Originally Posted by Occipitalred
Oh please, this is a discussion I have been wanting to have for a while. Please do debate me.
I disagree that the law of expectation is the unique law to dream control or to the development of the dream events.
Some scenarios for the example of flight, dreamlord:
1: You expect it to be hard so you fail (your situation)
2: You expect it to be hard but you succeed (I have done this)
3: You expect it to be easy but you fail (this has happened to me)
4: You expect it to be easy so you succeed (Law of expectations)
2 out of these scenarios go against the law of expectations, yet, I have experienced them. An example: Once I thought, if I just fell backwards, I would simply float. It made so much sense to me because I knew I was in a dream and that there was no ground in a dream. I was ready for feeling the gentle floating that was logical to ensue. Instead, I hit the hard floor causing a very unexpected pain.
Like Bugflok says, there are so many times where in dreams, even non-lucid dreams where expectations are even more in harmony with the dream, my expectations are so wrong. My beliefs which the dream gave me are so very wrong. I am struggling against the objective of the dream and everywhere stairs at me in disbelief as I undergo my crazy ambitions. I wake up and realize how wrong I was. If expectation was so important, how could my dream's beliefs be wrong.
Lastly, Sivason's banana example is another curiosity. What did the banana have anything to do with anything. If you think of a drink, why would you get a banana? For example, once, I wave my hand magically towards two boys in an alley with the intention of making them fly/float. Instead, a car fell from the sky and crushed them. This was so unexpected. So random. Even the result was so far from my intention. I didn't want to harm these people. They were innocent kids playing with a ball.
Dreams are constructed by our mind, so once you are lucid and realize that not only your mind is you but also every sense is you, it follows that there is the potential for almost perfect control of the dream. Yet, I think expectation is not the only tool. Perhaps it is even a weak tool in comparison with the other elements at play which decide what happens in the dream. Perhaps, the realization that the dream is you in every way is in itself a stronger tool. What other things control the dream?
The banana example, I think, can be explained as matter of an "uncontrolled" expectation. Where you begin to consciously expect a drink, it is possible that a chain of unconscious expectations result in the schema of a banana instead of a drink. The essential part, then, becomes controlling the expectation in the first place; all these Dream control techniques you see floating around the forum are the law of expectation applied with some extra "glitter" to control the expectation. For example, when you shout out into the dream "clarity," it works because you expected the dream to heed your request. For some, this way of applying expectation may give them more control, because the subconscious may form less associations on what is interpreted to be a command. For other's, this may not work exactly--if at all--due to a difference in the way the subconscious has been trained to associate. For similar reasons, magic may work for some, but not others. I speculate, then, that what each of these techniques do is package a large, complex set of schema's (the act of creating a city, say) and package them into a single schema so far outside of your experience it becomes highly unlikely the subconscious can create a successful association and wrest control from the dreamer.
Now, I realize, this theory of "spontaneous association" can be used to explain your examples; when you simply fell, the subconscious associated the act of "floating when falling back" as an impossible scenario, resulting it in replacing it with another schema, that of falling.You might also expect a task to be hard, but sometimes, just the expectation of it being possible causes the subconscious to wrest control and simply remove the "hard" part, resulting in you doing it.
My point is, the result of the law is as much a result of what expectations you hold as the ones the dream creates, the glue that holds it and its plot together. That is why it is sometimes so difficult to go against the "will of the dream," because the dream has already created a series of subconscious expectations it is using to maintain the existing dreamworld; I fear that my short introduction to the law of expectation may be too short. In order to counter the will of the dream, one needs up needing to use extra expectations to directly counter the ones created by the dream, something which unfortunately is quite difficult to perceive. As in sivason's example, where dd the banana come from? What strange subconscious expectation(s) associated a drink with a banana? But then he made it work. He used another expectation, a different one, using more abstract concepts (the banana never existed) that both the subconscious finds it difficult to create associations for and directly contradicts the subconscious previous influence (the banana exists). In the end, it was all expectation. Expectation is the reason all these techniques do what they do, the techniques only acting to counter specific subconscious influences.
Not all of those techniques work in every scenario, yes, and the reason I state expectation to be the foundation is that it's the dreamer's responsibility to use his own judgement to formulate a "plan of action" one that either uses or nullifies the effects of pre-existing subconscious associations and allows the dreamer to have total control over his "target expectation." Magic, for example, works in dreams where magic is already established, perhaps "Hogwarts;" it works because it incorporates the subconscious expectation of "magic works," therefore essentially nullifying it's effect on the dreamer's expectation. The law of expectation is an extraordinarily powerful tool, but one that is very difficult to use directly. But, should the dreamer discover a particular method to apply it while nullifying the dream's effects, it gives them unprecedented control.
Thank you, OcciptalRed, for helping me verbalize my ideas.
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