Thread: How does "natural" Dream Incubation work?

Maybe if we found out exactly HOW it was that certain experiences from Waking life eventually made it into a Dream, we can start to understand how to consciously incubate dreams.
I've noticed a clear difference between 2 types of dreams: Dreams based on Waking Reality(enviroments, people, situations, themes..etc) and Dreams that seemingly have no connection with waking life whatsoever.

A good Idea would be to write down a list of Dreams that were inspired/based on waking life experiences and then finding out how they got there. Maybe it would help to analyse the Inbucated Waking Life experience with other Waking life experiences that did NOT make it into your Dreams.

Maybe we can find some factors that were all present at waking Life experiences we later Dreamt of that weren't present in Waking Life experiences that Didn't make it into a Dream.
Some personal examples:
Incubated Waking Life experiences:
-My Ex girlfriend.
-My mom appears in a Dream every now and then.
-My best Friend Juno.
-Nieuwekerk; a small town where I used to go and see many friends for a long period in my Life.
-The use of Psycho-active drugs occurs sometimes in my Dreams.
-Lowlands festival and Lowlands festival-ish enviroments regulairly pop up in my Dreams.

Not Incubated Waking Life experiences:
-My sister
-Music I enjoy listening and Playing
-Painting/Drawing
-Divorce of my parents (allthough you'd spose that would leave a mayor impression)
-Meditating/Practising Spirituality.




Anyone willing to join heads on this?

I love this! I'm going to review some journals tonight and get some good examples. Are you looking for specifics such as:

I scheduled an appointment with a tax accountant, and that night I had a LD where two people were discussing tax law.

or generals such as:

I always dream of my childhood home, but I rarely dream of my family. I never dream I'm at work, although I do dream that I am hanging out with the people I work with.

I'll do this! This sounds like a great idea.

I'm usually pretty good at tracing why certain things appear in my dreams, so I might be able to help.

You are getting pretty close to pure idea of dream incubation. I hope people here will give you enough information to continue further. Just the idea of incubation is interesting. Do you think, you are looking at dream incubation from good aspect? you know. What should be the result of what you are going to research? People here may give you the examples, but maybe if you would clarify it a little, so they know, what to search for.

So as a conclusion. What is the idea behind?

In my experience, I've found that usually that the events, people, and places most emotionally significant to me tend to appear in my dreams; for instance, I had dreams with my ex-girlfriend every night for over a month after she broke up with me, and still typically do every night after I see her. I also often dream about climbing, usually over once a week, because it's my favorite thing to do.

Basically anything that occupies my mind for a significant period of time while I am awake will appear in my dreams.

This viewpoint would agree with the fact that I rarely dream about school, and most people probably rarely dream about work in that we just try to get it over with and don't really concern ourselves with it.
There of course will be exceptions, such as your parents' divorce. I would suggest (though you definitely know better than I) that maybe it didn't affect you strongly.

This is just what I've found to be true from my own experience, though I would guess this is probably how it works for most people. Hopefully this thread can find a way to explain the discrepancies.

Originally Posted by Valwen

In my experience, I've found that usually that the events, people, and places most emotionally significant to me tend to appear in my dreams; for instance, I had dreams with my ex-girlfriend every night for over a month after she broke up with me, and still typically do every night after I see her. I also often dream about climbing, usually over once a week, because it's my favorite thing to do.

Basically anything that occupies my mind for a significant period of time while I am awake will appear in my dreams.

This viewpoint would agree with the fact that I rarely dream about school, and most people probably rarely dream about work in that we just try to get it over with and don't really concern ourselves with it.
There of course will be exceptions, such as your parents' divorce. I would suggest (though you definitely know better than I) that maybe it didn't affect you strongly.

This is just what I've found to be true from my own experience, though I would guess this is probably how it works for most people. Hopefully this thread can find a way to explain the discrepancies.

Yeah. And this could help with incubation stuff. What, or who decides what is the dream content. Couldnt the same "force" decide to switch on our awareness? Just a suggestion.

Last night I dreamed about snowboarding.

Snowboarding is a frequent dream that I have because I love it so much, yet don't get to do it as much as I'd like to because I live in Texas. Also, a strong cold front came in last night and it was supposed to snow a little, and my cousin called from Fort Worth area and said that it snowed 9 inches!

Now what?

Hey SKA, I think you have a great idea going. However, I noticed from some of the replies of other members, that the examples might be a little to vague. I do think it might need a bit of refining if we are to find any correlations. We'll first need to define the boundaries to our problem, as well as define exactly what it is that we're trying to get out of it.

I did some thinking on the topic on the past couple of days and I'll add a couple of different ideas that might help us.

Originally Posted by SKA

I've noticed a clear difference between 2 types of dreams: Dreams based on Waking Reality(enviroments, people, situations, themes..etc) and Dreams that seemingly have no connection with waking life whatsoever.

I agree with this. I also believe that there are two additional categories for dreams:

Recurring Dreams
Non-Recurring Dreams

These two are pretty self explanatory.
Recurring dreams happen when an object, theme, or thoughts that appear frequently in your dreams.
Non-Recurring dreams happen when the object, theme, or thoughts that appear in the dream are pretty unique to that dream.
Now, going back to your classification of dreams:

Dreams that seemingly have no connection with waking life whatsoever.
>> I can't think of any further classifications for this. Also, since these dreams have no connection to waking life, they would not help in the attempt of becoming lucid by incubating the dream on demand.

Dreams based in Waking Reality

• Based on a distant past
  • example: I'm at the place where I grew up in my childhood, or where I went to school in my childhood, or talking to someone I haven't talked to in years.

• Based on a recent past
  • example: Based on something that has happened (preferably) in the last 24 hours. Could also be something based on something that happened a few days ago, but for our incubation purposes, it would be best to limit this classification to dreams that are based on something that happened the last 48 hours to still be helpful.

Now, our goal is to be able to incubate our dreams at will. That is, if we find out that there is something that we could do in waking life to trigger that same event into our dreams, we might have a better chance of becoming lucid. For this reason, we should concentrate on dreams that are based on waking reality and that are based on recent past.

Dreams based on distant past would not help us on our goal. It wouldn't be reasonable to attempt to do something today in hopes that it will makes its way into our dreams a month (or longer) from today.

Furthermore, it would be a good idea to include as much detail as you can regarding any possible connection that made the waking life event happen in your dreams. That could be an emotion that you felt during the waking life (also describe how you felt during the dream when the event happened), any special meaning that the event had to you, or any important backstory on the event that might have made it important to you.

I hope these ideas help us organize our thoughts better. Feel free to add any insights or criticize my ideas.

Hopefully we'll get to a beneficial conclusion.

here's some refinement:
Appearantly not everything that makes a big emotional impression on you during waking life is incubated into a Dream. I was 12 when my parents divorced and I felt as if it was the end of everything. so how come I did dream very often about my ex girl, but not once about my parent's divorce?

I'm wondering what the essential difference was between the 2 experiences.

When I used to keep a dream journal regularly, after writing down each dream I'd try to think of all the ways the dream had been influenced by my experiences during the last week or so. I was amazed by the connections that I was able to make and for each entry I had a list of around 10-15 events, conversations, and thoughts that had influenced the dream. If anyone wants an example I can post one of my old entries here.

And when I dream about something from my distant past it is often after recently thinking about it while awake.

Originally Posted by SKA

here's some refinement:
Appearantly not everything that makes a big emotional impression on you during waking life is incubated into a Dream.

You make a good point, it didn't cross my mind before. I also have had both happen:
I was on the computer one night looking up something specific on Google an hour before I went to bed and I had a dream about that topic on the same night. (non-emotional)

Sometime ago, I was argued with my dad in waking life. In my dream a couple of days later, I also argued with my dad - but the reason was completely different. (emotional)

Originally Posted by AlexLou

When I used to keep a dream journal regularly, after writing down each dream I'd try to think of all the ways the dream had been influenced by my experiences during the last week or so. I was amazed by the connections that I was able to make and for each entry I had a list of around 10-15 events, conversations, and thoughts that had influenced the dream. If anyone wants an example I can post one of my old entries here.

And when I dream about something from my distant past it is often after recently thinking about it while awake.

Very interesting AlexLou. Please do post it when you get the chance, and any correlation you may have found on why the events made their ways into your dreams.

Lately I've been having a recurring theme where I'm either at work or talking to someone from work (co-worker, manager, etc). I work about 5 days a week, 25 hours a week.

I've just thought of something.

Maybe it has got to do with the different states of minds we are in when we experience waking life. Maybe if we are in an open state of mind, a more suggestive state of mind, while experiencing a certain waking life event we are able to "Take them in" into our subconscious minds later resulting in a Dream about this event?

Maybe it's a good idea to think of a bunch of Waking Life experiences, of which you later also Dreamt, and see if you can remember how you felt during those waking Life events. And more specifically in what state of consciousness you were, wether you were tired, high/drunk, emotional or a combination of these states. Think of anything that can alter perception and consciousness in such a way.

Cuz the only "difference" between my hurtfull relationship with my ex girl and my parent's divorce was that there was a certain "Magic"about the whole experience with my ex girl. Perhaps due to me having fallen severely in love, My consciousness was altered into a highly suggestive, hypnotic-like state; which opened me up perhaps to take in the experience into my subconsciousness and to later dream about it?

How about you people?