I have been lucid dreaming for 10 years +.

There is no shadow men, this is not some spiritual thing. It is just biology and science.

You fall sleep, your body freezes up to prevent sleep walking, your mind makes hypnotic images and sounds to lull you to sleep. Your mind then makes the world around you, like any dream, except you have awareness and control of it due to conscious input.

That's it.    

There are people who doesn't know why SP happens and they see shadow man, there are also some people who know the scientific reason but still see a shadow man. It's just about a person's own fears, saying "that's not real, that's about you" for one time is fine but saying it over and over again is a bit rude to people who are having scary things in their SP's and who can't stop it even if they know the reason.

Changing something in your subconscious is hard, we should respect each other's fears.

And don't take this as an aggressive message. Your post is fine but I saw some people calling hallucinations bullshit. That doesn't seem like bullshit to people who can't do anything about it  

That's the thing - to your mind/senses they ARE real. The effects dreaming produces are nearly the same as if you were experiencing the event while awake. It's why it feels so real even though you know it doesn't actually exist.

This is taken from the book Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming

> The experiments just reviewed supported the conclusion that the events you experience while asleep and

> dreaming produce effects on your brain (and, to a lesser extent, your body) much the same as if you were to

> experience the corresponding events while awake.  

Good post. When you have very limited actual experience with LD and other altered states of consciousness, which is the case for most people, it can be really difficult to come to an educated conclusion of their natures. However, once we're able to experience them more frequently we begin to see through their mysteries and learn the subtle properties. Then we are able to tell what they truly are.  

And since when did this community refuse to discuss anything except 100% materialist reductionist science? To say that sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming have no spiritual significance is terrifyingly ignorant in my opinion.  

  
Just because things exist in the space of the imagination doesn't make them unscientific or false. They are real in their own way. Could the widespread reports of the "shadow people" in sleep paralysis reflect some subconscious monster archetype? Or perhaps the evolutionary remnant of a real fear that our ancestors dealt with to survive?  

  
  
Do you *know* that there is no spiritual connection with lucid dreaming? How can you claim there is nothing else there besides biology? How do you know that the realm of consciousness we exist in during a lucid dream isn't as real as waking life? We don't understand the relationship between biology and consciousness. It's dishonest to pretend to.  

People love to come up with spiritual explanations for a simple scientific one. That is human ignorance and imagination that has been invoked since the time of Zeus.

The believe in shadow people, or lucid dreaming having to do with spiritual connection, was silly at best, and not supported by evidence at worst.

I *know* the evidence suggests that Shadow people are just images the brain throws up when your falling asleep, to lull you into a hypotonic sleeping state.  I *know* there is no rational explanation for shadow people. And I *know* that our dreams are constructions of our mind in the most literal sense, and thus not spiritual.

The only thing I will give you, is I don't know if the realm of consciousness when we lucid dream is any less real then when we are in waking life. As the mind is set to make reality in waking life, just as it does in our dream. But it is sure as heck obvious that if anything is a figment of imagination, then shadow men are, just as much as our dreams.

It is dishonest to pretend as if any rational explanation of the lucid dreaming process would point to shadow people being something real in connection with the waking day world. When there is nothing at all to suggest that shadow people and spirituality have anything to do with the lucid dream world, other then confusion about the way the brain works when it is falling asleep. Shadow people are as real as your imagination, its not, and the only thing that you could even attempt to say is that our minds in the waking day world might make reality much like a dream world is made, and thus, shadow people are a real thing your mind imagines, but they are not real in connection with reality as human experience it from a Newtonian point of view. Or in other words, shadow people are not real, lucid dream is not a spiritual thing, and the closet to real you can make thing sound is an assumption that reality in the waking world is made by our minds, and since shadow people are made by our minds, it is real, but only real in the sense of the imaginary world within our heads, and not within waking day reality that we all experience day in and day out when we are awake.  

So I'm guessing you're around 17, right?  

lol, no dude, its science.  Biology.  

You would be a poor guesser.   I am not your age.  

You are not helping anyone by spouting some silly nonsense and telling people to mediate. This is science, not spirituality. You are not thinking with any part of your brain.

There is no shadow people, this is not some spiritual plan, all evidence and common sense says this is just straight up biology of the brain.  

I simply have an open mind.  You think your brain actually knows anything relevant to the truth... if anything we are fish Trapped in a fish bowl.. we can only know so much and anything else is skepticism, belief, and only what we can understand with our minds.. there is a mind greater than ours, and I'm sure billions of galaxies can prove that fact  

It doesn't make you smarter than other people to point out the materialistic nature of experience. You could make this same argument about anything spiritual, not just lucid dreaming visions. That doesn't make spirituality any less important to the people who experience it.


There's more to life than science and explanation, not to even get into the philosophical (EDIT: and scientific) issues with "objective truth" (you ironically reference Newtonian physics, which is itself a very limited paradigm). Many esoteric traditions are ruined by rationalization. If somebody experiences something deeply personal that has little to no effect on the outside world, is it more "important" that their symbolic interpretation of it is shot down, or that they believe whatever they choose and be enriched by it?


I am a 100% materialist btw, don't believe in God, angels, ghosts, visitors, any of it. It doesn't matter.  

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Magic is just science that people haven't figured out how to study yet (largely because it usually requires faith to work, and that kind of bias makes it hard to get objective, repeatable results).

There is a lot we don't know about perception and how it ties into the nature of reality, or what reality even is.

So OP is probably right, but so are you. Just filtering it through different lenses.  

I guess, Quantum mechanics sure does seem like magic.  But, its not, unless magic is something we have been viewing as the wrong thing all this time, or unless the only magic there is, is simply the wonder of the universe in all its glory.  

Actually lucid dreaming is whatever you believe and that's what you are going to get when you have them.  And if someone has some spiritual lucid dream that actually helps them and heals them or whatever it is in fact real to that person.  Just not real to you because your thoughts and beliefs are different.    

You are suggesting that a lucid dream is whatever you believe?  That is hog-wash.  Okay, then, I believe you are flamingo... Now tell me, are you sprouting pink feathers yet?  I did not think so.

Lucid dream can form anything you want, but a lucid dream is a phenomena, and one with a likely rational explanation, you cant just make up things and pretend its true just because you want, and then get upset when someone points out that your explanation is clearly defying the evidence and logic of reality.  

People really need to experience it more, first hand. You won't know water better than a fish, unless you become one yourselves, LOL. Interestingly though, you actually do achieve more LDs if you follow a more systematic and scientific path!

I personally agree with OP. There are more benefits to be gained if one approaches lucid dreaming scientifically. Associating lucid dreams with religious or spiritual meanings, I won't say it's right or wrong, but it does make one more prone to the trickery of the subconscious mind.  

Do you have a degree with anything involving neurology?  

Just because something is material doesnt mean it cant be spiritual  

You are clearly a dime a dozen moron  

It's pretty cringy that you parroted their insult back at them.  

I agree with you that this all involves a biological, scientific method to make but it never stopped me from having a spiritual feeling towards it anyways. I don't look at something like ice cream, and not have a wonderful feeling towards it based on it's science, I have a wonderful, god thanking feeling because it's scientifically possible.


I don't outright believe in magic, but I do believe with proper, logical processes, we can achieve something just as amazing.  

It's interesting you sound so sure of yourself. I'm curious though how you can explain a dream story being played out. Also you generically say your mind makes hypnotic images which is true, but obviously we all have various parts of our mind. It's been established that the subconscious part of our mind creates this imagery and experiences. Can you explain it's process, or reason to create specific images, or do you think it's just random. If it is random how can some dreams be so clear and detailed?

I'm 30 and have been LDing for as long as I can remember. I obviously have my own opinions on the matter, but I'd like a different perspective from you since you are very sure. I'd also like to know how you came to these conclusions. Did you perform any standardized tests?  

Well I would suppose we would need to discuss what your definition is of a spiritual thing. If you don't believe spirituality is a something that exists, and if you are a material reductionist, then sleeping and waking life are neither spiritual things. Conversely, you could suppose that spiritual things can and do happen while we wake but dreams only represent a biological process being enacted.

If spiritual experiences are possible in the world, and yours and my definition of what that means are close enough to each other, then we can have a meaningful discussion about what actually constitutes reality to our brains and minds. On the other hand, if you do not believe spiritual experiences are things that actually exist in the world, or what you mean by spiritual experiences is vastly different than what I mean, then we can have no meaningful discussion on this topic.

I have had spiritual experiences while lucid dreaming that defy explanation and could not been possible in waking life. Can this be proven scientifically; no, as nothing truly spiritual can. If you have been lucid dreaming for ten plus years, I have a very difficult time accepting that nothing spiritual has happened to you in that time period.