Thread: How does "natural" Dream Incubation work?

I love this! I'm going to review some journals tonight and get some good examples. Are you looking for specifics such as:

I scheduled an appointment with a tax accountant, and that night I had a LD where two people were discussing tax law.

or generals such as:

I always dream of my childhood home, but I rarely dream of my family. I never dream I'm at work, although I do dream that I am hanging out with the people I work with.

I'll do this! This sounds like a great idea.

I'm usually pretty good at tracing why certain things appear in my dreams, so I might be able to help.

You are getting pretty close to pure idea of dream incubation. I hope people here will give you enough information to continue further. Just the idea of incubation is interesting. Do you think, you are looking at dream incubation from good aspect? you know. What should be the result of what you are going to research? People here may give you the examples, but maybe if you would clarify it a little, so they know, what to search for.

So as a conclusion. What is the idea behind?

In my experience, I've found that usually that the events, people, and places most emotionally significant to me tend to appear in my dreams; for instance, I had dreams with my ex-girlfriend every night for over a month after she broke up with me, and still typically do every night after I see her. I also often dream about climbing, usually over once a week, because it's my favorite thing to do.

Basically anything that occupies my mind for a significant period of time while I am awake will appear in my dreams.

This viewpoint would agree with the fact that I rarely dream about school, and most people probably rarely dream about work in that we just try to get it over with and don't really concern ourselves with it.
There of course will be exceptions, such as your parents' divorce. I would suggest (though you definitely know better than I) that maybe it didn't affect you strongly.

This is just what I've found to be true from my own experience, though I would guess this is probably how it works for most people. Hopefully this thread can find a way to explain the discrepancies.

Originally Posted by Valwen

In my experience, I've found that usually that the events, people, and places most emotionally significant to me tend to appear in my dreams; for instance, I had dreams with my ex-girlfriend every night for over a month after she broke up with me, and still typically do every night after I see her. I also often dream about climbing, usually over once a week, because it's my favorite thing to do.

Basically anything that occupies my mind for a significant period of time while I am awake will appear in my dreams.

This viewpoint would agree with the fact that I rarely dream about school, and most people probably rarely dream about work in that we just try to get it over with and don't really concern ourselves with it.
There of course will be exceptions, such as your parents' divorce. I would suggest (though you definitely know better than I) that maybe it didn't affect you strongly.

This is just what I've found to be true from my own experience, though I would guess this is probably how it works for most people. Hopefully this thread can find a way to explain the discrepancies.

Yeah. And this could help with incubation stuff. What, or who decides what is the dream content. Couldnt the same "force" decide to switch on our awareness? Just a suggestion.

Last night I dreamed about snowboarding.

Snowboarding is a frequent dream that I have because I love it so much, yet don't get to do it as much as I'd like to because I live in Texas. Also, a strong cold front came in last night and it was supposed to snow a little, and my cousin called from Fort Worth area and said that it snowed 9 inches!

Now what?

I am throwing a huge St Pattys and Birthday party next week. Last night I had a dream that people were showing up at my house for it and I was totally unprepared.

Last night I had a dream my cats got attacked by the dog next door. He was barking at me while I was outside yesterday afternoon, but I'm not sure why that would filter into my dreams. I have had a dream about the dog before--violent that time as well--but I can't really explain why it would show up frequently as I almost never see it or think about it.

Hey SKA, I think you have a great idea going. However, I noticed from some of the replies of other members, that the examples might be a little to vague. I do think it might need a bit of refining if we are to find any correlations. We'll first need to define the boundaries to our problem, as well as define exactly what it is that we're trying to get out of it.

I did some thinking on the topic on the past couple of days and I'll add a couple of different ideas that might help us.

Originally Posted by SKA

I've noticed a clear difference between 2 types of dreams: Dreams based on Waking Reality(enviroments, people, situations, themes..etc) and Dreams that seemingly have no connection with waking life whatsoever.

I agree with this. I also believe that there are two additional categories for dreams:

Recurring Dreams
Non-Recurring Dreams

These two are pretty self explanatory.
Recurring dreams happen when an object, theme, or thoughts that appear frequently in your dreams.
Non-Recurring dreams happen when the object, theme, or thoughts that appear in the dream are pretty unique to that dream.
Now, going back to your classification of dreams:

Dreams that seemingly have no connection with waking life whatsoever.
>> I can't think of any further classifications for this. Also, since these dreams have no connection to waking life, they would not help in the attempt of becoming lucid by incubating the dream on demand.

Dreams based in Waking Reality

• Based on a distant past
  • example: I'm at the place where I grew up in my childhood, or where I went to school in my childhood, or talking to someone I haven't talked to in years.

• Based on a recent past
  • example: Based on something that has happened (preferably) in the last 24 hours. Could also be something based on something that happened a few days ago, but for our incubation purposes, it would be best to limit this classification to dreams that are based on something that happened the last 48 hours to still be helpful.

Now, our goal is to be able to incubate our dreams at will. That is, if we find out that there is something that we could do in waking life to trigger that same event into our dreams, we might have a better chance of becoming lucid. For this reason, we should concentrate on dreams that are based on waking reality and that are based on recent past.

Dreams based on distant past would not help us on our goal. It wouldn't be reasonable to attempt to do something today in hopes that it will makes its way into our dreams a month (or longer) from today.

Furthermore, it would be a good idea to include as much detail as you can regarding any possible connection that made the waking life event happen in your dreams. That could be an emotion that you felt during the waking life (also describe how you felt during the dream when the event happened), any special meaning that the event had to you, or any important backstory on the event that might have made it important to you.

I hope these ideas help us organize our thoughts better. Feel free to add any insights or criticize my ideas.

Hopefully we'll get to a beneficial conclusion.

here's some refinement:
Appearantly not everything that makes a big emotional impression on you during waking life is incubated into a Dream. I was 12 when my parents divorced and I felt as if it was the end of everything. so how come I did dream very often about my ex girl, but not once about my parent's divorce?

I'm wondering what the essential difference was between the 2 experiences.

When I used to keep a dream journal regularly, after writing down each dream I'd try to think of all the ways the dream had been influenced by my experiences during the last week or so. I was amazed by the connections that I was able to make and for each entry I had a list of around 10-15 events, conversations, and thoughts that had influenced the dream. If anyone wants an example I can post one of my old entries here.

And when I dream about something from my distant past it is often after recently thinking about it while awake.

Originally Posted by SKA

here's some refinement:
Appearantly not everything that makes a big emotional impression on you during waking life is incubated into a Dream.

You make a good point, it didn't cross my mind before. I also have had both happen:
I was on the computer one night looking up something specific on Google an hour before I went to bed and I had a dream about that topic on the same night. (non-emotional)

Sometime ago, I was argued with my dad in waking life. In my dream a couple of days later, I also argued with my dad - but the reason was completely different. (emotional)

Originally Posted by AlexLou

When I used to keep a dream journal regularly, after writing down each dream I'd try to think of all the ways the dream had been influenced by my experiences during the last week or so. I was amazed by the connections that I was able to make and for each entry I had a list of around 10-15 events, conversations, and thoughts that had influenced the dream. If anyone wants an example I can post one of my old entries here.

And when I dream about something from my distant past it is often after recently thinking about it while awake.

Very interesting AlexLou. Please do post it when you get the chance, and any correlation you may have found on why the events made their ways into your dreams.

Lately I've been having a recurring theme where I'm either at work or talking to someone from work (co-worker, manager, etc). I work about 5 days a week, 25 hours a week.

I've just thought of something.

Maybe it has got to do with the different states of minds we are in when we experience waking life. Maybe if we are in an open state of mind, a more suggestive state of mind, while experiencing a certain waking life event we are able to "Take them in" into our subconscious minds later resulting in a Dream about this event?

Maybe it's a good idea to think of a bunch of Waking Life experiences, of which you later also Dreamt, and see if you can remember how you felt during those waking Life events. And more specifically in what state of consciousness you were, wether you were tired, high/drunk, emotional or a combination of these states. Think of anything that can alter perception and consciousness in such a way.

Cuz the only "difference" between my hurtfull relationship with my ex girl and my parent's divorce was that there was a certain "Magic"about the whole experience with my ex girl. Perhaps due to me having fallen severely in love, My consciousness was altered into a highly suggestive, hypnotic-like state; which opened me up perhaps to take in the experience into my subconsciousness and to later dream about it?

How about you people?

Might be, that dreams are helping us to solve problems. But it might also be, that dreams are here to relax from what happened during day.

I have maybe a little different view on this. What if it is dependend on, how we actually solved the situation? What if unsloved tasks move into dream content more easily.

One more view could be the usage of brain hemispheres. When we use {or are forced tu use} the hemisphere we usually dont use, it can be a much more powerfull influence.

Who knows.

So what we're building here is a super technique? Sounds very interesting, I'll keep up with this thread.

The truth is no one knows. Even all the world's scientists, with their years of study and gathering facts, couldn't manage to explain why we Dream.

So I don't assume we're going to find out anytime soon. Or ever. But the idea is to Observe well and find out what we CAN conclude from personal experiences and, based on that, try to find the essential "ingredient" of a waking life experience for it to be incubated into our Dreams.

Now we can look at all the existing theories, but to just start wth one would be helpfull. One that I find most promising and credible; The idea that we might be "storing" waking life experiences into our subconscious minds at times when we are in a trance like, hypnotic state. It is well known that we people all spend our daily time in a natural trance A.K.A. sitting, walking, working..etc while being in a state of deep concentration/immersive thought. Like being on the train for 15 minutes while it seems only like 5 minutes. You know what I mean.

This could very well be a time when we are shifting our awareness to internal processes like these thoughts and feelings, and seemingly forget all about the external world and it's time around us. Maybe we take in alot this way, with a sort of "sideways attention".
Like when our conscious awareness is drawn completely towards internal thought processes, our SUBconscious awareness suddenly is blank and open to percieve and remember very clearly the external world's enviroments and situations around us, even if we have no conscious memory of this whatsoever. Like Dreaming and Waking are 2 worlds/Realities, each held together by Memory, but both devided & seperated of eachother by Forgetting.

This could also explain the dreams that SEEM to have no connection to waking life experiences: They may just be Waking Life experiences that we "took in" in the way I described above, and just didn't remember since we didn't consciously percieve it, but only subconsciously.

What do you folks think?

This is the most plausible theory.

Basically, it's that dreams are cataloging our waking life experiences and thoughts.

I think that we could test this. We could give one person an elephant, one person a toaster, etc.

Then the people could think about the objects a lot, look for pictures and videos of the objects, and visualize them every time that they RC, as well as right before bed. We could trade objects each day or so and find out how frequently they appear in dreams.

I'd be willing to be a subject.

I'm still stewing on this. I am trying to reconcile the natural dream incubation you have described with the intentional dream incubation I often perform.

I am with you on it being a function of the subconscious. Even when I am actively trying to incubate a dream, I end up with unexpected results. My brain will key in on things I didn't even consider.

I don't believe there is any single good explanation for it, but I think you are on the right track. Your explanation of 'the unnoticed' becoming dreams seems to jive overall with what I've experienced.

This kind of higher level discussion was discussed in a thread I created before. Maybe you will find some inspiration: Here it is>

http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ad.php?t=51070

Originally Posted by SKA

This could also explain the dreams that SEEM to have no connection to waking life experiences: They may just be Waking Life experiences that we "took in" in the way I described above, and just didn't remember since we didn't consciously percieve it, but only subconsciously.

What do you folks think?

Very interesting take on it SKA. Seems very much plausible. I'm keeping an eye open for this thread... there's some very good theories being talked about here.

Originally Posted by Robot_Butler

I am with you on it being a function of the subconscious. Even when I am actively trying to incubate a dream, I end up with unexpected results. My brain will key in on things I didn't even consider.

I don't believe there is any single good explanation for it, but I think you are on the right track. Your explanation of 'the unnoticed' becoming dreams seems to jive overall with what I've experienced.

I agree with you on this one. My dreams will sometimes display some little detail about something or someone that I hadn't really noticed before, which could be related to our SUBconscious mind being "open" while we are in a trance state while awake.

I've been having some pretty annoying dream-recall dry-spell lately and can barely remember any of my dreams... and the ones that I do remember are very vague and missing a lot of details.

I'll give an update and describe any possible connection to my waking life as soon as I can remember a good vivid dream.

I may have got an idea to test this theory.

Perhaps you people know those MiniCameras that are wireless, the size of a small marble and connected to a PC or screen via Radio-kind of waves.

Well this may be just the equipment you'd need;
Wear a Cap or Beanie all day and attatch this mini Cam on top of it, recording everything you see. Now you could wear a backpack containing a Laptop or other simple Video-Storing Device on which to record your day.

What you could do is wear this camera + recording disk (laptop, PSP, other...) for one day and record everything you are looking at.
Then at the end of the day you could replay the video and review your day; I bet there's alot of things on your Video which at the time you didn't even notice even if you were staring straight at it: This would be when you're in a daytime Trance state.

Now these images you hadn't consciously noticed before might be likely candidates for DreamScenes, DreamCharacters & DreamSituations and they could possibly act as DreamSigns too.

First we should find out if these "unnoticed" images have any connections with Dreams later that night or a couple of nights later. I was going to buy such a camera for other purposes anyways, but if anyone has such a mini-camera; Let me know if you're up for it.

I'll do that test if someone buys me that mini-camera along with a laptop. Oh... and I don't have a hat, so if someone could buy me a hat too, that would be great.

On a more serious note though...

I had a bit of an enlightenment today as I was driving. I remembered that most of my dreams (I'd say over half of them) involve me either driving or at work. Those are two activities that I'm very much in a trance when in waking life. It agrees very with your hypothesis as to why I always tend to have dreams doing those activities.

Hmmz great point. It suddenly connects.

I often Dream about Travel. It's allways when I'm in the Train or Metro in Waking Life that I sink into a significantly deep trance state. Maybe that's why I dream so often about Travel. I often Dream about airports and being lost with a Friend in Some Exotic Rocky High cliff island in the ocean. I remember bright white/blue skies with a bright reflection of the yellow sunlight on the red/white/beige-ish rocky/sandy ground beneath our feet and here and there, very scarcely, a small, low, dark olive-green bush.

I often imagine and daydream of traveling far away from this concrete, suburban chaos to find true peace and enlightenment in a sunny, eastern climate surrounded by beautyfull nature and engulfed in bright sunlight. These might be desires and wishes being dreamt about. I'm not sure yet.

Driving is a pretty often recurring dreamsign for me too. I travel lot of by train. I could use it as a dreamsign. But as i never make reality checks, it wont have as much affect.