Thread: The Nature of Dream Control

Originally Posted by moonshine

I've another idea. Why don't you stop giving me attention and see if I cease to exist?

Actually, it's high time I do just that. If I hadn't bothered to respond to any of your posts, you wouldn't still be posting this crap.

Like I do with annoying DCs, I'm now going to ignore you into oblivion. Not literally of course, but you're not worthy of my attention, so for all intents and purposes, you no longer exist to me. At least in this thread. I may still burn you when you start spouting your crap in other threads. It's just too easy and hard to resist.

Why nobody is criticizing the basic points of this thread? I think that the attention theory is incorrect. But as there are no criticisms, it looks like it falls to me to criticize.

Everything in your dreams requires your attention to exist.

That's untrue.

Consider all those cases when you were doing something, and then suddenly a dream character would walk up to you whom you haven't seen anywhere in the vicinity previously. Where did he come from? He certainly didn't require your attention to become existent, he simply appeared and started to act without your invitation.

Therefore it's not true that everything in a dream requires your attention to exist. Many elements of a dream are enacted subconsciously, and whatever made them existent and whatever makes them act in certain ways is out of control and doesn't operate through your attention.

It's true that it's possible to make things non-existent by ignoring them in a LD. However the notion of stopping something to exist by ignoring it isn't related to attention. It's related to a subconscious belief that if you stop seeing something in a dream, it will vanish. If you had a different belief, things would be different. Take a person in this thread who made a tsunami disappear by ignoring it, it's obvious that it worked this way because he expected it to work this way. In other words, it's normal dream control, you achieve what you expect to achieve. That doesn't tell us anything about objective rules of attention, neither that it's involved in any way at all.

The more attention you give to one element, the more detail it creates in relation to what you are focused on.

So for testing purposes I stared at my hand during a LD. I stared at it and stared, and it proceeded to look the same. I stared more and more, then considerably more, and finally my little finger changed its color slightly.

So, it kind of "proves" that giving a lot of attention to something produces new details related to it, but I didn't notice enough details to speak of. Therefore it's wrong that the more attention you give something, the more details it produces.

In fact, this method proves that it works in an opposite way: it made my hand look like the normal hand for a considerably longer time that it would if I didn't stare at it uninterruptedly! My last statement can easily be checked by looking away from something in a dream for a while and then looking back at it, in this case the object you looked at will show new details or will otherwise be changed. Interruption does introduce new details, but uninterrupted staring impedes this process.

Originally Posted by Arutad

Originally Posted by The Cusp

Everything requires your attention to exist.

That's untrue.

Consider all those cases when you were doing something, and then suddenly a dream character would walk up to you whom you haven't seen anywhere in the vicinity previously. Where did he come from? He certainly didn't require your attention to become existent, he simply appeared and started to act without your invitation.

If it wasn't true, then that would imply that the dream world is a stable world just like RL. That is clearly untrue.

Those dream characters that appear from nowhere do not have a previous history or existence, except for recurring characters.

Where did they come from? They were spawned from personal archetypes or schemata. They did not exist before you layed eyes on them or otherwise conceived of them in some dark corner of your mind.

Originally Posted by Arutad

Therefore it's not true that everything in a dream requires your attention to exist. Many elements of a dream are enacted subconsciously, and whatever made them existent and whatever makes them act in certain ways is out of control and doesn't operate through your attention.

The initial posts I made in this thread were far from complete, so perhaps I wasn't very clear initially. Your attention is merely the trigger or catalyst. What it triggers are archetypes, so focusing on the ocean for instance could yield anything form sea monsters to tidal waves, anything you associate with the ocean.

There is a lot of randomness involved in which direction those archetypes might go, but emotions do limit the range of possibilities.

Originally Posted by Arutad

If you had a different belief, things would be different. Take a person in this thread who made a tsunami disappear by ignoring it, it's obvious that it worked this way because he expected it to work this way. In other words, it's normal dream control, you achieve what you expect to achieve.

Saying what you expect to happen actually happens is the single biggest misconception about LDing there is. Even the most experienced LDers experience countless failures while attempting things. If they didn't expect those things to work, they never would have tried it in the first place.

It's not expectations that limit people, it's archetypes. I'm reminded of one of TwoShadows' LDs, where she repeatedly tried to pass through a solid wall but kept smashing into it (that image cracks me up!). It wasn't her expectations that failed her, she tried like hell. It was the well developed archetype that solid objects are just that, solid.

In order to override that particular hurdle, one would need to supercede that archetype of solid matter with one of something less substantial like mist, or something equally relevant to that individual. A physicist might use the space between particles, while someone into astral projection might use the insubstantial astral body.

Saying control relies on expectations is close, yet innacurate.

Originally Posted by Arutad

So for testing purposes I stared at my hand during a LD. I stared at it and stared, and it proceeded to look the same. I stared more and more, then considerably more, and finally my little finger changed its color slightly.

What did you expect to happen? You succeded in producing a change in the color of your finger. Hands are a fairly stable archetype. Had you been prone to warts in RL, you might have seen warts. But we experience very few variations in the appearance of our hands throughout our lifetimes. Perhaps if you had focused on the discoloration in your finger and then checked the rest of your body, you might have seen discolorations on the rest of your body as well.

The very first time I looked at my hands in a dream (and only time) I saw various things flashing in and out of existance in the palms of my hands like flipping through the pages of a book, like when you make animations in the corners and flip the pages. There was money, keys, sticks of gum, food, everything and anything I might possibly hold in my hands. That's what an archetype is, the sum total of associations with a certain subject or idea.

I appreciate your attempt at trying this out, but that one example is like saying just because you saw one car on fire, that all cars catch on fire.

I've experimented with this thouroghly in several lucids, as well poured over other people's DJs. Next time instead of your hands, try looking at some squirming insects, even better if they are stinging insects, and see how fast they multiply. The classic tooth dream is a great example if a rather extreme one.

Originally Posted by Arutad

In fact, this method proves that it works in an opposite way: it made my hand look like the normal hand for a considerably longer time that it would if I didn't stare at it uninterruptedly! My last statement can easily be checked by looking away from something in a dream for a while and then looking back at it, in this case the object you looked at will show new details or will otherwise be changed. Interruption does introduce new details, but uninterrupted staring impedes this process.

There, you've said it yourself, you didn't allow for any dramatic change to occur. You were limited to the first rule that everything requires your attention to exist, thereby maintaining a solid image of your hands. I don't think we disagree on how those changes take place. THat's one aspect I never got into much, mainly due to the lack of discussion that took place in this thread. I thank you for speaking up, and also welcome anything else you might have to say on the subject.

Also Arutad, perhaps your focus was too narrow. I was always assuming there were were several elements in play. Perhaps you were so intent on your hands that in that particular dream that everyone of those elements had to do with your hand?

If you want to play with your hands, do it in the cold snow by a warm fire. Then concentrate on your hands switching between the cold snow or hot fire as your secondary focus. It brings in the new element of certain physical sensations which are often absent in dreams unless you are otherwise paying attention to you body.

I also assumed there were themes already play, dream locations, characters, story lines,

ground sky and everything in between.

Then throw emotions into the mix, and you a whole other range of possibilities. You zoned out everything but your hands. You have to let some other element in to work with, otherwise all you're left with is everything requires your attention to exist.

If you were to try with your hands again with only a few elements in play, you'll start to notice the unique range of possibilities every area focus offers, visual or otherwise. Certain themes that you can find or induce in a reliable manner. But fewer elements means fewer possibilities available to you, so having multiple elements in play grants you multiple ways to fine tune your control.

The number of elements in play isn't as important as the ability to balance them out as needed. Or just travel through them, bringing in new elements and letting go the bothersome ones to see where it lead you.

It's in that context I say everything requires your attention to exist, the more attention you give something the more related detail it creates.




I thought I was done writing stuff in this thread, but you guys got me thinking about something I asked in my original post, "Do emotions require your attention to exist?"

I'm thinking emotions are ways to focus attention, independent of where your attention is placed. We focus on different specific things in every emotional state.

Going with the ocean archetype again, you have a huge amount of things associated with that concept. If you're focused on the ocean scene enough that it's creating an ocean dream, any number of thing related the ocean might appear. That's a lot of possibilities.

But only a few of those possibilities are going to be associated with strong emotions. This limited number of possibilities creates a predictable result. Emotions are powerful means of change in dreams because they determine or rearrange how you focus on things.


Now I want to end this rambling by saying dream control is exactly like refining a search engine query for something obscure. There are a lot of possible results for both search engines and dreams, most of them spam. But combining the right mix of words or elements you have in play, you can find the specific result you desire out of a seemingly limitless number of overall possibilities. Some elements bring you closer to your goal, some don't help so you remove them from your querry.

Cusp, a related question I wanted to hear some input on:

Often, when an archetype comes into play, there is some action in the dream before the switch(i.e. things happen before my teeth fall out). What would you say the delay is due to? The brain is working slowly enough that there is noticable time before a change? The brain slows down changes to the dream on purpose to preserve the flow of the story? Something within the archetype relating to speed? Something else entirely?

I moved this week, don't have easy internet access hooked up yet, so haven't been around much.

Originally Posted by Licity

Cusp, a related question I wanted to hear some input on:

Often, when an archetype comes into play, there is some action in the dream before the switch(i.e. things happen before my teeth fall out). What would you say the delay is due to? The brain is working slowly enough that there is noticable time before a change? The brain slows down changes to the dream on purpose to preserve the flow of the story? Something within the archetype relating to speed? Something else entirely?

That's something I'm going to need to look into more, the art of change. Thus far I've just taken for granted that change does occur. I haven't studied where and under what circumstances change takes place yet.

But I think the timing issue is just a matter of waiting for an opportunity for change to occur.

Keeping a dream stable is a balancing act of focusing your attention on certain elements and avoiding or dealing other less desirable elements. So generally speaking, change will occur when you attention becomes unbalanced. Either too much on one element, causing it be grow and become more real, or not enough on other elements, causing them to become unstable.

As Arutad mentioned, things do tend to come out of nowhere. Off the top of my head, the three big change inducers are

-Looking away from something, then looking back
-Looking really close at something allowing change to occur outside your field of vision.
-Just looking somewhere new.

Originally Posted by Arutad

When you dream you don't normally have consciousness and any directed attention to speak of. It's a play of your subconsciousness. Yet you can remember yourself in buildings and rooms that seems stable, you have characters speaking to you on their own.

You don't do it, your attention is not involved in the process.

I think we always have consciousness. We are conscious during the day, and any non lucid dream seems like reality at the time, so I don't really see a difference. We react to our environment, make decisions, ect. The subconscious just determines the landscape we inhabit. The consciousness is always there dealing with it.

Originally Posted by Arutad

But that's what I'm talking about. There is a place in your mind that creates them, and it doesn't require your attention, it doesn't require you to be aware of what it does. It makes dreams on its own, attention is not involved in supporting them.

I'm saying that because that's my experience, not because I'm thinking it theoretically.

The conscious and subconscious are always in play. The consciousness directs what for the subconscious will take.

Originally Posted by Arutad

An example would do. Usually if I LD in my apartment I want to go out, so I jump down through the window. Windows are usually closed. I had no problem jumping through them for a long time, never felt any obstacle on my way. But once I tried to run through and banged my forehead on it. I was surprised, tried again and banged my forehead again. Then I stepped back and remembered how I never had troubles before. I actually thought that no matter what happened, now that I remember that I never had troubles before and have certainty of success, I won't fail. And I jumped through the window with no problem.

My certainty of success was an expectation, and it changed everything.

That wasn't expectation. You defaulted on the archetype of matter being solid because that's the most active and well defined one you have. You get more data confirming that in RL than any other model.

Then you overrode or invoked a new archetype, the formed from your previous experiences passing through the window.

The most likely reason you were able to pass through that window in the first place is because you were more focused on flying than on the obstacle solid matter might present. That forged a new archetype that you are now able to draw on by focusing your attention onto it, and becomes more reliable the more you use it.

Another reason I think expectation isn't accurate is because of the word "NOT". You walk around in a lucid repeating out loud "There are NOT going to be zombies, there are NOT going to be zombies...", while looking around to make sure there aren't any zombies.

It would be a pretty safe bet to say the average person in going to encounter a zombie in that situation. Trying to preemptively negate zombies in that case still invokes the zombie archetype, causing the very opposite of your expectations.

Originally Posted by Arutad

I regularly look at various objects in my LDs, not only at my hand. The same. You look at something, it remains what it is. You look away, it changes.

The problem is that it doesn't work the way you think it does. You don't need to look at something to let it change, you need to look away from it.

Of course looking at something will work too, but only because you expect a change, not because you look at something. It's the same old dream control, you expect associated details or things to spring up and it happens. It doesn't make it "a law" of the dream-world. And it's not the nature of dream control in general, it's the rule of your personal dream-control that you created for yourself.

I think you misunderstand. Directing your attention is not limited to the visual range of sensory input. It can be a feeling, a concept/theme/idea, a sound, a smell, a memory. What you look at can be a very minor part in all that. It's things that catch your attention and stick in the back of your mind that count.

I never really got how change occurs. Seemed almost redundant since dreams are so full of change. I completely agree change occurs when you look away. When I said change occurs by focusing on something, I meant focusing on something new.

I still maintain this thread is not about my personal control system. It's a general purpose system that transcends all belief systems. It allows you to take advantage of your own personal system, and whatever that may be is of no relevance other than incidental to this discussion. A dream is a dream. Whatever your beliefs they work in somewhat predictable ways you can take advantage of. I'm doing my best here to sum up those generalizations in terms that will apply to everyone.

Originally Posted by The Cusp

If it wasn't true, then that would imply that the dream world is a stable world just like RL. That is clearly untrue.

When you dream you don't normally have consciousness and any directed attention to speak of. It's a play of your subconsciousness. Yet you can remember yourself in buildings and rooms that seems stable, you have characters speaking to you on their own.

You don't do it, your attention is not involved in the process.

But you say that everything in a dream requires attention to exist. Then why do we have dreams at all, why lack of attention doesn't prevent this spontaneous manifestation of the subconsciousness to happen each night?

Because our attention is not needed for our dreams to exist!

Where did they come from? They were spawned from personal archetypes or schemata. They did not exist before you layed eyes on them or otherwise conceived of them in some dark corner of your mind.

But that's what I'm talking about. There is a place in your mind that creates them, and it doesn't require your attention, it doesn't require you to be aware of what it does. It makes dreams on its own, attention is not involved in supporting them.

Saying what you expect to happen actually happens is the single biggest misconception about LDing there is. Even the most experienced LDers experience countless failures while attempting things. If they didn't expect those things to work, they never would have tried it in the first place.

I'm saying that because that's my experience, not because I'm thinking it theoretically.

An example would do. Usually if I LD in my apartment I want to go out, so I jump down through the window. Windows are usually closed. I had no problem jumping through them for a long time, never felt any obstacle on my way. But once I tried to run through and banged my forehead on it. I was surprised, tried again and banged my forehead again. Then I stepped back and remembered how I never had troubles before. I actually thought that no matter what happened, now that I remember that I never had troubles before and have certainty of success, I won't fail. And I jumped through the window with no problem.

My certainty of success was an expectation, and it changed everything.

Next time instead of your hands, try looking at some squirming insects, even better if they are stinging insects, and see how fast they multiply. The classic tooth dream is a great example if a rather extreme one.

I regularly look at various objects in my LDs, not only at my hand. The same. You look at something, it remains what it is. You look away, it changes.

There, you've said it yourself, you didn't allow for any dramatic change to occur. You were limited to the first rule that everything requires your attention to exist, thereby maintaining a solid image of your hands. I don't think we disagree on how those changes take place.

The problem is that it doesn't work the way you think it does. You don't need to look at something to let it change, you need to look away from it.

Of course looking at something will work too, but only because you expect a change, not because you look at something. It's the same old dream control, you expect associated details or things to spring up and it happens. It doesn't make it "a law" of the dream-world. And it's not the nature of dream control in general, it's the rule of your personal dream-control that you created for yourself.