by lxm 4y ago

chrisshroba 4y ago

Link without paywall?

vuln 4y ago
It's been on archive.is for 2 days. https://archive.is/GtkP8 https://archive.is/GtkP8

maleldil 4y ago

https://archive.is/rs32R https://archive.is/rs32R

muttantt 4y ago

I dry fast regularly (no water, no food). At about day 6 my dreams are so lucid and vivid that I can basically control them if I wake up in the middle of the night (and when you dry fast, waking up and being pretty much alert is common around days 3+ of a dry fast, at least for me). It's pretty crazy and one of the things I look forward to the most each time I dry fast (about 5 times a year, 7 days or so each time).

karmakurtisaani 4y ago
Fasting without water and electrolytes sounds incredibly unhealthy. How do you manage that?
- baal80spam 4y ago
  Uh, username checks out?
yosito 4y ago
Seven days without water?! That's incredibly risky. You may be able to survive it, but it would literally kill many people.
- muttantt 4y ago
  I agree no one should try this as their first fast. I've been dry, water, and grape juice fasting for two decades and can handle 7 days of dry fasting without an issue.
  - yosito 4y ago
    Your health, your choice. But I'm still skeptical that dry fasting for so long is safe, even if you've survived it many times.
kube-system 4y ago
are you sure those aren't just hallucinations?
adave 4y ago
guess a normal existence is too boring for you?

senthil_rajasek 4y ago

Despite the title "Choose What to Dream Tonight", "Just 10% to 20% of people are regular lucid dreamers". Lucid dream, "is when a person is aware that a dream is happening and can sometimes influence events within it." But you "could" lucid dream if you try, a) setting an intention b) writing it down and repeating a mantra before you sleep c) If you catch yourself lucid dreaming then remind yourself what you wanted to do in your dream and d) after you wake up, write down your dream. Seems like a fun experiment but there is no suggestion of any significant health or other benefits.

yamazakiwi 4y ago
I had to stop lucid dreaming because practicing started giving me sleep paralysis.
- mromanuk 4y ago
  When I was a teenager, I used to have plenty of lucid dreams. Also I had some sleep paralysis events. I remember once "waking up" on my bed, looking around, unable to move. I recall that my window blind looked a bit odd with all the holes forming an "X", at some point I decided to go to sleep. After that I woke up and I was back to my regular bedroom. I would love to have experiences like that, particularly I would love to experience OOBE, but looks really hard to get that. Maybe I can try this way.
  - swader999 4y ago
    Go check out r/astralprojecton it has a lot of info on how to have an OBE. I've been trying for a couple of months now and had one for sure and a couple of close ones.
    - mromanuk 4y ago
      Yes, thank you. I've been trying, read a couple of book (one with esoteric nonsenses) there is another book more promising, called "The phase" with exercises, but for the moment didn't work for me.

swader999 4y ago

Listening to the right binaural beats track or taking L Theanine before bed really kicks up the lucid dreams. And if you want to go off the deep end, try the gateway tapes.

TigeriusKirk 4y ago
I some times listen to astral projection / self-hypnosis tracks as I'm falling asleep. It definitely leads to more aware and more vivid dreams for me.

RigelKentaurus 4y ago

Interesting read. I dream a lot, and almost all my dreams are very happy (I'm on a nice trip with my family, hiking in a beautiful place, etc.) Some dreams are based in the future, e.g. celebrating 50th wedding anniversary with my wife, etc. However, I'm not aware that I'm dreaming, and have never been able to control my dreams either. When I wake up, I go, "that was interesting." Question: other than the entertainment aspect, is there a benefit to being able to control one's dreams?

gmane 4y ago
I sometimes become aware I'm dreaming during nightmares/unsettling dreams and then I'm able to "switch topics" to something more pleasant. I generally forget what I dream about next. I think being able to escape nightmares is a good benefit, but if you don't have nightmares then it's probably not very useful to you.
v8xi 4y ago
I've heard that certain people will use lucid dreaming to solve problems. Basically ask themselves to come up with solutions to things they are working on. Salvador Dali (and other famous people using similar methods) apparently used to fall asleep with a spoon dangling in his hand such that when he fell asleep it would drop and wake him up immediately. The idea being that you would awake in an altered state of increased creativity - apparently it works[1]. I also dream often and vividly and some of the dreams I have had have been so realistic and fulfilling that I wake up in a state of awe, feeling as if I have just lived a wonderful experience inaccessible to waking life. For example, I once had a dream where I traveled to the moon where I woke up feeling, as silly as it might sound, as if I had just returned from the moon - hard to describe how wonderful this experience actually was. So to answer your question, I think there is benefit in altering your state of mind through dreaming to re-align your perspectives and to get a different view on life. I don't think this requires controlling the subject of one's dreams, but having some control over the quality certainly would help. [1] https://www.livescience.com/little-known-sleep-stage-may-be-creative-sweet-spot https://www.livescience.com/little-known-sleep-stage-may-be-...

FailMore 4y ago

It's not such a good idea to choose what you dream. I hold a bit of a niche view on the functionality of dreaming, although I believe eventual research will hold me in good stead. When one looks at the neurology of REM sleep, it is hard not to reach the conclusion that dreams are a form of "inverse anxious mind-wandering". As in the neurology of mind-wandering is activated, however the brain is (surprisingly) in an extremely relaxed state. Norepinephrine (the fight or flight neurotransmitter) levels are 80% below base waking levels (Norepinephrine spikes when you are in a stressful situation), and the amygdala (threat detection) is inactive. When we are awake and performing anxious mind-wandering (with Norepinephrine levels raised and our amygdala active), our mind-wandering has a focus/direction. It imagines the worst and this encourages us to take avoidant action; for example, you might wish to bring something difficult up with a friend, however you brain will imagine all the ways that it can go wrong so you avoid the potential confrontation. From a survival point of view, it is pretty useful for the brain to have a bias towards avoidance when awake. I posit that during dreaming, the brain creates situations in which it would be wise to be unavoidant. However, typically, despite the situation we imagine quite clearly calling for unavoidant behaviour, we take avoidant behaviour. This is because our emotional/episodic memory areas of the brain are activated during REM sleep, and we automatically take the anxious behaviour we have been "trained" to take (our neuroses). This, in my eyes, is the function of dreaming. To highlight our neuroses/unconscious redundant anxieties. For this reason, controlling the content of your dreams would remove their primary function. I wrote a paper on this topic which contains several examples of dreams that fit this structure. (I'm afraid I do not have the time to type an example out now.) It can be read here: https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz It was previously discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590

com2kid 4y ago
> This, in my eyes, is the function of dreaming. To highlight our neuroses/unconscious redundant anxieties. For this reason, controlling the content of your dreams would remove their primary function. A large percent of people are lucid dreamers up until their 20s, so there likely isn't any hugely detrimental impact over some level of control over one's dreams. > I posit that during dreaming, the brain creates situations in which it would be wise to be unavoidant. For the longest time, my dreams were on the exciting / dangerous side. Lots of getting shot at, lots of fighting, lots of fun, but high stress situations. I had one dream that always stood out where I was actively terraforming worlds over the course of thousands of years in an attempt to create sentient life that could fight off a slowly progressing alien wave that was sweeping through the galaxy. Lots of fun, at least for my definition of fun. Also had a dream that took place over hundreds+ of years where I was stuck on a spaceship that thanks to relativity, had long since outlived the rest of humanity. That was a rather lonely dream. I've also watched plenty of movies in my dreams, and listened to some amazing concerts. I always wished I knew enough about music so I could transcribe the songs after I wake up. :( One thing that I miss now that I'm older is some of the plot lines from my dreams that had been going on for decades. It sucks to lose contact with some of the characters and places I used to visit.

brucethemoose2 4y ago

Is that an AI generated header image?

moremetadata 4y ago

[dead]

noiv 4y ago

When you read Peter Pan you need no scientific confirmation lucid dreams allow becoming the architect of your dreams and enjoy flying around.

karaterobot 4y ago

> After I told her that I was working on this column, she decided to try to dream about my father, who died last year. For five nights in a row, she says, she looked at pictures of him before bed, whispered his name when she closed her eyes, and snuggled up to “one of his ratty, old T-shirts.” Then she called me, annoyed. “It’s all bunk,” she announced. “Not a damn thing happened.” Surprised to read this little gut punch of a short story right in the middle of a fluff column.

w_for_wumbo 4y ago

A friend gave me melatonin gummies. I don't feel like they help with my sleep, but every time I consume them I become aware that I'm dreaming, and I'm able to control each aspect of my dream. It's been really fun, but at the same time I avoid doing this on weekdays, because otherwise I don't feel like I actually got the chance to rest.

v8xi 4y ago
One thing to keep in mind with melatonin supplementation is that the doses are like 10x++ higher than what is ideal. An informative read on it: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th...
- miguelazo 4y ago
  Very true. Have even heard of smaller people wetting the bed after taking 10mg doses too long.

joegahona 4y ago

There was an article about this same topic in Omni magazine decades ago [1]. I followed its recommendations and was never able to get anywhere. I have lucid dreams maybe 10% of the time now. I also have sleep paralysis, which is a weird kind of lucid limbo state -- I always know when I'm in it, and I have a method for breaking out of it (rubbing my lips together), but I'm very seldom "dreaming" when I'm in that state. [1] Might be this one: https://www.amazon.com/Omni-Magazine-September-1994-Exclusive/dp/B001NXK6EI https://www.amazon.com/Omni-Magazine-September-1994-Exclusiv...

johtso 4y ago

Highly recommend the film Waking Life. Fantastic rotoscoped film, dreamy and through provoking. First time I had a lucid dream was the night after watching it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edrGozs6W_I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edrGozs6W_I

miguelazo 4y ago
Seconded. Introduced me to lucid dreaming. Checking the lights (can’t turn them off), trying to look at my hands, were such great tips.

steveylang 4y ago

I think the mystery and ambiguity of our dreams is what makes them so powerful. I personally prefer to let my dreams be, and explore them immediately after waking. I write them down in complete detail first, then slowly let their meanings reveal themselves to me. Inevitably the meaning (by that I mean the relation to my waking life) comes through in the details that seemed inconsequential until I actually wrote them all down. Perhaps if I got to pick the nominal subjects of my dreams, my dream work and exploration would not change that much. But it definitely wouldn't be the same if I were to be able to script everything that happened.

tagami 4y ago

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.” ― T.E. Lawrence

iLoveOncall 4y ago

Why is the Wall Street Journal posting some New Age BS?