Relationship between Sub and Conscious Mind

[Runeword]

so I had a theory awhile ago that maybe the subconscious and the conscious mind were not able to read eachother's thoughts and were completely seperate minds. my most recent experiences have proved this to be wrong. I asked several characters while in a LD world last night if they were able to read what i was thinking. I focused on a specific sentence while asking them if they were able to do this and 2 of the 4 were able to answer correctly. I explained to them that the only way this could be possible is if we were all part of the same consciousness in this particular dream world and they seemed to understand that this was true. just wanted to share an experiment i did and hope that it contributes to some other LD'ers knowledge.

[Sivason]

I am not sure it shows any one thing. The conscious mind in an ld can create and manipulate DCs and their actions, just as handily as the subconscious mind.

[Runeword]

yeah that's something i hadn't thought of

[shadowofwind]

I am not sure it shows any one thing. The conscious mind in an ld can create and manipulate DCs and their actions, just as handily as the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is still involved in the creation of the DC right? The conscious mind doesn't know the details of how to create a DC, even though it may be involved in whether the DC gets created and how it looks and behaves. And if the DC does something that you're not aware of causing it to do, as seems to be what is described here, then it seems to me that by definition that's the subconscious mind doing that. In any case, it seems to me that at least part of the subconscious mind has almost total visibility of what the conscious mind is doing. Otherwise you wouldn't even be able to think, there would be no way to step from one conscious outcome to the next related intuition that becomes a thought. Going the other way, there seems to be more of a wall though, part of the subconscious can know things without having an immediate path to conscious expression. An example of this I've given before is when my girlfriend was cheating on me and my arm spasmed weirdly and my ring flew off. Consciously I had no idea what was going on. Subconsciously, a simple "your girlfriend is cheating on you" intuition wasn't possible, apparent. Another example is when writing algebra on a board in front of a class, and my hand writes a result that consciously I'm still a few steps away from. That has happened once or twice. I guess is obvious that the conscious mind doesn't have access to everything that is subconscious. That's what makes it subconscious! But what I was talking about here is a stronger limitation where the subconscious is obstructed also. On further thought, I guess there is probably obstruction going the other direction also, where the subconscious lacks information about what the conscious mind is doing. That would strongly interfere with a person's thinking, but maybe it does. It is still remarkable to me how sensitive my subconscious is though. I can make a simple choice about what I'm interested in (a choice that is all but done by the subconscious anyway), and this is pretty much always followed by a relevant dream or other experience. It doesn't take special focus or strong will or anything, the subconscious is paying attention, and it doesn't drop the ball.

[Runeword]

it's really amazing how complicated and powerful the mind is. that's one thing i almost always come up from an LD thinking. like for example the other morning i had one where i was showing some DC's some things i could do in the world. i decided to turn the clouds red. i was thinking of a blob of red fluff basically but as i waved my hand across them they came up with the most beatiful, detailed, red highlights and artistry like nothing i was thinking of at all. it's odd the relationship between the conscious and subconscious. they seem to be protected from each other in some way yet also work together.

[Psionik]

The more quiet consciousness (concentrated, observer state, unattached) the more consciously is subconsciousness manifesting.

[StephL]

Of course the subconscious and the conscious are connected and exchange info - how would you explain intuition, LD, many other things - like consciously making suggestions/affirmations to influence the unconscious (both the same un and sub for me here). And you can also drag forth subconscious content into your conscious mind by various methods (psychoanalysis being one of them - even if I´m not a fan of it overall..). To doubt that is actually really weird, I find.

[Zoth]

One of the reasons why people are amazed at how the dream content can be so volatile, and visual changes can occur at the blink of an eye without apparent reason, is exactly because your subconscious processes are exchanging information with your conscious perception. One of the best examples is when you notice someone mentioning your name in a party, but it can happen in other less obvious settings: when you think that in a dream it's your attention that forms the visual scenario, you are actually seeing more than you'd think. Now, this brings relevant implications to what exactly is responsible for this volatility in dreams (what exactly is responsible for the plot? Is the development of the dream content a matter of subconscious association?), and how dream control is performed to some degree, but it should be obvious that you're (or should I say, your "conscious" self) not the major agent for what you experience in your dreams, lucid or not ^^

[shadowofwind]

Regarding the sharing of memory between conscious and subconscious minds....This morning while sleeping I was lucidly working on a poem. I got about three stanzas into it and woke up. I remembered the last two lines I was working on, which didn't amount to much, but the rest of it, including the experience I was trying to capture in the poem, was gone. It wasn't gone as if I'd lacked memory during the dream, or had forgotten it in a few seconds after waking, or as if it hadn't been there, or as if it is far enough outside of human experience that its inherently not understandable from a waking life perspective. It was more like I changed context and lost access at the moment I awoke. This is the second time this has happened to me in the past couple of weeks, and I find it frustrating because the content, which has to do with how identity manifests as thoughts and events, is something I'm interested in retaining. Historically, I don't have trouble remembering lucid dreams, and I do learn things from them. But it does seem that there is a limit on how 'new' the knowledge can be before its blocked somehow and I have to work it out while awake. Regarding the instability of dreams....About a week ago I had a dream similar to the 'look at the time' stability experiment people were talking about a few months ago, except my dream involved letters. It was somewhat stable for a while, with the same letters hanging around for a little while, then it changed so that it was more unstable and the letters would only stay fixed for a couple of seconds. I'm pretty sure that in the first part of the dream, the letters are more stable because the 'memory' of them has been prepared somewhat ahead of time. Then when I get more into the 'making it up as I go along' part of the dream its less stable. This relates to my discussion with Sageous a couple of weeks ago on another thread, about whether dreams are prepared beforehand. The dreams that I can remember more easily seem to be ones that were prepared subconsciously beforehand with an aim towards having a metaphor that I can remember. These last couple that I've had that I can't remember seem aimed towards illustrating that the metaphor is straightforward and concrete enough that it should be thinkable while awake, except for some obstruction possibly having to do with gaining new knowledge. Its easier by the way to gain new knowledge if the knowledge is possibly coming through external means anyway, or could have come through external means. The frequent premonitions I used to have were like that. It seems I can take shortcuts in terms of the usual flow of events, but its the knowledge or experience that's not 'almost manifest' that's tough to get at. As if I'm a baby and I need my food mostly chewed for me or something.

[Runeword]

i need to change my notifications i guess. i don't come back to old threads i've posted in unless people have liked my post i guess? always interesting to come back weeks and weeks later and see the responses i have been missing.

[Dthoughts]

i need to change my notifications i guess. i don't come back to old threads i've posted in unless people have liked my post i guess? always interesting to come back weeks and weeks later and see the responses i have been missing. Ha haaa, i tricked you into coming here. Hhahahahahahahahahah my work here is done.

[Runeword]

lol nice. i will figure out how to stay updated better on this one day yet.