I've been hearing a lot about lucid dreaming and how people use it practice, experience, and grow. I was wondering if people like the stereotypical HNer actually are aided by lucid dreaming.<p>Are you able to accomplish anything? Actually grow from it?
<i>I've been hearing a lot about lucid dreaming and how people use it practice, experience, and grow.</i><p>I've heard a lot of claims about lucid dreaming among some young people I know well locally (who post here from time to time). I don't get the impression that lucid dreaming is really as beneficial as they think it is. Some cases I know about from personal observation involve disturbing sleep cycles so much in pursuit of lucid dreams that the young people failed in work environments or crashed and burned in their university studies. Getting a normal amount of sleep (for you, that leaves you feeling rested when you wake up in the morning) is very important. It's a lot more important than what kind of dreams you have.<p>I think a writing intervention<p><a href="http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/Faculty/Pennebaker/Home2000/WritingandHealth.html" rel="nofollow">http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/Faculty/Pennebaker/H...</a><p>may do more for many young people in high-creativity careers than lucid dreaming. There is a better research base, by far, for the writing self-help than for lucid dreaming. Try it and see how it works. Best wishes for much success in improving your personal insight and problem-solving.<p>AFTER EDIT: An issue to consider whenever participants on Hacker News discuss self-help strategies is how reliable the research base is. People who only use the University of Google Library to do research will often find websites by advocacy groups that are pushing a solution that may not have been tested. Fortunately, Google's own director of research, LISP hacker Peter Norvig, has written a guide to reading research reports<p><a href="http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html" rel="nofollow">http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html</a><p>that reminds us all about what to look for when someone reports some new, amazing treatment. Check out whether lucid dreaming has really been well evaluated with sufficiently large sample sizes, control groups, and other marks of good research.
Lucid dreaming and related out of body experiences have made me realize that the universe we're in is likely an elaborate illusion. That's because the dreams/OBEs are just as real as here, at least while they last. If you can't distinguish between two things then go ahead and call them equivalent.<p>I'm not sure this aids me though. On the downside I now think of my existence as eternal (we'll always be experiencing some kind of reality), which promotes procrastination. On the upside I don't need many material things to enjoy myself.<p>About the lack of evidence of lucid dreaming: you know what they say about absence of evidence. When one has had a full-on lucid dream, no more evidence is needed. It takes only one scientist to do good science. Corroboration isn't a real scientific requirement.
I am using lucid dreaming as a form of therapy. I am afraid of interacting with people because bad things happened to me in the past. From time to time I experience lucid dreams and I try to interact with the people in my dream but only if the people seem nice. Because of the fact that I know that I am dreaming and that I am in control I do things that I usually would not do. For example a couple of months ago I actually touched someone I like in my lucid dream. When I woke up I felt very good. I had extreme confidence in myself again. Lucid dreaming helps me a lot. I can try things. I can expose myself to things I am afraid of and usually when I have done something in a lucid dream and the experience was not too bad I am able to try it in the real world.