"The Nature of Dream Control" by The Cusp (Part 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: "When you dream you don't normally have consciousness and any directed attention to speak of. It's a play of your subconsciousness. Yet you can remember yourself in buildings and rooms that seems stable, you have characters speaking to you on their own. You don't do it, your attention is not involved in the process."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: "I regularly look at various objects in my LDs, not only at my hand. The same. You look at something, it remains what it is. You look away, it changes. The problem is that it doesn't work the way you think it does. You don't need to look at something to let it change, you need to look away from it. Of course looking at something will work too, but only because you expect a change, not because you look at something. It's the same old dream control, you expect associated details or things to spring up and it happens. It doesn't make it "a law" of the dream-world. And it's not the nature of dream control in general, it's the rule of your personal dream-control that you created for yourself."

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

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

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

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

That's a perfect example. The kid focuses on something with a strong emotional attachment, the powerful emotions magnify it's effect and start dredging up related memories which snowball out of control as he focuses on each new one.

It's exactly what happens in the classic tooth dream scenario.

Q: "I wonder if it is important to distinguish between strong negative and strong positive emotions. I personally can think of ways in which strong positive emotions have helped me in real life and in the dream world (or so it seemed at the time). But I would definitely agree that strong negative emotions could have a negative impact. I am glad that you mentioned how your mood while you were in one room seemed to affect the mood of others in other rooms. I do think that moods, energy levels, and emotions are transferable and contagious."

I don't see the need to distinguish between positive and negative emotions, it's the intensity of the emotion that counts. They each have their uses. As a teacher, you have to be both friend and disciplinarian.

Q: "As a teacher I know the value of matching and then raising the emotional mood of the classroom. If I go in with too high energy when teaching a low energy class, I will go over their heads. If (and this rarely happens) I go in with too low energy when teaching a high energy class then I will go under their heads. The important thing is to get everyone on a similar energy level and then raise them together by just being slightly higher than they are. I have to say though that I do believe that body positions and voice tone and rhythm do play a role in this, but I do think there are other contributing factors too, some of which might seem psychic."

Seem psychic, but I think it's just other ways or levels in which you capture and manipulate your student's attentions. Body position, voice tone and rhythm are good examples, but like in a dream, there are countless other ways you can do it.

One of the most effective methods I've seen a teacher us to gain control of an unruly class was to slam meter stick down on someone's desk as hard as he could. Talk about getting your attention!

Come to think of it, many of my teachers had unique ways grabbing and manipulating the student's attention. One could silence anyone with just a look. Another knew how to direct the other student's attention against you as a weapon in order to cow you into submission. A less subtle one was one teacher would fry up the cow brains we discected for the class to eat. All examples of directed attention which I think relate to dream control

Q: "I can’t quite figure out why I have a problem extending, stabilizing, and intensifying lucid dreams. I know that you have talked about introversion and maybe that is my problem. I don’t really ever seem to get lost in too much detail unless maybe when I am flying but that seems to be a fairly universal problem."

A stable dream requires a balanced focus of your attention. Becoming lucid upsets that balance, and sometimes you need to make a few corrections. The easiest thing to do might be to reset to your basic defaults though motion, which implies both your dream body and an environment to move around in and react to. Reestablish the basic framework, where you are, where you're going, what you're doing, what's happening around you.

You may even need to do that several times. I usually keep moving and doing crazy stuff like in the movie Crank. It keeps things stable, but holds me back somewhat because I become a little too involved with the environment which makes me more prone to distraction.

It's give and take really. Exerting control necessitates upsetting stability.

Q: "Dreams are a creation of our subconscious and conscious minds, correct? And these are formed by our own beliefs and experiences, right? Then it seems Night Stalkers can be as much a part of that experience as anything. I know several people who have dreamed the same dream at the same time (from their separate points of view). Which would be an important part of dream control, if it can be controlled. So it seems to fit quite well in this thread.
Night Stalkers may just be one person's experience with certain types of dream phenomena, but if learning about Dream Control came from the experience (which it does appear to), then Night Stalkers fit well within this thread.
Did the Night Stalker portion contain some information that some people may not agree with? Like the idea of shared dreams? Yes. Does that make it any less valid? Well, I don't like lawn Gnomes, but that doesn't mean other people should throw them away because I would. And I don't like hard core mathematics. It's too theoretical, and not practical enough. But by golly, though I don't see directly how we would benefit from it, some people manage to make it work, and change science (see: Einstein). It isn't that mathematics is proven correct. In fact, Physics will tell you that mathematics is an exact model trying to model an inexact world.
It is good to know where information came from so you can create a more full context for it, and place it in your own mental box. However, Moonshine, when you try to place it in everyone else's mental box, you are attempting to short circuit their method of learning for your own.
As for Shamanism and Magic, etc., these are belief systems. Belief systems color our dreams thoroughly, and alter how we can control them, and which methods work best for us. This is a thread on Dream Control, so it is still quite a valid topic.
It is nearly impossible to construct the idea of how beliefs affect our dreams without giving examples of beliefs affecting dreams, and also nearly impossible to give good examples or even pass along knowledge clearly unless it comes from your own belief system and experiences. Have you ever played telephone? That game is an example of why just passing on knowledge without experience can degrade quickly into nonsense.
So while you are attempting a forum control here, Moonshine, you are really just projecting YOUR OWN beliefs onto this thread, which is exactly what you are arguing is the problem with this thread. It might be better if you took a less hypocritical standpoint when you post to threads.
-Jim"

Thank you Jim. That was very well said.

Q: "One thing I don't understand is dream transitions or discontinuities. When you focus on certain things, instead of developing inside the same dream, they require a change of scenario. You go through a black patch and you transition to a new dream. Now why is that?"

Possibly because your thought process becomes internalized, and you don't have enough attention externally to sustain your surroundings. It seems like a sudden transition because you have one single archetype populating a blank slate, so it only seems more dramatic than usual.

Q: "I've been playing around with a theory, so let me put it to you. In waking reality, we have our perceptions, which are external, and our thoughts, which are internal. They don't really mix."

Actually they do mix. Your inner thoughts determine where you focus your outer perceptions, the exact same way as in dreams. In fact they limit them, because like in dreams, you can't be aware of anything that you don't have an existing archetype for.

Q: "In dream reality, we don't have perceptions, and we do have our thoughts, which are completely externalized as pseudo-perceptions. So actually looking at your dreams means looking at your mental contents, but externalized, or clothed with a sensory appearance taken from our store of memories. Does this sound plausible? BTW, this does not necessarily mean that our dreams are subjective - they are just as subjective or objective as our thoughts are, that's all."

Very well put.

Q: "In both cases, your belief system is the main limitation on what you can achieve. But whereas in the dream world, you can make immediate and visible changes, the material world is much more resistant to change, and your thought will change it over weeks or months rather than seconds."

RL only seems more resistant to change for the same reason those sudden transitions seem so dramatic, because they are the sole source of influence on a blank slate. In Rl, there are billions of other people exerting an influence as well, so it only looks like your individual contribution is meaningless.

But there's still gotta be a way to have direct influence over reality. When you focus on an archetype and it manifests it's associations, those new manifestations don't become the new source of change until you shift your focus onto them. So I'm thinking that by utilizing the manifested properties of the general archetypes the population is focused on and not the archetypes themselves, then those areas below the focus radar should allow you to exert change over the real world.

All I know for sure is I've got to start being more careful about the types of women I fantasize about, because they keep appearing out of seemingly nowhere!

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

I suppose that is what I'm saying.

Q: "These principles operate in physics also it seems. It seems that as scientists focus in on subatomic particles it just gets deeper and deeper and more detail unfolds to them. It is like they are chasing the mystery but their attention keeps creating it at a deeper level. At first it was atoms, then it was electrons, neutrons and protons, then it was quarks and positrons, etc. Then it was waveforms where particles are in no particular place but just where the observer expects them to be. And this opens the door to alternate realities. But, In a dream I had microscopic vision and I zoomed into a cobblestone and it unfolded fractally."

Relativity and the Uncertainty principle apply to dreams the same way they do to reality. You cannot fly faster than the speed of light in a dream (wormholes and teleportation doesn't count!)

I don't think there is an irreductable God particle in the physicial universe. According to the dream model, there will always be more detail the deeper you look. That goes both for the microcosm and the macro cosm. The phrase "as above, so below" seems to apply here, but I don't want to get into that right now.

Q: "I know its been almost three years since the last reply was made to the thread but for the sake of it let me include some of my thoughts. Cusp I would love it if you are still suscribed to the post. Three years of experimenting with these ideas im sure would have given you some more very interesting insights."

No worries, this thread never really dies. And it will only have been two years this spring.

Q: "I would like to know if anyone is familiar with the book "Conversations with God" by Donald Walsh."

I've heard of it, but had no idea that's what it was about. The title kind of put my off, but the concept of God isn't so far off as a metaphor. It's just the closest pre-existing archetype that embodies many of the relevant aspects. The idea of God isn't a useless concept, it makes a great template archetype for dealing with the unknown, but you just have to be willing to modify that archetype to fit the circumstances. Many people are resistant to change in their ideas of god, or their archetypes are so massive and well established that it's almost impossible to change them.

*Q: "1.Awareness of being in a dream like state

Everything in the dream requires your attention to exist.
The more attention you give to one element, the more detail it creates in relation to what you are focused on.
Emotions play a very important role in dream control
hehe sounds like im paraphrasing what Cusp has said before, but these are all rules that this book puts forward albeit not as concisely."*

Realy? He says that? It's good to have independant confirmation! I'm going to have to read that, especially since I want to write a book on the subject and I need to check out my competition. I didn't think I had any!

Q: "So how can reality be manipulated like a lucid dream? firstly, an awareness that this waking life is just merely a dream has to be in our minds...this awareness also has to come with a realisation that this dream is a creation of our universal body's mind (again crap word but you get the meaning) and as such we have absolute control over it."

For starters you need a lucid awareness in your daily life. Basically what I tried to say here http://dreamviews.com/community/showthread.php?t=83428
You have free will, but you need to be lucid to use it.

Q: "When I am with other people, I feel them deforming my personal world view and perception - they really tug it out of shape. This is very clear when I take a walk with one other person. Their effect on the conversation is most noticeable, but in fact the exact same effect takes place at the level of perception, even if no words are spoken. But I think exactly the same thing takes place in dreams. You can have totally subjective dreams, but most dreams are shared, not only with other human beings but with a host of other creatures."

Your timing is uncanny. I've only just started noticing that happening in my dreams last week. Had two separate dreams where that was happening. I would encounter suspect fellow dreamers and my attention would jump like a scratched record, or like you're trying to click on something with your computer mouse and the cursor suddenly jumps halfway across the screen.

But I don't want to discuss that too much here, I'll make a thread about it in BD.

As for in RL, I can feel that happening as well. It's one of the main factors in determining the company I keep.

Q: "So I think you've got it wrong in this respect. Sometimes in the real world we have the place to ourselves - nobody else is around - and we are still not capable of changing it at will. And sometimes in dreams, we are with others, and we are still capable of making changes at will. So I don't think that being alone or with others is the limiting factor - something else is."

I don't think physical distance is the limiting factor. Perhaps a radio frequency type scenario, where you only share your reality with people tuned to the same frequency.

Q: "Yeah I know what you mean about the God archetype, i had some real trouble starting the book because of this but once you get into it youll see that this "god" is more of a consciousness...sort of the collection of everyones consciousness kind of thing..in other words much more to do with our minds than the God that sent locusts to Egypt"

What book? You failed to include a link? Sorry I took so long to respond, but I've been loathe to bump my own thread, especially after 26000 views of just me rambling.

From what I can tell, reliable dream control stems from stable, well established archetypes. Jesus would be a prime example, but from my theories, Elvis would be an equally powerful archetype.

It's been noticing that for years now, even before I noticed how dream control affects reality, that I've been choosing the people I hang around with according to how they perceive me. I still don't consciously know how this works, but fundametally, it surely has something to so with shared reality.

Q: "Realy? He says that? It's good to have independant confirmation! I'm going to have to read that, especially since I want to write a book on the subject and I need to check out my competition. I didn't think I had any!"

Well that makes two of us. I've been putting off my book until I hammered out the specifics of shared dreaming, which pretty much hinges on the peculiarites of the shared dreaming experience. I've been pretty lax in my efforts, but as far as I can tell, the only difference between dreaming and reality is the number of people you share it with. I can't help but think my signature holds some clue to reality, shared dream or otherwise.

Q: "I would be interested to know what your personal argument is for your assertion that RL is just a dream like state...what makes you think this is so?"

That isn't some fanciful notion for me, it's a logical deduction. My primary interest has always been dream control. I've never been satisfied with the theory that belief or expectations determines the level of control an individual had, especially since I've had so many experiences that seem to indicate otherwise. Just today at work, I had an old retired dude who just sat there and watched us all friggin' day, because he just had nothing better to do. Normally I would have found that annoying as hell, but because I didn't pay him the slightest attention, it was like he didn't exist.

Q: "In some aspect of mind control, changing/chanelling empotions and events is called "refraiming."."

Reframing things is key to dream control. You only fail when you give up. For instance, instead of trying to increase the light levels in your dream, you could just give yourself night vision.

Q: "I have never read the secret. Every few years new stuff comes out that reveals the age old truths. And they are age old, since the beginning of time. The laws of reality are constant as far as i know in this cycle of exisctence. In the yoga sciptures is says that every so many years truths will be revealed for the new generations for their benefit and to end suffering etc."

Same here. I've never read The Secret, yet I feel like I'm intimately familiar with it. From what I can tell of my incidental knowledge of the subject, it sounds a lot like dream control, only it lacks the specifics of of dream control. But to me, knowing how dream control works explains so much! Of course I can't stress enough the importance of of archetypes, as difficult as it is to explain.

Q: "The archetypes that make up DCs are arranged primarily by their vibration."

I'm sorry, but this vibration stuff is just too ethereal for me to discuss. It could mean anything, and there's a lot of variation in the ways people use that term. I've gotten away with a lot of stuff in this tread, but I still feel an obligation to keep it somewhat mainstream so as to be of use to the average dreamer.

Not that I don't appreciate what the term vibrations can describe. In fact encountering a lower vibration is the best theory I can come up with for the horrifying "slowness" described in this thread, Geometric Night Terrors and Fever Dreams. http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ad.php?t=29794

Q: "Luckily, negative thoughts are much less powerful than positive ones... so you have to think about a negative thing for a lot longer before it will begin to seed."

I strongly disagree with the hippie tree hugging notion that love trumps all, that positive vibes are stronger than negative ones. I've tried to base my theories exclusively on dreaming experiences (mine and other DJ entries I've read), and I've seen no indication that that positive emotions are stronger than so called negative ones. From what I can tell, they are equal in every way. If you think otherwise, I guarantee I can ruin your fucking day to prove it if I have to (but I'd rather not ) . It's just a matter of what you focus on. There is a reason the ying yang symbol has equal proportions of light and dark.

Q: "But just like real people DCs are alive and independent unto themselves; they are conscious, not just projection slides in the brain."

Perhaps. The Logos theory comes to mind, but that really has no business in this section of the forum.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: "hi I need your help really badly I'm having trouble once I become lucid controlling my dreams for some reason every time I try to control something like when I wAnt some thing to appear or something to happen well something does happen but not what I wanted like the other when I had a dream and realized I was in a dream and became lucid the 1st thing I did was change the setting that's something I'm really good at then I seen a worm in some grass all of a sudden it became like 200ft tall and had a gold crown on it's head i got creeped out so I flew up (flying is a work in progress for me ) as I got higher I saw that there were these giant worms all over my deam world infecting it n blowing stuff up then I became afraid and fell out the sky into a lake I was hovering over I began to drown then the big worm with the crown came from the water and a claw came from it's body n he took a swing at me then I woke up so I wanted to ask because things like that happen all the time to me in lds also most of the time the dream won't do what I want it to can u help"

This is a perfect example of the second rule of dreaming. The more attention you give something, the more related detail it creates.

The worm hooked your attention, and that focused attention caused the worm archetype to grow out of control.

You just have to learn to break away and focus on something else when that happens. The only real control you have is where you choose to focus your attention.

Q: "I have a question, I tried to Earthbend in a lucid dream a couple of days ago and it didn't work. I concentrate a lot on it but not too much. But still nothing happens. Any tips?"

That's a tough one. While looking at the earth, try to impose archetypes that embody what you want to accomplish. Perhaps stuff like earthquake, hill, mountain, bulldozer, chasm or canyon. Anything that is related to how you want to earth to move. Maybe waves like water. It will probably take a lot of work to master it, but you should be able to make at least something happen.

Q: "There's a famous story that is usually mentioned to represent this: when the first caravels arrived to the American coastline, the Indians didn't see them until they were really close to the shore, because they had never seen anything like it and their brains ignored them at first. It took some time for their minds to even consider these objects as "real" and to decide "wasting" resources to make them "visible" on the Indians minds. The brain just kept the boats invisible and out of the picture until they were so obviously there, the mind had to deal with its presence and recognize them consciously."

The way I heard it, they didn't see nothing, but instead saw something created from their own personal inventory archetypes. And I'd wager many saw different things while looking at the same boat. I've actually heard more recent examples of this happening on Coast to Coast AM from time to time. Several people encounter something strange and each sees something different yet the same on an archetypal level.

Q: "When we're awake, we're still half-dreaming, because our brain recreates the world around us in its own personal manner. What I see is surely different from what you see even if we're in the same time and place. It's like a shared dream that has personal areas and overlapping areas. If you point my attention to some object I wasn't seeing before, it becomes real to me to and we're then sharing that dream-like object. Don't forget that matter isn't really real, it is just a cloud of endless probabilities that we collapse with our conscience, our attention, just like we do in dreams."

Nothing to add to that, you covered it too well

Q: "I can fly at really high speeds and I have no problem with that. Once I even flew at what seemed to be the speed of light. It felt like crossing several universes as if they were 2D... Hard to explain. But the dream didn't fade, the images I was seeing of the sequential universes were clear and focused. I even choose one that attracted me the most and stopped there. I think speed limits are only imposed by yourself but they can be overcome if you just free your mind from being worried about creating the next landscape."

I don't want to get into this too deeply right now, since I logged in to post something else. I'll agree the only limitations are conceptual ones, but I think there might be a couple of rare ones that can't be overcome. "Speed of Light" is irrelevant, since there is no way to measure how fast you are going. So let me rephrase and say increasing your speed indefinitely is impossible, at least in a controlled manner. I suppose you could get locked into nightmarish fractal loop to adjust for the constant perspective changed needed, but even then you'd only be moving relative to the current fractal which can't really be seen as an increase in speed.

Q: "I never create the landscape. I simply move freely through worlds I don't take the slightest second of thought creating. Try it"

Oh don't you? Rule 5 says you do! I'm not much of a realm sculptor myself, and my surroundings are not something I micro manage. You don't need to create it all manually, but you do need to remember you have a choice.

Q: "My own theory on this is that when you're half-lucid you know you're dreaming but you don't think too much about it, you just do things naturally and they happen as you expect them to. When you're fully lucid, your rational mind may take over, not allowing spontaneous intuitive creation to simply work its magic. You start thinking too much about how to make things happen, therefore blocking them."

I think the dream state is a delicate thing that the subconscious knows how to maintain with great skill. I think bringing full consciousness into the picture overrides that instinctive distribution of awareness, bringing along invocations of real world physics.

Only way around it is to learn to merge the two, a common archetype in it's self among the new agers.

Q: "There is a parallelism between this and attaining enlightenment. Masters are always saying, if you wish and crave for enlightenment all the time, it won't come to you, only when you stop thinking about it you will achieve it. Still, if you never have that goal, it probably won't come either. So the secret is in keeping the balance, a very subtle balance, between knowing you can have it and not thinking that you want it."

Dream control is nothing if not about balance. I got my best results in my dream influencing experiments when I didn't even get around to "doing" my various means I was using to achieve my ends. I chose my subject to send and said I'd get around to the sending part later. My targets began getting hits before I even tried to send.

Are you coming from a magical perspective with that last part? I sounds a lot like some of the magical school parallels I've been researching. Chaos magic in particular is practically interchangeable with dream control on every level.

****

Ok, Mayatara distracted me for a bit there, but now to post what I came here for.

Looks like I have to add a 5th rule.

Rule 5: You are always in control, even if you don't realize it
Nothing really new about this, I've said it before and it's always been a part of dream control and how dreams are formed. But it's a constant, and since there are so few constants in dreaming, that's gotta make it important.

Still not entirely sure what the ramifications of this new rule are, if any. Gotta let it stew for a bit, but the fact that it's a constant makes it important enough to be it's own rule. I suppose ultimately it would mean that nobody can hurt you but yourself, which is again nothing new.

The Dark Side of dream control

This is a thread I saw on AboveTopSecret.com which is a conspiracy website.
Somebody posted a thread explaining how they pulled off the miracle of the dancing sun at Fatima. What he described was the the most well polished piece of dream control engineering I've ever seen.

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING, Major System Used for Making Miracles (i.e. Levitation and move) in Religious, page 1: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread708314/pg1

It it's most basic level, the scheme takes advantage of specific visual quirks to make it appear that something is moving when it's not. He outlines the mechanisms for how these work explicitly.

What comes next is classic dream control. They train the eyes to do specific visual quirks in response to a tone, basically creating an archetype and trigger combo through repetition. They use a religious context where miracles happen, essentially fine tuning the possible outcomes. The whole thing is dream control on a scale I've never dreamed of. Not to mention the emotional impact of seeing a major miracle in a large crowd like at Fatima.

I totally buy it. The whole thing is just too elegant to be made up. Every element fits in perfectly.
That thread also made me realize I've totally been under utilizing triggers in my dream control. Of course you wouldn't want to become too reliant on triggers, as you'd be limited to those already prepared, but a few well trained trigger activated dream powers could come in very handy when lucid.

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Rewrite?

I've been saying I'm going to rewrite this for a long time now, and I'm saying it again! I think the reason I haven't yet is because the thread format is insufficient to contain what I'm trying to convey. So I'm creating a discussion board dedicated to dream control. The different sections a forum allows will allow me to break the topic up and hopefully keep things more coherent.

I also won't hold back on the shared dreaming and real world control applications there. In fact I'm hoping to invite people who practice dream control under other names, so it won't be strictly about dreaming. I mean it's strictly about dream control, but if that means taking tips from magical schools who are basically using dream control, then so be it.

I've cobbled together a basic site so far, but if anyone knows about setting up and running a free forum, and also wants to volunteer, PM me!

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Same shit, different pile

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

I do my thing over on Occult Corpus

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

"The Nature of Dream Control" by The Cusp (Part 2)

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Warning