"The Nature of Dream Control" by The Cusp (Part 1)

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.

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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:

1.Omission of information that was considered irrelevant to a participant;
2.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;
3.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;
4.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.

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Q: "You just proved the existence of the "Somebody else's problem" (SEP) fields."

Lol, I used the SEP analogy in relation to this subject elsewhere!

Q: "one thing I've had trouble with is boobs, I like your bad teeth example because that ties in with my problem. when I go to fuck a girl I take off her shirt and her tits are terrible not just small but oddly shaped, the more I'd look at them the worse they would get. I've yet to solve this problem and I think you have the answer but how do I look at the good side with them?"

The way excessive attention works is kind of like tunnel vision. You zoom in and it creates lots of related detail. I've been thinking about how to do the opposite of this, and I think it would be using Peripheral Vision. Instead of focusing one one element, try to take in as much of the scene as possible. I've yet to experiment extensively with this, but if my theory is correct, it using your peripheral vision should keep things more stable. In relation to your boob specific problem, there are many associations in your mind with the concept of "boob". They can be nasty like in you dreams, with associations like oddly shaped, wrinkly, veiny, ect. You could view it in a reproductive role, with associations such as mild, child, reproduction, ect. Or you could go with aesthetic qualities, firm, round, bouncy. Try to follow the links that take you where you want to go without taking any wrong turns.

You could also pay attention to other dream elements that have similar properties as you'd like to see in your boobs. Perhaps ripe fruit, water ballons, or... uh... fluffy pillows?

Try not focusing on things as a whole, but only on selective qualities that you want to amplify.

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After a lot experimentation, I have some thoughts on how this works in practice.

There seems to be a more general control, rather than specific control. Say I wanted to summon a monster with 6 arms, 8 eyes, purple fur, hooves and a tail. It most likely wouldn't work. But I could summon a general monster, and then tweak it's characteristics until becomes like I want.

It also seems to work more reliably when you focus on your goal, but not how you accomplish it. First of all, it's really hard to know where to begin to make something happen. When you have infinite possibilities at your disposal, it's hard to pick just one. By focusing on what you want, the "how" will take care of it's self.

Back in the Real World

I've been keeping an eye out for this process in action in the waking world, and I'm beginning to see it happening more and more. I've been a little shy in practicing this type of dream control in RL, mainly because I feel bad about manipulating people like that.

The other day on the bus, this woman had caught me checking out the girls on the bus. Not wanting to seem like a perv, I figured this would be a good time to reset my attention. So I focused in on the first thing I noticed, the yellow hand bars on the bus. Actually I just focused on the color yellow, zooming in my attention like I do in my dream. Immediately the yellow color became 2-3 times brighter than it was originally. After that I began to see bright yellow everywhere, where I hadn't noticed it before. People wearing yellow outside the bus, yellow on the store fronts, just everywhere. There was so much yellow around me, it no longer seemed real, but dream like. It just didn't seem possible that there would be that much yellow around, it was like a tooth dream gone bad, only I was pulled into a sea of yellow!

One application of this kind of dream control over people I don't feel bad about using, is flirting. I've never been much good at that, but now it's a whole new ball game. Things like how to capture and direct a girl's attention are so much easier now. Before it was like playing a game where I didn't know the rules, now it's like a game of Calvin Ball, where I make up the rules as I go along so that things turn out in my favor.

Another application I not sure I should go through with is at work. My partner at work is hard to get along with. He wasn't in yesterday, and I worked with another guy who's partner didn't show. We were both happy to have a break from the people we work with. Now I'm wondering if I shouldn't switch partners. Using this technique, I could make it happen easily with only a few words here and there, without anyone that I was the one that made it happen. But just because I can change something doesn't mean I should. Would things really improve if I went ahead with it? Asking directly to switch partners would cause a lot of tension at work, and the boss probably wouldn't do it just to spite me. But this subtle approach to change is very tempting.

First off, I want to mention an article I came across (which I can't find at the moment) which supports my dreaming/awake link. It said that the dreaming state persists even while awake. So while you dream, you are just dreaming. But while you are awake, you are awake + dreaming. It would suggest dreaming is the totality of existence. Anyone see anything about that? I've had too many beers to find it right now.

Going back to the notion that your dreams are formed by sum of your attention, where you direct your attention while dreaming has a direct influence. But there is also a residual spillover effect from where you direct your attention in the waking world. This spillover can be from the that day's events, or events deep in your past.

Which raises the question "How much can you pay attention to at once?" Or what is the maximum number of things that it is possible to pay attention to? For an indirect, roundabout answer, I'd like to introduce the notion of The MonkeySphere. The following is a very entertaining article on the subject.

It also sheds some light on the behavior of DCs, and how we view them.

http://www.cracked.com/article_14990...keysphere.html

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Q: "I'm WAY too lazy to read all that, but I saw the two rules at the top and how you think it might affect real life. In fact, I use this method a lot, and it IS a lot like dream control. If you're intrested in mastering life control, (yeah, not dream control, LIFE control) rent the movie called "The Secret." It explains EVERYTHING. Trust me, it will chande your life! Now don't think I'm crazy, I'm not saying things insta-poof like in dreams, and your still not gonna be able to fly, but just look into it."

OK, I finally watched The Secret. I hadn't before now because I felt I knew what it was about, but I never realized how close it is to my dream theory. A lot of it echoes what I've been trying to say. They beat me to the punch!

Still, I'd like to scratch a little deeper than that, or at least approach it from another angle. In this case dreaming.

Q: "Sounds interesting...
So, basically what you're saying is
I direct my attention to a guitar. Once I give it my attention, it exists because I'm aware of it...Then I can observe the details of the guitar...
I see a red Fender Stratocaster. It's got six strings, and a mohagany fretboard with sharktooth inlays. 24 frets total, and three humbucking pickups. It's got one volume control, as well as two tone contol knobs on the bottom right side of the body. It's got a whammy bar and a black pick guard
With the description of said guitar, once could assume I covered the basics like:
-color (red)
-Brand (Strat)
-Manufacturer (Fender)
-body type (six-string, 24 frets, mohagany fretboard, sharktooth inlays)
-accessories (whammy bar, volume and tone knobs, pick guard)
So let's say I want a Gibson instead...
Here's where Schemata comes in. A Schema is simply a building block that helps build an image in your mind. So let's take "guitar"
When you think of guitar, what comes to mind?
Amplifiers Players strings manufacturers
-half-stack / -Angus Young / -Earnie Ball / -Fender
-bass amp / -Jimi Page / -DR / -Ibanez
-effects box /-Slash / -D'ajarrio / -Gibson
I wanted a gibson, bit I'm paying attention to a Fender. Using the schemea of "guitar" I can customize my guitar the way I want. I already know what a 'Gibson Les Paul' looks like, so I can change the Fender Strat's shape into that of a Gibson. Now let's say I still wanted the sharktooth inlays on my Gibson...Well, just take the inlays (and, pretty much any other desirable feature) and put them on the fretboard of the new guitar you've just made.
My new guitar:
I see a gold Gibson Les Paul. It's got six strings, a mohagany fretboard with sharktooth inlays. 24 frets, and two humbucking pickpus. No whammy bar, no pick guard, and two volume and tone knobs each. Basically, the details of the object of attention are effected by the amount of information you've accumulated within your schema of said object.
Does this make sense? Did I understand the subject correctly? Let me know!"

Yes LucidM!nds, I say you've got the gist of it.

Although I don't know how reliable it would be for fine tuning relatively minor details such as the type of guitar in your scenario. I've been using it in a broader perspective. Like using the Mahogany of the body to create the forest the wood came from, or just using the guitar it's self to summon groupies.

For instance, I recently had a dream where I was traveling through my own intestines. In the following night's dreams, I was able to use that experience to give a DC who was harassing me a major case of gut rot, effectively incapacitating him.

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Like someone who thinks they saw a UFO. To them, they know it's real, but to a non believer, it's not. How about people who are undecided? It's kind of like Schrodinger's Cat. I've actually heard a theory that says the reason the government is covering up UFOs is because if the public acknowledged them it would make them more real and they could travel here easier, or something like that. (Just an example, please don't debate UFOs here)

As you can see for two simple rules, it sure gets complicated pretty fast. The Secret left a lot stuff out. I've been putting off getting into the kind of RL existence confusion above, because it's equivalent aspect in dreaming is Shared Dreaming. And the last thing I want is for this thread to be buried in the beyond dreaming section. I'm going to have to get into that eventually, but I'd like to get a few more constructive posts in on it's dreaming applications before I completely ruin this thread's credibility.

Q: "So instead of using the root of a cherry tree to create another cherry tree with different color fruit/leaves, you can use the root to create furniture (perhaps entire buildings) out of cherrywood?"

You could do both, but the first one sounds easier. It's more of a natural connection.

Speed Limits

Q: "EDIT: I forgot to mention, this rule is often a pain in my butt, as it severely limits the speed at which I can fly. I just can't think up new landscape fast enough to keep up, and very rarely does my subconscious does this job for me. Usually I am left with limited speed (and very limited flight ceiling for that matter), although some flying techniques I've read about on this board helped me somewhat in this regard."

I've hit that same speed barrier while flying. The problem is in order to have movement, you need to be moving in relation to something else. Once you start going fast enough, everything just becomes one big blur and you lose all sense of motion.

Luckily we're not limited to linear travel in dreaming. If you really want to get somewhere, just focus on it hard enough and it will pull you in. You needn't worry about how to get there, only focus on the destination.

Q: "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."

I was trying to show the various types of links that are made in relation to things you focus your attention on in dreams. For any object, person or concept, you attach to it a great many associations in order to define it.

For whatever main elements you are fixated on in a dream, it's these associations that begin to appear in the dream. This happens weather it's a normal dream or a lucid dream.

Q: Tonight i experimented how emotions affect the dreamscape. I was in a semi-lucid state while running through a corridor with a corner after every 5 meters or so.
First I used fear: I became very fearful of what might lay ahead in the hallway. Sure enough, monsters started popping up (who i then dispensed with a "will projectile"). When i had enough of this and two very menacing beast-humans appeared, I changed my mood into happy. INSTANTANEOUSLY, the 2 beastmen turned into my best friends with smiles on their faces After that I became fully lucid.

Good stuff Anomanderis, I'm glad to see you're getting the hang of it. I had a normal dream the other night, in a grocery store where the customers were shopping peacefully. Then I started beating up this illuminati guy, and they all started rioting and looting. And that's when the werewolves showed up...

Strong emotions have a humongous impact on dreams. That probably deserves it's own rule.

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Thanks for all the positive feedback, I really appreciate it. It takes me so long to write out these posts (This measly post took almost 4 hours!).

Real World Applications

For the past month or so, I've been observing how these principles apply to the real world as much as they do to dreaming. But it comes with an extra layer of complexity in the waking world, namely other people. The potential each one of us has using these techniques is phenomenal, and when you consider there are billions of people influencing the world in this manner, the possibilities for conflict or resonance are mind boggling. It would seem that the waking world is just one big shared dream!

So lets start off simple, with an example that happened to me today. There was a dog chained up out back of the neighbour's place where I was working. It seemed friendly and curious, so I let it come up to me and sniff me, no problems, it didn't seem a threat. Then I noticed a sign in the window that said "Beware Guard dog". The moment that sign registered in my mind and I though "Guard dog? Oh oh..." it's demeanor completely changed. It became mean, growled, and tried to bite me. It's like that sign created a link or association to the dog's corresponding behavior. I've been seeing dozens of examples of this daily.

Now to recap my three basic rules in a RL context.

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

I've used this rule effectively in dreams in what I would call a "banishing". Simply ignore something in dreams, put it completely out of your mind, and it will cease to exist.

This type of banishing works in RL too, but people don't cease to exist, they just wander off. Completely ignoring someone is a little rude, but very effective. I've also been using this to ward off unwanted conversation topics, and it works like a charm.

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

Carl Jung, the Anti-Freud, had a method where he would write a letter to someone and then not send it. This would invariably result in his target sending him a letter in response to what he had written, even though he never sent it. He was also the one to coin the term "synchronicity", which I believe is a fantastic example of this rule in action.

I have countless examples of this principle in action, as with the incident with the dog I detailed above. There are so many possibilities here, it's almost impossible to properly explain how it works. Thus far, I've broken this section down into two schools of practice.

A) Achieving specific goals: This is basically what the movie "The Secret" is about. I can't really give specifics on how to do this, as each individual had their own set of associations created through a lifetime of experience. Learning what the main influential associations are to you through dreaming will help you apply this to the real world.

B)Eliminating negative thought patterns: This has been the main focus of my efforts lately. Instead of dwelling on the negative aspects of my life, I do my best to ignore them. According to the first rule, they disappear and cease to create bad situations in accordance with this second rule.

The old saying "The straw that broke the camel's back" applies here. By not dwelling on the things that get on your nerves, you don't get that build up of straw that weighs you down.

Basically, this involves gaining control of your random thoughts that arise during the day, by either consciously directing them, or just putting a stop to the negative ones (which is so hard to do!). Most people arrogantly assume they are in complete control of their thought process, but this couldn't be farther from the truth.

3. Strong emotions have a devastating effect on everything around you.

I've decided to include emotion as a separate rule. I'll come up with a better way to sum it up eventually, but that's pretty much the gist of it for now.

Just look at how you react in the presence of people exhibiting strong emotions, or how other people react to your own strong emotions. Do most people really have a choice in how they react to these emotions? It's like there are unwritten social rules on how we are supposed to react. Even when you think you're masking or hiding your emotions, they still influence people's behavior.

One might think that people are responding to subtle body language, but that's not the case. Now I'm a recovering rageaholic, and I've had a few instances where I was in a room alone and foul mood took ahold of me despite my best efforts. The people in other rooms invariably begin to curse loudly, as if in response to my foul mood. This is the kind of thing dream characters are prone to doing.

Overview

I've had about 6-7 months or so of exploring this in my dreams, but have only been working on the real world applications for about a month. The more I look into it, the more the real world behave like a dream. And of course you know the first thing most people do once they realize they are dreaming is to have lucid sex.

Well, I'm no different. I'm realizing the world is my oyster, or at least a bearded clam. I've been using these principles to get women like you wouldn't believe. The thing is, the type of women that are attracted into my life seem to be influenced by the porn that I watch (Not that I'm complaining!). The real test will come tomrrow when I ask out the girl I'm totally in love with. According to my theory, it should go well, since she's been constantly on my mind.

Now the RL applilcations open up a lot of possibilities for control, but with all the people in the world, there are bound to be people with a will opposed to yours. What happens when two people try to manifest opposing intents? Even in a RL scenario, this brings us into the realm of shared dreaming, which is where I learned all about this.

You don't think I came up with this all by myself do you? Nope, I discovered this after making a challenge in the "Night Stalkers, Dream Walker" thread here: http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ad.php?t=37621
The very reason I think these were shared dream was the mastery these visitors had over attention. A lot of those Night Stalker dreams never make it into my dream journal because they are so difficult to describe. I've been loathe to mention it thus far, lest it undermine the points I'm trying to get across. I do have much more to go into, I just need to find a way to broach the subject properly, plus I have so much to experiment with, I just don't have enough time.

Q: "Tonight i experimented how emotions affect the dreamscape. I was in a semi-lucid state while running through a corridor with a corner after every 5 meters or so. After that I became fully lucid."

Actually, exploring this seems to induce semi lucid states. I've had dozens of related dreams that I wouldn't exatly call lucid, but seem to be experimenting with these concepts.

Q: "Woul you be willing to say, the Cusp, that both the physical world and dream world abide by the same basic rules? Only that in the dream world we are godlike."

I'd say we are just as godlike in the real world as in dreams. The only difference is that in dreams, there is nobody else to interfere with your will. In RL, there are billions of other godlike people as well. So if you wanted to fly, there are billions of other people who say "No, you can't do that.", thus making it impossible for you to do so. You're just outnumbered.

Tommo, all I can say is you have to learn to see this happening in dreams before you can see in in RL.

Q: "I also thought about that, but I think its a bit far fetched to believe that if there were no other humans (assuming we are the only intelligent race in the universe, which is far fetched in itself) we'd be able to manipulate physical reality as we wished. Although, certainly, the mental conditioning of you-can't-do that we have been fracked with since birth, is a bit of a bother.... I don't argue with all facets of the godlike aspect, just the power issue. A bit more work is required than just falling asleep and becoming lucid..."

Mankind has always manipulated physical reality as we've pleased. It needn't be through mental super powers, but can come about from science and technology. Any technologically advance people would seem like gods to primitive people. The development of science could be said to follow these rules as well. Paying attention to a problem or question until you begin to uncover related detail.

Q: "1) Why couldn't I phase through him? Was it because I was focusing too much on his body, thus making it more "solid"? I though about this after waking up and I think i did focus too much on the body. When I phase through walls, i never focus on the walls themselves, but beyond them."

Perhaps you were focused too much on your opponents and not enough on your goal of getting to the other side? Like they say, "Keep your eye on the prize".

Q: Also, that Carl Jung "letters" is very interesting, can you provide a link or tell me more about it?

Actually, I can't find a link to that at the moment. Letter writing being the main form of communication at the time, a search for "Jung" and "Letters" brings up a ton of other letters, mostly between him and Freud.

Trying to find it, I kept coming across terms like "causal" and "acausal", which would seem to fit, but I'll need to research it more in depth, which will take some time.

Here's another example from Jung in the meantime:

"A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment." [The Collected Works of Carl Jung, Volume 8, page 843]

Another incident where he was walking in the woods with a woman who was telling him a dream she had about a fox. Just then a fox appeared on the path ahead of them and walked ahead of them for a few minutes.

****

Synchronicity

I've spent the last two day reading up on Jung and synchronicity, and I have to relate what happened at work today. I hear my partner yelling and making a big commotion, so I go to see what's going on and find him holding a threaded bolt he found in a closet. He fixes up old lawn tractors, and it just so happens he needed a particular kind of bolt to fix one up the day before, so he had to make a special trip to the store just for that specific bolt. Then today as he's sweeping out a closet in an empty apartment, he finds that exact bolt.

He went on about what a coincidence it was for about half an hour, but he is prone to rambling. He insisted over and over he was telling the truth and that he wasn't making it up, and took the bolt home because he said his brother would never believe him. It was such an odd size he no longer had any use for it.

It was synchronistic for him because of the bolt, but also for me because I've spent the last two days reading up on synchronicity in preparation to write this. To have someone discover and be blown away by synchronicity before my very eyes was pretty freaky to say the least.

Jung's Views on Synchronicity
Jung explained synch as two or more seemingly unrelated events that create a meaningful coincidence, that do no follow any apparent cause and effect connection. He called this the "acausal connecting principle".

Modern psychology regards this as appophenia, the tendency of the mind to find or create meaning where there is none.

Jung held the belief that these coincidences held some kind of meaning or messages that could be interpreted through associated archetypes. The problem is which archetype to choose, which is often seen as the random whims of the analyst of patient.

Rule Number 2
Jung certainly identified synchronicity and even learned to use it somewhat, but he never truly understood how it worked.

I say synchronistic events but not acausal, but are related by a very distinct cause and effect relationship. But cause and effect implies a rule, doesn't it?

2. The more attention you give to one element, the more detail it creates in relation to what you are focused on.
This describes what happens with synchronicity perfectly.

Rampant synchronicity in dreams is the rule rather than the exception. Going through your DJ will yield glaring examples. But other than the influence of emotions, this is the totality of creation in dreaming. Beside the obvious examples, there are also many more subtle layers at work that become clearer once you are used to seeing them.

I'm going to steer this topic back into dreaming in my next posts. I suppose I'm going to have to get into the secret origins story of where I came up with all this.

****

I'd like to thank everyone for their contributions. I was expecting a lot hate from this thread, but instead it's producing some interesting discussion.

Q: "This synchronism thing is, I believe, (I'll use your example and one of mine for the sake of the argument), either pure coincidence or as in your co-worker's case the fact that he had been focusing on that particular bolt made him recognise it."

It wasn't that he recognized the bolt, it's the fact that it was there at all. He found it in a completely empty apartment, where the bolt was the only thing on the floor. Plus it was such an odd size, with a very fine thread, that the odds of it having been there were astronomical.

Q: "Do you think there are two different types of control? One just more subconscious, like put your hand out and shoot a fireball without even thinking about it, and another more thinking about how to overcome an obstacle and everything that goes into it, like 'how could I shoot a fireball?' 'Imagine a flame in my hands, what does a flame look like, ok the flame won't harm my hand but only my enemies' etc. etc."

Yeah, but that second kind of control where you think about it is totally unreliable.

Q: I've noticed something alike. When I am semi-lucid (I know I am dreaming, but haven't really realized it), I am much more powerful in a fight. While being fully lucid, i think my conscious mind (for the moment, at least) doesn't really believe (or maybe my focus is off. Now that I think about it, my semi-lucid and fully-lucid, my focus has been different...) I can do these things. My subC has no problems with phasing through enemy attacks...

Now that you mention it, I do much better in battles when I'm semi lucid as well. Strange, I would have thought it would be the other way around.

Q: "Well, this just points out the fact that there is another part of the brain at work, not the conscious or the subconscious but memory which is holding the image of the shack in the back of your mind, making the subconscious just assume that the object is still there as you know it to be, even if you aren’t consciously looking at it. Even if you did look back and it had lost detail you wouldn't realize as you would just be looking at as much of the object as you remembered being there. It is a matter of whether your mind considers the object in question to be of enough importance to keep and if not that is when the object would cease to exist."

That's an interesting point, which may even explain how we are able to remember our dreams. To use a computer analogy, lets look at data recovery. When you delete something from your hard drive, it doesn't actually erase all the ones and zeroes, but changes the pointer pointing to that particular block of memory from "used" to "unused". The data is still there until it gets overwritten by something new. I suspect something similar occurs when trying to remember a dream.

Some question that come to mind are "how much can this type of memory hold?" and "How far back in time does it go?"

Q: "Could u explain the relationship between synchronicity and dreaming in more detail because i don't understand yet."

Synchronicity is a product of the second rule, where you focus your attention creates related detail. Simply put, it's one of the predominant aspects that shapes your dreams.

The most noticeable ones are when the association between two events or objects are clear and relatively close together in time (ie focusing on your tooth defects in a dream will yield more of those defects). But you have to understand there are also synchronicities at work that are not as clear. These may be from things lingering in your mind from days, weeks, months or even years ago.

Q: "Fenghuang assumptive manipulation - faith manipulation - conscious manipulation."

I like that classification of manipulations. I would say the first two are more reliable. Conscious manipulation, for me at least, unfolds more like a scientific experiment, in that it allows room for failure.

Fully Lucid VS. Semi Lucid
That's quite the inconsistency we have here, in that semi-lucids seem to offer better control than full lucids. Since it's awareness of being in a dream that lends you control, it would be reasonable to assume that the better the awareness, the better the control. That just doesn't seem to be the case.

My only explanation is that we (myself included) are scatter brained victims of the digital age. Technology has conditioned us to the point where we can barely focus on anything for any length of time.

That and our modern culture has no place for the ancient traditions of meditation and disciplines of the mind. The majority of religions have time tested methods and techniques to school and train the mind. To counteract this seeming lack of control, I would advise some form of meditation of mental training. I'd recommend reading Carlos Castaneda's books, as they deal predominantly with attention. But any type of meditative practice would be sure to help.

****

Q: "So the fear was started by my sub-conscious but then held onto by the conscious, this was then temporarily avoided by not dwelling on it using the Attention Technique and then defeated with another emotion bravery/peace/confidence. This leads me to believe that Emotion is, somewhat, a separate entity, as I find it is not something that you can directly control, but it can be manipulated by concentrating on things that lead to an apposing emotion."

I'm impressed, that was some good use of the attention technique and the emotional technique.

I still think emotions can be controlled, it's just not something most people are used to doing. Either you control your emotions, or they control you. The tricky part about controlling emotions, especially in dreams, is that it's kind of a chicken and the egg scenario. On the one hand, you have whatever dream element is causing the emotion, but on the other hand, those dream elements are reacting in response to your emotions. It can be very difficult to separate one from the other.

Here's a lucid where I first discovered and experimented with the effect of emotions in dreams.

Fri Sept 22, 2006
A Study in Emotion
Clarity: 10/10
Importance: 10/10
I'm working, at a customer's house. I'm getting very frustrated, and my mood is growing more foul by the minute. These negative emotions keep building, and building, untill I can't take it anymore and I/they snap.

My bad mood explodes out of me like the shock wave from a nuke. I can see it physically washing over every thing as is moves out exponentially in every direction. As my wave of anger passes objects and walls, it changes them. Colors become harsher and angry, lines and angles become sharper, and everything now has a crueler, meaner look to it.

No longer angry, I am now amazed at how much my emotions affect the world around me. A little humbled and a lot calmer, I reset the entire scene back to the way it was before.

Now, I start running through the whole range of emotions, basking in them and seeing how they affect and change the world around me. At some point I notice it's not just the physical objects, but the people and characters as well. Focusing single mindedly on whatever emotion would completely change the behavior of the people and animals (some pets).

****

Q: "Wow, wanna slip some grammar in there?
Anyway think I get what you're saying and yes these things are all quite obvious, but discussing it leaves a chance for more insight and investigation into why all this happens and further things that you might not find quite so obvious. Also discussing it lets people have input and could change how you think about it.
For example if you investigate say, bones of a velociraptor, you might go in thinking clear headed and thinking critically but then once you keep dwelling on this one thing by yourself your judgment would become clouded because you have no input from other people. You might have a sudden feeling that this bone is only 100 years old and you would start looking for things that verify this, yet if someone was there with you they would say 'nah it's just dust' lol or whatever. I don't know if I got to the point there but that is why people discuss obvious things.
Cusp came up with some interesting ideas and eventually started thinking he could apply this to real life just the same as in a dream, he obviously won't agree with me but I believe he dwelled on it too long by himself. Therefore he started getting carried away with some ideas without someone there to say "wait a minute, you're not thinking clearly, real life cannot be manipulated like a dream etc etc"

I love both those examples, as they both show the second rule can work. You mind if I use those when I turn this into a book?

And I don't disagree with the second one about me at all. Because that's exactly how it happens. I'm not sure if that was meant to undermine my argument, since it supports it so beautifully. It does however create a bit of a paradox of the chicken and egg type. My focusing on the idea too much would, according to the second rule, create the excessive detail I'm putting into this thread, creating the very rules themselves. From that perspective, it sounds like a self fulfilling fantasy or delusion, but even the delusion scenario unfolds according to those rules.

Unfortunately I can't take full credit for coming up with all this. It was shown to me by someone else. Or at least I figured it out by watching someone else who knew how to apply it. I'm not sure if they were intentionally trying to show me or not. I'll get to that story later. It's a whopper.

****

The Dangers Family and Close Friends

The Dangers of Family and Close friends.

I learned of lucid dreaming through Carlos Castaneda's books. Besides lucid dreaming, which to my amazement turned out to be true, it also contained several other tips and practices for dreaming. This is actually where the whole looking at your hands during dreams thing came from.

Most of these dream tips sounded strange and didn't make much sense, but damned if they didn't work, which is why the hands thing is still around. Because it works.

One of the things he mentioned is that family and close friends should be avoided at all costs at dreams. It sounded like good advice, but I really had no clue why that should be so. The attention and emotion rules explain why they are such a threat to your dreaming.

The Data
To better understand why Family and such should be avoided, I asked for examples and hit the DJs to see exactly what happens when people interact with family DCs.

It turn out that things generally don't go too well. In most cases there are arguments, family attacking you, family members getting hurt, getting attacked or being chased. Even just being worried about their health or wasting a lucid trying to convince a stubborn family member that this is a dream. I'd estimate about 90% of the dreams I've read involving family go sour in some way.

Applying Rule 2
These DCs are people you love, sometimes hate, which causes you to lavish more attention on them. They are indeed attention magnets, and this increased attention causes family member to become central elements in the formation of the dream. This may not sound too bad, but it causes a couple of problems.

The first problem is the sheer wealth of experience you've had with these people. Anything you associate with them or have shared with those people, be it from childhood or last week, could pop in your dream about them. There are too many possibilities associated with them, too many ways the the dream could go to allow for good control.

*Note: These kind of elements with vast amounts of associations can still be very useful in dream. But ideally you'd want to use something other than family, like a door or a tree. Control doesn't always mean achieving achieving specific results. Sometime you just need to break a bad theme and you can use these general elements to randomly create some new elements.

The main problem is the associated dream elements that usually occur as a result of the extra attention given to family, are ones that are tied to strong emotions.

Rule 3.
We obviously care about these people a great deal, and strong emotions are a powerful force in shaping our dreams.

Memory as been been shown to improve remarkably when intense emotions are being experienced during the event to be recalled. With the emotional roller coaster that is family, there is a vast wealth of these strong emotional memories that you associate with these people in your mind. So it's really no surprise that these stronger memories are the first to surface in dreams.

Conclusion
Effectively applying the second rule to improve dreaming requites a balance of attention. Too much on any one element and it pull you in too deep, drowning you in a sea of detail. Too little, and things destabilize, fall apart, and become incoherent. DCs of family members and close friends tend to tip the scales into the too much side, which is compounded by the strong emotional bond we have with these people.

****

Q: "Very true Cusp!
Also just one thing unrelated to that that I feel I need to say here is I have had a few terribly depressing dreams recently containing this girl from my high school I was friends with. She was always telling me in the dreams that she just doesn't like me and wishes that I'd go away. This is because I was thinking about her a lot and wondering if she still likes me or not"

I think fear of being rejected is pretty common for just about everyone. You say you've been thinking about her a lot, so obviously that is going to incubate her in your dreams.

Q:"Do dreams with real family members take place often for you guys? I've tried to remember, but I can only recall about 3 dreams where one of my family was present. Once, my little brother, and twice my father, though the only one playing himself was my bro and that dream too was years ago.
I can't remember ever having a fight with family in a dream... maybe that's because I never get involved in such quarrels, because I know its pointless."

I have family dreams fairly often, but I see my family quite a bit since my brother had a baby girl.

Possibly you're just spending more time with other people, and it's those other people who show up in your dreams?

****

More practical RL Applications: Writing
A lot of people still have doubts that these rules can be applied to RL to effect change . By controlling where you place your attention and your emotional state, then logically, any change experienced would only be from your perspective.

The trick is that you can not only manipulate your own attention and emotions, but you can manipulate the attention and emotions of other people as well.

Here's an example that happened to my yesterday. I was purchasing something at the store, and I expected the total to be just over 10$ so I had a 10 and a 5 out and ready. I was surprised to hear the cashier tell me it was just under 10$. I had it held out to give to him, so I took the 5 back. Anyways, he ended giving me an extra 5 dollars in change. The way I was holding it made my 15 dollars the main focal point, which implanted the idea of 15 dollars in his mind. I gave the money back.

Applying these rules on other through actions can be a difficult thing to conceptualize, and I have a few more topics I'd like to cover before I get into that any deeper. But one area where I think there is a very clear cause and effect relationship between applying these rules to RL and effecting tangible change in the world around you is writing.

More Practical RL Applications: Writing

Political Newspaper Propaganda Articles
I've always loved these articles in the paper. Far from impartial reporting, these pieces are written with purpose and intent, which is to make people vote for the party they represent. I people who write these are know as "King makers"

There are three main tactics for doing this, which just happen to be the three rules of dreaming. They fit very with with the whole Public Relations aspect of politics as a whole.

1 - Everything requires your attention to exist.
While an important and fundamental rule, most of the time this one seems pretty redundant. But politics take advantage of this rule like like nothing else. With simple denials and by ignoring key issues, many things get swept under the rug, so to speak.

It's safe to say Politicians are masters of the first rule. If you want to learn how to apply the first rule better, that's where you should look. I could give countless examples, but I'm sure everyone can do the same off the top of their head. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" comes to mind.

2 - The more attention you give to one element, the more detail it creates in relation to what you are focused on.
This one is simple really. Associate the candidate you support with positive issues, and the opposition with negative issues. By emphasizing certain elements and drawing attention to them, it's possible to engineer these types of negative or positive associations. Once these associations are in place, then whenever someone who's been exposed to this enough things about the candidate, the second rule creates corresponding positive or negative thoughts.

3 - Rule of emotions (Still under construction)
You will rarely read about issues that are truly important in the newspaper. Instead they favor the issues that get people emotionally charged, either strongly for or against. This is to reinforce what they are trying to do with rule 2, as stronger more prominent memories are formed during intense emotions. These memories charged with emotion are usually the first to surface.

Commercials and Advertising
These ones are pretty self evident. They are designed solely for the purpose of capturing your attention, drawing you in, and making people buy. A clear case of making things happen by using the second rule.

Creative Writing
Getting away from the manipulative aspects, these rules can be applied to creative writing as well. I've had aspirations to do some creative writing for a long time, but I've always had difficulty deciding how much descriptive detail to include in my writing. Also choosing which elements to describe can be rather difficult.

Second Rule.

PD: OMG it's too hot and humid. Again, I'll have to finish this later

****

Q: "I guess the reason why I don't have dreams with family members in them, because I'm pretty much a hermit. And even when I am with them, I don't get emotionally involved.
Talking about the change and politics, it will be very hard for some to believe that this has any "supernatural" basis. I think its a bit of both: cues picked up subconsciously (body language, subliminal messaging, hypnosis) and the aspect that modern science can't quite explain yet, though which magick (kabbalah, hermetics, ...) has explained for centuries.
Heard of Derren Brown? He does some AWESOME stuff with hypnosis, NLP, body language and whatever alien powers he possesses:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=II_-QcW4Q4I
http://youtube.com/watch?v=befugtgikMg
http://youtube.com/watch?v=IOEKdaXIEHc
Although he says that none of the things he does is anything supernatural, just psychology and so on, there are some things that are impossible to explain away like that:
he made a woman look at passers-by from, i think, a second storey window, trying to make them stop by willing it. (given instructions by Derren) She does it! How that is psychology, I do not know..."

I'm not claiming any of this has a supernatural basis. Just the opposite, this is nature it's self.

I was actually planning a chapter on hypnosis. I was thinking I could use these methods to explain hypnosis, and to hypnotize people myself. But that's going to take a lot research, study and practice.

In high school, I would sometime do what I called the "look of death". I could use it on anyone walking down the hall and make them stop dead in their tracks. I got bored with making people stop, then started trying to use it to make people drop their books, which would work every now and then.

Q: "Yeh that's what I'm talking bout' cusp, little gestures or expressions and such that you can do that make people do certain things. Just like a smile can make someone feel happy other things can make people do or feel something else."

Here's another example, again from my high school years, which I'm very proud of. Our english class was debating the pros and cons of the Nuclear family (Mother, father, 2.5 kids and a dog), and as we were allowed to make our own groups, it turned into the guys VS. the girls.

Our side was at a bit of a disadvantage, as the girls tended to be harder working than the guys, and their group had the smartest people in the class. The topic of homosexual couples raising kids came up on our side, and the girls overheard us and started coming up with counter arguments, which I happened to overhear.

It's then that I came up with my plan. We would pretend to be biased against homosexuals, and make it appear that this aspect would be our main argument. This made the girls do a lot of work coming up with great counter arguments. Unfortunately for them, when the debate rolled around, we avoided that topic like slick politicians, so that all their hard work was completely wasted and irrelevant.

One of the most effective methods to accomplish this trickery for the debate was a massive green tome my friend found at the library, which said "GAY IS NOT GOOD" in big bold letters on the cover. We spent the majority of our class prep time thumping that book with our fists like it was a bible, which was great fun!

Our opposition's greatest assets was their strong work ethic, so I used that against them. We directed their attention on that one topic, forcing them to spend the majority of their efforts preparing for it, then we blindsided them with topics they weren't so well prepared for and won the debate. They had no chance. I had single handedly won that debate on the first day it was announced.

Q: "I had a weird kind of lucid nightmare this morning. I was in a massive underground tunnel, it was practically pitch-black and the only things separating me from falling into the pit were these quite solid, but still dodgy-looking metal gratings.
I became lucid and I was afraid. Maybe because of the darkness. The fear made me think that there might be monsters close by. And then I thought 'Well, frack me, if there weren't any before, then me thinking this will make them appear anyway'. Which was true, because monsters started coming at me one by one. First an alien (conveniently from the movie Alien, you see. I had nightmares as a child when I watched those movies), then a predator, then someone I don't recall and finally a glowing skeleton-thingy with a luminescent chain with a circular blade at the end of it."

I had somewhat similar non lucid dream last night. Only instead of expecting monsters, I was expecting prostitutes. And sure enough, there they were! They gave the best back rubs.

Q: "How long did it take for you to gain control over your lucidity, the Cusp?"

I really don't know how to answer that. I've probably been LDing for about 15 years, and I still wouldn't say I have control. There's just always so much do in dreaming, always something new to explore.

My very first few lucids I failed at almost everything out of the ordinary that I tried to do. After a few successful tricks, I was able to repeat those I had previously done more easily. So I would rely on those one and use the hell out of them until I got really good. I tend to go overboard and have dreams where I repeat the same thing hundreds of times very quickly in different circumstances and scenarios. Every now and then I'd pull off a new trick and be able to replicate it much easier each time I tried it. Kind of like adding magical spells to a spellbook.

And I've been pretty much doing that ever since. But, after doing that for so long, the stuff I try now can get pretty complex or abstract. To the point where often I will know I was lucid, but the things I was doing with it can't even be translated into a waking context. I'm just left with the impression that I was doing something either really important or really cool, and at best I can just recall a few flashes that don't seem to make any sense.

****

All my notes on various things are rather chaotic and I keep losing track of stuff, so I just want note some future topics on this subject here.

-Next will most likely be my conclusions from my Vampire, Werewolf, Zombie study.

-Then Secret origins of these rules and Shared dreaming.

-Reconciling the ILDs. There are way too many LD techniques. There has to be elements these techniques have in common, and I'm willing to bet that the majority of them (Or at least the good ones) use these rules in some way.

And for the RL side of things, which will take a lot of research, I have the following to investigate
-Hypnotism - Look evidence of these rules in hypnotism methods. I'm sure I can use these rules to hypnotize people myself.
-Summoning - A bit out there, but if there is any truth to it, then the rituals should mirror these rules as well.

And I still have to finish the bit on creative writing. So much to do, so little time.

****

Q: "Thanks, Cusp and everyone for keeping this going. It has been really interesting. I wanted to add a bit. When I was in juniour high and HS I used to do what I called "little miracles." All of my friends knew I could do this, so from time to time they'd ask me for one of my "miracles." Generally they'd track me down before school started and tell me they hadn't studied for a test or had forgotten their homework and needed their teacher in a specific class to not do the test or to not collect the homework. I'd say, "Okay, you have your miracle." Then, without fail, whatever they'd wanted would happen. Sometimes they wanted other stuff -- a guy to notice them, for their parents to not get mad for something they'd done, etc. And everytime it worked. I "granted" more than 100 miracles and never had any of them not come true. The law of attraction in action. Now I like to use it to get parking spaces where I want them. I dream frequently about my family members. Most of them do include some form of struggle or tension."

Seeker28, that's awesome how you would do those "little miracles". I might ask you for help with one someday.

I kind of do something similar to your parking spaces trick. When crossing the street on foot, I almost never have to wait for the lights to change. They just change for me at the perfect time so that I never miss a step. Doesn't work out that way when I'm driving though.

****

Q: "I think you pretty much do it in the same way I do. For stuff to happen, I really need to feel good. I don't know why, but maybe because this feeling good makes me think about the term 'inner storm', that I tend to affect the weather when i'm in that state of consciousness. Come to think about it... I've been unusually happy a few times recently and its been raining for 2 weeks. Ah, my imagined connections...."

One day I woke up and for no apparent reason, I felt better than I've ever felt before. It was a super intense king of the world feeling, I felt like I could do anything. That alone was an incredible experience.

But when I left for work, everyone at the bus stop was staring at me. And when I got on the bus and sat near the back, every single person was turned around backwards in their seats and stated at me the whole time I was on the bus. I could even see the driver looking at me in the mirror! The people didn't even seem to be aware they were doing it, like they were mesmerized. I felt too good to care and just let them soak it up. Nobody at work reacted to it and the feeling went away around 11:00.

Now I know what Jesus felt like. The funny part is, at time that happened, I had hair past my shoulders and my beard (both brown) made me look very Jesus-like.

Q: 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.

I never properly thanked you for introducing me to the concept of schemata, which has been very useful. I generally view it as an AI neural network model, but my attempt at explaining neurons and dendrites and weights didn't pan out too well. It's like you mind is a vast forest full of twisting trails and paths. The more use use certain paths, the more worked in they get and the easier they are to travel. Your dreaming mind is more likely to travel well beaten paths.

I still think nothing exists until you are experiencing it, or at least focusing on it in some manner. These schemata already exist independently of the dream, they don't require any dreaming attention to sustain. They are a result of everything we've experienced. For dreaming purposes, I like to think of them almost as geographic locations with roads leading to new places.

I don't always have control over which path I'll take, but I am free to choose which schemata I want to use for change. You don't always have to go for pinpoint accuracy control, a general change of theme is good too. Sometime I change themes several times just to find associations that are useful.

****

The Fist Time LDer

A Newb's Experience with Lucid Dreaming

Using these rules for dream control requires a balance of attention. This leaves only three outcomes for any newbie dreamer. Achieve a balance, or tip the scale in one direction or the other.

1. Balance: If a first time LDer begins to interact with his environment right away, then he inadvertently achieves balance as his awareness gets spread around the dream scene. Things seem stable as long as they keep up a steady interaction with the dream.

2. Introversion: The dreams realizes they are dreaming and are so amazed, excited and thrilled by this fact that they focus all their attention on that thought alone. What that implies, the realization of what's happening, what's possible, all these thoughts direct a sudden rush of your awareness inwards to deal with all these mental machinations, which creates a corresponding vacuum in the dream around them. With no attention to sustain it's self, the dream collapses and the dreamer wakes up.

3. Overkill: Realizing they are dreaming, the dreamer checks things out and something fantastic, bizarre or just plain interesting catches their eye. They go in for a closer look and the directed increase in attention causes that element to grow out of control, demanding even more attention. They get in too deep and don't know how to stop it. The resulting confusion also leads to waking up, which is a form of the second outcome.

The second two are only pitfalls at the beginning. With practice they become your main tools. The reason it goes so badly at first is because people don't recognize what's happening. It's like giving a loaded gun to a monkey. The monkey doesn't recognize what the gun can do, what it was designed to do. Yet it can still fire the gun, which will probably scare the living shit out of it at the very least!

Q:"Hehe, I guess you could call the fact that almost always nobody will sit next to me in a bus (even if its packed) my own little miracles. Or maybe I just creep people out, dunno"

I do that as well. I don't think it's about creeping people out, because I'm a very successful hitch hiker.

Here's a neat bus trick. If you can sit by at least two pretty girls, then any other pretty girls that get on the bus after will cluster around you.

****

Q: [everything in your dreams requires your attention] ... "I think it would be truer to say that everything you perceive requires your perception. It may be true that for an individual, when they're no longer aware of something (volentarily or not) it stops existing for them but you don't really know if everything in your dreams are to do with you. I'm not saying they're not but there's other theories too.. ie, foreign entities like in "the art of dreaming" (carlos casteneda)."

Those would be the exception to the rule, as well as any form of shared dreaming. Learning to recognize and use your own elements should make it easier to recognize any foreign elements.

Q: [The more attention you give to one element, the more detail it creates in relation to what you are focused on]...have you noticed what happens if you stop and try and keep your focused attention on whatever's there? for me, it tends to change and can change into something completely different or unrelated or into nothing at all."

That's what I based the second rule on. The act of focusing your attention is the main creative force in dreams. It's just not always so focused and directed, so it's effects are not always so obvious.

But those changes are not unrelated, they follow schemata or archetypal models. These elements of change seem random, but they can be classed together because they have some relation to the object you are focused on. Some things or concepts can have thousands of related associations that may seem random, but they all have the root element in common.

Most of the time I'm unable to choose which of these associations will rear it's head, but I do feel that I'm able to narrow the choices somewhat.

Just try it. You'll see that the changes that come from focusing on a teddy bear are quite different than those that come from focusing on a severed head. Even if you can't predict the exact change, you can still have a pretty good idea of what to expect. Knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore, and not getting distracted by every shiny object can go a long way in providing dream control.

Q: "-but i wonder if concentrating on an object and letting it change into it's associated items would strengthen your memory connnections."

Most likely. In a neural networking model, every time one of these paths gets used, it gains what they call "weight". The more weight these pathways have, the more likely they are to get used.

But the true measure of the strength of a connection is the strength of the emotions you were experiencing when those memories were formed. THanks to the part of the brain called the hippocampus, which affects memory, learning and emotion, stronger memories are formed in response to strong emotions.

These emotionally charged memories being the strongest, surface first in dreams. I need to revise the third rule to reflect that.

Q: "Basically, wtf? That's like saying everything you see requires your sight. It's just basically redundant and it has nothing to do with attention anyway. It's a totally different thing, so you can't say that attention thing is wrong and the perception thing is right, it's like saying algebra is wrong because calculus is right."

I don't follow what you're trying to say at all. In a dream you're not using your real eyes to see.

We know through science that matter exists both as a wave form and as a singularity (particles). Recent advances in quantum mechanics tell us the act of observing these wave forms is what collapses them into singularities. This would suggest there is something "magical" about the act of perception.

Q: "do you find that you percieve more (emotions, objects, sences etc..) when you're fully lucid or when you're semi-lucid?"

I don't think I perceive more in one state or the other, my perception is just distributed differently in a full lucid than it is in a semi lucid. In a semi lucid, I take in more of the dream. In a full lucid, I have more of an inward focus while I think about the implications of what I'm doing. I still have the same sum total of perception, but a greater portion of it is directed inwards during full lucidity.

Q: "So you believe that at all times we are "maxing out" our perception, just that the distribution is different?"

I can't really say for sure at the moment, I need to experiment with that more. Yet another thing to add to my research list.

Q: So basically, in a semi-lucid everything is not as real, right?

No, just the opposite. Full lucidity by definition requires more focus on your thoughts, most notably the "Holy crap, I'm lucid!" thought. This leaves less attention to sustain your surroundings.

In a semi-lucid, more attention is focused on interacting with the dream, which makes it more real.

****

An Engineering Project: The Rumor Mill
I just realized a little something my brother and I do could provide a practical engineering project using those rules that anyone reading this could help me with. The main problem with understanding these rules in action is that they can be pretty abstract. Here we will try to create something very small and simple, with a very clear and simple intent. Plus we'll limit ourselves to using only words to accomplish it.

Background
Now my family has a bit of a history for bullshitting. My brother and I like to make up interesting little factoids that are complete fabrications, and tell it to someone. First of all, it's funny getting someone to believe something stupid, but it's even better when they repeat it and get called for being so completely wrong.

My brother inadvertently set a new standard when one of his bullshit fabrications caught on and spread. He actually had something he made up on the spur of the moment repeated to him by someone he didn't know in a completely different city from where he first told it.

I'm sure every one of you has heard the rumor about the Don't worry be happy guy committing suicide, or the one about Richard Geir and the gerbil. Those may sound stupid and immature, but what those simple rumors accomplished was awe inspiring. They spread around the globe like an infectious disease with a speed that rivaled the internet. Just think of how many perverted gerbil conversations you've had to suffer through as a result of that one.

Just a handful of words can have far reaching consequences. In that light, it's easy to see where the classical portrayal of wizards and scorcerors performing acts of magic by reciting magic words or incantations might have come from.

Applying the Rules
1. Every thing requires your attention to exist
-This is a brilliant example of the first rule in action. Make no mistake about it, we are creating something from nothing here, and the goal is to keep it alive through attention. A lot of people have trouble understanding how this works, and I hope these rumors will clarify things.

These rumors sustain themselves through the attention people give them. If it's a lame rumor that nobody cares about, it will soon be forgotten and cease to exist. But if the rumor is good, it takes on a life of it's own, it becomes something quite real and almost tangible.

The person sustaining the existence of these rumors needn't consciously focused on them to keep them going. They reside somewhere in the mind, but remain active. This is a great analogy of how we carry over residual stuff from waking life that influences our dreams.

2. The more attention you give to one element, the more detail it creates in relation to what you are focused on.
-This rule provides the building blocks for creation. There are maybe three elements tops in these rumors. They extremely simple. But the right combination of a very few element creates an irresistible hook.

Just look in the Dream Gallery section of this forum (http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...splay.php?f=60), and you'll see my dream entitled "Mormon Sex Cult" has over 5000 views. Not to brag, but that blows away any other dream posted there by leaps and bounds. Why? It's the right combination of elements. Of course sex is always a good one, but combined with Mormon and Cult, it's even more alluring.

3. Emotions strengthen memory and flavor those memories accordingly. (Still trying to rework that rule to better summarize what's happening. I'm not happy with that rendition, but it will do for now)
-Emotions can be considered the power source for this project, which keep the rumor going. Ideally we want something that people are strongly polarized either for or against. Something that provides a strong sense of shock or surprise. Something deliciously captivating.

I've been trying to write this for two weeks now. I'm not happy with how it turned out, but I still think it gets the point across, so I'm just going to post it and move on.

Ideally I want a rumor that will rival those two I mentioned, that will spread across the globe and get back to my brother so I can gloat. We could also do it on a smaller scale withing the DV community. I was going to suggest something about Asher, but he's been quick to wield the ban axe these days, and I don't want to get booted just yet. I'm just using him as an example.

They way these rumor implant and sustain themselves in the back of your mind is the kind of thing you want to accomplish with the desire for lucid dreaming. You want to turn it into something real that takes on a life of it's own. A site like this helps amplify that reality due to the number of people in agreement on lucid dreaming.

****

Q: "It would be funny if LD'ing was just a rumour and we all really just dreamed that we were having an LD."

Actually, most people who claim to be insomniacs, when monitored under laboratory conditions, actually sleep well most of the night. These people will argue they didn't get a wink of sleep all night until confronted with video footage of them sleeping soundly. What they concluded from this was that the people were dreaming that they were tossing and turning in bed all night. Just one long crappy false awakening.

Q: "What gerbil rumor?"

Allow me to refer you to the tale of Lemmywinks the Gerbil King. And remember you asked for it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4iebOTJHTk

OK, enough about the gerbils.

Q: "lol. Neway that insomnia thing was that for real insomniacs or just people who think they are?
Coz I'm almost 100% sure it's a real condition and you would only sleep seconds or minutes every night but you don't dream so it's like just a blink."

Insomnia is a real condition. And these were real insomniacs who were studied in the lab. Sure they spent a good deal of time tossing and turning, but they did still sleep, even though they would tell you they didn't. These people were literally shocked to see video of themselves snoring away.

Sorry no link for that, I got it from a book.

I'd say that they are putting too much focus or attention on their inability to sleep or restlessness, and the second rule fills in the details of a restless night, be it in RL or through a FA type scenario. Too much attention on any one thing is unhealthy.

****

Using Vision for Dream Control

The Basics: Vision

Using these rules for dream control boils down to a matter of awareness or attention. To be precise, where and how intently you have that attention or awareness focused. What awareness is exactly, no one can really say. It's an intangible process we use so often we take it for granted. For the moment, we only need concern ourselves with how awareness works.

Humans have 5 senses with which to perceive the world around them, but we rely most heavily on our sense of sight. What this means is that sight is our primary tool through which we are aware of what is going on around us. Or to put it another way, our main means of becoming aware of our surroundings. This makes vision our main weapon for deploying awareness in dreams.

Be careful what you look at...

Simply looking is probably the best and easiest method of dream control. This is both a curse and a blessing. What is so great about it is that it's such an easy thing to do. The downside is that we are almost always looking at something in our dreams.

This type of dream control doesn't just turn it's self on when we want or need it, it's always in play. And there is so much to look at, so much to see and take in. So many wondrous or terrifying sight, you awareness can hardly contain it's self. It jumps around from this to that, the whole while unaware of the consequences it's having on the dream. That is why dreams seem random.

In fact you need to look in order to interact with the dream and keep it stable. The trick is to learn to selectively choose what to look at. It's quite easy to lose control, some things you just can't help but look at. But we don't need to dwell on those things. Just a quick glance to asses and then move on until you come upon something you would like to expand on. Then you can dwell on it, examine it more closely. But if you start examining every little thing, things quickly get out of hand.

In Castaneda's books, the main technique Don Juan made him practice was just glancing at objects in dreams. I've been rereading those books for over 15 years and never understood what that was about until tonight. Just glancing is the best way to "travel" in a dream without disturbing things too much.

When you glance lingers too long, something happens, a change that you can actually feel. It almost feels like two magnets locking together. That feeling can grow in varying degrees of intensity along with your increased focus on that object.

Watch out for dream elements that ensnare you attention and almost compel you to look closer. Dreams are full of them, they lurk around every corner! Again I cite the example of a tooth dream gone horribly wrong. At first you may just want to let it happen and watch how the changes come. Once you recognize what is happening, it will be easier to avoid such snares in the future, however horrifying or beautiful they may be.

Tunnel Vision
I need to work on my glancing, but so far I've gotten really good at zooming in with my vision on a single thing, blocking out everything else. Literal tunnel vision. This is the best for extreme changes related to that element. You can keep going deeper and deeper into the detail, or pull back and see how your surroundings have changed in relation to what you were just staring at. I recommend going back and forth several times to see exactly what and how drastic the changes were.

It's really hard to explain how these changes take place, you have to experience it for your self. The changes that occur as a result of Tunnel Vision may be too drastic to qualify as control, but it sure is fun. It's more like controlling which water slide you want to throw yourself down.

...

I've also started working on focusing on multiple objects the last couple of weeks, hopefully glancing will help with that. I had discovered a new vision technique last night that I was experimenting with in a lucid, but I can't quite make sense of what I was doing while awake. It had a rolling feel to it, but that just makes no sense... I'll figure it out eventually.

****

Q: "Btw, how do you see the eyes of DCs in your dreams? do they look real? This morning was the first time that I actually saw a DC whose eyes looked real to me, there was no blankness or emptyness that had always been in their eyes."

I've never noticed anything out of the ordinary about the eyes of my DCs. My zombies usually have a blank empty look in their eyes, but that's to be expected.

Sounds like that would be a good dream sign for you, if you can learn to recognize it.

Q: I've found that when I become lucid and my sight moves from object to object, I will lose lucidity rather quickly. I have to look at everything very slowly and always keep something in focus for my lucidity to stabilize. But I've only got it to stabilize a few times...
This morning I tried to do that as well, but I guess my awareness was also on the DC that I was solacing by hugging her. I focused on a point in my surrounding, but after some seconds I could sense the dream blurring and then my vision started greying out.

Sounds like you were looking at too many things before you were ready for it.

The exercise Castaneda was practicing consisted of choosing a starting anchor point. Starting from there, he would glance at a few objects, then return to the starting point and repeat the process. Every time he would try to glance at more and more objects before returning to his starting point. I don't even think it would be possible to come up with a better method to practice glancing.

Sounds like you were looking at too many things before you were ready for it.

Q: "That means that the speed i look with while i am awake is much too fast for when i am lucid, i literally have to move my point of focus a centimeter at a time to not lose focus of the entire dreamscape."

Nothing wrong with focusing on the entire dreamscape. Peripheral vision works wonders for stability. It's only when focusing on individual items you have to be careful.

Q: "It's not the things I'm looking at that change, it's the stuff I'm not."

That's exactly right! Thank you, I rely on these comments to see what needs to be explained further. That's an important distinction I seem to have overlooked.

The changes that occur in the things you are not looking at are directly related to the thing that you are looking at. It's not what you are looking at that changes.

I'll try to better illustrate this point with zombies, werewolves and vampires next.

****

The Origins of Zombies, Werewolves and Vampire

Q:"How does everyone create their dreamscape when they are in 'limbo'? When I'm already inside a dream, I usually use the 'beyond that door' or 'behind that corner' method; when I am DEILDing (basically chaining) I use VILD. The first time I used VILD, i had the most amazing dream entry that i have ever experienced: i imagined a scene and the colours started slowly trickling/flowing in in little spiral vortexes that merged into the dreamscape."

I would assume it's a result of whatever lingering schemata are still active in you mind. But to me the spiral vortexes seem to be very important in those kinds of scenarios. So many people dream about sacred geometry without knowing what it is. And what it is is the building blocks of all creation, but I don't have enough understanding of that subject to really explain it.

The Origins of Zombies, Werewolves and Vampire

Without a doubt, the second rule is the most influential in shaping our dreams, and also the easiest to observe.

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

So let's take a closer look at the elements that birth these creatures in our dreams. The following examples are from dreams that didn't start out with these creatures all ready in them. I also excluded lucids, because the control afforded by lucidity distracts from the natural formation of elements we are trying to observe here

Vampires
While going through the DJs, I noticed that the main element that causes Vampire to appear in dreams is the classic spooky old mansion or castle. Everyone knows that's where vampires live. If you happen to spot one of these mansions, odds are, you're going to have vampires to deal with.

...I'm now near a castle and have become "NeAvO the vampire slayer"...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...&postcount=594

I'm in this kind of castle/mansion... and confronting this woman who was actually some kind of supernatural being (vampire?)
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...&postcount=543

...We had to go in this dark, spooky house...a strange woman in there who summoned a vampire
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...2&postcount=25

..all the houses were early 1900’s and very big...I kept thinking I’m not a vampire...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...41&postcount=1

...because he was 230 years old.That confused me for a moment until I realized that CB was actually a vampire.
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...&postcount=127

Obviously there are plenty more reasons to dream of vampires, books you read, games you play, halloween, but it all boils down to the same thing. Focusing on something that has a strong association with vamps, even if it's carried over from the waking world rather than something in your dream. Many dream vampires have a sexual nature, especially for women, and have quite different triggers. I can't go into every possible scenario because they are endless, and I'd be entering into the realm of psychology.

Death, corpses, blood, all these are common triggers as well, and can have a cumulative effect. It needn't be just one element like the mansion/castle, those just happen to be very clear examples.

Werewolves
Werewolves are interesting because they seem to reflect a beastial part of ourselves. They have fewer concrete association other that full moons and creepy woods at night, and their presence is most often triggered by strong emotions, namely anger and rage. A good fight or chase will often bring out the werewolves! They are good examples of the third rule in action.

3. Strong emotions flavor everything much like viewing things through a colored lense.

...They pull out a knife with a folding blade... somethings chasing me (werewolf or terminator??)...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...40&postcount=2

...The Werewolf guy was the most prominent. He was chasing us through the woods...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...postcount=1073

...As I viciously beat the old fucker, the people in the grocery store begin to get violent themselves....The infectious disease that is spreading is lycanthropy! ...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...postcount=1081
*That one's mine. Note how my rages completely changed how the DCs were acting.

...People panic near night...many people at the windows and on balconies, panicking...Just then I see the werewolf...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...&postcount=350

...I darted into the trees...so I ran past and kept going...It turns out that he was a werewolf! I was very scared
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...1&postcount=51

...some guy is messing with me or something, and I transformed into a werewolf, and started biting his arm uncontrollably...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...&postcount=101

I only concentrated on emotional werewolf creation in those examples, but there are plenty that follow the second rule as well. The main triggers being scary movies, video games, and halloween. Or of course the dark spooky woods at night like this one...

...I'm up at the cabin with my mom and step dad. I'm outside, it's night, and I have a sword. I'm out near the front of the property, when I'm attacked by a werewolf...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...postcount=1055

Zombies
Zombies are actually too big of an area to get into right now. It's going to take a bit more time that I have tonight to go through the countless examples of zombie dreams, but I think Vampires and Werewolves get the point across.

...

After writing this up, any guesses on what I'm likely to dream about tonight?

****

Q: "Hm, never dreamt about zombies, vampires or werewolves that I can remember. I described that mush room thing how it kept getting more and more bugs over it, but also the leaf didn't change at all, besides getting more detail to it."

You got extra detail in the leaf. But between the boring old mushroom and the crawling insects, which of the two do you think are more likely to capture your attention? Obviously the insects, and that's why they kept multiplying. If you really want to see the changes, you really have to latch onto it with your attention. Try to recreate tunnel vision.

Q: "I thought of something today that could be another rule but now I've forgotten, I'll edit this post later if I remember. It had something to do with anchors, like while you're doing WILD."

Anchors sound like a good idea. What were you thinking?

****

Secret Origins: Enter the Night Stalkers

The time has come to reveal where I learned of these dreaming rules, and at the same time to throw any credibility this thread might have had right out the window.

Secret Origins: Enter the Night Stalkers.

It all started with the infamous Night Stalker/Dream Walker thread.http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ad.php?t=37621

That thread was about people who supposedly enter other people's dreams and torment them. I like to keep an open mind, and was willing to at least consider the possibility. If there were people capable of such things, then I reasoned that DV would be a good place for them to find targets. Many people, including myself, keep detailed dream journals on this site. I figured the DJs would allow any of these Night Stalkers to read about their visits afterwards.

Being a LDer with many years of experience, I arrogantly assumed I would be able to handle any such visitors with ease. So I put out an open challenge to any of these "Night Stalkers" that might be lurking the forums in the hopes being targeted. I was really cocky about it, repeatedly calling them out, calling them names.

Before very long, it appeared I had gotten what I had asked for. I still didn't really beleive it at first, and figured those dreams were self induced. But the thing was, I was consistently getting my ass kicked in those dreams, night after night. This was odd, because I rarely lose a dream fight, especially when I'm lucid. But to get my butt whooped almost every single night was unprecedented in my dreaming.

It was a perplexing situation, because I considered my LD skills to be superb, especially when it comes to smashing things. But these opponents in my dreams could take anything I threw at them, which was starting to frustrate me. I started going over those dreams in an attempt to find out what I was doing wrong, or what I could do differently to turn things around. My best lucid tricks were totally ineffective.

Epiphany

These dreams continued night after night, with me trying to defeat these people and having no luck. As the dreams progressed, I began to notice how these opponents were able to defeat me. That's when I saw that we weren't playing by the same rules. I began to watch what it was they were doing to me, or rather how they were doing it, and I began to emulate them.

That's when things started to turn around for me, and I started win dream battles again.

The Difference

The problem I was having before was that I was attacking them directly, while these so called Night Stalkers were attacking me inderectly. In fact, I had mistaken their attacks as thier main weapon, but it turns out their true weapon was how they manipulated my attention. The attacks were just an incedental result.

Now a lot of people say that since it's your dream, anyone who enters it can't hurt you. And this is true. But what they can do is use your dream against you.

I was just flat out attacking, but these NS would build up their attacks with an almost theatrical flare. Instead of just letting loose with an energy blast like I would, they would hold the charge, letting it fill my senses in a manner that captivated my attention. Being so focused on what they were doing, it became part of my dream, and thus real for me. My direct attacks were to easy for them to ignore, and thus had no power over them.

As I got better at thier style of combat, they would actually compliment me on maneuvers I would make. Winning these dream fights all came down to coming up with innovative ways to capture you opponent's attention.

After getting the hang of this, the resulting dreams I had were indescribible, yet thrilling beyond words.

The Players

There were the same two people that kept showing up and attacking me in this manner. I call them Gimpy and the ThumbMaster. They each had their own unique styles which helped to tell them apart.

ThumbMaster: This guy's main technique was assuming the role of torture interrogator. He would constantly demand answers to inane questions that had nothing to do with anything. In retrospect, it wasn't the questions that were important, but rather the tone they set. By demanding questions of me (he wouldn't even wait for an answer before asking his next question), it created an interrogation setting in my mind. Just by asking questions, he was able to create an atmosphere where he was in charge.

He also had this brilliant torture method where he would run his thumb along the muscles and ligaments in my shoulders finding painful spots and pressure points. He never actually hurt me, but used jsutt enough pressure to let me know he coud hurt me at any time he wanted. And that was the most important part. His masterfully directed my attention causing his torture to become the main aspect of my dream.

Gimpy: This guy was was less skilled than the ThumbMaster. He prefered to assume the role of an indestructible psycho killer who stalks you relentlessly. In fact he preferred the threat of chasing/stalking to actual physical violence, and would let me get away so he could continue with his relentless stalking. He was creating a scenaio of fear, which was much more important than actually attacking me.

THis guy was nigh indestructible, and nothing I threw at him would phase him in he least. THis was very annoying for me because I still had a thing for direct attacks.

One night, when nothing was working on this guy, I remembered something I had read in one of Castaneda's books about a weak spot on the energy body. I performed a special attack and managed to hurt him. I'm not telling what I did or how, but afterwards, I had the impression I actually hurt him. It wasn't just a dream attack, I felt I did real lasting damage to a real person. Not just to his dream body, but to his real body.

I asked around a month or two later if anyone had encounterd a DC that fit his MO, and also had a limp. Two people reported seeing a limping DC that behaved like Gimpy. They both reported that he had grey hair.

I seriously think I hurt that guy for real.

Real or Not?

From those series of dreams, I devised my three rules of dreaming. Everyone says I likely induced those dreams myself, and initially, I thought that was the case as well. But after going over them again and again, they are distinctly different from normal dreams.

For starters, normal dreams follow these rules without exception. I'm able to trace back where things came from as a result of what I had my attention fixed on, and more importantly, my attention would wander around naturally.

But in these shared dreaming encounters, I wasn't in control of my attention, they were. Even when I'm not in contol of my attention, I can still recognize the natural progression as it moves around, and recognize what drew my attention to certain things. But when I interacted with these two people, they were the ones that were directing my attention in a most unnatural manner.

The difference to me is very clear, and my dream dreams have not unfolded like that before or since. Keep in mind I have 15 years of DJs to compare these against. I'm not making this up because I want to be special as many people say. I'd much rather take full credit for discovering these rules, but unfortunately, they were demonstrated to me by other people. Furthermore, those rules were the last thing I was expecting to discover. I already thought I know all there was to know about LD fighting, so I was quite surprised to find that I didn't know the first thing about dreaming.

Questions.

What is a Night Stalker's True purpose?
Initially, I assumed they were just shit disturbing greifers, much like you will find in any online video game. People who delight in tormenting others. That may be the case, but I learned such a great deal from those encounters, I'm wondering if their true purpose was to teach. And if not teaching, then for practice. The learning curve was just so much higher interacting with them than in my subsequent dreams where I'm exploring these concepts by myself. You have not only your attention to deal with, but someone else's as well.

Why terrorize dreamers?
Either for teaching or for practice, it creates a scenario where the rules of engagement are implicitly understood. Fight or Flight, things couldn't be simpler. There is no need to set up rules or goals, which saves a lot of time.

Do they know how to cause real damage?
Either they know how to hurt people for real, and choose not to, or they have no idea how to do that, and I just stumbled upon it as a fluke. Were they trying to teach me and I took things too far? Or was it something they just didn't know how to do? I'm thinking they don't know how to hurt people for real. Mainly because I took to these practices like a fish to water, and it wasn't long before I consistently outclassed them in a very short period of time.

...

So there you have it. Send the guys with the butterfly nets to stick me in a padded room. As crazy as it sounds, the rules that came from it work, all the time, every time. Frankly I'm amazed at how little opposition this thread has gotten. I have to assume it's because these rules are so self evident, you can't argue against them, which is why I'm leaking this dirty little secret now.

****

Q: "Cusp, have you considered the possibility that they are inorganic beings who are feeding off of your attention?"

They were too clumsy for IBs. They made very human mistakes. You could see when they lost lucidity or focus. One minute they are hunting me down, the next they get distracted by something in the dream. Plus the timing matched my challenges exactly.

Q: "Come on, Cusp.. lots of different types of IBs in-dreaming.."

Perhaps, but IBs aren't likely to suddenly lose lucidity like that. That's a human failing.

Q: "Well.. I would beg to differ about that.."

I'm still quite sure they were real people rather than IBs.

Q: "Did they teach you how to stalk?
and are you saying these are people IRL that have mastered their dreaming skills so that they can enter other peoples dreams?
If you know how to do it, enter my dreams anytime from tonight to next friday night. THAT INCLUDES ALL YOU OTHER NIGHT STALKERS TOO!!!!
Oh and Cusp, I see you're over at astral dynamics.com
Do you believe in that too?"

No, I don't know how to do that. Yet. But I'm a lazy bastard. I'll get around to it eventually.

In regards to the AD site and OBEs, I'm not sure what I believe. I tend to think it's just a dream, but I'm starting to think RL is just a dream as well, so who knows? But I have very little experience in that area. I just go there to get the hippie perspective from time to time.

****

Dream Sharing scenario

Q: "haha ok fair enough.
Anyone heard of that bigfoot being captured thing goin around?
Good example of the attention thing. I just wonder, if they went to the media and said "we found bigfoot" and they were like "yeh we don't care", nobody would ever bother trying to create these hoaxes.
Tell the truth Cusp it was you wasn't it? haha nah but what is that rumour/hoax thing you were going to do? thought of it yet?"

Not yet. Really I just wanted to put that out there because it's a good analogy of how dream control works. There is very little difference in what's happening with those stories and what happens in a dream. They are both active on so many levels, it's hard to get a clear picture of of how much impact they have.

The Dream Sharing Scenario

Now as for this shared dreaming nonsense, I don't expect most people reading this to believe it. If you don't that's fine, but for the sake of this discussion, consider it a theoretical scenario. The implications of those three rules of dreaming under those conditions, where two dreamers are interacting, are just easier grasp. It's easier to learn to play chess against an opponent than by your self. Your biggest opponent is yourself, but it's hard to imagine how much we work against ourselves in dreams. The idea of an opponent helps clear things up.

Someone just posted this dream about a lucid DC. To me this looks like an example of some possessing superb knowledge of dream control. Just consider the possibility, it makes it easier to identify specific instances or opportunities for dream control sequentially. Wether they are actual shared dreams or not doesn't change how these rules shape the dream in the least.

Q: Last night, I had an LD where I think one of the dream characters seemed to be just as aware of it being a dream.
I was in my front yard and I got lucid, probably from an RC, can't exactly remember. I approached a girl standing in my front yard and asked for, well, I'm sure you all know.
Her reply was to grab me and throw me straight over into the neighbor's driveway! She had enough strength to lift me from the ground over her head! It popped into my mind that she was probably as lucid as I was, as I layed on the ground. I looked over the wall that's in our neighbor's driveway and she walks away, and in her place a bear appears and attacks me! The bear comes to my right and takes a missed bite at my right arm! I run from it, shoot at it, and soon two are following me. I run into the other neighbor's yard, stop near the pool, and one of them falls in. I pull out a pistol and start shooting the other one as I run for my yard. I climb up on the swingset ladder, and shoot the other one dead as it's on its hind legs behind me. Soon after, a dinosaur comes from across the field and that wakes me up (or gets me into an FA, can't remember exactly).
I could be wrong, but I think the DC was probably lucid and did this as a reply to my proposition! There was just something I suspected that she made the bear appear, so it would attack me.
Or it could be that I read about one childhood nightmare about a bear being in the closet during a WBTB.
Did you ever have the experience of DCs having as much control over the reality as you do?

Q: Her reply was to grab me and throw me straight over into the neighbor's driveway! She had enough strength to lift me from the ground over her head! It popped into my mind that she was probably as lucid as I was, as I layed on the ground.

That would seem like a normal reaction for any good lucid dreamer. But let's consider that this girl really knew what she was doing, and she also knew this guy was a fellow dreamer. She knows it's a shared dream even though the doesn't. And he's pissed her off enough that she wants to make an example of him.

In order to ensure that he receives his lucid butt whooping, she wants make shure he doesn't wake up. Spinning is often thought to be a good way to stop from waking up, because the intense motion helps creates additional focus points to keep things stable.

Picking the guy up an throwing him would have the same effect as spinning, keeping him anchored, or even trapped, in the dream. It's actually much better, because spinning is too disorienting. Flying through the air and crashing into hard pavement is going to make things feel pretty damn real.

Q: "It popped into my mind that she was probably as lucid as I was, as I layed on the ground. I looked over the wall that's in our neighbor's driveway and she walks away, and in her place a bear appears and attacks me!"

In a shared dream scenario, that would be a superbly skilled and stylish use of the second rule. She knows that she doesn't even have to bother dealing with this guy directly. She provides him something that will completely capture his attention, and she knows it will grow out of control as a result. Which of course it does. The guy focuses on the bear so much, it splits in two! Everything after the introduction of the bear element is a clear example of attention growing out of control as a result of the second rule. The scariness of the bear probably invokes the emotional element of the third rule as well, making it even more effective.

Maybe the bear was just a result of him reading about it, but I submit that people don't necessarily see the same thing during shared dreaming. All she needed to do was create a general purpose localized threat, and his dreaming attention filled in the details. Nothing trumps the fundamental rules of dreaming. Everything we experience is a direct result of our own personal schemata.

****

Q: "Wasn't there a general rule that things in dreams when lucid, are like you expect them to be? As in, when you eat a chicken it will taste like what you think chicken tastes like."

Sort of, really it comes down to what schemata you have active in you mind, which is not necessarily what you might be expecting.

For instance, the word "NOT" has very little meaning in your dreams. If you were to say to yourself in a lucid, "When I open this door, there is NOT going to be a blood sucking vampire standing there!". The "not" won't help since you've already invoked the image of the vampire, which in all likelyhood is exactly what you'd find.

Q: "But then again, some of your other stated ''rules'' aren't exactly 100% valid either."

Well that's pretty vague. If they don't seem valid, you probably just don't understand it yet. Tell me what you have a problem with, and I'll do my best to better explain.

Q: "This is one of the things that make me believe in Shared dreaming, as there is no reason for her lips to taste like peach, and I'm sure as hell my pillow doesn't taste like peach."

You should read up on Archetypes. There is every reason for her lips to taste like peaches! Peaches have a very fundamental feminine association. It can mean boobs, or even the fuzzy peach.

Q: "wouldn’t your dreams reflect your beliefs whether or not they were true? Isn’t your mind going to introduce these concepts in your dreams as you understand them?"

Knowing that's the case is the first step to avoiding that situation. But this thread has nothing to do with belief, I'm not asking anyone to believe anything. Besides, this is not what I was expecting to find. I already thought I knew everything about lucid dreaming before I started this. I've since had to start over from scratch and relearn everything. Wouldn't it have been easier to come up with a scenario that that matched my pre-existing body of knowledge? It sure would have taken a lot less work...

It's not just in my dreams that reflect these rules, it's every dream, every time. I didn't make them up, they were already there waiting to be discovered. Show me any dream that was recalled with enough detail, and I'll be able to walk you through it's development step by step.

If I am delusional, then as a self fulfilling fantasy, you gotta admit it's pretty tight.

Or maybe you believe I'm making this up. Especially after that post I made about rumors. I am one of the one responsible for keeping that Night Stalker thread alive. Perhaps the shared dreaming thing is my rumor. In which case, that would make it an incredible example of my rules for dream control being applied to the to the waking world.

I maintain that I'm just trying to describe the truth as best as I can see it.

Q: This morning I was lucid for the longest time ever. And I lost my lucidity 5 seconds after thinking that...
As soon as i became aware of the length (even though it might've been a short period, since we all know time can get funky) of my lucidity, it started wavering.
Before it had been very constant, almost as if i was not aware that i was lucid, even though i was. One could argue that it was semi-lucidity, but that's not what i felt (remember). I remember being fully lucid. I was lucid, but didn't put attention on the time. Almost like when going into a trance i learned how not to pay attention to salivation and then i didn't need to swallow anymore. The most stable one I have ever had . . . until that one fateful thought.

Sounds like a less extreme form of introversion, without the waking up.

• 2 - Introversion: The dreams realizes they are dreaming and are so amazed, excited and thrilled by this fact that they focus all their attention on that thought alone. What that implies, the realization of what's happening, what's possible, all these thoughts direct a sudden rush of your awareness inwards to deal with all these mental machinations, which creates a corresponding vacuum in the dream around them. With no attention to sustain it's self, the dream collapses and the dreamer wakes up.*

Q: "It seems that to lengthen my lucidity, I need to push the point of introversion as far as possible until i get rid of it."

You might not have to get rid of it, you could try to balance it out. I'm sure if you had that thought while you were running, you wouldn't have had that problem. Of course it's kind of hard to stop those kinds of thoughts from arising at the wrong moments.

But there is a process to waking up. Things fall apart first, and if you can catch that happening, you might be able to counteract it.

****

WARNING!: Fourth rule incomming!!!
Lol, I started off with two, now I need four.

Actually the new fourth rule isn't anything new. It's been an integral part of this discussion all along. I just feel I need to stress the importance of schemata and personal representation systems. It definitely needs it's own rule. But that's the last one!

I'll figure out how to word it later, because really it's part of rule 2. Or maybe it should be a sub rule to rule two. Or maybe I should just get some sleep (and hopefully some practice) and worry about it tomorrow.

Q: "A question about the emotions: What if you meet a person you're in love with in your dream? How will it affect the dreamscape?"

Your love for that person will cause them to become a central element of the dream, and the rest of the dream will form around them. This turns out to be a thorn in your side more often than not. You will have nice dreams sometimes, but if you've ever gotten into an argument with that person, that scenario stands a good chance of playing it's self out again (or some approximation thereof). Your concern for their welfare or safety will also manifest unpleasant scenarios.

If you keep a DJ, do a search for "mother" or "father" or anyone else you you love. You'll find that the majority of the time, the dream goes bad in some way.

You need freedom to act in a dream, and people like that will tie you down.

Q: "Had an amazing lucid this morning. Just indescribably vivid and beyond real. When I reached the point of introversion, I could feel it. Feel my awareness reaching inwards and lack of focus on the dreamscape. I took this as a cue to give my mind as much sensory input from the dreamscape as i could and i stabilized my lucidity.
When I started losing it I was holding snow in my hands. It seems that every time I have something in my hands (strong sensory input) my lucidity does not end in me waking up (unless its a false awakening), but in entering a new dream, though i've still lost my lucidity almost every time."

THat's awesome! I'm glad it's working for you. Feeling it like that is really important in ways I can't describe at the moment. I know what you mean by losing lucidity. Often I will relinquish my lucidity in order to stabilize the dream, and forget to get it back. Trying to focus lucidity seems artificial at times, and it can be good to slip back into natural dreaming to stabilize things.

Starting a fresh new dream after the point of introversion is only natural. Things were fading away, and there was likely not much left of the original dream. So the dream has to start over, building off of what you have your attention on. When that happens, try to see how the new dream is related to your area of focus that salvaged the dream.

...

I've been a little lax with updating this thread the past few weeks. Had a bad case of writers block, and a loss of focus. I have three articles in the works for this topic which I'll finish soon.

Plus I haven't been lucid in well over a month, but broke that streak last night in a lucid where I concluded that dreams are no different than reality.

To give a recent example, I saw a guy yelling at a little girl yesterday who was about the same age as me niece. Now my 19 month old niece is currently obsessed with pinecones (which I think is due to their inherent sacred geometry). So I walk into my building, thinking about my neice because that scene I just witnessed captivated my attention, and there in the middle of the hall is a pinecone. Call it coincidence or synchronicity, but I say it's the second rule of dreaming in action.

My personal schemata associates pinecones with my niece, and by thinking about her, that's the path it took. I've lived in this building three years now, and I've never seen anything laying in the hall.

Q: Cusp, what is it about these two characters that makes you so sure that they are seperate from your own psyche?

It's very simple. They are able to use these dream control techniques I've been talking about, and they don't respond to me using them like a regular DC would.

Q: "So Cusp I have a question. I have little trust in people (emotional aspect) and when I go through my day to day I seem to be on auto-pilot. You know like when you stare into nothingness and your eyes adjust and sort of only see the outline of things, thats how it is for me everyday. So I visually dont really concentrate on anything, theres no attention to detail. I dont talk to anyone unless I need to, im a sociopath I guess you could say, so my interaction to the world is minimal. Going through the day like this and based on what Ive read of your dream rules, do you think my attentive disconnection from the real world would have an impact on my ability to dream control, based on your attention rule? Especially since we tend to interact in our dreams the way we do in real life, as far as behavior patterns are concerned?"

Based on the rules, I would say your dreams would tend to be unstable. Things would disappear quite frequently and there would be very little continuity. Also your ability to spontaneously become lucid would be greatly deminished, so you would have to rely on reality checks and ILD methods to get lucid. You would probably wake up a lot once you get lucid due to this introversion

I don't like talking to people either, but I would suggest trying to increase your awareness. I think that is the difference between natural LDers and those that rely on methods. Naturals are more aware of their surrounding

Q: "I have found in dreams and in real life that if I focus really hard on getting something to happen, it doesn't work. In the dreams, objects don't move, I don't fly. In real life, I get too caught up in the details and lose the overall goal and the lessons any problems are teaching me.
However, in my dreams and real life, if I make my intentions strong towards my goal, and let the method be determined by the environment, or the dream, I can and do succeed."

Yep, you have to keep your eye on the prize. Concentrate on you goal, and not how you're going to achieve it. The trick is not to get distracted. There are a bazillion things that can easily distract you, you just have to practice not letting your attention wander.

Q: That is why I brought up Milton H. Erickson, because a lot of what he talks about is how your beliefs assist and restrict you, and how you can change them. That is also why I brought up my theory on thought, because my belief in the answer gave me the answer (thought I didn't recognize it when I saw it), and my disbelief kept the answer from me.
-Jim

Thanks for that, Jimmy! I'll be sure to look into that guy. I've been meaning to look into hypnotism to see how it ties into this. I get the feeling i could use these rules alone to hypnotize someone, but it's hard to find a volunteer who I can approach with this.

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Fourth Rule

Thanks to everyone for keeping this thread alive while I've been out of it with allergies, flu and back pain.

Rule #4: There is no random in dreaming. All changes and newly created dream elements follow our own personal schemata and archetypes without exception.

Let's take the ocean as an example. What comes to mind when you think of the ocean? Sand, beach, boats, seagulls, seashells, salt, waves, fish, whales, pirates, fishing, your uncle Jim who lives by the ocean, ect.

It would be impossible to make a complete list, because these things we associate with ocean are always changing. But there are main ones that are more likely to come through in a dream than others. If you dream of the ocean, any of those things may appear in your dream. Where did the ocean come from? Maybe there was a travel or vaction theme before that, which has an association with the ocean.

The thing that really makes dream elements seem random is that we can focus on several different things at once, so these influences overlap each other.

Continuing with our ocean example, let's add another element. Say, the general theme of family (perhaps there was a family reunion element earlier in the dream, or even in RL). The associations with family would be Mother, Father, brother, sister, cousins, aunts, uncles, ect.

So now we have
Ocean: Sand, beach, boats, seagulls, seashells, salt, waves, fish, whales, pirates, fishing, your uncle Jim who lives by the ocean, ect.

Family: Mother, Father, brother, sister, cousins, aunts, uncles, ect.

Since Uncle Jim belongs to both those categories, you can almost guarantee he's going to show up in your dreams.

Lets take it one step further and add an third, emotional element. Let's say your uncle Jim is a drunk bastard who pisses you off, maybe even scares you a little when he's really hammered. Other family members who evoke those emotions may show up in you dream. And since Anger and Fear are associated with violence, perhaps the sharks from the ocean theme will start eating people. Actually, they would most likely attack your family members due to the emotional attachment (rule 3).

There are a great many associations we make with each element or theme, but when multiple elements are in play, it's the associations that all of them have in common that will manifest themselves. Each additional element you focus on will narrow down the possibilities.

Psychic Energy?
These last few posts about "Psychic energy" only illustrate the differences between personal schemata. I would say The Enterer has a broader and more developed schemata of what psychic energy is, while those riding his ass have a much more simplistic set of associations with the term. Words are only descriptions, they are not fact. You have to have some understanding of where people are coming from, and that goes for both sides.

Advanced Vision Techniques and Hypnotism

Visual Representation Systems

This seems to be a good follow up to the fourth rule. Consider the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svjHklQhHpc

According to that vid, people subconsciously look to the top left when remembering something, but look to the top right when required to create a mental image. This seems to be universal for everyone, and could aid with summoning in dreams.

If you wanted to summon something from memory, logically, you should try to make it appear on your left side. You want to create something in a lucid, try to make it appear on your right side.

He also discusses more specific visual patterns (sub-modalities), like how close or how far, how bright/dark, color versus black and white. How people you like or dislike appear, and specific locations of where they appear in your vision. If one were to visualize their lucid dream goals while awake before hand, you could note the visual specifics to try and recreate in a dream. You could create an actual visual mapping system to facilitate you lucid goals.

Hypnotism.

That first video is in response to Darren Brown's NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) system. Watch any of the associated vids to get a better understanding of what is happening.

I've suspected that these rules could be applied to hypnotism, and this Darren Brown guy uses every one of my rules in his techniques.

I consider this next video a great analogy of what happens in dreaming. What's better is how he applies it to the waking world, seemingly confirming my hypothesis. They break down how he does it at the end, and it's sheer genius.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=befug...eature=related

...

I haven't updated this thread in awhile because I've been busy experimenting in my dreams. Everything I've talked about so far I've verified thoroughly, but as this discussion progressed, I was moving into theoretical areas which I wanted to test out before I came to any conclusions. It's slow going, but I'm still working on it.

So far the visual techniques have provided me with the best form of control. Simply looking around is the most powerful form of control you can perform, and you will never gain true control unless you understand that.

I also just applied to be a guest on Coast to Coast AM. I know George Noory is into dreaming, and the shared dreaming elements as well as applying those rules to the waking world is a perfect topic for that show. Wish me luck!

****

Q: As you said, something that exists might take influence on your world. If things exist outside of your attention, there are most likely a great number of them since it doesn't make much sense that the only thing existing outside of your attention might be a football or something like that (even if there are few things existing outside of your attention, that itself shows their insignificance). If there are a great deal of things existing outside of your attention, it is very likely that at least one thing would somehow influence your world. Thus if you find your world being influenced in a way that doesn't make sense given what you are paying attention to, for instance you're eating dinner and a car drives through the wall, you can conclude that things exist outside of your sphere of attention. If you can find no evidence of such occurrences, you cannot conclude rule 1 absolutely, but with a good amount of certainty, as much as certainty as you may have concluding just about anything about dreaming.

I never thought of it like that, that's a good point.

Q: I disagree, Valwen. Not in the conclusion that if one thing exists outside of your attention, then many things do. That is fine logic. What I disagree with, is saying that if you are eating dinner and a car crashes through your window that you can conclude things exist outside of your attention. You most certainly can't conclude that. All it means is that a stray thought conjured up a car. Your dream-world is not an independant holo-deck program. It is not it's own scape, or even some realm that exists in your sub-concious with it's own little realities. At least, I'm fairly certain that it's not. In context of our dreams being synapses and thoughtwaves, something requires our thoughts to exist in a place entirely made of thoughts.

In that scenario, you're eating dinner. Presumably you have a window for the car to crash through. What's outside that window; your yard, your driveway (with your car perhaps), and both of these lead to the street which is made for cars...

All it would take is for a noise outside to capture your attention. Then you listen more to figure out what it is, maybe you hear some tires squawk or an engine. Mix in an element of tension or danger, and voila, car through the window.

There is a clear cause and effect chain that is anything but random. Once you recognize what is happening naturally in a dream, you can use it for control.

Hell Realms

I stuck this in the beyond dreaming section, but it really belongs here. It's about how different people could each individually recreate the same dreamscape.
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ad.php?t=70716

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Why do we become lucid?
If I had to sum up the control techniques I've been trying to explain, it would be "focused awareness". Even if you're not purposely doing it, it's still happening anyways. The things you are aware of build your dream world. So in essence, it's safe to say that dreaming is all about awareness.

Clearly, some people are more aware of their surrounding than others. I would go so far as to say that those who have a greater awareness are generally more successful in life. Adults are obviously more aware than children, yet children develop into adults. Awareness is something that grows with us. What's important to note there is that it can grow. It can also decline or be suppressed by things like alcohol.

Lucidity is a byproduct of heightened awareness.

Naturals

So called "natural" lucid dreamers simply have an above average awareness. But even naturals have room for improvement. Plus this type of heightend awareness is not neccesarily a constant thing. It can wax and wane.

Techniques

There are a ton of methods to become lucid. It seems someone invents a new "ILD" method at least once a month, which really cracks me up! These techniques do work to some degree, but there are so many available to choose from, it can be a daunting task to choose one.

The sheer number of techniques is too messy. There just shouldn't be that many. Yet they all do work. To simplify things, let's consider what they all have in common.

Be it plain old reality check where you stop to look around, plugging your nose and trying to breath, trying to put your finger through your hand, or waking yourself up to think about lucidity before going back to bed, the one thing they all have in common is that you break away from your regular routine and become more aware for a short period of time. The varied techniques just give you a focus point for that awareness.

It's this momentary increase of awareness that trains you for lucidity, not the actual technique. Like with any other muscle in you body, the more you use it, the stronger it becomes.

Dream Yoga

I found out a bit about buddhist dream yoga recently, and at heart, it seems to be just an extended reality check. Instead of just giving up once know you're not dreaming, you try to sustain that heightened awareness. It would seem to me to be much more effective than doing a random technique a few times a day. Going with the muscle training analogy, it's more like a full workout rather than a few sit ups.

When you're getting close...
As your awareness grows closer to the critical mass required for lucidity, you should start to notice signs that your efforts are paying off. A lot of people get really close without realizing it, which must be really frustrating.

Here are some signs to watch for that might indicate you're getting close to becoming lucid.

-Talking about lucidity or dreaming with DCs, or even just thinking about it.
-Recognizing that you've dreamed of something before.
-Using powers from previous lucids without being lucid.
-Waking and re-entering the same dream.
-Recognizing that things are weird or not right, but still not getting lucid.

There are a ton more, really it could be anything where you get close to lucid. Watching for these signs in your dreams can let you know when you're getting close, and a lack of them can let you know when it's time redouble your efforts or try something new.

****

Q: @TheCusp. But in what way would you become "more aware" of your surroundings simultaneously? You'd start seeing more things around or what? Either you're aware that you're asleep or not

Q: Awareness is what you want to have in dreams and it's either present or absent, but not somewhere in between. It's like being dead or alive, either you are or you aren't.

Everything that is alive is aware of it's surrounding to some degree. A person is going to be more aware than something like a worm. An adult is more aware than a child. There are varying levels of awareness. Lucidity is just a road sign to let you know where you are at. "You are now entering Lucidville, Population: you!"

Ever been in a fight? In those moments before it happens, when you it's going to go down, you become hyper aware.

Ever been hungover? No so aware.

Now I'm going to have to write a piece about what awareness is, and that ain't gonna be easy! Suffice it to say for now that there are different ways to deploy your awareness. You could have an expanded peripheral vision, zoom in on something in a sort of tunnel vision, become hypersensitive to sounds or smell. You can focus on one thing so much, it doesn't leave room for you to be aware of anything else.

For instance, I'm certainly not aware enough at the moment to tackle this subject. Or perhaps it's just that my thoughts are too scattered at the moment, and I lack the proper focus. Either way, I'm not ready for this just yet.

****

RL magic explained as a method of Dream Control

Magic is using the dream state to your advantage

So far I've tried explain how dream work in general without getting into too many specific methods of control, and also touching on how they might apply to real life. Now I'd like to do the exact opposite, and show how to use RL methods of control in dreams.

This stuff is still new to me and I've been having a hard time conceptualizing different ways to focus my awareness. Fortunately, the idea that reality is a dream is thousands of years old, which has given people plenty of time to figure out how to use it.

Any type of magic that might actually work could only function as the result of life being a dream, and would use the rules of dreaming. So I'm going to explain how every single type of magic works.

I don't expect anyone to actually believe me when I say that life is a dream, all I ask is you consider the following an analogy of dream control. People once believed the sun and moon were gods. The type of magic I'm talking about here is the kind that can turn a god into a cold rock or ball of burning gas. Which is still pretty powerful stuff, depending on how you look at it, which is exactly the point.

Magic, There can be only one...

Any type of magic that could possibly work in the real world does so only because life is a dream. Therefore, they should work exceptionally well in dreams.
There weren't as many types of magic as I though there were, but each one makes for a perfect method of exerting control over your dreams. If you understand what's happening.

Shamanism.
Might as well start here, since shamanism is where I learned of LDing. I'm going to use Carlos Castaneda as an archetype for the genre, which in essence about controlling awareness. Wether his particular story is true or not, there is a goldmine of info in there on how to skillfully work with awareness.

It does mirror a lot of what I've been trying to explain so far, but is based on the ability to see energy directly. He also claimed that our wold was just one of many, existing along side each other like the layers of an onion. The world we inhabit is just the result of a habitual way of deploying our awareness. I only recently understood that by figuring out how identical hell realms could exist for different people.

(Hell Realms) http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ad.php?t=70716

One last thing from Castaneda's work I'd like to note is a distinction he makes between the Sorcerers of Antiquity, and Modern day Sorcerers. The old school wizards were hellbent on replicable results, and developed overly elaborate rituals and methods to obtain them. The modern day sorcerers are more about kicking it free style.

Make that three...

Stage Magic
Your run of the mill stage magic works pretty much exclusively with the first rule of dreaming. Everything requires your attention to exist. Mix in a bit of redirection, and that's all there is to it really.

Your dreaming attention is what fills in the blanks for optical illusions, in the exact same manner as things get created in your dreams. Magic is using the using the dream state to your advantage. While stage magicians perform mere tricks, there is still some magic in what they do.

Next we have the three basic types of magic distinguished by anthropologists:
(Italics taken from here: http://www.articleswave.com/articles...-of-magic.html)

Homeopathic Magic
Homeopathic Magic is based on the assumption that like produces like. It means that if some form of action is performed on something, it will have a same impact on the intended real thing.

This school of magic clearly all about rule 2.

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

Sympathetic Magic or Imitative Magic
Sympathetic Magic on the core principle that if it is performed on some object(s), the same would happen to the person or object which is under influence. The relation is made between the objects based on the presumption that one can influence something based on the attachment.

This school of magic takes advantage of the third rule.

3. Any new elements or changes follow strict personal schemata and archetypes.

These schemata and archetypes are the sum total of links between one main theme or object, and the things related to it that define it. This school of magic works directly with those links.

Contagious Magic
Contagious magic supports the notion that if a person has contact with certain things, they will influence the person who is under contact with those things. The most common example of this type of magic can be seen in use of voodoo dolls. Voodoo dolls are attached with a part of fingernails, hair or teeth of the targeted person. The voodoo doll, then is assumed to be the person himself and it can be used of to hurt the victim. This type of magic falls under black magic, since it is practiced to cause harm or injury to others.

All rules in play for this one.

Rule 1 Everything requires your attention to exist:
Good focal points to make things real

Rule 2 The more attention you give something, the more related detail it creates: Again good focal points.

Rule 3 Any new elements or changes follow strict personal schemata or archetypes: Obvious associations present.

Rule 4 Strong emotions are a powerful force in shaping your dreams:
Emotional element Involved.

Who's counting? Getting even more specific

Divination

Seeing or predicting things under divine influence and intervention.

That definition kind of blends into ESP, so let's take Dowsing as typical example of divination. Finding water with a stick, classic! Lets start with an excerpt from this article on brain function to better understand what's happening(http://discovermagazine.com/2009/feb...ing-us-smarter).

...What’s even more remarkable about our brains is that they actually search for new things to make part of this feedback system. Imagine you are poking a stick into an animal’s burrow. As you poke away, you are aware of what the far end of the stick is touching, not the end you’re holding in your hand. This kind of extended sensation appears to be the result of a reorganization of the brain. Scientists have found that when test monkeys spent five minutes learning how to use a rake, some of the neurons in their hands began behaving in a new way. They began to fire in response to stimuli at the end of the rake, not on the monkey’s hand. Other neurons, in the brain, respond to things that appear to lie within arm’s reach. Training the monkeys to use the rakes caused these neurons to change—reacting to objects lying within rake’s reach rather than arm’s reach.

Like the magic wand, or even pointer sticks used in schools, the dowsing rod is simply meant to focus awareness. Not some mystical magical energy, just plain old awareness. I think that's why there are so many old paintings of Jesus holding a magic wand. To show that he was focusing his awareness. Any of his miracles would be easy to do in a dream.

While following a stick around may seem like a useless dream skill, I think it could be both a useful and fun way of finding things or people in dreams. Up until now, I haven't come up with a reliable way of finding people for my shared dreaming attempts. I think using this stick method will help with that big time!

Ceremonial or Ritual

This depends on religion to religion and is generally performed for both positive and negative purposes. This involves but isn't limited to removal of spirit possession, prosperity, injury to some party or parties, better next life form, etc.

These types of magic work within certain predefined contexts, as allowed by the third rule of dreaming. People expect magic to follow unchanging physical rules and work like a machine. But the rules it follows are schemata and archetypes.

Take the Crowley type of cults, Order of the Golden Dawn ect. It involves reading and memorizing tons of books about gods and demons, which they invoke in their rituals. It's everyone learning the same stories that creates the common ground where the magic can happen. Buy building up specific archetypes, they are able to come up with ways to use and manifest them through ritualized focus of their attention.

It's the same kind of magic that allowed for the rise of rap music. They created a complex culture or system, complete with awareness focusing techniques to make things happen within that system. Successful hip hop artists are magicians are sorcerers. Explicit knowledge of that system give them the ability to make things happen within it.

It's basically like a religious person calling of Jesus to save them in a dream. Of course going to come to someone with a well developed religious archetype. But you might not always want jesus's pacifist style. If you were to familiarize yourself with greek mythology, you would have a whole array of gods you could call to, each with unique bents of character and specialties. If in a dream you have slow legs or need to run faster, invoke Hermes, or even the Flash for that matter.

But it only works if you know hermes is supposed to be fast with those winged sandals on his feet. If you don't know Thor is the god of thunder, you won't be able to use him to strike down your enemies. They require a well developed, stable schemata system to function in.

Thaumaturgy

Thaumaturgy is a term which denotes the art of magic which invokes supernatural powers

Good old Invocation!
Equivilant to yelling lucid commands (More light!) but with the power of a god behind them, and is just a more simplistic and focused form or ritual. Lucid commands fail because you have no well developed precedents for doing impossible things to draw on. Invoking specific gods, saints, whatever with a solid background to them is a lot more reliable.

ESP

ESP is the power to perceive things which are not present to the senses

That definition is a little vague as well. But it seems to be awareness focused in a certain way and the good old dream rules. Remote viewing could be explained by the second dream rule, the more attention you give something, the more related detail it creates. Which describes precisely what happens with remote viewing.

Theurgy

Theurgy is a part of white magic performed with the help of spirits. It is basically performed by Neoplatonists to bring in supernatural or divine intervention in human affairs.

Another form of Invocation within predefined set of archtypes.

Tantra

Tantra was introduced by Hindu and Buddhist religions. Tantra involves use of elements such as mantras and mudras (spells) from Vedas (sacred texts) recited for getting things done magically.

An even more basic form of Invocation, functioning in much less developed, simpler archtypes.

Voodooism

Voodooism is a religious cult which involves use of voodoo dolls, witchcraft and animistic deities for inflicting effects on selected targets.

Voodoo in and interesting one in that it's so brutally simple and direct. I find voodoo one of the best schools of magic that applies directly to dreaming, and it uses all four rules very well.

First you have the freaky fetishes that are meant to capture and focus your attention. They are usually made from bone, feathers, dead things, invoking the image of death and using the emotion fear to fuel the magic. Voodoo dolls are a mere focus point for your attention as well.

They say voodoo only affects you if you believe in it. That's not quite true. It only affects you if you focus on it. That's why the general tools of voodoo are somewhat theatric in nature. You don't need to believe you've been cursed, but if you think about it all the time, that is the curse.

Alchemy

More than magic, alchemy was considered to be a science, very rare people new during medieval times. Alchemy was supposedly performed by alchemists who had the ability to turn ordinary metals into gold.

There's a lot of hogwash out there when it comes to alchemy. First, it's lead into gold, then nooooo, it's transmuting yourself, then there's all this philosopher's stone crap. None if it sounds like dreaming to me, but the general theme of alchemy is transmutation.

Transmutation makes a pretty kick ass dream skill, but I don't know enough about alchemy to find anything that applies to dreaming. I guess intense emotions would be the best way way to transmute things.

Although if you're into Calvin and Hobbes, you should have enough of a well developed schemata in that area to make a working Trangmografier in your dreams.

Necromancy

Necromancy involves conjuring up the dead for prophesying or delivering a sermon. Necromancy is performed along with use of evil spirits to produce supernatural effects in the world.

Ok, I don't know how reanimating corpses has anything to do with dreamng. I suppose it could be a fun in a dream, but not very productive or useful overall. An undead army could come in useful now and again, but they are just as likely to turn on you. Plus it implies even worst things for them to fight.

I will say this about zombies, they don't reproduce through infection, bites or viral diseases. They multiply through attention they command, which is true in dreams, in movies, and even accounts for the existence of so many zombie movies.

As for working with dark spirits, just more invocation within a predefined system.

Occult

Occult means beyond ordinary understand and which is difficult and hidden to see. Chaldean, in the occult philosophy is referred to the person skilled in occult learning.

Well, that's a little general to work with. But then I guess it can be difficult to see how life is a dream.

Prayer

Same as most of the other magics, invocation within a predefined system.

Conclusions

-Devices that focus your attention in dreams can be useful. Using a magic wand as a general purpose tool while dreaming should in theory make everything easier.

-Taking advantage of well established systems and archetypes will greatly increase the chance of success for whatever you are trying to accomplish. They can also provide links to things that might not otherwise be accessible to you.

-Understand how focusing your awareness, like on a voodoo doll, fetish or totem, affects dreams through the second and third rule of dreaming. It doesn't have to be a voodoo item, it can be anything in your field of vision.

There was too much ground to cover here to go into as much detail as I would have liked, but I'll be happy to answer any questions.

****

Here's an article on attention.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2...ntionlost.html

A couple more articles.

Attention and Awareness in Magic: Turning tricks into science
http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/va...l/nrn2473.html

Magic tricks reveal gaze and attention not always linked.
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot....ction-and.html

And this short video, The psychology of attention in magic.
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/blog/...gic-18398.html

Confidence

Some common advice on dream control is to be confident in what you're doing. I've never understood how you are supposed to be confident. I always thought of it as something you do, like straightening your back and speaking in a certain manner.

I now realize confidence is an emotion, and treating it as such makes it an all purpose tool for dream control. Again, the stronger the emotion, the more effect it's going to have.

Should work for RL as well.

Was an epiphany for me, just never thought of it as an emotion before. Another weapon to add to my emotional arsenal.

Paycheck the movie

I saw the movie Paycheck for the first time last night, and it's all about the kind of dream control I've been trying to explain. Actually, it only uses the second rule of dreaming, the more attention you give something, the more related detail it creates.

Ben Affleck even sums it up once he figures out what's going on, saying something like "By getting me to focus on certain objects, it changes the outcome."

I don't want to ruin the plot for anyone who hasn't seen it, but that movie is a lesson in using the second rule of dreaming for control. It's what the entire plot is based on.

Magical Reality Checks?

In light of what I've learned from RL magics, mainly they all take advantage of schemata in some form, lets take a another look at what happens when you do a reality check. Say you decide to do a reality check every time you walk through a door.

Remember, we're working with systems of associations that define things. For a door, you have the door frame, a door knob, maybe a lock, different styles of door and different materials, wood, metal. The sum total of these things is your conception of what a door is. There are major and minor associations, for instance a door is almost always going to be in a wall, but it might not always have a christmas wreath hanging on it.

What happens when you do RCs everytime you pass through a door is that you begin to forge a new association for the concept of door. A link to lucid dreaming. The goal is to make LDing as much a part of the concept of door as a door knob is. Hell, if you can make it the main purpose for a door's existence, so much the better.

When you dream of a door, it automatically gets assembled according to your own personal concept of a door. By altering that conception and making LDing an integral part of it, it also creates opportunities for you to become lucid.

So doing occasional reality checks is not really enough, you can never look at a door in the same way again if you really want it to be effective. You have to fundametally alter what a door means to you. Which is pretty much the basis behind most of those types of magic I went through earlier.

Containers

I've stumbled upon another little dream control gem. Haven't used it enough to master it as of yet, but I think I've got a grasp on the general concept.

Nothing in dreams is independent, everything is connected to something else in some fashion. People usually don't just dream of vampires, first they dream of a spooky old mansion or castle, which then leads to the vampires (RL influences aside). The beach sand you walk on in a dream of the ocean is not independent, it's fundamentally linked to the ocean. Or both the ocean and beach can be viewed as individual elements of an nautical theme.

When trying to exert control over a dream, sometimes it's best not to treat what you are trying to control as an individual element, but to think of it as part of something else.

Say you have a glass of water, and you want to move the water to the other side of the room. Trying to pick up and move just the water is going to be almost impossible. It's much simpler just to pick up the glass that contains the water and carry that across the room.

The same holds true for dreams. I'm at a loss to come up with specific dream examples, as the dreams I had on the subject were very confusing, but that's how it works. It's basically just a little shift in the way you conceptualize things, but it opens up a lot of finesse for dream control.

Perhaps you'd dream you're in a classic hell scenario. Instead of battling each of the countless demons individually, you could just freeze hell over, taking care of all of them at once. Just like carrying the glass of water.

...

And on an unrelated note, the Feb 27th Coast to Coast AM show got into dreaming, and the guest Rosemary Ellen Guiley really knows her stuff when it comes to dreaming. I was seriously impressed. Her website gets into all kinds of fringe stuff, but damn that woman knows her dreaming. She even got into shared dreaming!

****

Q: "My main Crit is that:
[Rule #4: There is no random in dreaming. All changes and newly created dream elements follow our own personal schemata and archetypes without exception.]
is wrong ...
Shouldn't it be ;
Dreams and dream elements can be produced either by our subconscious (normal dreaming) or by our conscious mind (lucid dreaming).
If you want to create a complete model of dreaming there are probably a few obvious but elementary factors you should note..."

I don't see how your point differs from mine. Both the conscious and subconscious assemble dreams in the same manner, by using archetypes. Since this happens naturally in normal dreams, or subconscious dreams, I'm trying to illustrate how to use that in lucid or conscious dreams.

I just read something about three major types of archetypes. Personal archetypes, which hold meaning only to you, Social Archetypes, which hold meaning to a specific group of people, and Universal Archetypes, which are pretty much the same for everyone.

I think it's important to make the distinction as to which type you're trying to use in a dream, as each one has different implications.

Q: "i read all of it. excellently articulated. so many of my thoughts on the questions of dreaming spellout for me in a few pages worth of info. very well done. and the totality of existance, as you hinted towards earlier up, yields great contemplation too. havent formed a concrete thought about it yet"

Emotional dream control on TV's Fringe

Thanks for the praise and the bump Cam.

Anyone watch the TV show Fringe? Last night's episode entitled "Bad Dreams" was about exercising emotional dream control. I couldn't have asked for a better demonstration of how it works. Even if you don't watch Fringe, that episode is worth finding if you're interested in dream control.

Actually the character in question had a decided lack of control, like someone in a regular non lucid dream, and his emotions influenced the behavior of everyone around him, exactly like it happens in dreams.

I recently learned the difference between REM dreams and non REM dreams. It seems non REM dreams we are less prone to having strong emotions than in REM dreams, where strong emotions run rampant. Of course that distinction is not absolute, it is possible to induce strong emotions in NREM dreams. It's just that generally speaking, dreamers in NREM experience a low emotional state. Which is just as well when you look at what happened to that guy on Fringe last night, also considering the majority of dreams happen in a non rem state.

Q: "I don't watch Fringe regularly, but my suitemate does. I saw last night's episode, though, and couldn't help thinking about this thread in particular. And, yeah, this thread kicks ass. I do have one gripe, though. In your theory that this reality is simply one giant shared dream, how does death play into that? The more I think about it, the less the concept of death, and dying, fits in with the rules. I would go into more detail, but I would like to know your thoughts on this matter first."

Death? Well you see... Ummmmm... Uhhhh... Pfffft, I don't know. Never really gave it any thought.

Perhaps it giving up, where you no longer have the desire to sustain certain things with your attention. With sudden death it would be grievous wounds, with old age it would be your broken down body, and with suicide it would be all those shitty things you make bigger than life by focusing on them too much.

After death? Maybe you find new things to focus on? Slip into another dream like the transition between sleep and waking?

Ask me again after I'm dead.

****

Q: "So are you adding clairvoyance to your list of powers now?"

In the thousands of years mankind has observed the various mountain ranges on the earth, never once have those mountains gotten up and danced the Macarena. Is it not a logical deduction to assume they are not going to get up and dance the Macarena anytime soon?

Q: I'm not convinced. Theres a difference between mentioning where you learned the info, and laying out the nightstalkers legend.
...and then dream sharing.
...and psychic energy.
...then magic, shamanism and wizards.
Just sayin'

I don't recall mentioning anything about psychic energy. As for the rest, sure, but you present it out of context. The only point I was trying to make was that those rules of dreaming seem apply to the waking world as well, which would imply that the waking world is nothing more than a dream.

As much as you may claim to disagree with that statement, here you are using those very rules in a RL scenario against me.

1. Everything requires you attention to exist.

That also implies that if you don't give something attention, it will cease to exist.

You're only focusing on the more outlandish sounding aspects of this thread while ignoring the more pertinent points. I've invited you to debate these things, but you doggedly refuse to acknowledge anything beyond your narrow point of view.

2. The more attention you give something, the more related detail it creates.

In every post you've made so far, you're just repeating yourself, adding nothing new or relevant to the discussion.

3. All change and new elements introduced strictly follow archetypes or schemata.

You're attempting to transmute this thread into something it's not by invoking the generalized archetype of psychic phenomena with all it's associated ridicule.

4. Strong emotions have a devastating effect on shaping your immediate environment.

Your derisive attitude is the icing on the cake.

...

Well done! You might have succeeded against someone not as well versed in the subjective nature of reality, but in this thread you attempts are akin to pissing in the ocean.

****

Q: "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.

****

Q: [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.

Q: "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.

Q: "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.

Q: "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.

Q: 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.