Affirmations and the dream "I"

[Bobblehat]

A bit of a tricky one to explain but I'll try! I've been thinking about my affirmations and my dream content lately. My affirmations will be something along the lines of: "I'll remember to ask, "Am I dreaming?"" But my dream content has places that don't resemble places I've been, the people are people who I've never met, and the events are strange and often nonsensical. Does it follow that the dream, "I" (me) isn't the same person as the real, waking me? Or, maybe I could look at it the opposite way: the whole dream - its contents and people etc - is just one big ME, with no distinction between me and the dream? This would mean that to my dreaming mind, my affirmation "I will remember to ask, "Am I dreaming?"" doesn't make sense. Would it be better to make an affirmation such as: "The dream will obviously be a dream."?

[DpsBob]

Interesting idea. I will try this tonight in place of my usual affirmations... the subconscious can be finicky about which autosuggestions it accepts and which it does not (i.e. negative affirmations being ignored) so I would not be surprised if this worked. I'll try for the next few nights and report back!

[Bobblehat]

Nice one. Thanks Bob. I'm trying something else at the moment (worked first time last night) and I'll keep trying that one a few more nights before I report it on here. Let me know how you get on, Bob.

[zhineTech]

from a traditional esoteric / buddhic / spiritual point of view all of consciousness, indeed all of "I" is one and the same. in fact the goal is to cause the various levels of being to come together, so there is a continuous thread of awareness running through all of your waking and sleep cycles. to objectify your unconscious mind as something separate seems counter productive, like you would be decreasing the chance of lucidity. but i too find myself addressing my subconscious as something separate, which is sort of a Freudian concept. and often i see people "asking their subconscious" for things, because of what you have said. the "I" in our dreams often seems quite alien to us. having said all that, i think the particular mantra you proposed "The dream will obviously be a dream" is a very workable middle ground. you should try it out and let us know how it goes. i may experiment with this as well and see where it leads.

[zhineTech]

edit for dbl post.

[A dreamer168]

I think the issue is bigger than the dream "I." I think it has to with getting the subconscious mind to understand being conscious while dreaming. This is what I'm starting to do: I think of a beaker filled with water. Then, I visualize pouring the water into a second beaker. The two beakers represent the awake state and the asleep state, respectively. The water represents awareness. In this way, I hope the abstraction of "lucid dream" will become more concrete in my subconscious. Any other suggestions?