Thread: (Prove Me Wrong) No One Has Literally Ever Talked to Their Subconscious. Ever.

Well - it's worth a try!
Good luck anybody with it!
I'd like to "converse" with myself as well, but am battling with my insufficient skill-level at the moment, still.
Things like my soul-mate or dream-job - hm.
Theoretically - if I got the background information stored away somewhere - could be possible to be reminded of something.
I wouldn't ever come up with asking for who my true love would be - not only because of being married - what should it throw up, if not the actual or a past lover?
But since it was a TOTM basic and seemed easy enough to do - I asked a DC.
This is what happened:

So I sat down on a bar stool and asked her, who my true love would be.
She got a conspirational look on her face, took out a piece of paper and pen and wrote down a sentence - one word per line.
And I couldn't read it - the letters were clear, and I could read it as in read it out loud, but didn't understand it.

So I asked what it means - and she said, it would be in a language, I was yet to learn.
A mix of Latin and something else. It became apparent then, that there was indeed Latin shining through the words.
She said - once I learn that other language - I would know the answer, too.

This seems sort of typical from what I read of others - if you ask things right out - in words, for which you don't consciously have an answer - such cryptic stuff is what people tend to get.

Sometimes, deep in meditation, we can gain insights into things, and the solutions to problems present themselves. I did this a little while ago, lay down, meditated for a good long while, and then thought about this thread oddly enough. I didn't plan on that, but I reminded myself of my determination to check on this in my next lucid dream. I then got an answer that just appeared to my mind. Not sure where it came from really, but it makes sense to me.

If you want to be more aware that you are dreaming when you are dreaming, try to be more aware that you are awake when you are awake.

I think the method for actually doing that is going to be unique for everyone, and it sounds very similar to doing reality checks in my opinion. But with the difference of what you do afterwards. If you determine you are awake, hold onto that realization, and live life accordingly, without forgetting you are awake. By making the waking hours lucid, that habit of mind will manifest during dreams as well.

I'm still going to ask in my lucid dreams for the sake of the thread, but I'm satisfied.

Hey screen, you of course asked an impossible question at the outset, because proving you talked to your subconscious would be impossible, even to yourself.
However, I do think that lucid dreaming probably allows you to get closer to achieving that goal.
The first problem is to define what your subconscious actually is, and that debate could go on and on.
I like to think of it as something that influences the way you think and act without conscious input.
An example would be the fight or flight response.
So, if your lucid dream conjures up stuff that you are not consciously controlling, that, to me, is your subconscious coming through.
Then it just becomes a case of interpreting what your subconscious is "saying".
If you meant literally having a conversation with your subconscious, then whether incarnate as a DC, or as a feeling or disembodied voice, I still assert that you are conversing with your subconscious if it's not a consciously created scene or feeling.

It seems that you are implying that the subconscious has some mysterious inner depth, a bit akin to a soul. I think of it as simply all the stuff you mind does that your conscious thought is unaware of.

There are now known to be 2 thought levels, the fast and slow. Fast is the automatic learned responses, and slow is the deliberate logical process. Fast is like the auto-pilot stuff we all do without thinking, or the fast reflex stuff in sport etc..
For me the subconscious is the fast automatic response type thinking that goes on, that is below (sub) the conscious logical thought processes; the slow logical thinking.

If you start wondering about whether your subconscious has the answers to some high level moral or religious questions, I don't think it works like that. It's more basic - we are, after all , just apes when you remove the top layer of slow conscious thought.

Extra edit to the post: Since I can't edit the original now, I want to add this clarification to anyone who still reads this. "Has anyone used lucid dreaming to actively communicate with and inquire about the subconscious itself?" I hate having to clarify the, "not trying to be rude part," but I have to because it's the Internet and you can't hear my tone. But that's all I'm asking about, nothing else. And anyone who might have done what I asked has never published their experiences, or I simply can't find them.

Some people still weren't getting that point, so I wanted to clarify. Again, not intending to be rude. So if you have done what I've asked, please share your experiences and the questions you asked.

There was one time, a few years back, that in a dream I had something very odd happen. I assume it was my subconscious and not anything else as I don't believe in other things that it could have been. (evil spirits etc)
I was having a nightmare, very common for me, but this one took a rather ugly turn like I had never had before. I'm almost always self aware in dreams but I don't let myself know.. Hard to describe.. Like I know but I don't try to change things. I let the dream just sort of flow and see where it goes.
Well this one time it passed a place of my comfort zone big time and I wanted to wake up. I said in the dream, Wake up now. Normally doing this snaps me out of a dream very fast and I wake up in a panic from it. But it works.. However, this time it did not.. First time for everything right? I was so startled that it was not working I started to panic and felt like I was going to stop breathing in the dream.

Then things just stopped, like time standing still. There was a person standing in front of me. They looked like something or someone I had seen before. They just stood there. All I could say was "Who are you?" As I said it it's mouth moved with mine saying the same words.. I had this overwhelming sense of fear and dread just looking at it.

Then it said, "You know me." This time I said the same as it as it spoke.Then it said "This is what I like." "I miss you." "Stay." I said the same things as it did again.
After that it looked sad and came close to me. Then without any warning it touched me and as it did I woke up.

Never again have I seen this person in a dream. But I also don't ever try to leave a dream now...
I do sometimes wonder if they would come back if I tried to. But I could feel they knew things that I could never understand and frankly I don't think I would want to.

Also I don't think I could have asked it anything even if I had wanted to.. The feeling I had with it was so overpowering that I could hardly move let alone talk with it. So sadly if that was my subconscious I don't think I'll ever get info out of it.

Screen, I guess I was saying that when we LD we ARE sort of "talking to our subconscious", depending on how you define subconscious and how you define talking.
What you appear to be asking is a bit like saying, "has anyone talked to God, you know, the old guy with a beard in the clouds, have you actually had a conversation with him?"

Originally Posted by Bimulous

.

That's really fascinating, I've just gotten into LD'ing recently (despite doing it as a child all the time)

I think thats a really powerful metaphor for what the subconscious is even if its 'not' your subconscious

I had a dream a while back, details are fuzzy but it had the same mirroring type thing happening I think dreaming can train us to be more empathic and to me that sounds like the most empathic you can be, with yourself! This sounds like time for some ultra-realization to have a subconscious you love if thats possible, "I LOVE ME".

edit: to elaborate on my dream it was an endless amount of people but we all couldn't touch, if I moved forward everyone moved forward, and anything I did was 'mirrored' in that effect

I don't think you really ever could talk to your subconscious. It's pure information, everything you don't think about, every little thing going on that you do without thinking.. That's what ones subconscious is to me. I would picture it as a very primal, all knowing thing (Well, it would know everything you have every seen, felt or heard).. But that's just me.

Goldenspark, it's clear you're not even trying to understand what I'm saying. I am not, nor was I ever, asking anyone to define the subconscious to me. You'll never be able to quote that question in any part of my post. I haven't been told an idea about what it is, or its possible nature to lucid dreaming, that I haven't already considered. I'm not discounting any of your theories about it, but you're presenting them in a way as if you're trying to educate me when it's only your opinion, and I find that very rude.

Regardless of how you define the subconscious, have you both actively and consciously, sought out, communicated with, and inquired about its existence? No, you haven't. But it's your own fault you didn't understand my point even after I added clarification. And judging by your choice of words of, "appear to be asking," you still didn't understand my point, so you should have just asked and I would have gladly explained further. Instead of reaching a rash conclusion and making that completely irrelevant comparison. That, was very rude.

I understand why it is quite confusing for almost everyone, we all know that DC's, dreams, objects in dreams, etc... all of it is subconscious and we are able to talk to it, we all have done it, but the question Screen is asking is if anyone has tried talking to your subconscious about ITSELF. Not like: "hey, can you tell me which path is better for me?", but more like: "what are you?, how are you constructed?, are there any differences between the conscious me and you?". It's an interesting idea, no harm in doing it. I asked some of it today during a LD, it's not a shocking or interesting answer but since you're interested in these experiences I'll share my attempts and keep trying:

I was inside a house I didn't know, suddenly I remembered that a few seconds ago I was lying in my bed so I became lucid and touched the walls to stabilize the dream. The house was empty, I found my ex-BF opening the fridge, avoiding eye-contact (I'm starting to feel like Cobb in inception movie, because my ex-BF keeps appearing first in my LD's). I knew this DC wasn't the best option for a deep conversation, so I just asked him:
Me: "can you tell me something I need to know?".
P: "no... I don't have anything to say..."
Me: "ok.. then, can you tell me where can I find how to talk to my subconscious...uhmm.. in a deeper way I mean".
P: look outside in the hammock

I didn't understand so I went out of the house and there was indeed a hammock, and and old man sleeping there. I woke him up.
Me: sorry to bother you, but can you tell me what are you?? what the subconscious is??
old man: I'm not the one who answers but the one who asks. So I'll answer you with a question.

And... that's it, I lost lucidity, regained it later but didn't last enough to keep trying on that subject. But what I've been thinking about is that in LD's I don't need to explain myself, my words, my intention, nor do the DC's as well, there's some -intuitive- conversation. It's not like when you're talking to someone in waking life that you need to explain what do you mean so that they don't get it the wrong way. I didn't have to explain to the old man in my dream that by "what are you?" I didn't mean as a person. It's interesting because there are no assumptions like the ones there are in ANY human conversation.

So, before anyone ASSUME it's intention by answering "I'm not the one who answers, but the one who asks", I'll explain that I felt that he answered the question as being subconscious itself, not like a pretentious person trying to say "hey hey, calm down, I'm the one who makes the questions"... no, I didn't FEEL it that way. I felt that it was a plain answer, with no intention in it, so the answer could be read as this: "The subconscious is not the one who answers, but the one who asks".
I'm explaining this because I know it can be misunderstood.

Originally Posted by Screen

Regardless of how you define the subconscious, have you both actively and consciously, sought out, communicated with, and inquired about its existence?

Screen,

Have you tried to communicate with the subconscious mind this way? If so, did you do so in a waking state or a lucid dreaming state, and what happened?

Niall

kilham: yes, thank you for adding the extra clarification, and sharing your experiences--always interesting to read about. I'm not sure why dream characters offer the answers they do. Maybe it's part expectation of complex human nature, and part difficulty in creating characters with enough sentience.

Nailler: not yet, but I plan to. And the next part I'm about to say goes to you, too, kilham. I think everything in the dream is made of the same "material." By that, I mean they all originate from a source before they become the sky, a tree, or a character. Their seeming sentience probably shares a single origin as well. Since you can "grant" sentience to objects and talk to them, maybe you're not communicating with a singular thing, but an expression of that same origin. This is why I think characters aren't really sentient, they just give us that impression. What's truly sentient, is the source they're an expression of: the subconscious. Again, I don't know any of this yet, just working on the idea.

So, if everything is an expression of that same intelligence, you could use anything to communicate with it. My idea is to try and use a book that might be like an encyclopedia of my mind, and I can browse its pages for the answers I'm looking for. I think this method might be more concise and less cryptic. I think part of this relies on expectation. We expect people to be complex, and so that's how they manifest. Like how we expect the sky to be blue, and so it is, even though there's no reason it should be in a dream, right? So we expect a book to be concise and clear in its answers, and that's how it should manifest. If this approach works, I'll be able to see what answers I can learn from it.

I've re-read your posts and mine and I can't see anything rude in my responses to you. Of course what I said was my opinion and I apologise that you have interpreted it as trying to educate you. The answer to your simple question is "no".

Originally Posted by Screen

What's truly sentient, is the source they're an expression of: the subconscious.

In my opinion, the only thing truly sentient in the mix is you. All those things you mention, including the subconscious mind, are an expression of you.

That said, I do think your experiment of visualizing your subconscious as a book might prove interesting... a neat via for learning more about your own nature.

didn't Robert Waggoner basically do this? he talks about it in his book, how he shouts out to the dream and it responds? He calls it the dream awareness, or awareness behind the dream, or something like that.

Screen--
Interesting questions. I developed lucidity, the ability to operate consciously in dreams, not according to the models here, but to begin to gain control over a realm which has been occupied by...foreign powers, largely religious, who have swallowed us like Jonah into the belly of their whale in order to program their history. I developed "lucid abilities" in dreaming as a response to this, to try to change it, so the human future holds sway here. My principal "guru," was my daughter when very young. She was in tune with this to a degree that was scary and encouraged me to develop all the control possible in this unconscious realm. "Lucidity" is, for me, simply a term that describes the multiple ways one can enter the unconscious with the sword of human conscience and power to reclaim it.

Hummer

Originally Posted by Hummer

Screen--
Interesting questions. I developed lucidity, the ability to operate consciously in dreams, not according to the models here, but to begin to gain control over a realm which has been occupied by...foreign powers, largely religious, who have swallowed us like Jonah into the belly of their whale in order to program their history. I developed "lucid abilities" in dreaming as a response to this, to try to change it, so the human future holds sway here

Hummer

Fantastic a like-minded soul.

Originally Posted by tofur

didn't Robert Waggoner basically do this? he talks about it in his book, how he shouts out to the dream and it responds? He calls it the dream awareness, or awareness behind the dream, or something like that.

This is supposedly exactly so:

Originally Posted by LucidJordan

..
During a lucid dream last night I remembered an interview I watched a few nights earlier with Robert Waggoner on Conscious TV:



and he said that he had started to address questions to the awareness behind the dream rather than the objects in the dream with interesting results of an inner voice responding, "an awareness within an awareness", and so I stopped and asked out loud during my lucid dream "What is the meaning of this?". When I asked the question I didn't really think about what "this" was, or what exactly I was asking about, and as soon as I asked that question it felt like something heavy had hit me in the back of the head only there was no pain, just a white flash that persisted for a few seconds, a faint dizzy feeling and a white noise ringing sound. Then I lost conscious thought and continued to just dream as normal.

...

Now something to Goldenspark:

Originally Posted by Goldenspark

Screen, I guess I was saying that when we LD we ARE sort of "talking to our subconscious", depending on how you define subconscious and how you define talking.
What you appear to be asking is a bit like saying, "has anyone talked to God, you know, the old guy with a beard in the clouds, have you actually had a conversation with him?"

While I understand, that you feel, it's not an answer to your question, Screen - I think it is, and it grasps something, which shimmered through your question.
That is the idea of there being a unified unconscious ("sub" would indicate I subscribe to Freud).
Just like a god, in principle - but I also hold the opinion, there is not.
There is an unconscious, which by the very "un-" suggests unity - in the end effect, with what you could communicate will always be a partition of that whole complex of neural functions.
And so the "literally" in the title does not make a lot of sense.
I hope, I made myself clear here and didn't come over rude.

I know I am more than a little late to this game (story of my life), and folks like Darkmatters, BrandonBoss, and Steph have already said anything I would have said in direct terms, but as long as I'm here:

Unfortunately, Screen, you may have the whole thing backward. I have been working on this for many years, and have found that LD'ing seems to be a great tool for exploring the unconscious; indeed, it might be the best tool, given the unique perspective you have when consciously observing your self from a dream.

This observation is done almost totally through metaphor and emotion, since verbal communication seems a function of the conscious end of the mind's spectrum (so a direct verbal conversation is likely impossible, or would be little more than a DC repeating exactly what you expect to hear, because that marks the limit of unconscious verbal communication). But the observation can only occur after you've gotten good enough at LD'ing to actively pay attention to the right things; you are not going to learn how to do it from your unconscious. Why? Because your unconscious doesn't know how to do it!

LD'ing is an extremely conscious event, couched in self-awareness and waking-life conscious activity. In a sense, LD'ing is an affront to the unconscious, because during dreams we are daring to meld our conscious selves with its natural nighttime function -- dreaming, whose engine is the unconscious, exclusively. Indeed, every time we LD we are communicating directly with our unconscious minds, because it is the dreaming mind: the engine driving the dreams we are exploring, changing, and learning from. But its purview is creating dreams, and it has no interest or experience in this melding with it that you are attempting while lucid. In fact, it could be said that your unconscious is wired to prevent you from being self-aware in dreams; not only does it not know how to get you lucid, it actively attempts to prevent it.

So, if there were a separate being in your head that was the unconscious (which there is not), and you could communicate verbally with it (which you cannot), it would likely just say "Hell if I know" to your question about how to be lucid; or, more likely, it would offer up a way to LD that is a direct reflection or projection of what you already know.

I am by no means belittling the unconscious here. I believe that the unconscious mind does represent a vast storehouse of knowledge and action, because it has a more global access to memory and body than we do consciously. In a sense, that rest of Freud's "iceberg" is memory, perhaps even everything you've ever experienced. Combine that with unconscious connections to otherwise autonomic processes (i.e., memory creation and storage, social behavior, maintenance of your physical body), and you have a potentially very powerful tool for learning about yourself, bettering yourself, and maybe even making yourself (and your Self) a bit more healthy. But that combination would result from a conscious connection with the machinery of your mind (the unconscious being its control room), and that conscious connection could happen with lucid dreaming. But you need to teach our unconscious how to LD, and not the other way around.

Finally, even if your unconscious held all the secrets of LD'ing, the skills you would need to master to unearth those secrets during a dream are vastly more difficult than simply learning to LD... so if you are able to literally ask your unconscious how to LD, you probably would already know how to do it, and likely wouldn't even care anymore!

tl;dr: You must know how to lucid dream before you can ask your unconscious anything, and not the other way around. Also, you must know how to do it quite well before you can assemble metaphors and emotional cues that mean something unconsciously, that will coax it into desired action (i.e., memory retrieval, physical healing, problem solving). Similarly, you must have these skills well in hand before you can truly observe and understand the foundations of the communications coming from your unconscious in dreams (if there truly are any). In a sense, you are teaching your unconscious to LD, not vise-verse.


A little aside:

Originally Posted by StephL

That is the idea of there being a unified unconscious ("sub" would indicate I subscribe to Freud).

Thank you, Steph, for being pretty much the only one here who recognizes that unconscious is the recognized term for what we're talking about; I was beginning to feel a bit lonely. For what it's worth, I used to try to point this out, but it's pretty useless... one of Freud's great successes was firmly embedding "subconscious" in the pop-culture lexicon.

Hey Sageous and StephL, don't subconscious and unconscious mean virtually the same thing? They are defined as synonyms of each other in some dictionary definitions?

Unconscious is just the preferred term.

^^ Right. Unconscious is not only the preferred term, but the term used by the actual people studying it -- specifically to indicate that there is no "sub," and perhaps to separate it from any Freudian references.

Subconscious has simply been around so long, and so ubiquitously used by the media (I guess it sounds better), that it has indeed become a synonym of sorts. I suppose in the future even the scientific crowd will start using subconscious as well, because that's the only word they heard growing up. That is how language changes.

It'd be a shame if that bit of word trivia is all you got out of our posts, though...

Sageous StephL : I appreciate the input you gave. And no, StephL, you didn't come across as rude. But as I explained earlier, my title wasn't meant to be taken word for word. The real question was explained throughout the post. The main problem was people were trying to address my title specifically. I made it the way I did mostly to gather attention to an important question I had, since my other posts didn't generate many views for unknown reasons.

Now, as you already guessed, no, it doesn't answer my clarified question. I'm not looking for definite terms of the subconscious or unconscious because I know there isn't any. It's still something we're learning, as we don't know everything there is to know about it. Same with lucid dreaming: we've pretty much only scratched the surface of its nature, and we know very little about it. For example: I've talked to people like myself who struggle to have lucid dreams even though we do everything right. But we can't give an explanation as to what's being done wrong, only recommendations. That's one of the things I hope we discover.

Also, I don't even assume that dreams are made entirely by our minds. We don't know completely what a dream is, or why humans have them in the first place. It's an understandable conclusion, but we don't know. For all we know, when we dream, we're actually entering some sort of new realm as certain astral travelers believe. I've considered those ideas as well for explanations, and I currently don't discount any of them.

What is the extent our minds know that we're not aware of? I don't know. I came across the idea of interviewing the subconscious because people would ask secrets about themselves like soul mates and dream jobs, and somehow received accurate to precise answers. Then there's precognitive dreams, with plenty of cases to read about that it would be foolish to conclude that it's not possible. In both examples, where is the information coming from? If not your own mind, it has to be from somewhere, something, or even someone.

Bottom line, the subconscious seems to be the easiest lead to begin with. If lucid dreaming gives you the chance to interact with it, what would it say? And by "interact," I mean consult it in a concise, clear way that doesn't need to be interpreted. Like consulting a book, as I previously mentioned. It doesn't have to be a person. And if the subconscious isn't the source of this information, maybe accessing what it does know will point us in the right direction. I wouldn't know how to validate anything it would say, but you have to start somewhere.

Lastly, there have been people here who have had many lucid dreams and did complicated things. Much more complicated than what I'm suggesting; shape-shifting, teleporting--visit those tasks of the months if you want a list of examples. Yet, no one has directly inquired about this in their dreams. Which surprised me, given the many opportunities people had to do so. But, as a fellow member mentioned, it's probably because they don't care. I don't blame them. The sole reason I'm interested in any of this, is to help answer these questions to improve lucid dreaming, like being able to clearly answer why some people can't lucid dream after several attempts.

But as I said, no one has done exactly what I'm asking about. Or at the very least, published it for whatever reason. I think by now I've made my points pretty clear, and I'm done talking about it as I'm not trying to debate anything. Not trying to sound rude, I just don't want to continue. If anyone comes across my post and you have inquired about the subconscious, or experienced something similar, I look forward to what you have to share.

Originally Posted by Sageous

It'd be a shame if that bit of word trivia is all you got out of our posts, though...

I've been reading these posts with interest, and have gained quite a lot from them. I guess I'm reluctant to comment much further in terms of the link with unconscious discovery through lucid dreaming due to lack of experience in LDing.
However, having thought about it a bit more, I think there is a difference between unconscious and subconsious that is worth expanding on, in that the noun unconcious, to me, suggests "not conscious", whereas subconscious means "below" conscious, i.e. a form of consciousness below "normal" conscious thought. Subconscious also conjures up the idea of thoughts that originate from the below-brain, or ancient brain, that are more basic in their nature.
I think of this not as another form of consciousness that is somehow parallel but normally un-seen, but at a baser level, a more animal level if you will.
This touches on the reasons why it's difficult to communicate with the subconscious mind, because by definition it is too base to command ordinary spoken language.
Therefore I would guess that communication with the subconscious has to take the form of actions and in metaphor.
Take the classic example of wondering how you might react in a life-threatening situation. The real-life life-threatening situation often causes the ancient subconscious brain to take command, say in a fight or flight decision, and your actions are often not consciously thought through. I would assume that an LD could allow you to present that scenario and experience the subconscious response without the same actual danger.
That to me would be communicating with your subconscious in an LD.

^^ Okay; I guess you didn't read my post.

Which part of "I have been working on this for many years, and have found that LD'ing seems to be a great tool for exploring the unconscious; indeed, it might be the best tool, given the unique perspective you have when consciously observing your self from a dream" implies that I have not tried to communicate with my unconscious, and am not still trying to do so? I'm not seeing it. I also suggest that you look again at my post, and not do so from the stance that I was trying to tell you you were wrong, but was trying to offer you a bit of my experience to help you on your search... I'd appreciate it if you would, just so I don't feel like I totally wasted my time.

For what it's worth (and as I already said), I spend quite a bit of time attempting to communicate with my unconscious, and during the early years of my efforts I did indeed ask direct questions, to the point of building schemata that had me sitting at a table with a DC who was my Official Unconscious Representative, and spending many hours (over many dreams) asking questions about all those secrets and other big things. I tried many different versions of seeking to converse directly, and never once learned anything I did not already consciously know. After a time I realized that asking in English was not a route that was going to work. I have had more success in recent years forming metaphors that I hope will act as "information collectors" during LD's, and have been making very slow progress in this, mostly because it is not easy.

I was not telling you that your unconscious does not know how to LD for the fun of it; I have come to realize this through long experience. I had hoped that offering you my perspective would have given you something to think about rather than just deny.

I guess I knew there was a reason I waited so long to post here. In spite of your OP, you seem to be waiting for an single desired answer that does not exist, Screen, and seem to be calling anyone giving you thoughtful, knowledgeable, opinions about this subject liars, or proclaiming that we just don't understand you. You need to get past that, Screen, or else you'll never move forward.

Oh, and if someone comes on here telling you that taking to your unconscious is no problem, here's all you gotta do, take their words with a grain of salt.

tl;dr: Screen, I for one have spent many years trying to communicate with my unconscious, and have learned that simply speaking words does not work (at least for me); communication is possible, but it will take much more effort on your part, though success will be more than worth it. Also, I have also learned that the unconscious has no interest in LD'ing, so it will not teach you how. You still must learn on your own; there is no magic bullet!