 Originally Posted by The Cusp
But a blatant exception to the expectation theory is negation. Open a door in a dream thinking to yourself "There is NOT going to be zombies behind this door", and in all likely hood there is going to be zombies. even though you fully expect there not to be. This scenario doesn't fit the expectation model, but does fit the archetype model because the zombie archetype is much more substantial and overrides the simple "Not".
Fact is dream control fails a lot for the average person. In order for it to fail, they have to attempt control, which they would never have done if they didn't expect it to work.
Expectations alone are not enough for most people. You're just a freak  If you want to help people with control, you're going to have to go a little deeper in describing exactly what it is you are doing. I'd really like to know. I'd say I've mastered dream control, but it can still take me a couple of tries to get something to work. I chalk up my failures on how I focus my attention, so maybe you could provide a few more details on how you are using yours.
I know I PM'd you saying I was sleeping, but then I decided to reply first.
You say that negation doesn't work, but my experience is different, for example in the dream I described earlier in this thread. Let me quote the relevant bit:
There is one dream where i almost couldn't control it, not because my technique didn't work, but because i was petrified.
I was in a room, circular, with lots of dark corridors and i felt like something really bad was about to happen. I kept working myself up, getting more and more scared, and my heart rate was quickly rising. Then i suddenly realized this made no sense, but i was too petrified to take full control.
I closed my eyes and kept saying to myself, nothing will happen as long as i don't expect anything will happen. I kept saying that until eventually i felt like i was rising above the dream. And because i thought that, i started physically rising up.
Then i suddenly thought 'oh no I'm going to fall!' But then i stopped myself by thinking 'relax, i will only fall if i expect to fall'. I opened my eyes and looked down, and sure enough i was floating a few metres above the ground. I kept telling myself i will not fall if i don't expect to, but my heart was racing and i was too scared to do anything.
I stayed in this condition until i calmed down, then i transported elsewhere.
In any case, if I didn't want zombies to be behind the door and I wasn't too scared, I would just not even think of zombies. (I never see zombies anyway). I'd think there was a beautiful landscape on the other side of the door.
From these forums, I can see and agree with you that a lot of people fail in dream control. I was very lucky in a way, in that I developed dream control and kept doing it for years before even finding this information. The whole concept that dream control might be difficult didn't even exist in my mind, that expectation was non-existent. As far as I was concerned, if I can control my dream, that means I can do anything. Since that was my expectation, that's how it worked. If I had visited these forums before I gained dream control, things might have been very different, because I would have expected achieving dream control to be a struggle.
All I do in my dreams is: 1. I feel an urge to do something 2. I concentrate hard on making myself expect that thing to happen next 3. It just happens. So far this has always worked, and I don't expect that to stop any time soon.
 Originally Posted by The Cusp
As someone with perfect control, I'd appreciate if you'd take the time to skim through this thread and tell me if anything in there sounds familiar to you.
I read the first 4 posts in your thread and got the general gist of what you're saying, and I actually agree with you. And I don't think what I am saying contradicts you. Here is a quote from earlier in the thread of how I reconcile it:
I agree that the dream world is not only based on expectations, but I still maintain that whatever you expect to happen will happen. Let me explain:
You are only consciously affecting a small portion of the dream. E.g. You might fly, or you might edit a landscape, or you might teleport somewhere. You can do all of these things, but where did the sky you see come from? And where did the appearance of the landscape come from? How did the details of the place where you teleported appear? I'm sure you weren't consciously drawing and mapping out every detail that appears in your dreams. Most of it was subconscious, or perhaps it was even influenced by external real-world inputs e.g. Noises, touch sensation, perhaps even things like wifi signals!
In other words, i agree that dreams are actually mostly not consciously controlled by us. However, I still believe that whatever you expect or anticipate in a dream is what will actually happen.
So the things you focus your attention on, your brain fills in the details. Emotions and schemas will, of course, influence how your brain colours the dream world. E.g. Because you expect the sky to be blue, when you fly in a dream, your brain draws the sky blue.
I look forward to hearing whether you agree or disagree with this.
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