Maintaining Balance While Interacting With Dream Characters

I had another LD last night, and had made a point of trying to locate a specific friend. I called out for him and found him quite easily, but the interaction was completely nonsensical, his responses having nothing to do with what I said, and I very quickly lost balance and the dream. I'm finding it more difficult than anything else to have conversations with DC's without losing focus. In semi-lucid or non-lucid dreams I'll have really extensive conversations with people, sometimes about bizarre subjects I've never spoken to anyone about in real life, but when I become lucid it seems really difficult to maintain lucidity while trying to talk to anyone. Generally speaking I find it hard to maintain lucidity while focusing on any one thing for too long, so this makes sense, but I'm wondering what the trick is here?

Usually common dream characters are very idiotic and say and do things that are complete nonsense. As for loosing balance in a dream after talking to your friend, that never personally happened to me, but one guy suggested on the forums that direct speaking through language in a dream can often disrupt it. Try speaking to him in your mind next time. You can also do some dream stabilization techniques to regain focus of the dream. Here are some common ones!

1. Touch: Touch everything around you the minute you become lucid Touch the floor, the walls, buildings, grass, act. This will help "anchor" yourself in a dream.
2. Spinning: Once a dream starts to look blurry or less vivid, spin around rapidly with your arms out for a good 10-20 seconds. You might end up in a completely different place, but the dream will re-stabilize.
3. Look down at your hands and yell "Clarity Now!" when you look up, things should look more vivid and stable.
4. Diving: When a dream is beginning to end, or whenever, dive into the ground. You will probably reach complete blackness, but than a completely new dream will open up. This is similar to DEILD in the sense that you can chain dreams.
5. Rubbing Hands: If you become lucid in a blurry dream, or the dream is ending, rub your hands vigorously and the dreamscape will re-stabilize.

Hope this helped! :)

When I say 'balance', I don't mean like my physical balance, I mean... metaphorically, I feel like lucid dreaming is like walking a tightrope, so I refer to it as balance when I feel something basically tips me off the lucid tightrope and I fall into regular dreams or wake up entirely. The techniques are awesome though I'll be sure to try them, diving into the ground sounds especially neat :P

What jblb was talking about sounds like what you need it should help you to maintain lucidity, try messing with a clothing item or twiddle your fingers during conversations possible.

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Originally Posted by ThisWitheredMan

Generally speaking I find it hard to maintain lucidity while focusing on any one thing for too long, so this makes sense, but I'm wondering what the trick is here?

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You're right on the money when you talk of balance in regards to focusing your attention. This is in fact the trick you are looking for, you just need to know how to use it.

Attention is a balancing act because it is what sustains your dream environment. Too little attention and things fall apart, too much attention and you become mired in a sea of infinite detail.

Sounds like you're focusing too much, flooding your attention so that there's none left to hold onto lucidity. Personally I avoid DCs while lucid. Most of the time they're completely useless, and they just get in the way.

Just be aware of how much you're focusing your attention and on what, and don't overdo it. Actually overdoing it can be fun, just remember you can pull back if things get too intense or begin to destabilize.

Thanks for the reply Cusp, that's pretty much what I was figuring. Something about DCs fascinates me so much that I tend to get too engrossed when I try to interact with them and I forget to keep sweeping my gaze and maintaining lucidity. What do I need to do to make my DCs more deep? As I said I've had non-lucids where I have extensive conversations either with individuals or even group conversations, often about things I have no recollection ever having talked about (for example, included a weird excerpt from my dream journal below). To me the coolest thing about LDing isn't the wish fulfillment (as cool as that is!), but the ability to achieve a deeper communication with your subconscious mind and a better understanding of what makes you you and your reality your reality. Speaking to figments of the dream seems the most direct angle to this? Is it as simple as pointing at a dream character and saying, "This dream character is going to be as consciously aware and intelligent as it possibly can be"?

Spoiler for Odd Conversation:

She says something about how we fear emotion until we realize that emotions are the point of life and that we need as many people as possible sending us as many emotions as we can so that we can deepen our experience and progress to higher vibratory levels. I say something like “Without the emotions we’re fucked!” in agreement as though I already understand this. She goes on to say something about how the best part of this spiritual vibratory progress is that you can continue from where you left off in your next lives if you die before ascending.

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Originally Posted by ThisWitheredMan

Thanks for the reply Cusp, that's pretty much what I was figuring. Something about DCs fascinates me so much that I tend to get too engrossed when I try to interact with them and I forget to keep sweeping my gaze and maintaining lucidity. What do I need to do to make my DCs more deep? As I said I've had non-lucids where I have extensive conversations either with individuals or even group conversations, often about things I have no recollection ever having talked about (for example, included a weird excerpt from my dream journal below). To me the coolest thing about LDing isn't the wish fulfillment (as cool as that is!), but the ability to achieve a deeper communication with your subconscious mind and a better understanding of what makes you you and your reality your reality. Speaking to figments of the dream seems the most direct angle to this? Is it as simple as pointing at a dream character and saying, "This dream character is going to be as consciously aware and intelligent as it possibly can be"?

Spoiler for Odd Conversation:

She says something about how we fear emotion until we realize that emotions are the point of life and that we need as many people as possible sending us as many emotions as we can so that we can deepen our experience and progress to higher vibratory levels. I say something like “Without the emotions we’re fucked!” in agreement as though I already understand this. She goes on to say something about how the best part of this spiritual vibratory progress is that you can continue from where you left off in your next lives if you die before ascending.

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WOW dude that conversation is amazing. I read a couple of books about raising our vibratory state. That conversation was pretty deep.

I agree with jblb's comment about speaking to them through your mind. That was my first thought when I read your post, and then saw that someone had already suggested it. I'm not sure how you would increase the intelligence of a DC, though. Maybe will them to have some of the characteristics of the most intelligent person that you personally know? Don't make them that person, but try to attribute some of it to them. That said, I have no idea how superimposing a personality upon a DC would work, but it's an interesting idea.

Daredevilpwn: Is that a known concept? Where can I read up on that sort of thing? I've read some spiritual sort of stuff but never anything quite as... specific as that information was. Really wondering where that came from.

ccrinbama: When you say speaking through my mind, you mean just look at them and think the conversation to them? Do they respond in thoughts too, or will they speak?

I don't know how they will respond. That seems like it would vary greatly from person to person. The only commands I've ever given DCs have been stern and vocal, but the idea of projecting ideas at them without vocalization seems like it would work just as well. While imagining it, I assumed that you would be projecting thoughts with your mind, and they would be responding with actual words, vocalizations. Either way, I'm very interested to hear how it goes for you, if you try it out.

Also, props on using the Doctor as your avatar.

Okay I'll try to remember to do that and post how it goes here. It might be a while because I'm planning/hoping to stay away from DCs for a little while, because I still have a lot of trouble avoiding their... allure, and it always collapses the dream.

And since you mentioned The Doctor, and since it's similar to the last thing I posted, here's a weird excerpt from a dream I just had last night that involved The Doctor espousing what sounded a lot like Buddhist philosophy...

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This one is like an entire Doctor Who episode. There’s a whole sequence of events that I do not remember, and the “Eureka” moment of the episode is this: The Doctor is running through his whole thought cascade thing, and he comes to this question: What’s the single biggest mistake of your life? The Doctor asks. Being born, I say. He nods or smiles, and I say something like “Then it’s about the soul? Ultimate reality?” The idea here isn't like oh life sucks let's be depressed, but like the Buddhist premise that we're born into this reality because we're spiritually stuck on something we can't let go of?

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Originally Posted by ThisWitheredMan

Daredevilpwn: Is that a known concept? Where can I read up on that sort of thing? I've read some spiritual sort of stuff but never anything quite as... specific as that information was. Really wondering where that came from.

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Let me tell you this. That conversation with that DC is definitely something to think about. Check out the book 'wanderer in the spirit lands'. There is this one bit that explains how each 'sphere' which is bascially a 'world' has its own vibration, the higher vibrational spheres the more beautiful it is.And the lower the vibration the crappier the world is. Also if you simply google up "raising your vibration' you will find tons of stuff about it. I also recommend if you haven't to read the books by Robert Monroe. "Journeys out of the body" "Far journeys" "ultimate journeys"

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Originally Posted by ThisWitheredMan

What do I need to do to make my DCs more deep? To me the coolest thing about LDing isn't the wish fulfillment (as cool as that is!), but the ability to achieve a deeper communication with your subconscious mind and a better understanding of what makes you you and your reality your reality.

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Well, to have deeper conversations, you'd want to avoid direct puppet like control. So that leaves you with context. Say there is a room full of dream character criminals, if I walk into that room and assume the role of either the police or the crime boss, those DCs will react differently to each. So for deeper conversations, I'd adopt a deeper mindset. Maybe bow or meditate with them, anything you associate with the "deepness" you're after.

But from what I've come to understand, the subconscious isn't that impressive of a thing. The way I see it, it's just a bunch of associations. Pretty random ones at that.

I think the Cusp makes a good point, ThisWitheredMan. You might simply be asking too much of your DC's.

When you are lucid, especially strongly lucid, you instinctively know that the DC's in your dream are constructs, and can be literally no deeper than the state of your current expectations. So, if you attempt to get them to speak intelligently to you or perhaps surprise you with some new chunk of wisdom, or even spontaneously behave like the people they resemble, your unconscious might just get confused, have nothing to give you, and offer up gibberish from the DC's. That could be unbalancing indeed, especially because a part of your waking awareness also knows nothing important can really come from this DC, unless you put it in first -- but then you wouldn't have needed to hear it ... Bye-bye balance.

Not so ironically, non-Lucids are often crowded with "wise" DC's, but that is mostly because, without your waking-life self-awareness and memory present, you are unable to question the validity of the gibberish that gets poured upon you ... And, by the same token in NLD's enough gibberish gets tossed around that eventually something sounds deep!

I tend to be like the Cusp and shoo away my DC's, as I've never gleaned anything of any real value or novelty from them that I hadn't dumped into them a few seconds earlier, and I think there might be more efficient tools for dipping into the waters of your unconscious chaos. As the Cusp notes, working context is a good idea, as is messing with schemata and metaphor, both of which often cause DC's -- and your unconscious -- to "adapt" to your higher expectations and help you form new ideas, feelings, or perhaps just cooler scenerios. But even then the DC's won't "tell" you anything new, clever, or be just like the folks they represent ... Unless you're not lucid!

Sometimes, I suppose, LD'ing can be a lonely business...

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Originally Posted by The Cusp

But from what I've come to understand, the subconscious isn't that impressive of a thing. The way I see it, it's just a bunch of associations. Pretty random ones at that.

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Originally Posted by Sageous

You might simply be asking too much of your DC's.

That could be unbalancing indeed, especially because a part of your waking awareness also knows nothing important can really come from this DC, unless you put it in first -- but then you wouldn't have needed to hear it ... Bye-bye balance.

Not so ironically, non-Lucids are often crowded with "wise" DC's, but that is mostly because, without your waking-life self-awareness and memory present, you are unable to question the validity of the gibberish that gets poured upon you ... And, by the same token in NLD's enough gibberish gets tossed around that eventually something sounds deep!

I tend to be like the Cusp and shoo away my DC's, as I've never gleaned anything of any real value or novelty from them that I hadn't dumped into them a few seconds earlier, and I think there might be more efficient tools for dipping into the waters of your unconscious chaos. As the Cusp notes, working context is a good idea, as is messing with schemata and metaphor, both of which often cause DC's -- and your unconscious -- to "adapt" to your higher expectations and help you form new ideas, feelings, or perhaps just cooler scenerios. But even then the DC's won't "tell" you anything new, clever, or be just like the folks they represent ... Unless you're not lucid!

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I'd like to respectfully disagree with you guys about the nature of the subconscious. Without getting into a long-winded explanation or debate, needless to say I have firm convictions that there is much more to the subconscious mind than the two of you seem to believe. My beliefs are less than mainstream, however, so I don't fault you for disagreeing. I definitely do not agree that my awareness "knows nothing really important can come from this DC, unless you put it in first." What makes you so sure? How can you actually know for sure that this is true? If you would cite your own experiences with DCs, how can you be sure your own expectation that they are only constructs causes them to be so? I firmly believe that the subconscious mind is highly intelligent and aware, and more than capable of the types of things I want it to do. I have a lot of personal experiences (lcoughscoughd) backing this belief, but I've also read plenty of material from other people who have themselves had similar experiences. I tend to shy away from absolutes in general, though. Could be a variation on how we view things.

If you're interested in possibly broadening your beliefs, check out this book. It's what got me into all this in the first place. He has many very interesting experiences that I intend to have myself.
http://geekboy.57o9.org/Lucid%20Drea...20waggoner.pdf

^^ Fair enough; never mind, then!

Can I just add, though, that I have plenty of "belief" in the depth, power, and potential of the unconscious? I would have rather you simply disagreed than chose to pity my limited beliefs (which is an unbelievably incorrect stance); that seems more than a bit disingenuous.

I've also read Waggoner (and Monroe, and many others like them), and strongly recommend that you don't base your search solely on his writings. Trust yourself before him; they're your dreams, not his.

I would still be curious to hear your side of things in further detail, though! How DO you know for sure that it's not your own expectation for them to be mere constructs that makes them so? :P

You had to post that right as I was gong to bed. :(

I'll explain tomorrow.

Hey ThisWitheredMan. Why not make a post explaining why you believe DC's are more than just mental constructs. It would be an interesting debate. If we do that here then it would become offtopic.

By the way have you looked up "raising your vibrations" yet?

Sageous, I apologize if it came across like I was 'pitying' you. I wasn't trying to put you down or anything like that, but I think that comes with the territory here. Full disclosure, I think I used to see things more like you seem to, and now I see them this way, and I pity myself for having been what I perceive as narrow minded, or succumbing to my own expectation that things are ultimately mundane. Obviously I can't be certain you are quite in line with how I used to see things, and I don't mean to categorize you in any way. My point is that, though I don't intend to convey condescension, it's impossible to veil that implication entirely (without being ingenuine or truncating my own thoughts) because it's inherent to the difference in our viewpoints. I meant no disrespect.

^^ No worries, ThisWitheredMan. I have a pretty thick skin. Just defending my mystical honor, I suppose.

Someday when you catch me waxing metaphysical and transcendental (hang around here long enough and you will) about the "true" and untapped depths of the unconscious, you're welcome to remind me of my apparent hypocrisy regarding the importance of DC's!

... Only apparent, though, because I still believe that commiserating with DC's is not the best route to the core of your unconscious... I was hoping that the Cusp would address your question above first, though, because I have a feeling he'll be more clear and less abrasive than me.

:cheers:

Ok. First to address the charge of being narrow minded. Everything I learned about dreams has come from shared dreaming. 2 people entered my dreams and trolled me for weeks until, rendering everything I thought I knew about dreams useless. It was only by watching what they were doing to me that figured out how dreams work. I think the waking world is a huge shared dream, and that the basics of dream control work in the waking world. I think magic and dream control are the same things, and my knowledge of dream control allows me to jump into any magical discussion, because they are the same thing. Hell, just the other night, I figured out the secret to invisibility!

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Originally Posted by ThisWitheredMan

How DO you know for sure that it's not your own expectation for them to be mere constructs that makes them so? :P

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Because it's not based entirely on my own dreams. I've been reading other people's dreams since there have been dream websites, and this model works for everyone regardless of their personal belief system.

90% of dream control advice is based on an individual's personal paradigm. I like to think the dream control advice I offer takes a step back and helps people work with these paradigms and belief systems. ALso to give them the freedom to not limit themselves to their routine focus points, what Castaneda called fluidity.

The subconscious can be mundane, amazing, mysterious, scary. Each one can be absolute truth for the individual, but that doesn't change anything for anyone else.

The way I see the subconscious is just the total sum of your personal archetypes. Archetypes being the sum total of associations you gave to any given topic. There are going to be associations we didn't know we formed, and as far as I'm concerned, that's the only mystery the subconscious holds. I tend to view this sort of programming my brain has picked up without my knowledge or consent as malware, and I sure don't go seeking wisdom from a computer virus.

I just think you're expecting too much from your DCs. There's a thread on here somewhere about the things DCs says. It's pretty funny.

That's not to say you couldn't get something deep out of them. There's a video lecture by the God Helmet guy, where he talks about people who think they have been told the secret to the universe in a dream. It's so deep, so profound, so mind blowing, so simple. So then the person wakes up and writes it down so as not to forget it. The next morning they check what they wrote and it's complete meaningless nonsense. He explains that the brain can release chemicals that can make anything seem profound.

Here's an example of the subconscious being useful in a dream. in the 18th centure, Emmanuel Sweedenborg was trying to figure out the cause of tooth decay. He had some hypnogogic imagery which started off as a tooth because he was so focused on the probem of tooth decay.

This HI of the tooth decayed, and then it morphed into curdled milk. Upon rousing himself he realized that milk goes bad because of bacteria, and concluded bacteria is what causes tooth decay. His subconscious was useful in this situation, but the archetypal structure that revelation took is glaringly apparent.

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Originally Posted by Sageous

... Only apparent, though, because I still believe that commiserating with DC's is not the best route to the core of your unconscious... I was hoping that the Cusp would address your question above first, though, because I have a feeling he'll be more clear and less abrasive than me.

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Fair enough. What I have read, the things that describe DC's as fairly versatile, also suggests that there ARE deeper ways to explore the unconscious. I suppose I'm not ready to give up on DCs just yet :P

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Originally Posted by The Cusp

There are going to be associations we didn't know we formed, and as far as I'm concerned, that's the only mystery the subconscious holds. I tend to view this sort of programming my brain has picked up without my knowledge or consent as malware, and I sure don't go seeking wisdom from a computer virus.

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It's not necessarily about seeking wisdom. Whether or not you consider it malware, it is still present (repressed/hidden) in your psyche and affecting the operation of your mind. If you uncover and reconcile the repressed content, you free yourself from its influence. This was the mechanism of much of the self-change I have undergone in my life (primarily with the help of entheogens that allowed me to delve into my own unconscious and begin mapping its hidden contents.

I think maybe I should clarify or restate, that I leave open the possibility that external wisdom can come to my dreams without coming from my unconscious, because I do not necessarily believe dreaming occurs entirely within my own mind and nowhere else. The dream I quoted high above about emotions and vibratory levels, in my eyes, could have come from some kind of external source contacting me through my dreams. I suppose I lumped this in with 'the unconscious,' but it doesn't necessarily have to come from my own mind.

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Originally Posted by ThisWitheredMan

Fair enough. What I have read, the things that describe DC's as fairly versatile, also suggests that there ARE deeper ways to explore the unconscious. I suppose I'm not ready to give up on DCs just yet :P

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I think maybe I should clarify or restate, that I leave open the possibility that external wisdom can come to my dreams without coming from my unconscious, because I do not necessarily believe dreaming occurs entirely within my own mind and nowhere else. The dream I quoted high above about emotions and vibratory levels, in my eyes, could have come from some kind of external source contacting me through my dreams. I suppose I lumped this in with 'the unconscious,' but it doesn't necessarily have to come from my own mind.

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That, ThisWitheredMan, is a horse of a different color -- and may be worth its own thread. Sure, there are better ways, I think, to tap the wells of your unconscious mind, but DC's are without a doubt the point men of communication with external sources!

I made the mistake of lumping what I am talking about in with 'the unconscious' because I was describing it for people who I'd perceive as wanting to believe that everything going on in your dreams is ultimately coming from your own unconscious, so any thought of external contact would just be a more complex internal contact (to those types), instead of being directly clear about what I thought it could be, myself.

I've found that when you attempt to perceive what other people want to believe, you wind up seeing very little. Better to say exactly what you want to say, and let the chips fall where they may, I think!

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Originally Posted by ThisWitheredMan

I think maybe I should clarify or restate, that I leave open the possibility that external wisdom can come to my dreams without coming from my unconscious, because I do not necessarily believe dreaming occurs entirely within my own mind and nowhere else. The dream I quoted high above about emotions and vibratory levels, in my eyes, could have come from some kind of external source contacting me through my dreams. I suppose I lumped this in with 'the unconscious,' but it doesn't necessarily have to come from my own mind.

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I won't disagree with that. You just have to be very good at identifying your own dream content before you can start spotting the outside influences. Plus your own personal psyche can still flavor the outside stuff. Say different people encountered some outside entity. One might see it as an angel, another as a wise man, another as an alien. There is a lot of that in shared dreaming where both parties see something different that is sort of the same on an archetypal level.