Thread: The Nature of Dream Control

I believe there are but two simple rules that govern and dictate the shape every single aspect of dreaming. I believe this holds the key to the true nature of dream control, and that understanding it leads to much more frequent lucid dreams as well.

I'm also beginning to suspect that this rule applies to the waking world as well, and that the dream control skills mastered through understanding of this concept can be used to influence the waking world. I expect this to be demonstratable, not as a physical proof, but as something that can be experienced.

1. Everything in your dreams requires your attention to exist.

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

It sounds overly simple, but the implications are infinitely complex. Every single dream unfolds according to those two rules without exception. This isn't anything new, but something you've been doing all along without being aware of it. It may not be clear at first, but like one of those hidden pictures you have to look at cross eyed, it eventually jumps out at you. You just have to learn how to see it.

I have a lot to say on this subject, and hardly know where to begin. I'll be making a series of posts where I try to expand on various aspects and applications, many of which may have small exercises, tasks or questions. I'll of course try to answer any questions in the meantime.

Either this will completely change the way you dream, or I'm completely nuts. I'm anxious to find out which, so feedback and participation will be greatly appreciated.


I want to note that strong emotions have an overwhelming role in shaping dreams, much like a colored lens. Emotions are still something you pay attention to, but their effects are so dramatic I feel they deserve a special mention.

1. Everything in your dreams requires your attention to exist.


While this may seem obvious, it's still one of the most basic principles of dreaming. The only things that exist in a dream are things that you are aware of. It's not complete world that you wander around in and explore. As soon as you stop paying attention to something and forget about it, it ceases to exist. If you are in a closed room and can't see the outside, then the outside doesn't exist. When you open to door to go outside, it could lead anywhere, into space or hell or the city of the mole people.

The point is, nothing exists in your dreams until you become aware of it. Much like Schrodinger's Cat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat

This can be a useful tool I've used effectively in the past to deal enemies while lucid. If you don't pay something any attention, it will cease to exist. Kind of like when your parents told you as a kid to just ignore whoever is bothering you (I hate it when they're right!).

The skill to be learned here is to learn what things you pay attention to. Ask different people who walked down the same street what they saw, and a bird watcher would tell you about the rare wood pecker he saw, a child would tell you about the playground they passed, your wife would tell you about those shoes on sale, and I would tell you about that girl in the short skirt. What are the things that captivate your attention, and how do these things make you feel? How do they affect your life?

Some things you pay attention to are beneficial, and some are detrimental. If you are prone to only noticing the bad in people, then interacting with people is going to be a pain in the ass. If you focus more on the good in people, then it can be a rewarding experience.

You have to learn to selectively ignore the things that don't do you any good, and focus on those things that accomplish your goals. During a dream, the effects of doing so are quite drastic, but practicing this while awake will have echoed results in your dreams, as well as be beneficial to you on several levels in RL.

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

The first rule determines the content of your dreams, this one determines how much of that content is going to be in you dreams.

The key to using this rule to your advantage is balance. Too much attention can pull you in like a black hole, creating a universe of detail which can also captivate your attention, further aggravating the situation. On the other hand, if you don't pay elements in your dreams enough attention, they become unstable in accordance with the first rule of dreaming, that things need your attention to exist.

There are many "traps" in dreaming that capture your attention, distracting you with unnecessary detail. A good example is a tooth dream. You notice something wrong with your teeth, take a closer look, and then find more things wrong with them the more you look. This is something you don't want to get trapped in, but this kind of extreme can be used to your advantage. By focusing more on the positive and useful elements you will overwrite the dream scene with new detail. The degree of change depends on what you focus on (first rule) and how much you focus (second rule).

Let's take a closer look at the second half of this rule now. The more attention you give to one element, the more detail it creates in relation to what you are focused on. Initially I thought there would be a great many things vying for your attention which had a culmulative effect on shaping the dream. But in practice there were very few main elements, and the links between them were very straightforward.

The detail that arises from your increased attention or focus is formed by mental associations in your mind in relation to the element of your focus. These mental associations can take many forms, some direct, some abstract, like associated memories tied to a place or object. But this doesn't mean you have to settle for random associations. There are always unlimited ways to zoom your focus, even when there are relatively few elements to choose from.

Say you were to focus on a physical object. You could focus on what it is, what it's used for. You could focus on it's age, history, previous owner. You could focus on it's texture or what it's made of. Or you could use it to reach related memories, perhaps ones with useful elements you could use or expand on. Try each of those perspectives while experiencing strong emotions and you can tweak the flavor of your dream even further. Each of these approaches to the same element will yield different yet reliably predictable results.

A Deeper Look at the Effect of Emotions

Again, I feel emotions deserve a special mention. I'm assuming for the moment that emotions are something that require your attention to exist as well. But I'm not too sure about that at all, and the emotional influence may turn out a third rule. Anyone have any thoughts on weather emotions are something that require your attention to exist, or whether they they are independent entities?

Emotions are like a filter or like a color lens. Each emotion shapes your dreams in predictable ways, affecting both your surroundings and the behavior of DCs. Anger will cause harsh colors and sharp angles, and my cause DCs to fight or fear you. The effects of fear are obvious, painfully so in dreams.

Both this Emotional technique and the the Attention technique can be used independently, or in combination with each other. Sometimes it may be better to use one technique over the other. The emotional technique won't change the physical elements as drastically as the Attention technique, but will change the look, feel and mood of the dream, as well as influence DC behavior.

By practicing this you will begin to notice that DCs are puppets and you are the puppet master, only your emotions are the strings. You can influence the way DCs act, and the types of things they say, but not what they say. It's interesting to note that people in RL react the same way in the presence of strong emotions as do DCs. After the confidence and practice gained from using this in dreams, it would stand to reason that this could be used to influence people in RL as well. It seems people do this all the time anyways, but very clumsily for the most part.

You must be capable of being able to summon up any emotion at will, and not let the ones that arise naturally to rule you. The benefits of positive emotions are obvious, but even the so called negative emotions have their uses. Anger can often make thing go your way. Even fear could be used to lure someone close, then you switch to a confident rage. But you would have to actually feel the fear, not feign it. And always make sure you are in control of the emotions, not the other way around.

Strong emotions are best as well. So strong they radiate out from you, or perhaps vibrate would be a more appropriate term. I think this part ties into Aquanina's work with High Vibrational Frequency.

This can be practiced in dreams, or in RL like a reality check. As with the previous parts, these things become more apparent in RL after you become accustomed to seeing the dramatic effect they have in dreams.

Schemas and AI

I was going to expand on Archetypes, Schemas, and Artificial Intelligenge to try to give a better understanding of the types of associations that are made when new detail is formed as a result of your attention. But it turn out Archetypes are a type of Schema, along with stereotypes, social roles, and worldviews. Of particular interest inception of the Schema concept.

The following article is from the Wikipedia entry on Schemas.

The original concept of schemata is linked with that of reconstructive memory as proposed and demonstrated in a series of experiments by Bartlett (1932). By presenting participants with information that was unfamiliar to their cultural backgrounds and expectations and then monitoring how they recalled these different items of information (stories, etc.), Bartlett was able to establish that individuals' existing schemata and stereotypes influence not only how they interpret 'schema-foreign' new information but also how they recall the information over time. One of his most famous investigations involved asking participants to read a Native American folk tale, "The War of the Ghosts," and recall it several times up to a year later. All the participants transformed the details of the story in such a way that it reflected their cultural norms and expectations, i.e. in line with their schemata. The factors that influenced their recall were:

* Omission of information that was considered irrelevant to a participant;
* Transformation of some of the detail, or of the order in which events etc were recalled; a shift of focus and emphasis in terms of what was considered the most important aspects of the tale;
* Rationalisation: details and aspects of the tale that would not make sense would be 'padded out' and explained in an attempt to render them comprehensible to the individual in question;
* Cultural shifts: The content and the style of the story were altered in order to appear more coherent and appropriate in terms of the cultural background of the participant.

Bartlett's work was crucially important in demonstrating that long-term memories are neither fixed nor immutable but are constantly being adjusted as our schemata evolve with experience. In a sense it supports the existentialist view that we construct our past and present in a constant process of narrative/discursive adjustment, and that much of what we 'remember' is actually confabulated (adjusted and rationalised) narrative that allows us to think of our past as a continuous and coherent string of events, even though it is probable that large sections of our memory (both episodic and semantic) are irretrievable to our conscious memory at any given time.

Further work on the concept of schemas was conducted by Brewer and Treyens (1981) who demonstrated that the schema-driven expectation of the presence of an object was sometimes sufficient to trigger its erroneous recollection. An experiment was conducted where participants were requested to wait in a room identified as an academic's study and were later asked about the room's contents. A number of the participants recalled having seen books in the study whereas none were present. Brewer and Treyens concluded that the participants' expectations that books are present in academics' studies were enough to prevent their accurate recollection of the scenes.

For starters, lets look at the factors that influenced recall.

* Omission of information.
First rule, without your attention, things can't exist

* Transformation of some of the detail; a shift of focus and emphasis in terms of what was considered the most important aspects of the tale;
Again, a combination of the first and second rule, and your most powerful tool in dream control.

* Rationalisation: details and aspects of the tale that would not make sense would be 'padded out' and explained in an attempt to render them comprehensible to the individual in question;
Second rule, attention creates detail.

* Cultural shifts: The content and the style of the story were altered in order to appear more coherent and appropriate in terms of the cultural background of the participant.
This sounds like the effect emotions have on dreams. Is it possible different cultures have an identifying emotional state?

These factors responsible for flaws inconsistencies in long term memory just happen to be the tools of dream control! The links to memory make me wonder if dreams are really dynamic memories kept alive by our attention.


And now for an Artificial Intelligence approach. A binary yes or no system may be easier to picture than fancy notions like Schemata.

Consider training an artificial neural network to understand language, starting with a concept like tree. You could manually create links to words like grows, leaves, branches. Alternatively, you expose the network repeated instances of trees until it learns on it's own. Links to words like outside would be formed, but not all instances of trees would necessarily be outside, some may be indoors, so another link to indoors is formed. But the majority of trees being outside, the path to "outside" gets used more and gains weight, becomes more substantial. The more connections or paths your word has, then better the understanding your AI will have.

You have to learn to travel those weighted paths or synapses without getting lost within their endless nature.

I would like some feedback on this. I could go on and on, but if nobody cares, I'll keep it to myself.

Originally Posted by The Cusp

Schemas and AI

I was going to expand on Archetypes, Schemas, and Artificial Intelligenge to try to give a better understanding of the types of associations that are made when new detail is formed as a result of your attention. But it turn out Archetypes are a type of Schema, along with stereotypes, social roles, and worldviews. Of particular interest inception of the Schema concept.

The following article is from the Wikipedia entry on Schemas.

The original concept of schemata is linked with that of reconstructive memory as proposed and demonstrated in a series of experiments by Bartlett (1932). By presenting participants with information that was unfamiliar to their cultural backgrounds and expectations and then monitoring how they recalled these different items of information (stories, etc.), Bartlett was able to establish that individuals' existing schemata and stereotypes influence not only how they interpret 'schema-foreign' new information but also how they recall the information over time. One of his most famous investigations involved asking participants to read a Native American folk tale, "The War of the Ghosts," and recall it several times up to a year later. All the participants transformed the details of the story in such a way that it reflected their cultural norms and expectations, i.e. in line with their schemata. The factors that influenced their recall were:

* Omission of information that was considered irrelevant to a participant;
* Transformation of some of the detail, or of the order in which events etc were recalled; a shift of focus and emphasis in terms of what was considered the most important aspects of the tale;
* Rationalisation: details and aspects of the tale that would not make sense would be 'padded out' and explained in an attempt to render them comprehensible to the individual in question;
* Cultural shifts: The content and the style of the story were altered in order to appear more coherent and appropriate in terms of the cultural background of the participant.

Bartlett's work was crucially important in demonstrating that long-term memories are neither fixed nor immutable but are constantly being adjusted as our schemata evolve with experience. In a sense it supports the existentialist view that we construct our past and present in a constant process of narrative/discursive adjustment, and that much of what we 'remember' is actually confabulated (adjusted and rationalised) narrative that allows us to think of our past as a continuous and coherent string of events, even though it is probable that large sections of our memory (both episodic and semantic) are irretrievable to our conscious memory at any given time.

Further work on the concept of schemas was conducted by Brewer and Treyens (1981) who demonstrated that the schema-driven expectation of the presence of an object was sometimes sufficient to trigger its erroneous recollection. An experiment was conducted where participants were requested to wait in a room identified as an academic's study and were later asked about the room's contents. A number of the participants recalled having seen books in the study whereas none were present. Brewer and Treyens concluded that the participants' expectations that books are present in academics' studies were enough to prevent their accurate recollection of the scenes.

For starters, lets look at the factors that influenced recall.

* Omission of information.
First rule, without your attention, things can't exist

* Transformation of some of the detail; a shift of focus and emphasis in terms of what was considered the most important aspects of the tale;
Again, a combination of the first and second rule, and your most powerful tool in dream control.

* Rationalisation: details and aspects of the tale that would not make sense would be 'padded out' and explained in an attempt to render them comprehensible to the individual in question;
Second rule, attention creates detail.

* Cultural shifts: The content and the style of the story were altered in order to appear more coherent and appropriate in terms of the cultural background of the participant.
This sounds like the effect emotions have on dreams. Is it possible different cultures have an identifying emotional state?

These factors responsible for flaws inconsistencies in long term memory just happen to be the tools of dream control! The links to memory make me wonder if dreams are really dynamic memories kept alive by our attention.


And now for an Artificial Intelligence approach. A binary yes or no system may be easier to picture than fancy notions like Schemata.

Consider training an artificial neural network to understand language, starting with a concept like tree. You could manually create links to words like grows, leaves, branches. Alternatively, you expose the network repeated instances of trees until it learns on it's own. Links to words like outside would be formed, but not all instances of trees would necessarily be outside, some may be indoors, so another link to indoors is formed. But the majority of trees being outside, the path to "outside" gets used more and gains weight, becomes more substantial. The more connections or paths your word has, then better the understanding your AI will have.

You have to learn to travel those weighted paths or synapses without getting lost within their endless nature.

OK, the part about schemes was clear, even though I don't see how that's relevant to LDs. But the AI part... it's like it's Chinesse.

What you are saying about archetypes ties in with something I read in Huxley's The Gates of Perception. He argued that, rather than being an organ of thought, the brain was a "reducing valve" (I think he was using a plumbing metaphor!), whose role was to reduce the flood of information provided by the five senses to manageable proportions, by a process of filtering related to our previously acquired conceptions of the world.

I have the impression that the world in its raw state is extremely chaotic, and all living beings have to select and filter this flood of information to make sense of it. Perhaps what distinguishes humans from animals (if anything) is that we can reconfigure this process to a certain extent, although the flip side of that is that we are also subject to all kinds of mental diseases when the process goes wrong.

As you say, all of this becomes much more obvious in the context of the very plastic environment of LD.

This is actually the first time I've seen this (interesting) thread, and I don't have time to go through the whole thing yet, so I'll just respond to a few parts of it. Sorry if I only rehash what's already been said.

Originally Posted by The Cusp

1. Everything in your dreams requires your attention to exist.


While this may seem obvious, it's still one of the most basic principles of dreaming. The only things that exist in a dream are things that you are aware of. It's not complete world that you wander around in and explore. As soon as you stop paying attention to something and forget about it, it ceases to exist. If you are in a closed room and can't see the outside, then the outside doesn't exist. When you open to door to go outside, it could lead anywhere, into space or hell or the city of the mole people.

The point is, nothing exists in your dreams until you become aware of it. Much like Schrodinger's Cat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat

This can be a useful tool I've used effectively in the past to deal enemies while lucid. If you don't pay something any attention, it will cease to exist. Kind of like when your parents told you as a kid to just ignore whoever is bothering you (I hate it when they're right!).

The skill to be learned here is to learn what things you pay attention to. Ask different people who walked down the same street what they saw, and a bird watcher would tell you about the rare wood pecker he saw, a child would tell you about the playground they passed, your wife would tell you about those shoes on sale, and I would tell you about that girl in the short skirt. What are the things that captivate your attention, and how do these things make you feel? How do they affect your life?

Some things you pay attention to are beneficial, and some are detrimental. If you are prone to only noticing the bad in people, then interacting with people is going to be a pain in the ass. If you focus more on the good in people, then it can be a rewarding experience.

You have to learn to selectively ignore the things that don't do you any good, and focus on those things that accomplish your goals. During a dream, the effects of doing so are quite drastic, but practicing this while awake will have echoed results in your dreams, as well as be beneficial to you on several levels in RL.

Was it you I had a talk with about this, before, Cusp? The whole "does a DC have guts if you can't see them" thing? In either case, it's important to remember that "awareness" has many levels, leading even into subconscious awareness (I'm not saying you disagree, I'm just adding to the context ). So, that is to say, I'm not sure we have to actually see/hear/feel/etc something for it to exist in dreams. I believe that even a subconscious awareness - an activated schema that has not risen to the level of "conscious thought" - can affect a dream.

I've always found the schema concept fascinating, and I believe that this is how dreams progress (and why they often do so in a seemingly erratic nature). But, for this to be the case, that would mean that schematic concepts that we are not yet actively aware of still hold influence.

If you are dreaming that you are sitting in your room, with the door closed, one might say that the living room doesn't exist if you're not actively aware of it. But, being in such a familiar setting, your subconscious knows the kitchen is there, even if you're not thinking about it at the time. Does your mind already have some abstraction of the living room model created, ready to be thrown into the context of the dream, upon your walking out of the room? This would make sense, as with word schemas, the mind activates schemas for context even when the particular concept isn't being used.

For example: If someone says "Dream," the mind would probably activate schemas such as "Bed", "sleep", "night", "lucidity," "nightmare," "flight," etc. Anything that it could associate with "Dream." Even if you're not aware that these words are being gathered by your subconscious, and prepared to throw into the context of conversation, they are.

So, if the schemas that (I believe) conduct how dreams progress, then it's possible that just the most subtle trigger of a subconscious "living room" schema could create some sort of abstract model of how your mind will present your living room to you, whenever you decide to leave your room and walk into it.

Technically, you are still "aware," of the living room, before you become consciously attentive to it (albeit subconsciously), but it just makes you wonder exactly how aware of something you actually have to be, before it loses its (to use S. Cat terms) "superposition," and collapses into a solid state.

Originally Posted by The Cusp

A Deeper Look at the Effect of Emotions

Again, I feel emotions deserve a special mention. I'm assuming for the moment that emotions are something that require your attention to exist as well. But I'm not too sure about that at all, and the emotional influence may turn out a third rule. Anyone have any thoughts on weather emotions are something that require your attention to exist, or whether they they are independent entities?

Emotions are like a filter or like a color lens. Each emotion shapes your dreams in predictable ways, affecting both your surroundings and the behavior of DCs. Anger will cause harsh colors and sharp angles, and my cause DCs to fight or fear you. The effects of fear are obvious, painfully so in dreams.

Both this Emotional technique and the the Attention technique can be used independently, or in combination with each other. Sometimes it may be better to use one technique over the other. The emotional technique won't change the physical elements as drastically as the Attention technique, but will change the look, feel and mood of the dream, as well as influence DC behavior.

By practicing this you will begin to notice that DCs are puppets and you are the puppet master, only your emotions are the strings. You can influence the way DCs act, and the types of things they say, but not what they say. It's interesting to note that people in RL react the same way in the presence of strong emotions as do DCs. After the confidence and practice gained from using this in dreams, it would stand to reason that this could be used to influence people in RL as well. It seems people do this all the time anyways, but very clumsily for the most part.

You must be capable of being able to summon up any emotion at will, and not let the ones that arise naturally to rule you. The benefits of positive emotions are obvious, but even the so called negative emotions have their uses. Anger can often make thing go your way. Even fear could be used to lure someone close, then you switch to a confident rage. But you would have to actually feel the fear, not feign it. And always make sure you are in control of the emotions, not the other way around.

Strong emotions are best as well. So strong they radiate out from you, or perhaps vibrate would be a more appropriate term. I think this part ties into Aquanina's work with High Vibrational Frequency.

This can be practiced in dreams, or in RL like a reality check. As with the previous parts, these things become more apparent in RL after you become accustomed to seeing the dramatic effect they have in dreams.

That is really interesting. I've never really tried manipulating my emotions in dreams. I'm definitely going to have to experiment with that. I will offer that emotions don't necessarily require your attention to exist, but that they can be overwritten. A show I saw two nights ago actually helped convince me that emotions can exist with or without your awareness. It is common in some patients with Tourette's Syndrome to have emotional ticks, along side the well-known physical ticks. A neural firing will automatically flip any emotion on/off in an instant, like a light switch. When the victim snaps out of the tick (in the case of one girl they were talking about, at the least) they may have no recollection of the emotional breakdown they'd just had.

Also, it has been said that there are nerves in the brain that can be stimulated by (surgical) hand, that can make you break down into tears, or laugh hysterically.

But, even if they do have the power to "kick in," at involuntary times, I do believe that emotions can be controlled and manipulated, so I'd definitely to play around with that a bit, while dreaming, and see what sort of affects it has on the environment.

Anyone have any thoughts on whether emotions are something that require your attention to exist, or whether they they are independent entities?

I really feel that the initial sections were very interesting and worthwhile.

Later additions, delving deeper into Magic, Psychic Energy, Living dream characters etc just rankle me.

It almosts feels like one of those cults where your told a few things that seem to make sense about your general well being, http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...07&postcount=1 then BAM suddenly your souls are made from ancient space aliens and Tom Cruise is your best pal. http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...&postcount=175

My understanding is that the primary sections of DV are focused on practical aspects and science of lucid dreaming, which should be respected.

It seems to me that vunerable newbies, filled with the wonder and awe of lucid dreaming, might be all to ready to attach spiritual significance to dreams. Something they might not do when armed with more information and experience.

Personal beliefs, spirituality, religion and all that stuff is absolutely fine, but there is a dedicated space for discussion of the same.

Originally Posted by midgitmage

Anyone have any thoughts on whether emotions are something that require your attention to exist, or whether they they are independent entities?

Independent I think, but can be influenced to a small extent. Usually they're influenced only by suppression, though.

Originally Posted by moonshine

It seems to me that vunerable newbies, filled with the wonder and awe of lucid dreaming, might be all to ready to attach spiritual significance to dreams. Something they might not do when armed with more information and experience.

Personal beliefs, spirituality, religion and all that stuff is absolutely fine, but there is a dedicated space for discussion of the same.

QFT +1

Originally Posted by midgitmage

Anyone have any thoughts on whether emotions are something that require your attention to exist, or whether they they are independent entities?

I know this question was posed at the beginning of this thread and so I have had sometime to think about it and the short answer is that I feel fairly confident that emotions do not need a person's conscious attention to exist. (Whether conscious attention = awareness is another debate altogether, but I am asserting that they are for the purpose of this thread as that is what has seemed to be the general trend so far.)

I learnt this while working with teenagers that had been severely abused and are now all diagnosed as emotionally disturbed. I learnt quite a bit about processing emotions and emotional triggers from that job.

Also, I am not a neuroscientist so some of this may not be correct but I think that emotions reside in the lower part of the brain and awareness and thoughts exist in the higher part of the brain that developed later in human evolution. These two parts of the brain can and do operate independently at times and can even conflict with each other. So basically I think emotions belong to the lower brain and are more automated where as attention belongs to the higher brain and can be controlled more easily. I do think that subtle emotions that have not come into our conscious awareness can and do exist and do affect us in ways we aren’t aware of. The more powerful emotions force their way into our conscious awareness and in doing so affect us in ways that we are both aware and not aware of.

In my time working with emotional disturbed young men this became quite apparent. Often times a small trigger could set off a boy. The trigger might be something as small as a similar type of boots that a person wore that were similar to one of the boy’s abusers (this is a real life example and did happen). Such an environmental trigger would start to set the boy off in an emotional storm, sometimes instantly but sometimes slowly. A trained professional can watch as the boy gets slowly more and more unstable as minutes and hours go by until going into an emotional episode. In the early stages the boy might not even know there is anything wrong, might not even make a conscious connection between the boots of the new person and the boots of the abuser, but the subconscious does and starts to produce anxiety. Later the anxiety grows, but like I said a trained professional that knows the boy well and knows signs to look for might even be able to realize that the boy is going to have an emotional episode even before the boy does because the boy is not consciously aware of his emotions yet still they are there lurking below the surface subtly affecting the boys behavior.

Hope that makes sense. My posts get kind of long but I like to be clear. Thanks.

Interesting post, amazing detail and very usefull practical info.
once point, about emotion, i agree totally and completely, but i also, from experience know that DC's are not all puppets at all, infcat, many are very logical, and autonomous, almost separate from you, you simply cannot influence certain DC's as far as im concerned.
some may even challenge you in your authority and assert there own reality!
maybe im wrong and i just dont have enough control but that's how i feel at the minute.

you have hit the nail on the head though with emotions because without learning to regulate adn suppress certain emotions at certain times with a passive authority you will very quickly awaken!!

Originally Posted by Zenithar66

, but i also, from experience know that DC's are not all puppets at all, infcat, many are very logical, and autonomous, almost separate from you, you simply cannot influence certain DC's as far as im concerned.
some may even challenge you in your authority and assert there own reality!

You are always in complete control of your DCs even if you don't know it. YOu just have to learn to recognize how it happens. Most times it's just the context of the dream that determines their behavior, which can be altered. But micromanaging every aspect of the dream and every nuance of a DCs behavior is probably not the best use of lucid time. I'm satisfied to generalized alterations to their behavior.

So, like..
If I were watching T.V or playing a video game..
Everything around the T.V would pretty much vanish and my concentration would move all into the T.V..
Right? :s

Originally Posted by imnewtothis

So, like..
If I were watching T.V or playing a video game..
Everything around the T.V would pretty much vanish and my concentration would move all into the T.V..
Right? :s

Right. I'm reminded of dreams where I was watching TV and my surroundings faded away until I was in the show.

Or sometimes you'll see young kids watching TV, and you can talk to them but they don't hear you.

Originally Posted by Soulnote

With the first rule, what about things that newly appear as you explore? Like if you are just running through your dream world with you SC mind making things that you don't pay that much attention to. I'm not trying to poke holes in your theory but I am just asking you to elaborate on that.

I think of those as satellite properties of the main archetype your attention is focused on, or peripheral archetypes. They exist through the main active archetype, until you focus your attention onto one of them and then they become the dominant archetype that drives the creative process in your dreams.

That's pretty much the main algorithm of dreams. Main archetype produces satellite associations until one of those associated properties captures your attention and become the main archetype, which produces it's own association until one of those captures your attention... On an on all night.

Of course archetypes don't necessarily have to produce something new. They can alter existing elements. For instance, in a recent lucid dream, I was being chased by a motorbike gang. I ran into the woods where I could better ignore them, and a glowy pixie like thing caught my attention. When I looked back to the motor bike gang, they had become an elven army. Obviously I associate pixies with elves and such.

Originally Posted by The Cusp

I think of those as satellite properties of the main archetype your attention is focused on, or peripheral archetypes. They exist through the main active archetype, until you focus your attention onto one of them and then they become the dominant archetype that drives the creative process in your dreams.

That's pretty much the main algorithm of dreams. Main archetype produces satellite associations until one of those associated properties captures your attention and become the main archetype, which produces it's own association until one of those captures your attention... On an on all night.

Of course archetypes don't necessarily have to produce something new. They can alter existing elements. For instance, in a recent lucid dream, I was being chased by a motorbike gang. I ran into the woods where I could better ignore them, and a glowy pixie like thing caught my attention. When I looked back to the motor bike gang, they had become an elven army. Obviously I associate pixies with elves and such.

I'm 15, that made near no sense to me...

Don't understand archetype or algorithm, but I THINK peripheral is like peripheral vision, which humans have

how do i redream a dream ????. Please reply xxXxX

Originally Posted by kellywowo

how do i redream a dream ????. Please reply xxXxX

Just think about it as you're falling asleep. Try to remember as much detail as possible, like you're about to write it down in you DJ.

Happens to me quite often when I'm too lazy to get out of bed to take notes on the dream. I try to memorize the details as I drift off and usually end up continuing the dream.

HypnOgogic Imagery could interfere with that process by introducing other random themes, so it's not 100% guaranteed to work. But then again you don't always go through the HI stage, so if you keep at it you should be able to re-enter the dream eventually.

a

Originally Posted by The Cusp

HypnOAgogic Imagery

Originally Posted by The Cusp

Just think about it as you're falling asleep. Try to remember as much detail as possible, like you're about to write it down in you DJ.

Happens to me quite often when I'm too lazy to get out of bed to take notes on the dream. I try to memorize the details as I drift off and usually end up continuing the dream.

HypnOgogic Imagery could interfere with that process by introducing other random themes, so it's not 100% guaranteed to work. But then again you don't always go through the HI stage, so if you keep at it you should be able to re-enter the dream eventually.

Do not try! Do!

Spit in one hand.. Try to spit in the other?

Then you can see and feel what trying is good for...

Originally Posted by The Cusp

1. Everything in your dreams requires your attention to exist.


While this may seem obvious, it's still one of the most basic principles of dreaming. The only things that exist in a dream are things that you are aware of. It's not complete world that you wander around in and explore. As soon as you stop paying attention to something and forget about it, it ceases to exist. If you are in a closed room and can't see the outside, then the outside doesn't exist. When you open to door to go outside, it could lead anywhere, into space or hell or the city of the mole people.

The point is, nothing exists in your dreams until you become aware of it. Much like Schrodinger's Cat. Schrödinger's cat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This can be a useful tool I've used effectively in the past to deal enemies while lucid. If you don't pay something any attention, it will cease to exist. Kind of like when your parents told you as a kid to just ignore whoever is bothering you (I hate it when they're right!).

The skill to be learned here is to learn what things you pay attention to. Ask different people who walked down the same street what they saw, and a bird watcher would tell you about the rare wood pecker he saw, a child would tell you about the playground they passed, your wife would tell you about those shoes on sale, and I would tell you about that girl in the short skirt. What are the things that captivate your attention, and how do these things make you feel? How do they affect your life?

Some things you pay attention to are beneficial, and some are detrimental. If you are prone to only noticing the bad in people, then interacting with people is going to be a pain in the ass. If you focus more on the good in people, then it can be a rewarding experience.

You have to learn to selectively ignore the things that don't do you any good, and focus on those things that accomplish your goals. During a dream, the effects of doing so are quite drastic, but practicing this while awake will have echoed results in your dreams, as well as be beneficial to you on several levels in RL.

Yes, I agree.. if something's bad in a dream, ignore it and it'll go away. basically, you can do anything in a dream that you believe you can do. If you think you're gonna get chased by the growling dog looking at you, you will, similarly if you believe it's harmless and will just walk away, away it walks

It's not belief!! My DJ is full of incidents where I believed something would happen, then something completely unexpected happened. Belief is unreliable. I'd go so far as to say it doesn't exist. That's right, I don't believe in belief. There's only programming and focused attention.

I haven't been very active on DV lately. I'm still pursuing my obsession with dream control, only I've moved my shit to a different pile. I'm approaching it from the angle of magic and the occult, which is essentially the same thing in my opinion. I've been learning a great deal about Archetypal Engineering and real world application, as well as refining my ideas of what an archetype is and how to use it.

I do my thing over on Occult Corpus

Those interested in exploring my ideas of what dream control is can look up posts I've made over there. It's presented in the context of varying magical paradigms, but everything I write about there is directly applicable to dream control. You don't need to believe in magic, I don't want your belief, only your attention.