Thread: The Nature of Dream Control

Hm, never dreamt about zombies, vampires or werewolves that I can remember.

Anyway um I think things change when you are looking at them, but just not always. I mean, I described that mush room thing how it kept getting more and more bugs over it, but also the leaf didn't change at all, besides getting more detail to it. In that dream I was trying to see how much detail I could get, in the other one I wasn't really trying to get anything out of looking at the mushroom, just looking at it. But in neither of them did the dreamscape change at all and I didn't lose lucidity either. Just putting that out there.

I thought of something today that could be another rule but now I've forgotten, I'll edit this post later if I remember. It had something to do with anchors, like while you're doing WILD.

Originally Posted by tommo

Hm, never dreamt about zombies, vampires or werewolves that I can remember.

I described that mush room thing how it kept getting more and more bugs over it, but also the leaf didn't change at all, besides getting more detail to it.

You got extra detail in the leaf. But between the boring old mushroom and the crawling insects, which of the two do you think are more likely to capture your attention? Obviously the insects, and that's why they kept multiplying. If you really want to see the changes, you really have to latch onto it with your attention. Try to recreate tunnel vision.

Originally Posted by tommo

I thought of something today that could be another rule but now I've forgotten, I'll edit this post later if I remember. It had something to do with anchors, like while you're doing WILD.

Anchors sound like a good idea. What were you thinking?

Well the mushroom captured my attention first because it was rather large but then I guess the bugs held my attention on it.

Honestly I can't remember what I was thinking I'll try to remember.

The time has come to reveal where I learned of these dreaming rules, and at the same time to throw any credibility this thread might have had right out the window.

Secret Origins: Enter the Night Stalkers.

It all started with the infamous Night Stalker/Dream Walker thread.http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ad.php?t=37621

That thread was about people who supposedly enter other people's dreams and torment them. I like to keep an open mind, and was willing to at least consider the possibility. If there were people capable of such things, then I reasoned that DV would be a good place for them to find targets. Many people, including myself, keep detailed dream journals on this site. I figured the DJs would allow any of these Night Stalkers to read about their visits afterwards.

Being a LDer with many years of experience, I arrogantly assumed I would be able to handle any such visitors with ease. So I put out an open challenge to any of these "Night Stalkers" that might be lurking the forums in the hopes being targeted. I was really cocky about it, repeatedly calling them out, calling them names.

Before very long, it appeared I had gotten what I had asked for. I still didn't really beleive it at first, and figured those dreams were self induced. But the thing was, I was consistently getting my ass kicked in those dreams, night after night. This was odd, because I rarely lose a dream fight, especially when I'm lucid. But to get my butt whooped almost every single night was unprecedented in my dreaming.

It was a perplexing situation, because I considered my LD skills to be superb, especially when it comes to smashing things. But these opponents in my dreams could take anything I threw at them, which was starting to frustrate me. I started going over those dreams in an attempt to find out what I was doing wrong, or what I could do differently to turn things around. My best lucid tricks were totally ineffective.

Epiphany
These dreams continued night after night, with me trying to defeat these people and having no luck. As the dreams progressed, I began to notice how these opponents were able to defeat me. That's when I saw that we weren't playing by the same rules. I began to watch what it was they were doing to me, or rather how they were doing it, and I began to emulate them.

That's when things started to turn around for me, and I started win dream battles again.

The Difference
The problem I was having before was that I was attacking them directly, while these so called Night Stalkers were attacking me inderectly. In fact, I had mistaken their attacks as thier main weapon, but it turns out their true weapon was how they manipulated my attention. The attacks were just an incedental result.

Now a lot of people say that since it's your dream, anyone who enters it can't hurt you. And this is true. But what they can do is use your dream against you.

I was just flat out attacking, but these NS would build up their attacks with an almost theatrical flare. Instead of just letting loose with an energy blast like I would, they would hold the charge, letting it fill my senses in a manner that captivated my attention. Being so focused on what they were doing, it became part of my dream, and thus real for me. My direct attacks were to easy for them to ignore, and thus had no power over them.

As I got better at thier style of combat, they would actually compliment me on maneuvers I would make. Winning these dream fights all came down to coming up with innovative ways to capture you opponent's attention.

After getting the hang of this, the resulting dreams I had were indescribible, yet thrilling beyond words.

The Players
There were the same two people that kept showing up and attacking me in this manner. I call them Gimpy and the ThumbMaster. They each had their own unique styles which helped to tell them apart.

ThumbMaster: This guy's main technique was assuming the role of torture interrogator. He would constantly demand answers to inane questions that had nothing to do with anything. In retrospect, it wasn't the questions that were important, but rather the tone they set. By demanding questions of me (he wouldn't even wait for an answer before asking his next question), it created an interrogation setting in my mind. Just by asking questions, he was able to create an atmosphere where he was in charge.

He also had this brilliant torture method where he would run his thumb along the muscles and ligaments in my shoulders finding painful spots and pressure points. He never actually hurt me, but used jsutt enough pressure to let me know he coud hurt me at any time he wanted. And that was the most important part. His masterfully directed my attention causing his torture to become the main aspect of my dream.

Gimpy: This guy was was less skilled than the ThumbMaster. He prefered to assume the role of an indestructible psycho killer who stalks you relentlessly. In fact he preferred the threat of chasing/stalking to actual physical violence, and would let me get away so he could continue with his relentless stalking. He was creating a scenaio of fear, which was much more important than actually attacking me.

THis guy was nigh indestructible, and nothing I threw at him would phase him in he least. THis was very annoying for me because I still had a thing for direct attacks.

One night, when nothing was working on this guy, I remembered something I had read in one of Castaneda's books about a weak spot on the energy body. I performed a special attack and managed to hurt him. I'm not telling what I did or how, but afterwards, I had the impression I actually hurt him. It wasn't just a dream attack, I felt I did real lasting damage to a real person. Not just to his dream body, but to his real body.

I asked around a month or two later if anyone had encounterd a DC that fit his MO, and also had a limp. Two people reported seeing a limping DC that behaved like Gimpy. They both reported that he had grey hair.

I seriously think I hurt that guy for real.

Real or Not?
From those series of dreams, I devised my three rules of dreaming. Everyone says I likely induced those dreams myself, and initially, I thought that was the case as well. But after going over them again and again, they are distinctly different from normal dreams.

For starters, normal dreams follow these rules without exception. I'm able to trace back where things came from as a result of what I had my attention fixed on, and more importantly, my attention would wander around naturally.

But in these shared dreaming encounters, I wasn't in control of my attention, they were. Even when I'm not in contol of my attention, I can still recognize the natural progression as it moves around, and recognize what drew my attention to certain things. But when I interacted with these two people, they were the ones that were directing my attention in a most unnatural manner.

The difference to me is very clear, and my dream dreams have not unfolded like that before or since. Keep in mind I have 15 years of DJs to compare these against. I'm not making this up because I want to be special as many people say. I'd much rather take full credit for discovering these rules, but unfortunately, they were demonstrated to me by other people. Furthermore, those rules were the last thing I was expecting to discover. I already thought I know all there was to know about LD fighting, so I was quite surprised to find that I didn't know the first thing about dreaming.

Questions.
What is a Night Stalker's True purpose?
Initially, I assumed they were just shit disturbing greifers, much like you will find in any online video game. People who delight in tormenting others. That may be the case, but I learned such a great deal from those encounters, I'm wondering if their true purpose was to teach. And if not teaching, then for practice. The learning curve was just so much higher interacting with them than in my subsequent dreams where I'm exploring these concepts by myself. You have not only your attention to deal with, but someone else's as well.

Why terrorize dreamers?
Either for teaching or for practice, it creates a scenario where the rules of engagement are implicitly understood. Fight or Flight, things couldn't be simpler. There is no need to set up rules or goals, which saves a lot of time.

Do they know how to cause real damage?
Either they know how to hurt people for real, and choose not to, or they have no idea how to do that, and I just stumbled upon it as a fluke. Were they trying to teach me and I took things too far? Or was it something they just didn't know how to do? I'm thinking they don't know how to hurt people for real. Mainly because I took to these practices like a fish to water, and it wasn't long before I consistently outclassed them in a very short period of time.



So there you have it. Send the guys with the butterfly nets to stick me in a padded room. As crazy as it sounds, the rules that came from it work, all the time, every time. Frankly I'm amazed at how little opposition this thread has gotten. I have to assume it's because these rules are so self evident, you can't argue against them, which is why I'm leaking this dirty little secret now.

Interesting, to say the least. I don't LD on a regular enough basis to question what you've posted, but in terms of understanding why people would do such a thing, is quite simple (Which I think you already know but hell I'll post my take anyways) Fun. After I master an online game or something I tend to get bored sometimes and pick on people. Not malicious intent of course, but to flex my abilities and maybe get a challenge out of it....More often than not I had challenges especially running from people better than myself

Cool stuff.

Originally Posted by The Cusp

Questions.
What is a Night Stalker's True purpose?
Initially, I assumed they were just shit disturbing greifers, much like you will find in any online video game. People who delight in tormenting others. That may be the case,

Why terrorize dreamers?

Cusp, have you considered the possibility that they are inorganic beings who are feeding off of your attention?

Originally Posted by Vortex

Cusp, have you considered the possibility that they are inorganic beings who are feeding off of your attention?

They were too clumsy for IBs. They made very human mistakes. You could see when they lost lucidity or focus. One minute they are hunting me down, the next they get distracted by something in the dream. Plus the timing matched my challenges exactly.

Originally Posted by The Cusp

They were too clumsy for IBs. They made very human mistakes.

Come on, Cusp.. lots of different types of IBs in-dreaming..

Originally Posted by The Cusp

The time has come to reveal where I learned of these dreaming rules, and at the same time to throw any credibility this thread might have had right out the window.

Secret Origins: Enter the Night Stalkers.

It all started with the infamous Night Stalker/Dream Walker thread.http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ad.php?t=37621

That thread was about people who supposedly enter other people's dreams and torment them. I like to keep an open mind, and was willing to at least consider the possibility. If there were people capable of such things, then I reasoned that DV would be a good place for them to find targets. Many people, including myself, keep detailed dream journals on this site. I figured the DJs would allow any of these Night Stalkers to read about their visits afterwards.

Being a LDer with many years of experience, I arrogantly assumed I would be able to handle any such visitors with ease. So I put out an open challenge to any of these "Night Stalkers" that might be lurking the forums in the hopes being targeted. I was really cocky about it, repeatedly calling them out, calling them names.

Before very long, it appeared I had gotten what I had asked for. I still didn't really beleive it at first, and figured those dreams were self induced. But the thing was, I was consistently getting my ass kicked in those dreams, night after night. This was odd, because I rarely lose a dream fight, especially when I'm lucid. But to get my butt whooped almost every single night was unprecedented in my dreaming.

It was a perplexing situation, because I considered my LD skills to be superb, especially when it comes to smashing things. But these opponents in my dreams could take anything I threw at them, which was starting to frustrate me. I started going over those dreams in an attempt to find out what I was doing wrong, or what I could do differently to turn things around. My best lucid tricks were totally ineffective.

Epiphany
These dreams continued night after night, with me trying to defeat these people and having no luck. As the dreams progressed, I began to notice how these opponents were able to defeat me. That's when I saw that we weren't playing by the same rules. I began to watch what it was they were doing to me, or rather how they were doing it, and I began to emulate them.

That's when things started to turn around for me, and I started win dream battles again.

The Difference
The problem I was having before was that I was attacking them directly, while these so called Night Stalkers were attacking me inderectly. In fact, I had mistaken their attacks as thier main weapon, but it turns out their true weapon was how they manipulated my attention. The attacks were just an incedental result.

Now a lot of people say that since it's your dream, anyone who enters it can't hurt you. And this is true. But what they can do is use your dream against you.

I was just flat out attacking, but these NS would build up their attacks with an almost theatrical flare. Instead of just letting loose with an energy blast like I would, they would hold the charge, letting it fill my senses in a manner that captivated my attention. Being so focused on what they were doing, it became part of my dream, and thus real for me. My direct attacks were to easy for them to ignore, and thus had no power over them.

As I got better at thier style of combat, they would actually compliment me on maneuvers I would make. Winning these dream fights all came down to coming up with innovative ways to capture you opponent's attention.

After getting the hang of this, the resulting dreams I had were indescribible, yet thrilling beyond words.

The Players
There were the same two people that kept showing up and attacking me in this manner. I call them Gimpy and the ThumbMaster. They each had their own unique styles which helped to tell them apart.

ThumbMaster: This guy's main technique was assuming the role of torture interrogator. He would constantly demand answers to inane questions that had nothing to do with anything. In retrospect, it wasn't the questions that were important, but rather the tone they set. By demanding questions of me (he wouldn't even wait for an answer before asking his next question), it created an interrogation setting in my mind. Just by asking questions, he was able to create an atmosphere where he was in charge.

He also had this brilliant torture method where he would run his thumb along the muscles and ligaments in my shoulders finding painful spots and pressure points. He never actually hurt me, but used jsutt enough pressure to let me know he coud hurt me at any time he wanted. And that was the most important part. His masterfully directed my attention causing his torture to become the main aspect of my dream.

Gimpy: This guy was was less skilled than the ThumbMaster. He prefered to assume the role of an indestructible psycho killer who stalks you relentlessly. In fact he preferred the threat of chasing/stalking to actual physical violence, and would let me get away so he could continue with his relentless stalking. He was creating a scenaio of fear, which was much more important than actually attacking me.

THis guy was nigh indestructible, and nothing I threw at him would phase him in he least. THis was very annoying for me because I still had a thing for direct attacks.

One night, when nothing was working on this guy, I remembered something I had read in one of Castaneda's books about a weak spot on the energy body. I performed a special attack and managed to hurt him. I'm not telling what I did or how, but afterwards, I had the impression I actually hurt him. It wasn't just a dream attack, I felt I did real lasting damage to a real person. Not just to his dream body, but to his real body.

I asked around a month or two later if anyone had encounterd a DC that fit his MO, and also had a limp. Two people reported seeing a limping DC that behaved like Gimpy. They both reported that he had grey hair.

I seriously think I hurt that guy for real.

Real or Not?
From those series of dreams, I devised my three rules of dreaming. Everyone says I likely induced those dreams myself, and initially, I thought that was the case as well. But after going over them again and again, they are distinctly different from normal dreams.

For starters, normal dreams follow these rules without exception. I'm able to trace back where things came from as a result of what I had my attention fixed on, and more importantly, my attention would wander around naturally.

But in these shared dreaming encounters, I wasn't in control of my attention, they were. Even when I'm not in contol of my attention, I can still recognize the natural progression as it moves around, and recognize what drew my attention to certain things. But when I interacted with these two people, they were the ones that were directing my attention in a most unnatural manner.

The difference to me is very clear, and my dream dreams have not unfolded like that before or since. Keep in mind I have 15 years of DJs to compare these against. I'm not making this up because I want to be special as many people say. I'd much rather take full credit for discovering these rules, but unfortunately, they were demonstrated to me by other people. Furthermore, those rules were the last thing I was expecting to discover. I already thought I know all there was to know about LD fighting, so I was quite surprised to find that I didn't know the first thing about dreaming.

Questions.
What is a Night Stalker's True purpose?
Initially, I assumed they were just shit disturbing greifers, much like you will find in any online video game. People who delight in tormenting others. That may be the case, but I learned such a great deal from those encounters, I'm wondering if their true purpose was to teach. And if not teaching, then for practice. The learning curve was just so much higher interacting with them than in my subsequent dreams where I'm exploring these concepts by myself. You have not only your attention to deal with, but someone else's as well.

Why terrorize dreamers?
Either for teaching or for practice, it creates a scenario where the rules of engagement are implicitly understood. Fight or Flight, things couldn't be simpler. There is no need to set up rules or goals, which saves a lot of time.

Do they know how to cause real damage?
Either they know how to hurt people for real, and choose not to, or they have no idea how to do that, and I just stumbled upon it as a fluke. Were they trying to teach me and I took things too far? Or was it something they just didn't know how to do? I'm thinking they don't know how to hurt people for real. Mainly because I took to these practices like a fish to water, and it wasn't long before I consistently outclassed them in a very short period of time.



So there you have it. Send the guys with the butterfly nets to stick me in a padded room. As crazy as it sounds, the rules that came from it work, all the time, every time. Frankly I'm amazed at how little opposition this thread has gotten. I have to assume it's because these rules are so self evident, you can't argue against them, which is why I'm leaking this dirty little secret now.

Wouldn't be these dreamwalkers nightstalkers would they cusp.

http://forums.astraldynamics.com/viewtopic.php?t=9894

I spent several hours with a fellow LD'er digging up what we could find... If you have a look for yourself you will find in Lex's first post "they were talking about this over at club beach"

I found the club beach forum which is a jap anime site. I found the thread she was talking about and no one else mentioned nightstalkers, she brang it up, then another person confirmed it - Aeronolio, who is also known as Sanzora on DV (they have identical avatars). They both signed up on DV almost at the same time, they both live in South Africa, both like jap anime, and both like RPG games. If you have a look at World of Warcraft, you will see the terms "Dreamwalker" and "Nightstalker" plastered all over it.

The thing is.. their story implies that these 'nightstalkers' and 'dreamwalkers' and 'rogues' are all ordinary people who are part of a 'faction' (commonly used term in WoW), that know how to go into others dreams and taunt them. Not only has shared dreaming never been confirmed with a reputable account, it would serve absolutely no purpose to go into other peoples dreams. They are immature girls deluded with their own fantasy.

You would know this of course, having been the one who started the thread over on astral dynamics.
The one thing I can't figure out is why you would forget to mention the same in your Official History of The Night Stalkers post.

Hmmmmm.

Good god, is this really supposed to be a serious lucid dreaming forum?

With stuff like this "nightstalker" nonsense... people are going to be taking lucid dreamers as seriously as if we've just walked out of a mental home dressed a gandalf the wizard.

Dreams are a creation of our subconscious and conscious minds, correct? And these are formed by our own beliefs and experiences, right? Then it seems Night Stalkers can be as much a part of that experience as anything. I know several people who have dreamed the same dream at the same time (from their separate points of view). Which would be an important part of dream control, if it can be controlled. So it seems to fit quite well in this thread.
Night Stalkers may just be one person's experience with certain types of dream phenomena, but if learning about Dream Control came from the experience (which it does appear to), then Night Stalkers fit well within this thread.
Did the Night Stalker portion contain some information that some people may not agree with? Like the idea of shared dreams? Yes. Does that make it any less valid? Well, I don't like lawn Gnomes, but that doesn't mean other people should throw them away because I would. And I don't like hard core mathematics. It's too theoretical, and not practical enough. But by golly, though I don't see directly how we would benefit from it, some people manage to make it work, and change science (see: Einstein). It isn't that mathematics is proven correct. In fact, Physics will tell you that mathematics is an exact model trying to model an inexact world.
It is good to know where information came from so you can create a more full context for it, and place it in your own mental box. However, Moonshine, when you try to place it in everyone else's mental box, you are attempting to short circuit their method of learning for your own.
As for Shamanism and Magic, etc., these are belief systems. Belief systems color our dreams thoroughly, and alter how we can control them, and which methods work best for us. This is a thread on Dream Control, so it is still quite a valid topic.
It is nearly impossible to construct the idea of how beliefs affect our dreams without giving examples of beliefs affecting dreams, and also nearly impossible to give good examples or even pass along knowledge clearly unless it comes from your own belief system and experiences. Have you ever played telephone? That game is an example of why just passing on knowledge without experience can degrade quickly into nonsense.
So while you are attempting a forum control here, Moonshine, you are really just projecting YOUR OWN beliefs onto this thread, which is exactly what you are arguing is the problem with this thread. It might be better if you took a less hypocritical standpoint when you post to threads.
-Jim