Thread: Countering Dream Logic to Become Lucid

Originally Posted by Chimpertainment

First: There are plenty of times in my dreams when completely insane things have happened and I never batted an eye. That makes me think there is some kind of trigger, perhaps a switch that says something is not right.

There is, and that switch is memory. The only way to know, even to assume, that something is not right is to have a benchmark of truth to which to compare it. Without memory, that benchmark is inaccessible.

Second: This suspicion is then satisfied, in most cases by some kind of logical justification.

I see a parallel with this and waking life. It relates to cognitive dissonance. When something is introduced into a mind that is contrary to the logical framework hitherto established, a logical justification must be made in order to preserve equilibrium and prevent dissonance.

This in my view, is what is happening in the dream as well.

I'm not sure about this. Cognitive dissonance is a similar event, but, as it is a conflict of beliefs, and both the dissonance itself and its resolution cannot happen without some self-awareness present. In other words, yes, you can (and likely will) experience cognitive dissonance in a dream, but only after you're lucid. In regular NLD's the lack of a self-aware "You," and all your requisite (memory based) intellectual and emotional baggage, prevents cognitive dissonance from existing, I think. In a sense, cognitive dissonance is a higher-end logical mode, which requires not only the presence of memory but of self-awareness as well.

Now that last paragraph makes it sound like logic does not work just fine in dreams, but suffice it to say that cognitive dissonance is a condition that doesn't exist without a little self-aware help in waking life, either.

The solution to both the dream and waking life dilemma is awareness. One must bring awareness to that initial feeling of suspicion. Once the justification does its work, the suspicion is suppressed and awareness will more than likely be ineffective.

Yup. Self-awareness in a dream is the necessary tool for accessing memory and getting things mentally organized. Keep in mind, though, that even that initial suspicion requires unnatural self-awareness or memory* to be sparked.

* This BTW is why we do all that mnemonic work in MILD, as it creates a rote trigger that slightly cracks the door to memory in a dream, and allows you a chance to become aware of the dream -- suspicious, as it were -- through a failure in the logic that was working just fine before the crack appeared.