Yikes.  That does sound creepy.  Saaay!  Would you like to buy a nice used car?  Don't worry.  This is just a dream :)

When I think about it, a lot of my weird dreams involved cars and driving.

Perhaps I felt as though I was not really in control ("in the driver's seat") in my life.

Or maybe it's just because I lived in Houston, and driving there is a nightmare.

Kendra

What a great idea! Flying through the rooms is fun!

I grew up in the Sierra Nevada in California. There is a mountain across from my Mother's property. I recall having a nightmare where I was outside looking at the mountain- after I became lucid-I chased the monster off- and tried to levitate to fly over the mountain- I did get up to the tops of the Ponderosa Pines nearby-and did a 360 over the top of the house.

I doubt that anyone healthy would lose the ability to tell the difference betweem dreaming and waking.

Quote - I would imagine there are many techniques but the few times I've been able to do it on purpose I would fall asleep concentrating on an object.  In my case a necklace that I wore to bed.  For whatever reason, concentrating on it brought it out in my dream and reminded me that I was dreaming.    I tend to have dreams about rooms and once I took off flying through them.  Another time I managed to have anything I looked at in the room change if I closed my eyes.  

There is a danger to lucid dreaming though.  If you get really good at it and do it a lot, they say you could experience the inability to differentiate between dreaming and reality.  Personally I think thats a bit of a stretch but I suppose it could happen.  

I have a lot of lucid dreams without even trying. It's to the point now that any dream I have is at least semi-lucid. I don't realize I'm dreaming but I know I can control my surroundings. But the weirdest thing is once my husband, who used to talk in his sleep, woke up once to me talking in my sleep about a dream he just had. He figures we must have been conversing in our sleep.

heh you know that makes sense really..we do still experience the world even asleep.  i've had conversations with my mom when she's napping.  they're fairly coherent though she would not remember a thing.  my sister used to try to grill her for information...like 'where are the car keys?'

i used to have crazy times with paralysis.  sometimes i would see someone in the room and try to react, if only to hide deeper under the covers.  NO GO.  and the person would creep a little closer.  i'd lift my arms finally only to look over and see they have not moved.

this kind of stuff is why i thought nightmare on elm street was so cool.  i love the blending of dream and reality.

and i do sometimes realize that some experience or conversation that my mind has registered as real had been a dream.  but our minds don't really hold a concrete view of reality like we think they do.  it's been shown that simply the act of recalling a memory tampers with that memory.  and that makes sense too when you think about it.  after all you use the same pathways recalling something that you used in acquiring the experience.  and those pathways are ever changing and modifying, so there will always be ne mental vocabulary introduced as some are eliminated

Personally I remain a little sceptical about most of the "realities" I find myself in... or rather my interpretation and /or recollection of them at least :lol:

Great thread this one...

I dream an awful lot, but I seem to invoke the space time continium theory in that very often I have bumped into myself at the end of a dream, I am able to remember many aspects of my dreams and can return to them night after night, but after i've bumped into myself, they always change slightly.. Maybe I'm actually not typing this, but an alter character in a different dimension is?

Actually the worrying part is my wifes dreams, she often has quite vivid dreams after watching shows like women who kill, or Banged up abroad, I've now hidden all the sharp objects in my house and employ a food taster .........................

Eric, you're not talking about Lovers Leap are you?  

As for waking up and not being clear on whether you're awake or still in the dream, that's pretty normal I think.  At least immediately after waking up.  I know its happened to me several times.  One dream in particular was during a time when I was dealing with someone who had threatened to kill me.  He was out of jail and so of course living alone, my mind was on that...keeping safe... if doors were locked, etc.  In my dream the door to my bedroom had the hallway light shining around it and the door knob was turning as if someone were trying to get in.  Talk about panic, it was so much that I tried to jump up from bed and actually had trouble waking up.  Once I did, I saw the light off, no noise, figured it was a dream and fell back to sleep.  Problem is I fell right back into the exact same dream.  When I woke up the second time I had to wonder what was real.  

Anyway, that book sounds interesting.  I'll have to look into it.