The Nature of Dream Control

[The Cusp]

A Deeper Look at the Effect of Emotions Again, I feel emotions deserve a special mention. I'm assuming for the moment that emotions are something that require your attention to exist as well. But I'm not too sure about that at all, and the emotional influence may turn out a third rule. Anyone have any thoughts on weather emotions are something that require your attention to exist, or whether they they are independent entities? Emotions are like a filter or like a color lens. Each emotion shapes your dreams in predictable ways, affecting both your surroundings and the behavior of DCs. Anger will cause harsh colors and sharp angles, and my cause DCs to fight or fear you. The effects of fear are obvious, painfully so in dreams. Both this Emotional technique and the the Attention technique can be used independently, or in combination with each other. Sometimes it may be better to use one technique over the other. The emotional technique won't change the physical elements as drastically as the Attention technique, but will change the look, feel and mood of the dream, as well as influence DC behavior. By practicing this you will begin to notice that DCs are puppets and you are the puppet master, only your emotions are the strings. You can influence the way DCs act, and the types of things they say, but not what they say. It's interesting to note that people in RL react the same way in the presence of strong emotions as do DCs. After the confidence and practice gained from using this in dreams, it would stand to reason that this could be used to influence people in RL as well. It seems people do this all the time anyways, but very clumsily for the most part. You must be capable of being able to summon up any emotion at will, and not let the ones that arise naturally to rule you. The benefits of positive emotions are obvious, but even the so called negative emotions have their uses. Anger can often make thing go your way. Even fear could be used to lure someone close, then you switch to a confident rage. But you would have to actually feel the fear, not feign it. And always make sure you are in control of the emotions, not the other way around. Strong emotions are best as well. So strong they radiate out from you, or perhaps vibrate would be a more appropriate term. I think this part ties into Aquanina's work with High Vibrational Frequency. This can be practiced in dreams, or in RL like a reality check. As with the previous parts, these things become more apparent in RL after you become accustomed to seeing the dramatic effect they have in dreams.

[The Cusp]

Schemas and AI I was going to expand on Archetypes, Schemas, and Artificial Intelligenge to try to give a better understanding of the types of associations that are made when new detail is formed as a result of your attention. But it turn out Archetypes are a type of Schema, along with stereotypes, social roles, and worldviews. Of particular interest inception of the Schema concept. The following article is from the Wikipedia entry on Schemas. The original concept of schemata is linked with that of reconstructive memory as proposed and demonstrated in a series of experiments by Bartlett (1932). By presenting participants with information that was unfamiliar to their cultural backgrounds and expectations and then monitoring how they recalled these different items of information (stories, etc.), Bartlett was able to establish that individuals' existing schemata and stereotypes influence not only how they interpret 'schema-foreign' new information but also how they recall the information over time. One of his most famous investigations involved asking participants to read a Native American folk tale, "The War of the Ghosts," and recall it several times up to a year later. All the participants transformed the details of the story in such a way that it reflected their cultural norms and expectations, i.e. in line with their schemata. The factors that influenced their recall were: * Omission of information that was considered irrelevant to a participant; * Transformation of some of the detail, or of the order in which events etc were recalled; a shift of focus and emphasis in terms of what was considered the most important aspects of the tale; * Rationalisation: details and aspects of the tale that would not make sense would be 'padded out' and explained in an attempt to render them comprehensible to the individual in question; * Cultural shifts: The content and the style of the story were altered in order to appear more coherent and appropriate in terms of the cultural background of the participant. Bartlett's work was crucially important in demonstrating that long-term memories are neither fixed nor immutable but are constantly being adjusted as our schemata evolve with experience. In a sense it supports the existentialist view that we construct our past and present in a constant process of narrative/discursive adjustment, and that much of what we 'remember' is actually confabulated (adjusted and rationalised) narrative that allows us to think of our past as a continuous and coherent string of events, even though it is probable that large sections of our memory (both episodic and semantic) are irretrievable to our conscious memory at any given time. Further work on the concept of schemas was conducted by Brewer and Treyens (1981) who demonstrated that the schema-driven expectation of the presence of an object was sometimes sufficient to trigger its erroneous recollection. An experiment was conducted where participants were requested to wait in a room identified as an academic's study and were later asked about the room's contents. A number of the participants recalled having seen books in the study whereas none were present. Brewer and Treyens concluded that the participants' expectations that books are present in academics' studies were enough to prevent their accurate recollection of the scenes. For starters, lets look at the factors that influenced recall. * Omission of information. First rule, without your attention, things can't exist * Transformation of some of the detail; a shift of focus and emphasis in terms of what was considered the most important aspects of the tale; Again, a combination of the first and second rule, and your most powerful tool in dream control. * Rationalisation: details and aspects of the tale that would not make sense would be 'padded out' and explained in an attempt to render them comprehensible to the individual in question; Second rule, attention creates detail. * Cultural shifts: The content and the style of the story were altered in order to appear more coherent and appropriate in terms of the cultural background of the participant. This sounds like the effect emotions have on dreams. Is it possible different cultures have an identifying emotional state? These factors responsible for flaws inconsistencies in long term memory just happen to be the tools of dream control! The links to memory make me wonder if dreams are really dynamic memories kept alive by our attention. And now for an Artificial Intelligence approach. A binary yes or no system may be easier to picture than fancy notions like Schemata. Consider training an artificial neural network to understand language, starting with a concept like tree. You could manually create links to words like grows, leaves, branches. Alternatively, you expose the network repeated instances of trees until it learns on it's own. Links to words like outside would be formed, but not all instances of trees would necessarily be outside, some may be indoors, so another link to indoors is formed. But the majority of trees being outside, the path to "outside" gets used more and gains weight, becomes more substantial. The more connections or paths your word has, then better the understanding your AI will have. You have to learn to travel those weighted paths or synapses without getting lost within their endless nature.

[The Cusp]

I would like some feedback on this. I could go on and on, but if nobody cares, I'll keep it to myself.

[arby]

You just proved the existence of the "Somebody else's problem" (SEP) fields.

[Soldier]

you've had alot on your mind I'd advise people not to skim over this, I had to read that 3 times to grasp what your saying and you've opened the door on a few subjects. emotions- I never really thought that would have effects on your dream, I'll use that to my advantage. attention tech- one thing I've had trouble with is boobs, I like your bad teeth example because that ties in with my problem. when I go to fuck a girl I take off her shirt and her tits are terrible not just small but oddly shaped, the more I'd look at them the worse they would get. I've yet to solve this problem and I think you have the answer but how do I look at the good side with them?

[The Cusp]

You just proved the existence of the "Somebody else's problem" (SEP) fields. Lol, I used the SEP analogy in relation to this subject elsewhere! one thing I've had trouble with is boobs, I like your bad teeth example because that ties in with my problem. when I go to fuck a girl I take off her shirt and her tits are terrible not just small but oddly shaped, the more I'd look at them the worse they would get. I've yet to solve this problem and I think you have the answer but how do I look at the good side with them? The way excessive attention works is kind of like tunnel vision. You zoom in and it creates lots of related detail. I've been thinking about how to do the opposite of this, and I think it would be using Peripheral Vision. Instead of focusing one one element, try to take in as much of the scene as possible. I've yet to experiment extensively with this, but if my theory is correct, it using your peripheral vision should keep things more stable. In relation to your boob specific problem, there are many associations in your mind with the concept of "boob". They can be nasty like in you dreams, with associations like oddly shaped, wrinkly, veiny, ect. You could view it in a reproductive role, with associations such as mild, child, reproduction, ect. Or you could go with aesthetic qualities, firm, round, bouncy. Try to follow the links that take you where you want to go without taking any wrong turns. You could also pay attention to other dream elements that have similar properties as you'd like to see in your boobs. Perhaps ripe fruit, water ballons, or... uh... fluffy pillows? Try not focusing on things as a whole, but only on selective qualities that you want to amplify.

[The Cusp]

After a lot experimentation, I have some thoughts on how this works in practice. There seems to be a more general control, rather than specific control. Say I wanted to summon a monster with 6 arms, 8 eyes, purple fur, hooves and a tail. It most likely wouldn't work. But I could summon a general monster, and then tweak it's characteristics until becomes like I want. It also seems to work more reliably when you focus on your goal, but not how you accomplish it. First of all, it's really hard to know where to begin to make something happen. When you have infinite possibilities at your disposal, it's hard to pick just one. By focusing on what you want, the "how" will take care of it's self. Back in the Real World I've been keeping an eye out for this process in action in the waking world, and I'm beginning to see it happening more and more. I've been a little shy in practicing this type of dream control in RL, mainly because I feel bad about manipulating people like that. The other day on the bus, this woman had caught me checking out the girls on the bus. Not wanting to seem like a perv, I figured this would be a good time to reset my attention. So I focused in on the first thing I noticed, the yellow hand bars on the bus. Actually I just focused on the color yellow, zooming in my attention like I do in my dream. Immediately the yellow color became 2-3 times brighter than it was originally. After that I began to see bright yellow everywhere, where I hadn't noticed it before. People wearing yellow outside the bus, yellow on the store fronts, just everywhere. There was so much yellow around me, it no longer seemed real, but dream like. It just didn't seem possible that there would be that much yellow around, it was like a tooth dream gone bad, only I was pulled into a sea of yellow! One application of this kind of dream control over people I don't feel bad about using, is flirting. I've never been much good at that, but now it's a whole new ball game. Things like how to capture and direct a girl's attention are so much easier now. Before it was like playing a game where I didn't know the rules, now it's like a game of Calvin Ball, where I make up the rules as I go along so that things turn out in my favor. Another application I not sure I should go through with is at work. My partner at work is hard to get along with. He wasn't in yesterday, and I worked with another guy who's partner didn't show. We were both happy to have a break from the people we work with. Now I'm wondering if I shouldn't switch partners. Using this technique, I could make it happen easily with only a few words here and there, without anyone that I was the one that made it happen. But just because I can change something doesn't mean I should. Would things really improve if I went ahead with it? Asking directly to switch partners would cause a lot of tension at work, and the boss probably wouldn't do it just to spite me. But this subtle approach to change is very tempting. First off, I want to mention an article I came across (which I can't find at the moment) which supports my dreaming/awake link. It said that the dreaming state persists even while awake. So while you dream, you are just dreaming. But while you are awake, you are awake + dreaming. It would suggest dreaming is the totality of existence. Anyone see anything about that? I've had too many beers to find it right now. Going back to the notion that your dreams are formed by sum of your attention, where you direct your attention while dreaming has a direct influence. But there is also a residual spillover effect from where you direct your attention in the waking world. This spillover can be from the that day's events, or events deep in your past. Which raises the question "How much can you pay attention to at once?" Or what is the maximum number of things that it is possible to pay attention to? For an indirect, roundabout answer, I'd like to introduce the notion of The MonkeySphere. The following is a very entertaining article on the subject. It also sheds some light on the behavior of DCs, and how we view them. http://www.cracked.com/article_14990...keysphere.html

[The White Rabbit]

you've had alot on your mind I'd advise people not to skim over this, I had to read that 3 times to grasp what your saying and you've opened the door on a few subjects. emotions- I never really thought that would have effects on your dream, I'll use that to my advantage. attention tech- one thing I've had trouble with is boobs, I like your bad teeth example because that ties in with my problem. when I go to fuck a girl I take off her shirt and her tits are terrible not just small but oddly shaped, the more I'd look at them the worse they would get. I've yet to solve this problem and I think you have the answer but how do I look at the good side with them? Haha, no luck. I think that is rather odd actually.

[anomanderis]

i think the answer would be to have an expectation of good boobs before taking off the shirt. and not just, "i don't want them to be ugly" - negatives work the same as you saying "her boobs are ugly". imagine the most beautiful pair of boobs alive that would make even the dalai-lama cry.

[CrazyJelly]

You just proved the existence of the "Somebody else's problem" (SEP) fields. Hah! Hitchikers guide to the Galaxy FtW!!! xD I love that book soo much. Giggle

[ChaybaChayba]

I would like some feedback on this. I could go on and on, but if nobody cares, I'll keep it to myself. One of the most interesting reads I had on lucid dreaming in a while, so don't hold back with your information, you really seem to know what you're talking about. Anyway, this will be very useful for me when dreaming, just what I was looking for

[seeker28]

Thank you Cusp! This is all understandable (even if a takes a few readings), important, useable information. I read this thread last night, decided to simply be mindful of how my attention and emotion affect the dream scape, and already I am seeing serious possibilites. If you have any more ideas or more indepth explanation I'd love to hear it. It is so nice to read something well thought out, thought provoking, and useful. I'm subscribing to this thread.

[The Cusp]

Thanks for all the positive feedback, I really appreciate it. It takes me so long to write out these posts (This measly post took almost 4 hours!). Real World Applications For the past month or so, I've been observing how these principles apply to the real world as much as they do to dreaming. But it comes with an extra layer of complexity in the waking world, namely other people. The potential each one of us has using these techniques is phenomenal, and when you consider there are billions of people influencing the world in this manner, the possibilities for conflict or resonance are mind boggling. It would seem that the waking world is just one big shared dream! So lets start off simple, with an example that happened to me today. There was a dog chained up out back of the neighbour's place where I was working. It seemed friendly and curious, so I let it come up to me and sniff me, no problems, it didn't seem a threat. Then I noticed a sign in the window that said "Beware Guard dog". The moment that sign registered in my mind and I though "Guard dog? Oh oh..." it's demeanor completely changed. It became mean, growled, and tried to bite me. It's like that sign created a link or association to the dog's corresponding behavior. I've been seeing dozens of examples of this daily. Now to recap my three basic rules in a RL context. 1. Everything in your dreams requires your attention to exist. I've used this rule effectively in dreams in what I would call a "banishing". Simply ignore something in dreams, put it completely out of your mind, and it will cease to exist. This type of banishing works in RL too, but people don't cease to exist, they just wander off. Completely ignoring someone is a little rude, but very effective. I've also been using this to ward off unwanted conversation topics, and it works like a charm. 2. The more attention you give to one element, the more detail it creates in relation to what you are focused on. Carl Jung, the Anti-Freud, had a method where he would write a letter to someone and then not send it. This would invariably result in his target sending him a letter in response to what he had written, even though he never sent it. He was also the one to coin the term "synchronicity", which I believe is a fantastic example of this rule in action. I have countless examples of this principle in action, as with the incident with the dog I detailed above. There are so many possibilities here, it's almost impossible to properly explain how it works. Thus far, I've broken this section down into two schools of practice. A) Achieving specific goals: This is basically what the movie "The Secret" is about. I can't really give specifics on how to do this, as each individual had their own set of associations created through a lifetime of experience. Learning what the main influential associations are to you through dreaming will help you apply this to the real world. B)Eliminating negative thought patterns: This has been the main focus of my efforts lately. Instead of dwelling on the negative aspects of my life, I do my best to ignore them. According to the first rule, they disappear and cease to create bad situations in accordance with this second rule. The old saying "The straw that broke the camel's back" applies here. By not dwelling on the things that get on your nerves, you don't get that build up of straw that weighs you down. Basically, this involves gaining control of your random thoughts that arise during the day, by either consciously directing them, or just putting a stop to the negative ones (which is so hard to do!). Most people arrogantly assume they are in complete control of their thought process, but this couldn't be farther from the truth. 3. Strong emotions have a devastating effect on everything around you. I've decided to include emotion as a separate rule. I'll come up with a better way to sum it up eventually, but that's pretty much the gist of it for now. Just look at how you react in the presence of people exhibiting strong emotions, or how other people react to your own strong emotions. Do most people really have a choice in how they react to these emotions? It's like there are unwritten social rules on how we are supposed to react. Even when you think you're masking or hiding your emotions, they still influence people's behavior. One might think that people are responding to subtle body language, but that's not the case. Now I'm a recovering rageaholic, and I've had a few instances where I was in a room alone and foul mood took ahold of me despite my best efforts. The people in other rooms invariably begin to curse loudly, as if in response to my foul mood. This is the kind of thing dream characters are prone to doing. Overview I've had about 6-7 months or so of exploring this in my dreams, but have only been working on the real world applications for about a month. The more I look into it, the more the real world behave like a dream. And of course you know the first thing most people do once they realize they are dreaming is to have lucid sex. Well, I'm no different. I'm realizing the world is my oyster, or at least a bearded clam. I've been using these principles to get women like you wouldn't believe. The thing is, the type of women that are attracted into my life seem to be influenced by the porn that I watch (Not that I'm complaining!). The real test will come tomrrow when I ask out the girl I'm totally in love with. According to my theory, it should go well, since she's been constantly on my mind. Now the RL applilcations open up a lot of possibilities for control, but with all the people in the world, there are bound to be people with a will opposed to yours. What happens when two people try to manifest opposing intents? Even in a RL scenario, this brings us into the realm of shared dreaming, which is where I learned all about this. You don't think I came up with this all by myself do you? Nope, I discovered this after making a challenge in the "Night Stalkers, Dream Walker" thread here: http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ad.php?t=37621 The very reason I think these were shared dream was the mastery these visitors had over attention. A lot of those Night Stalker dreams never make it into my dream journal because they are so difficult to describe. I've been loathe to mention it thus far, lest it undermine the points I'm trying to get across. I do have much more to go into, I just need to find a way to broach the subject properly, plus I have so much to experiment with, I just don't have enough time.

[Something Else]

[/SIZE][SIZE=4]3. Strong emotions have a devastating effect on everything around you. I've decided to include emotion as a separate rule. I'll come up with a better way to sum it up eventually, but that's pretty much the gist of it for now. I wonder if it is important to distinguish between strong negative and strong positive emotions. I personally can think of ways in which strong positive emotions have helped me in real life and in the dream world (or so it seemed at the time). But I would definitely agree that strong negative emotions could have a negative impact. I am glad that you mentioned how your mood while you were in one room seemed to affect the mood of others in other rooms. I do think that moods, energy levels, and emotions are transferable and contagious. As a teacher I know the value of matching and then raising the emotional mood of the classroom. If I go in with too high energy when teaching a low energy class, I will go over their heads. If (and this rarely happens) I go in with too low energy when teaching a high energy class then I will go under their heads. The important thing is to get everyone on a similar energy level and then raise them together by just being slightly higher than they are. I have to say though that I do believe that body positions and voice tone and rhythm do play a role in this, but I do think there are other contributing factors too, some of which might seem psychic.

[Something Else]

[/SIZE][SIZE=4]3. Strong emotions have a devastating effect on everything around you. I've decided to include emotion as a separate rule. I'll come up with a better way to sum it up eventually, but that's pretty much the gist of it for now. On a different note, I am paying much more attention to my emotions in dreams and trying more to actively engage and create positive emotions in an attempt to extent and stabilized my lucid dreams. Often times my LDs only last a few seconds. After having read this thread a few days ago I tried to WILD. I am happy to report that infusing positive emotions in my dream seemed to make it last much longer. I had the longest LD of this year. It lasted around 2 minutes, which is much better than the normal trend for these days of 2-3 seconds. It was followed by two shorter and less powerful DEILDs. Then yesterday I tried to LD again while applying this technique. I was greeted with my normal 3 second LD followed up by a very real false awakening. Today, almost nothing. I can’t quite figure out why I have a problem extending, stabilizing, and intensifying lucid dreams. I know that you have talked about introversion and maybe that is my problem. I don’t really ever seem to get lost in too much detail unless maybe when I am flying but that seems to be a fairly universal problem.

[apprentice]

I would like some feedback on this. I could go on and on, but if nobody cares, I'll keep it to myself. hi, I just wanted to say that I like your ideas! all very interesting.

[Hukif]

Ah well, I don't know much but... isn't that a little obvius when you talk of the common dream kind? Since its just the representantion of something you have in your brain to an alternal reality, and since our reality is only the things that we decode in our brain via the materials (the places where our senses are located at) of our body, then if we don't get the code of a material it won't appear on the brain and therefore it won't exist for the life form in subject. Said that, it works the same way, since the things we see in common dreams are just another representation of those codes in form of images, and as so the ones that aren't got are non-existant, and the ones that are ignored, becomes non-decoded and non-existant too. Tough the emotions can have or not a place in there, since some people will get an alter of the decoding because of those, and some won't, not sure on the emotion field <.<

[tommo]

Wow, wanna slip some grammar in there? Anyway think I get what you're saying and yes these things are all quite obvious, but discussing it leaves a chance for more insight and investigation into why all this happens and further things that you might not find quite so obvious. Also discussing it lets people have input and could change how you think about it. For example if you investigate say, bones of a velociraptor, you might go in thinking clear headed and thinking critically but then once you keep dwelling on this one thing by yourself your judgment would become clouded because you have no input from other people. You might have a sudden feeling that this bone is only 100 years old and you would start looking for things that verify this, yet if someone was there with you they would say 'nah it's just dust' lol or whatever. I don't know if I got to the point there but that is why people discuss obvious things. Cusp came up with some interesting ideas and eventually started thinking he could apply this to real life just the same as in a dream, he obviously won't agree with me but I believe he dwelled on it too long by himself. Therefore he started getting carried away with some ideas without someone there to say "wait a minute, you're not thinking clearly, real life cannot be manipulated like a dream etc etc"

[Hukif]

"hits self" Sorry for the grammar <.< And yes, I get what your saying (or I think that I does) so technically its for help make the idea clearer about the subject and at the same time give the info to anyone who isn't paying attention to it, right? Interesting.

[The Cusp]

Wow, wanna slip some grammar in there? Anyway think I get what you're saying and yes these things are all quite obvious, but discussing it leaves a chance for more insight and investigation into why all this happens and further things that you might not find quite so obvious. Also discussing it lets people have input and could change how you think about it. For example if you investigate say, bones of a velociraptor, you might go in thinking clear headed and thinking critically but then once you keep dwelling on this one thing by yourself your judgment would become clouded because you have no input from other people. You might have a sudden feeling that this bone is only 100 years old and you would start looking for things that verify this, yet if someone was there with you they would say 'nah it's just dust' lol or whatever. I don't know if I got to the point there but that is why people discuss obvious things. Cusp came up with some interesting ideas and eventually started thinking he could apply this to real life just the same as in a dream, he obviously won't agree with me but I believe he dwelled on it too long by himself. Therefore he started getting carried away with some ideas without someone there to say "wait a minute, you're not thinking clearly, real life cannot be manipulated like a dream etc etc" I love both those examples, as they both show the second rule can work. You mind if I use those when I turn this into a book? And I don't disagree with the second one about me at all. Because that's exactly how it happens. I'm not sure if that was meant to undermine my argument, since it supports it so beautifully. It does however create a bit of a paradox of the chicken and egg type. My focusing on the idea too much would, according to the second rule, create the excessive detail I'm putting into this thread, creating the very rules themselves. From that perspective, it sounds like a self fulfilling fantasy or delusion, but even the delusion scenario unfolds according to those rules. Unfortunately I can't take full credit for coming up with all this. It was shown to me by someone else. Or at least I figured it out by watching someone else who knew how to apply it. I'm not sure if they were intentionally trying to show me or not. I'll get to that story later. It's a whopper.

[jimmie]

Wow, wanna slip some grammar in there? Anyway think I get what you're saying and yes these things are all quite obvious, but discussing it leaves a chance for more insight and investigation into why all this happens and further things that you might not find quite so obvious. Also discussing it lets people have input and could change how you think about it. For example if you investigate say, bones of a velociraptor, you might go in thinking clear headed and thinking critically but then once you keep dwelling on this one thing by yourself your judgment would become clouded because you have no input from other people. You might have a sudden feeling that this bone is only 100 years old and you would start looking for things that verify this, yet if someone was there with you they would say 'nah it's just dust' lol or whatever. I don't know if I got to the point there but that is why people discuss obvious things. Cusp came up with some interesting ideas and eventually started thinking he could apply this to real life just the same as in a dream, he obviously won't agree with me but I believe he dwelled on it too long by himself. Therefore he started getting carried away with some ideas without someone there to say "wait a minute, you're not thinking clearly, real life cannot be manipulated like a dream etc etc" That's an odd thing to say. Real life is manipulated, much like dreams. They may not be identical in all aspects, and maybe they are and we just don't have enough force of thought? Maybe reality is an excuse to not take resposibility for our thoughts, and let "other things", that may just be us in disguise, control us. Are you a person, or a dream of a person, who dreams they aren't in control?

[jarrhead]

hi, I just wanted to say that I like your ideas! all very interesting. Off topic.. Congratulations on your ONLY post and you joined in 2008! It's like playing Where's Waldo! ;

[atlantic]

Dreamslinger, I definitely agree with your assessment that dreams develop according to the focus of your attention, and that detail is added as you focus on a particular element, detail that was not there before. Sometimes you see things change before your eyes, as you put your full focus on them. One thing I don't understand is dream transitions or discontinuities. When you focus on certain things, instead of developing inside the same dream, they require a change of scenario. You go through a black patch and you transition to a new dream. Now why is that? I've been playing around with a theory, so let me put it to you. In waking reality, we have our perceptions, which are external, and our thoughts, which are internal. They don't really mix. In dream reality, we don't have perceptions, and we do have our thoughts, which are completely externalized as pseudo-perceptions. So actually looking at your dreams means looking at your mental contents, but externalized, or clothed with a sensory appearance taken from our store of memories. Does this sound plausible? BTW, this does not necessarily mean that our dreams are subjective - they are just as subjective or objective as our thoughts are, that's all.

[The Cusp]

One thing I don't understand is dream transitions or discontinuities. When you focus on certain things, instead of developing inside the same dream, they require a change of scenario. You go through a black patch and you transition to a new dream. Now why is that? Possibly because your thought process becomes internalized, and you don't have enough attention externally to sustain your surroundings. It seems like a sudden transition because you have one single archetype populating a blank slate, so it only seems more dramatic than usual. I've been playing around with a theory, so let me put it to you. In waking reality, we have our perceptions, which are external, and our thoughts, which are internal. They don't really mix. Actually they do mix. Your inner thoughts determine where you focus your outer perceptions, the exact same way as in dreams. In fact they limit them, because like in dreams, you can't be aware of anything that you don't have an existing archetype for. In dream reality, we don't have perceptions, and we do have our thoughts, which are completely externalized as pseudo-perceptions. So actually looking at your dreams means looking at your mental contents, but externalized, or clothed with a sensory appearance taken from our store of memories. Does this sound plausible? BTW, this does not necessarily mean that our dreams are subjective - they are just as subjective or objective as our thoughts are, that's all. Very well put.

[Something Else]

In dream reality, we don't have perceptions, and we do have our thoughts, which are completely externalized as pseudo-perceptions. So actually looking at your dreams means looking at your mental contents, but externalized, or clothed with a sensory appearance taken from our store of memories. Does this sound plausible? BTW, this does not necessarily mean that our dreams are subjective - they are just as subjective or objective as our thoughts are, that's all. I have thought about this before too. Sounds like a good theory to me too.