If you think dreaming is cool, you should see how it feels when you acheive dream lucidity. Also known as lucid dreaming or conscious dreaming. There are lots of levels of self-awareness, but the level that one needs to acquire, is the one they absolutely know they are dreaming at the time they *are* dreaming.
Wikipedia: Lucid Dreaming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dreaming
Basically, it means dreaming and having full conciousness in a dream where you are completely aware you are dreaming.
Its not too difficult to do, but it can take several months of exercises to help train yourself to acquire such a state.
If you are interested, see the links below. Really cool stuff, although as I said before, its a LOT of work to get there. The techniques are pretty simple though.
1. Achieve dream recall. Basically, it means everytime you wake up, write in a log book every detail you can remember and do this every single night. After a month or two, you find out you can recall amazing things, even smells, etc...
2. Reality state testing - This is the one that is a pain in the ***. Basically, you test yourself as many times as you can remember when you are AWAKE to see if you're dreaming or not. Something as simple as looking at some text, looking away, and then looking back at that text. If the text changes, your most likely dreaming. Basically, you want this so ingrained into your brain, so that when you're dreaming, you'll ask this question, and it will let you know your dreaming.
Basically, the average person will do this for several months (took me about two solid months when i experimented with this) and finally one night you'll be dreaming, and suddenly realize you are *actually* dreaming. The experience from there is just unbelievable as you can do whatever you like!
The best resource for this is the following book:
Lucid Dreaming by Stephen Laberge
did a lot of reading on lucid dreaming, and successfully made it occur numerous times. The experiences have been some of the most powerful ones in my entire lifetime. It is something you will never forget. The power of the mind is incredible at creating scenes and events, and what you can do in a lucid dream is something of extreme proportions. Think: no boundaries.
Oops. Just saw your post on this - you beat me to it!
But yes, you are right. My first lucid dream was probably one of the most fantastic experiences in my entire life. I actually continued doing this for a few months thereafter - I was in college at the time, and could afford to sleep late like until 10-11am. (Lucid dreaming is easiest in the late morning hours as any sleep you enter at that time is REM) But if you don't keep up with the practicing, you lose the skill very quickly. Plus, mine weren't very common. I might of had 1 per week. Although i know some people who had the skill to do them almost every night. But now being married with kids, and getting up at 5:30am, little opportunity to do this.
So while it may sound a little crazy to some of you, I think that if you haven't experienced this, you need to. It is the the most powerful facet of the human brain which you actually have access to control, and you cannot even grasp what is possibly attainable until you are the one fully creating the events which occur.
Yep, I know but it is scientifically proven and well documented in the medical community. In fact, studies have been conducted where lucid individuals would move their eyes etc... so that time in the dream could be measured vs. real world time, etc... But, its not easy thats for sure. Takes lots of practice and exercises to get there!
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