A lucid dream, also known as a conscious dream, is a dream in which the person is aware that he or she is dreaming while the dream is in progress. During lucid dreams, it is possible to exert conscious control over the dream characters and environment and have them perform feats which would be physically impossible in the waking world. Lucid dreams can be extremely real and vivid depending on a person’s level of self-awareness during the lucid dream.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream

Lucid dreams are something that I find very interesting.  After reading a blog post about dreams and nightmares on my good friend Amanda’s blog, my mind really started thinking about the subconscious and how mystical it is.  Everything that happens in a dream is happening in our head, yet we know so little about them.  Dreams can be amazingly powerful too.  I know that my mood for the rest of the day can be affected by a dream I had because it seemed so real.  No matter how strange a dream is, it can still have very strong emotional feelings attached to it.

The ability to control what happens in our dreams seems like it would be one of the most amazing experiences ever.  Just think, you could do anything you want.  You want to fly by flapping your arms?  No problem.  Want to breathe underwater?  Sure thing.  I think the ability for complete control over everything and everyone is a guilty pleasure of the human mind on the subconscious level, no matter how moral of a person you are.  This is especially true when all you have to do to erase everything you did is open your eyes and wake up.  I guess the other guilty pleasure of the subconscious mind would be the ability to have actions without consequences.

Thinking back on dreams, it seems that there are two different ways to look at them.  There is the overall impression of the dream, which sometimes can be an elaborate story that makes sense, however more times than not, is usually a jumpy, convoluted story that contains many events with only a couple things in common such as a person that appears throughout most of the dream.  I guess the best thing to call this would be the “long-term” memory of the dream.  The other way, as you probably guessed would be the “short-term” view of the dream where you think back on only specific events or short moments in time.  Usually, when thought about in these little segments, each little part of the dream makes sense, no matter how one part transitioned to the next.  Sure sometimes someone or something very strange can be going on, but when thought about on a small enough time frame, you don’t have the issue of your location changing spontaneously or people suddenly appearing in your dream out of nowhere. I’ve had times where I had dreams that take place over over a very long time and made sense, for the most part, from start to finish. When I woke up, I felt as if years should have gone by when in fact, only 7 or 8 hours have passed. I even had one night where I had trouble sleeping, so I managed to experience 3 completely separate dreams in one night, and I remembered them all in the morning. Talk about a brain workout.

This really makes me think about how the subconscious works because during the dream, it seems perfectly normal for things to spontaneously change around you.  You could be in your house one moment, and halfway around the world in the next.  The strange thing when this happens though, is that it usually takes me awhile to realize that I’m not in the same place I was before.  This is a little bit of a weird analogy, but its almost as if dreams are fluid and things can shift around smoothly, no matter how different or random it is, and the change is so smooth that it takes awhile to notice the change.

Ultimately, I wish there was some way to record dreams exactly how we see and experience them, no matter how strange or confusing they may be.  I’m sure if we were able to watch our dreams while we were awake, we’d basically be saying “what the hell?” for most of the time, but it would still be interesting to study.  I know a lot of times stuff that has happened to me recently, or even just stuff that has been on my mind lately, can be reflected in my dreams in very interesting, and sometimes subtle, ways.  I really hope we make some breakthroughs into understanding the subconscious part of the human brain as I would love to learn more about it.

Well tonight I went to see the movie Semi-Pro with Will Ferrel, which is a really funny movie and also happens to be totally unrelated to this entry but I thought I’d start off with it. On the bus ride back to school though, I went into that deep thought mode and let my mind run wild. I actually asked myself the age old question, what is reality? I’m sure that most of you have pondered this at some time in your life, and if you haven’t, then I recommend it because its good to give your mind a little exercise every now and then.

A philosopher (I think it was Parmenides) once claimed that there is no way to prove anything around you is real. Although its a bit far-fetched, he had a damn good argument: since everything we sense is interpreted by our brain, we have no way of proving that our brain isn’t making everything up. A lot of movies have been made with similar concepts in mind, notably The Matrix. If you haven’t seen it, the really short version of the story is that machines took over the world and all humans have unknowingly become part of a computer simulation. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. If you had a direct feed of information into your brain replacing all 5 of your senses, then you would be able to experience anything without your body physically doing any of it. To be honest, its a bit of a dead-end philosophical path, since once you establish the fact that you can’t prove anything around you is real, then there isn’t much else you can say. But for argumentative purposes, I think its no biggie to ignore this little caveat since it is pretty far-fetched and extreme. Feel free to share your thoughts on what you define “real” to be, its a wide-open subject with no right answer so anyone can have their own opinion on it.

Another thing that completely fascinates me is outer space. The thing that baffles me most is the issue of relative size. The universe is big. No really, its REALLY big. But how big is “big”? Obviously you can’t put it into numbers. Einstein said that the universe is not infinitely large, however it has no boundaries (let that one sink in for awhile). Ok, so maybe thinking about the size of the universe is a bit extreme. I think you and I would agree that Earth is a pretty decent size. It takes 8 or 9 hours to fly to Europe on a plane traveling at a nice speed, which feels like a long time when you’re stuck in the plane. It takes a spaceship about 4 days to reach the moon, which is a bit longer. Heres some numbers for you though to put things in perspective:

• Circumference of Earth: ~24900 mi or ~40070 km
• Distance to moon: ~238860mi or ~384,403 km
• Smallest average distance to Mars: ~48 million miles or ~78 million kilometers
• Distance to closest galaxy (Andromeda): ~2 million light years

Well… crap. The distance to Mars alone is mind boggling (traveling to it would be like circling the earth 1928 times), but the distance to Andromeda is ridiculous. It takes light 2 million years to travel to Earth from Andromeda, which means even if we were able to travel at the speed of light, it would still take 2 million years to get there. You might want to pack a couple of puzzle books for the ride, just fyi. The only plausible way to reach such a far away location would have to require cryogenics, and that doesn’t sound like too much fun. Theres a fine line between reality and sci-fi when it comes to outer space, and thats pushing it. Plus… in 2 million years, not to sound pessimistic or anything, but as a human race, we’d be lucky to still be around by then. It sounds weird saying there will be a time when humans cease to exist, but its gotta happen sometime I believe. Anyways, before I start rambling incoherently, I’m going to call it a night. Hope this post gets your own imagination going. My recommendation for you: pick a clear night, go to a hill somewhere nearby (bring a friend if you want), and just lay down and stare at the sky. I guarantee your mind will start filling up with thoughts like these and it really makes you appreciate all the small things in life ironically.