JoannaB

Congrats on the progress!
That's interesting dream.
Also it seems like your awareness was high, which is what makes non-lucid dreams closer to lucid as well as increasing chances.
Keep going and good luck!

I also realize why I had the dream of controlling mother: my own mother on the phone yesterday asked me "I would like to ask you for a favor. When I was at your home last, I left a few small self improvement books about exercise and nutrition there. Could you take a look at them as a favor to me." I said no, I have no interest. Not that I have no interest in self improvement, exercise or nutrition, but the way my mom does this is not something I have an interest in playing along with. I choose my own self improvement my own way.

So in a way I was two characters in this dream: the one I was consciously (some sort of high priestess perhaps?) and the grown daughter was me too but not consciously me. I was talking to myself in this dream.

Edit: I also think that it's interesting that the issue is naming, which a mother might think she has a right to do, but what is appropriate when the child is little is no longer appropriate when grown up. I think a lot of my issues with my mother revolve around her not realizing that things are no longer appropriate to do when a daughter is grown. She means well, and she figures as a mother it is her duty to help me, but she does not realize that certain kinds of help are not going to be welcome at all now that I am grown (turning 40 this year - quite thoroughly grown).

I thought it did not matter what you did, because your mother would still try to be a bit controlling.
So then you chose to do whatever you like. You control your own fate. You can choose your own identity. A name is an identity, identification, or what you identify with.
So this surpised you.

Interesting you felt it was near lucid, because you became more luicd in life in this situation.
The power of a name, of your individuality.

If you saw your mother as some sort of high priestess, that may mean in control of your spiritual area. And a bit archaic.

Thanks, superman. All except the last bit sounds true to me. The problem I have with the last bit is that my mother was not the high priestess: I was. The high priestess of sorts character was who I identified with, whose eyes I saw this scenes through. So I think I was at least two out of the three characters in this scene. The reason why I say at least two is that another interpretation occurred to me in which I might have also been all three parts in this dream: part of me likes to control myself too much, part of me is naive and just surprised that I may have any control, and part of me realizes that since it does not matter what I do, I can do whatever I like, and that's empowering.

Yeh I read that wrong, No wonder I got it wrong.
:sorry:, the observing you was the high priestess, Joanna.
I think consciously you want your ultimate control of your spriitual area, and the daughter was how it was actually happening, not consciously, or automatically, that is not in control, with your mother being too much in control. I would say this part is not you because you weren't it in the dream.
So you were talking to yourself about that I think.
Just my view though.