Thread: Mastering Your Dreams

The knowledge I'm about to impart upon you took me around three years, and hundreds of lucid dreams to acquire.
To be perfectly blunt, I perceive the information your about to read as being the most important I've ever written on the subject of dream control. Indeed, other than to expand upon the following info/explain it better, I shouldn't ever have to write another tutorial on this subject again. I think you'll agree once you finish, its quite comprehensive.

This is the second of two tutorials I've written to try and simplify lucid dreaming in general. You can find the first: "How to Lucid Dream," here.

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Mastering Your Dreams

"Mastering Your Dreams," doesn't that title evoke the most awe-inspiring imagery? The Hobbit standing high, gripping tight at the reigns of his hulking, blazing dragon; the amputee flinging his body over the last icy boulder at the tip of Everest...
Mastering Your Dreams! What a monumental feat that would be. An occasion worthy of song!
...Right?


We the community of Dreamviews.com have made an enemy of our biggest ally. In our minds we have depicted the place of dreams as being a wasteland of cheap thrills and half experiences. In our collective unconsciousness dreamland is an illusionary, fragile, half-assed place where we must compromise and compromise so that we don't offend our all knowing, all powerful "subconscious."

I have come to the conclusion that we are addicted to challenge. We are given the most powerful gift any being could ever be given: our own private rule-free universe, and what do we do with it? We make up a bunch of "laws" that are "very hard" to get around. We limit ourselves so that we will have something to work towards overcoming.
Some examples:

• "Sex makes your LDs super unstable!"
• "Lucidity makes dreams less stable!"
  
• "You can't flip a light switch!"
• "Don't close your eyes! You'll wake up!"

This is crazy! A gross misinterpretation has been made of the dreamstate at large. We have created mythical beings: "Our subconscious, our dream guides, Angels, Demons..." for the sole purpose of limiting ourselves. We have let our imaginations go wild: ignorantly making up insane fantasies and canons where none should exist.



Why must we limit ourselves in this incredible world? Isn't it enough that we have to eat, drink, sleep, live, and die in real life?
Leave your sense of competition in the shower, lucid dreaming should be about adventure and enjoyment, not an epic struggle against forces unknown (if you want to compete with DCs in your LDs have at it, but you should never have to fight an invisible foe: your "subconscious" for things like lucidity or dream length).

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In order I will be going over:

• Dream Formation
• Lucid Dream Formation
• Dream Control

Please don't skip any of the sections,
they were written to be read in order.
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Dream Formation
(and the unconscious)

Wouldn't it just be beautiful if our dreams all had hidden messages in them that we could just "read" and better ourselves with?
Well, they do... Kind of.

Normal dreams are created by our brains using a very essential psychological function known as schemata. Schemata dictate how we view the world on the most primitive level. They are our unconscious mind; our expectations.
"Unconscious mind?"
To be honest, I'm not too well versed in the terminology of psychology. I say unconscious, because the word itself is fitting. Your schemata are your basic principles for reality, or, your biases.


An example of a schema (Schema= singular form of schemata) that I have is that a bird has wings.
You don't even have to think about whether a bird has wings or not, you just unconsciously know they do. This is a schema in action.

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So how does this relate to dreams?
With each real-life experience you have your schemata are modified. The outer world is objective, just because you think something is true doesn't mean it is. Your schemata are ever being updated to allow you to live closer to reality.
For example, a person that has only experienced unacceptance from others may unconsciously believe that everyone is always judging him. If that same person experiences more of life, their schemata will be modified to take into account that some people are actually pretty cool and like him for who he is. He will unconsciously believe that he is ok how he is, and will thus not automatically assume that people are judging him.


Again, how does this effect dreams?
Your dreams are the outcome of rampant, unchecked schemata (expectations) building on top of one another. All dreams start as seeds. The seed is an image, just some random image that is vomited out of your collective memories. Here's an example of a dream going from seed to imaginative story:

1. You see a grayish outline
2. Schemata: "That outline looks like a boulder"
3. The outline becomes a boulder
4. Schemata: "Boulders must mean a mountain"
5. Your now standing on a mountain
6. Schemata: "Mountains have sheep"
7. There are sheep all around you
8. Schemata: "Sheep need a shepherd"
9. Theres a shepherd standing beside you
10. Schemata: Shepherds were in that story in the bible
11. Angels appear and begin to sing

That is extremely overly simplified. Your schemata are consulted about everything in the dream, from what color a rock is, to what shape a rock is, to the light levels of mountains that you've seen similar rocks on... Everything.

The only "intelligence" behind your dreams is schemata. Schemata do not think, they are billions of little rules that you have cached into the massive data storage unit of your brain.
The reason you can study your dreams to improve yourself is because they are a direct link to the little rulebook inside of your head. They show you your most basic beliefs on reality and what is possible, allowing you to change these as you please.

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Keep in mind that schemata are also being created every time you watch a movie. They say: "magic is real in special cases, the Matrix is a real place, women like to have sex on the kitchen counter," etc etc.
When your watching a fantasy movie your not steadily thinking about how impossible it is to do magic, your schemata are in effect saying: "this is possible in this circumstance." In the same way, when your in a dream your not thinking about why your able to throw balls of energy, you just do it.

Expectations become dreams.
I have told you how normal dreams are formed for a reason. Very similar laws apply when lucid, except things become a bit more like reality.

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Lucid Dream Formation

In the same way schemata direct everything about non-lucid dreams, they have an equally large impact on lucids.

Though the fundamental laws of the dreamstate don't suddenly change when lucidity is achieved, they are slightly altered.
The change is the same as when you suddenly snap out of the illusion of watching a movie. One second your sitting there completely immersed, the next your back in your body, having realized that you really need a bathroom break.
The illusion of the movie was broken. Suddenly you stopped passively taking in the stream of shit it was pumping into your brain and came back to reality. You were able to objectively think: "My god, thats not how it would be in real life at all!."
In short, you were able to switch from one set of schemata to another, from the set of "action movie," to that of "reality." You were able to consciously manipulate your expectations.


The same thing happens in lucid dreams.
When you become lucid, your able to take a step back and say: "wait a second, monsters don't exist in real life, why should I have to put up with them here?" Then your dream will change to be like real life.

This is how we control our dreams; we manipulate our expectations, which manipulates our schemata, which manipulates the dreams on the most direct level.

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Dream Control

If you believe something, be it: "To fly in LDs you have to wear a cape," or "When you orgasm in a dream you automatically wake up," you are creating rules for your lucid dreams.
Beliefs are schemata, and schemata are the fabric of lucid dreams.

From the moment you logged onto dreamviews your mind's collection of schemata on "what a lucid dream should be like" has been growing. Law after law has been pounded into your brain, from not being able to read, to not being able to properly use a lightswitch. Your schemata grew and grew, then you had a lucid dream.
In that lucid dream, there was no objective reality, you were in an altered state of consciousness that ran totally on schemata -- no outside forces effected your dream.

In your lucid dream you tried the things that you believed to be very hard and guess what happened? You failed.
The next day what did you do? You logged on to Dreamviews.com and posted about how you had tried that in a lucid dream, and it really is as hard as everyone made it out to be, thus planting that schema in another unsuspecting noobs noggin.

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Well I'm here to spawn only one schema: lucid dreams are limitless. They don't have to be blurry, they don't have to be short, they don't have to be scary, unrealistic, or illogical.
If you wanted, all of your lucid dreams could be near perfect imitations of reality. No more having to stabilize, no more having to focus on your hands for clarity, no more placebo, and no more fighting.

Your dreams are yours for the taking. There is only one "law" that exists in lucid dreams, they don't last forever.



To achieve anything in your lucid dreams, all you must do is realize that nothing is hard to get in lucid dreams. In the world of LDing, all you need to do is know that something will happen, and it will.
That is how you master your lucid dreams: realize that all you must master is your own belief that dreams have rules.