This is a bit off topic, if its possible to be off topic in this thread. I'm posting it here because it relates more directly to this thread than to any other thread or forum theme.
In a dream last night I was surfing around a hilly lawn in a lawn chair, thinking something like 'Yeah this violates a couple of energy conservation laws, but its a dream. Simulating waking life physics even to this extent helps give the dream a kind of coherence, even though simulation isn't completely accurate." By the standard technical definition of lucid dreaming, this was a lucid dream, since I was aware I was dreaming. But it was just an ordinary dream, expressing my developing thoughts about dreaming, just as everybody's dreams express their developing thoughts about whatever it is that they are concerned with.
The definition of 'lucid' seems to reflect an underlying assumption that people dream about being awake, and that a person is lucid when they have the mental presence to recognize that they're not really awake, that its a "dream". But for the most part you don't dream about being awake if you're more concerned in life with thoughts and ideas, and not about what you're running around 'doing' with other parts of your body besides your brain. A thought is a thought whether you're awake or asleep.
Different parts of a person's mind work together in different ways at different times, and while asleep some parts of the mind are generally less active than when awake. The mix is different for different people. Why should being 'awake' while being asleep in some particular way be considered an accomplishment? By itself it doesn't mean you're more aware generally, and it doesn't mean you have better control over your mind either. If you're dreaming "I'm choosing to do this, and now I'm choosing to do that" that doesn't mean you have more control. You are controlling the virtual reality 'person' in your dream, but the you who is doing that is being controlled by a deeper you who decides what you are allowed to think of doing when you're doing that. And if you try to think about that deeper you, you're doing self-inquiry in a way that's easier for you when you're asleep. Can you count that, or make additional copies of the experience? Does a higher count mean your better at it or worse at it?
So in my lawn-surfing dream last night, a dog climbs onto my lap. Then I couldn't surf because the dog was too heavy. I thought "I'll add a button to my chair that sends electricity between the skids on my chair, then I'll be able to move with the added weight. I know that doesn't make sense, but I can pretend it makes sense because its a dream."
This dog is like almost any other dog: if there's an empty box or bag with an interesting smell it sticks its nose in to see what's in it. But the dog must be trained, disciplined! In my dream, a man gives the dog a lesson by closing it in a sack and frightening the trapped and blinded dog from outside. When the dog comes out it is shaking with anguish, and I try to comfort it. But what the man cares about is controlling the dog's behavior, not how the dog is feeling, or what psychological damage he may be causing.
I think that when you think of what is in your dream as being inside your 'own' mind, subject to your personal control, you are locking a part of yourself in a bag like that dog. Your spirit is more than that, more than just 'your' spirit. Maybe its good to train the dog, to develop it into more than a wild animal in a domestic setting. But the dog needs and deserves compassion. If you think that the dog needs to be treated like a 'straw dog' because it is imperfect or illusory, or just a tool, then I think that is not compassion, and you've somehow replaced your compassion with brutality in the form of a belief about mental accomplishment.
I'm not addressing any particular person or group of people, my use of the word 'you' is largely rhetorical.
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