By Jennie Viratham Poonsawat
From Can you control your dream? by Elizabeth Landau, CNN
It
is rare for people to be able to control their dreams even it can happen with
children more than adults. Lucid dream allows dreamers to control the
plot and the ending of the dream just like when they play games. Deirdre
Barrett, editor of Dreaming: The Journal of the International Association
for the Study of Dreams and psychologist
at Harvard University and the Cambridge Health Alliance , suggests that there
are several ways to have a lucid dream for example, reminding oneself before
going to sleep about the lucid dream. In fact, according to experts, this kind
of phenomenon can happen scientifically. For centuries, humans have known about
lucid dreams; Tibetan Buddhists began practicing "dream yoga" more
than 1,000 years ago for attaining a purer form of consciousness through lucid
dreams. Sometimes, we can check whether we are dreaming or fully awake by visualizing
oneself doing something in a dream, if there is no consequences then it is just
a dream. One of the famous movies by
Christopher Nolan, "Inception" also relates to lucid dreaming and
reality checks. In the movie, each dreamer has a "totem" to separate
dream from reality like a metal top that always spins in the dream. The
characters go too far then they get confused between dreams and reality, it is
a sign of mental illnesses like schizophrenia. However, Barrett claims that in
real life, the confusion does not appear to be a kind of illness but more
likely a dream journal. But, if a person cannot distinguish between a dream and
reality, he or she should consult a therapist due to the mental condition. It
does not mean that the person has mental disorder but if there is a confusion
like this, it will be hard to live normal life. Even so, Gary Schwartz,
professor of psychology and neurology at the University of Arizona, states that
it is possible that some people might get too obsessed with the lucid dream and
think that it is their real life, but the case is rare. Therefore, it will be
safe for ones who practice lucid dreaming to be aware of reality and dreams.
I have seen the movie "Inception"
and I got confused because there were many dimensions in a dream so I didn't
know which one was a dream or reality. Therefore, I watched the movie again and
I realized that the clue was the "totem" which allowed the characters
to distinguish between dream and reality. Afterwards, I looked up on the Internet
about the kind of dreaming in the movie that was when I found out about "lucid
dreaming" . This article makes the concept about lucid dreaming clearer so
now, I understands more about what lucid dreaming is and how to do it.
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