Thread: Assigning Lucid Tasks/Rituals to Alleviate Schemas

[split from the September TOTM Thread - Ophelia]

Holy hell I just typed a really long post and the forum ate it. Recap: In the realm of convincing myself to accept new tenants/beliefs/expectations, in and out of dreams, I have found that it is sometimes easier to get yourself to accept what you want, without expressing ANY doubt, if you assign the belief or expectation to a protracted ritual or task, dictating that upon completion of the task the belief will be 'earned', and thus more powerfully ingrained. So, for example, if simply saying aloud, "I no longer believe that I will ever have vision trouble in LDs," doesn't work because doubt sabotages you, it might be easier to accept the new command or rule if you instead dictated that the rule/command/belief/whatever would be in place after you, say, completed a certain task, performed some kind of magical ritual, accomplished some specific significant thing in LD'ing, some list of challenges met, or embodied the vision problem as some kind of entity and then 'defeated' or banished that entity somehow, basically if you can convince yourself you have 'earned' it, it might be easier in the future to say "Well, even though I'm worrying about getting the vision trouble, that worry isn't strong enough to overpower the strength of the ritual I did, so it won't happen anymore." I've never used this in a dream quite like I've described here, but I have used it in waking life with beliefs/goals/discipline type stuff, and if you consciously make the link there is a definite connection between action and thought. I'd be curious if you tried to do something and see what happens.

For example, now that we've talked about it I actually really want to try the very thing I described as unsettling, and I wonder, if I were to tell myself that facing that fear would unlock some extent of ld'ing capacity or even affect my waking consciousness in some positive way, if it very well might once I do the thing?