The Right Way of Facing Confrontation

I have been thinking about the way I face Dream Characters confrontation in my lucid dreams.

In most of my lucid dreams, DCs will come out and tell me I have trespassed. They always look menacing and for some reason, I know I won't get out of it without a fight (I mean, don't I at least get a trial?) They come running closer and being a peaceful person, I fly away (and I'm not super great at it, I never fly like superman, I have to use my limbs and sort of swim up, which is slow and ineffective. I will awkwardly be fluttering my arms and legs, my feet still in arm's reach of them. But they never grab me. And none of them knows how to fly. So I end up escaping, even if in a very pathetic way. :P )

I have tried to deal with this in two different ways (being nice and looking away):

Spoiler for Examples:

Example 1. There was a dream about my family and I needing to get to a point to be rescued. When we entered the field, I was alone and lucid. I was just amazed by how vivid the field was and the sea beyond it. I saw the person coming for rescue. It was someone on a motorcycle. As he approached, I realized he had bad intentions (why? He had a helmet, I couldn't see his face). I told myself, no. I just started spinning around myself, grabbing at the scenery, calling out "Do you want to come explore the dream with me? You may be my friend and follow me!" But as I looked up, he was racing towards me. I just looked straight at him repeating to myself that he was a friend. But he ran over me and the dream ended.

Example 2. There was a giant crocodile coming at me. I just looked away and the lucid dream continued. Interesting things happened.

Example 3. Last night, I had a lucid dream that a panther appeared before me, menacing looking. For a second, I was excited to see it. It looked nice. Then, I was scared and started miserably flying away. The panther was menacing again.

I realize that I could improve my control and this wouldn't be an issue. Also, looking away, and never looking back is the most effective strategy for me, but since this type of confrontation is recurring, I wonder if there is something that I must deal with. Whether dreams are messages from the gods or our subconscious, or whether they come from a deterministic cause and effect mechanism, it seems that I should at least consider facing these situations.

In real life, I can't just look away from confrontation, so why is it an acceptable way of dealing with DCs? I'd like to hear what you all think.

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But he ran over me and the dream ended.

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Hahahaha. In all seriousness though man, it could be your mental schemas. Whatever you are expecting deep down in your heart to happen, is always what will happen. You may sometimes think that you really are expecting one thing, but at the deepest level you don't really expect that thing. You have to really change your mindset about LDing in a way to take control completely.
For example, for a long time, I was trying to find a specific girl in my LDs. I tried every night, and I always told myself that I was going to see her and that she would show up. She never showed up. Why? Because I never really believed. It's just like how my flying abilities used to go up and down a while back. In some LD's I would know that I sucked at flying. In that dream I would end up sucking at flying. In other dreams, I would know that I was perfect at flying. In those dreams I flew flawlessly and I did feel like superman or something along those lines.
My point in all of this is: Your expectations control what happens in the dream world. If you control your expectations and put them in your favor, you can control alot. Every single time that I have 100% belief in myself and no doubt whatsoever, I never fail. Even if its something as big as time dilation.

Some may disagree with me on this, but confrontation is acceptable in dreams because they are all inside of your head. To an extent I do believe that dreams are real, but in a different way than waking life. However, you don't have to confront DC's. You could just project love onto them or make yourself invincible. There's so many things you could do. I prefer to use my power and take control of everything so I usually end up destroying the DCs that mess with me. That being said, in my 107 lucid dreams so far, I've only been in fights maybe 5 times.

Ignoring the need to "deal with reoccurring issues," one thing you may want to try other than looking away (which is really effective to make something you don't want in a dream to disappear), you can try changing the narrative using "pretend memories." Sivason is very successful at doing this, he does it often, you may want to check his DJ. Basically, instead of *you* being nice and hoping the thing responds, you "remember" that the menacing panther is really a sweet, tame animal.

What I did in my last LD without really thinking about it when I came upon a DC whom I thought appeared potentially threatening, I "took charge" of the narrative by accusing him of something I made up in a firm voice. He right away just looked more confused and puzzled than threatening.

If they're confronting you, they want something from you. If you don't know what they want, ask them. Give them what they want and you will be able to part from them.

Thank you for your comments!

I have been thinking about the whole thing and I am going to use a mixture of all you said.

So I realized, there are two themes going on:
1. A person accuses me. And I feel guilt.
2. An animal sees me and becomes violent. People say animals see people's soul so if an animal dislikes you, it's because you're a bad person, thus I am a bad person.

Both involve me feeling guilt/self-doubt. This is a waking life problem (not a huge one, but one nonetheless). I always worry too much about what I might have done wrong that could have irritated or displeased or angered others. But I let this affect me too much. Whatever happened happened. I can think of something to improve. Once that's done, that's all I can do. Maybe I can give comfort to the person but if they don't want it, then, I've done my best. I need to move on and remember I am a good person. This is a weird situation to me because it feels rude. The way I am going to deal with this is that I will spare a few seconds to feel compassion/empathy for the other person, seeing the "harm" that was caused to them (if any) without blaming myself. And then, I'll do the rest.

For the animal part, it's just not true that animals know if people are good or not.

Here is how I will react in a dream two both situations:

1. I will say "It's done. I am a good person. I can make mistakes." (to myself)
"What can I do to amend my wrongs?" (to DC)
if the answer is constructive, I'll amend my wrongs, if not, I'll say to myself: "I am a good person. Move on"
Then, I will look away and move on with my dream. I think it's okay to just think about something else once you've done everything and the other person is just creating their own problem.

2. I will say "I am a good person, you just need to know me better" (to the animal, then I can let it smell me)
If they are receptive, I will pet it and then continue my dream, with the animal or without. If the animal continues to be menacing, I will just look away and move on. I have faced the situation. I need do no more. Spending any more time would be a mistake on my part.

Conclusion: Like Oneup said, I think this must be my "expectation" causing all of this in the sense that I have a tendency for self-doubt. I have done a few things with consequences in my life, but none of them were consequences of me being a bad person, just mistakes. And any reasonable person would forgive me for them. So, I should feel sympathy for the person, and feel respect/awe for the way we all have effects on eachother, comfort the person if I can, and move on, never blaming myself. By blaming myself, I mean thinking "I am a bad person." I can think "I should of been careful about that." in a way that is compatible with "I am a good person" and that's good.

My answer also includes dolphin's because I do give the DC/animal whatever they want (to know me better or my apology)

Thank you FryingMan. I won't use your technique in this case because I think since this is recurring, it is something that needs to be dealt with in waking life and accordingly in the dream. But it's an interesting technique in a non-recurring scenario I might use when I've resolved this!

Why not just give them a good punch or kick whilst at the same time imagining them flying hundreds of meters away into the distance from it?

I've done this many times and its very effective, just one super punch (or push) and you don't have to deal with them anymore.

Another trick is demanifestation, just wave your hand in front of them, making sure your hand covers your vision of them, and imagine them disappearing completely.

You could also use the hand trick as more of a jedi mind trick and tell them to leave you alone.

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Originally Posted by Eonnn

Why not just give them a good punch or kick whilst at the same time imagining them flying hundreds of meters away into the distance from it?

I've done this many times and its very effective, just one super punch (or push) and you don't have to deal with them anymore.

Another trick is demanifestation, just wave your hand in front of them, making sure your hand covers your vision of them, and imagine them disappearing completely.

You could also use the hand trick as more of a jedi mind trick and tell them to leave you alone.

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Unsummoning is fun. "Too many DCs here, go away!" *wave hand*, *poof*!

Haha, right. I could just summon them away (I might as well just do that.) The thing is since this was recurring, I am thinking I need to use an attitude change to solve this unconscious problem and therefore make it so my brain doesn't find it worthy of dreaming this so often. Summoning away seems to me like cheating, using lucid control but that in itself may be the attitude change required.

By just changing this, I have actually changed the way I think during different situations in real life and it has made everything more enjoyable. It's a powerful feeling. I've had another dream with an angry cat but I became lucid and was confident with it, so I came to the conclusion that I was only dreaming about an angry cat and nothing else while in that dream.

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Originally Posted by Occipitalred

I have tried to deal with this in two different ways (being nice and looking away):


In real life, I can't just look away from confrontation, so why is it an acceptable way of dealing with DCs? I'd like to hear what you all think.

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Posts like this make The Cusp very happy indeed! Although I was kind of hoping by this point that would be common knowledge. Looks like I still have work to do...


Yes, ignoring something in a dream is the best way to defeat anything, if somewhat anticlimactic. However, this is not strictly a visual factor. My first rule of dream control is: "Everything requires your attention to exist". Visuals just happen to the predominant way we are used to directing our attention. It's not just looking away from something, because if you're still thinking about it, it will still exist. You have to cut off attention completely. It is even possible to do that while still looking at something (like how you sometimes can't see something right in front of you).

DCs accosting you isn't so much some deep rooted psychological issue as it is you just not realizing how important your focused attention is in the dream. A monkey with a loaded handgun.

I like the fact that you brought up that the power of attention is not only visual. I now realize how important that is and I am impressed I haven't thought about that yet.

Now, I'm thinking it's completely fine to just focus my attention elsewhere and not confront the situation because if the problem is that I feel guilty for no reason, then, the solution is to stop focusing on that feeling of guilt and to focus on something else. And besides, I have been really good at controlling this type of emotion in the last week. I feel liberated! :)

Exactly! As for what you're focusing on, try to think of things as reference or inference points.

What do you mean by reference and inference points?

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Originally Posted by Occipitalred

What do you mean by reference and inference points?

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I don't know what exactly he's referring to, but I assume it is something similar to the Unifying theory of Dream Control: "Dream control is achieved through the manipulation of expectation(inference) via shifts in attention(reference).". I added the bolded parts in. Expectation is why some people have almost perfect dream control after only a couple LDs, and some struggle for months to achieve even simple elemental manipulation. Anyone can do anything in a dream as long as they expect themselves to be able to. This is, of course, much easier said than done, which is why most people have a gradual increase in abilities rather than an instant one. It's what they expect to happen. After one realises that complex dream control is literally as simple as walking, flying, or breaking apart planets, then one can start controlling his dream by simply doing it, without archetypes, visualization or all that. Something eventually clicks and you realize that dream control is no more complicated that moving your arm in real life. It's almost natural or intrinsic, I'd say.

Attention is different from expectation. Without attention, things do not exist. Literally. Not even in the real world. There's a principle in physics that says that if something is farther away than the distance light could travel in time t, then for t seconds it can be said that for all purposes, that thing does not exist, because it cannot be observed. The same idea works in dreams too, if you do not pay attention to a DC, then the DC isn't there.

EDIT: I just looked it up and the principle I'm talking about is the Light cone. The wikipedia page mentions the fact that things outside the light cone are not part of our causal past or causal future. What that pretty much means is that since they cannot influence us and we cannot influence them, they can be said to not exist. Furthermore, one could say that since human reality is subjective, they literally do not exist, although this might anger some theoretical physicists.

That's interesting. I wonder if that's what the Cusp meant.

I cannot stop myself from thinking about Dimeglio when you talk about things only existing if you pay attention to them because it's a concept Dimeglio encounters in Chapter 3 of the Dimeglio Fanfic I am writing :tongue:

THat's exactly what I meant, and probably better than I would have put it.

You can use it by purposely ignoring specific reference points. For example to make yourself immune to bullets or walk on water. Or you can use it to aid in summoning/manifesting. As you reach down by your side expecting a dream sword to be there, imagine feel of the handle, the coldness of the blade, how it would feel to swing it, that classing ffffssschhhhwwwwiiiinnngggg! sound. All of those are inference points, which when taken together narrow down the possible outcome like the classic game of 20 questions.

http://www.20q.net/

The end result of the dream depends on what inference points you are focusing your attention on. You just have to pick the right ones, or ask the right questions.