Thread: The Nature of Dream Control

Originally Posted by tommo

It would be funny if LD'ing was just a rumour and we all really just dreamed that we were having an LD.

Actually, most people who claim to be insomniacs, when monitored under laboratory conditions, actually sleep well most of the night. These people will argue they didn't get a wink of sleep all night until confronted with video footage of them sleeping soundly. What they concluded from this was that the people were dreaming that they were tossing and turning in bed all night. Just one long crappy false awakening.

Originally Posted by Valwen

What gerbil rumor?

Allow me to refer you to the tale of Lemmywinks the Gerbil King. And remember you asked for it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4iebOTJHTk

Did you make up the whole thing or just the putting rodents up your ass part? Some kid at my school called that feltching or something like that. Pretty cool that you found your rumors spread around the world, but it could just be that someone else made them up too.

Originally Posted by Valwen

Did you make up the whole thing or just the putting rodents up your ass part? Some kid at my school called that feltching or something like that. Pretty cool that you found your rumors spread around the world, but it could just be that someone else made them up too.

The term is fletching, but it does not not mean gerbils up the ass...
(Sorry for the OT)

OK, enough about the gerbils.

Originally Posted by The Cusp

OK, enough about the gerbils.

Agreed.

lol.
Neway that insomnia thing was that for real insomniacs or just people who think they are?
Coz I'm almost 100% sure it's a real condition and you would only sleep seconds or minutes every night but you don't dream so it's like just a blink.

Originally Posted by tommo

lol.
Neway that insomnia thing was that for real insomniacs or just people who think they are?
Coz I'm almost 100% sure it's a real condition and you would only sleep seconds or minutes every night but you don't dream so it's like just a blink.

Insomnia is a real condition. And these were real insomniacs who were studied in the lab. Sure they spent a good deal of time tossing and turning, but they did still sleep, even though they would tell you they didn't. These people were literally shocked to see video of themselves snoring away.

Sorry no link for that, I got it from a book.

I'd say that they are putting too much focus or attention on their inability to sleep or restlessness, and the second rule fills in the details of a restless night, be it in RL or through a FA type scenario. Too much attention on any one thing is unhealthy

The Basics: Vision

Using these rules for dream control boils down to a matter of awareness or attention. To be precise, where and how intently you have that attention or awareness focused. What awareness is exactly, no one can really say. It's an intangible process we use so often we take it for granted. For the moment, we only need concern ourselves with how awareness works.

Humans have 5 senses with which to perceive the world around them, but we rely most heavily on our sense of sight. What this means is that sight is our primary tool through which we are aware of what is going on around us. Or to put it another way, our main means of becoming aware of our surroundings. This makes vision our main weapon for deploying awareness in dreams.

Be careful what you look at...
Simply looking is probably the best and easiest method of dream control. This is both a curse and a blessing. What is so great about it is that it's such an easy thing to do. The downside is that we are almost always looking at something in our dreams.

This type of dream control doesn't just turn it's self on when we want or need it, it's always in play. And there is so much to look at, so much to see and take in. So many wondrous or terrifying sight, you awareness can hardly contain it's self. It jumps around from this to that, the whole while unaware of the consequences it's having on the dream. That is why dreams seem random.

In fact you need to look in order to interact with the dream and keep it stable. The trick is to learn to selectively choose what to look at. It's quite easy to lose control, some things you just can't help but look at. But we don't need to dwell on those things. Just a quick glance to asses and then move on until you come upon something you would like to expand on. Then you can dwell on it, examine it more closely. But if you start examining every little thing, things quickly get out of hand.

In Castaneda's books, the main technique Don Juan made him practice was just glancing at objects in dreams. I've been rereading those books for over 15 years and never understood what that was about until tonight. Just glancing is the best way to "travel" in a dream without disturbing things too much.

When you glance lingers too long, something happens, a change that you can actually feel. It almost feels like two magnets locking together. That feeling can grow in varying degrees of intensity along with your increased focus on that object.

Watch out for dream elements that ensnare you attention and almost compel you to look closer. Dreams are full of them, they lurk around every corner! Again I cite the example of a tooth dream gone horribly wrong. At first you may just want to let it happen and watch how the changes come. Once you recognize what is happening, it will be easier to avoid such snares in the future, however horrifying or beautiful they may be.

Tunnel Vision
I need to work on my glancing, but so far I've gotten really good at zooming in with my vision on a single thing, blocking out everything else. Literal tunnel vision. This is the best for extreme changes related to that element. You can keep going deeper and deeper into the detail, or pull back and see how your surroundings have changed in relation to what you were just staring at. I recommend going back and forth several times to see exactly what and how drastic the changes were.

It's really hard to explain how these changes take place, you have to experience it for your self. The changes that occur as a result of Tunnel Vision may be too drastic to qualify as control, but it sure is fun. It's more like controlling which water slide you want to throw yourself down.



I've also started working on focusing on multiple objects the last couple of weeks, hopefully glancing will help with that. I had discovered a new vision technique last night that I was experimenting with in a lucid, but I can't quite make sense of what I was doing while awake. It had a rolling feel to it, but that just makes no sense... I'll figure it out eventually.

I've found that when I become lucid and my sight moves from object to object, I will lose lucidity rather quickly. I have to look at everything very slowly and always keep something in focus for my lucidity to stabilize. But I've only got it to stabilize a few times...
This morning I tried to do that as well, but I guess my awareness was also on the DC that I was solacing by hugging her. I focused on a point in my surrounding, but after some seconds I could sense the dream blurring and then my vision started greying out.

Btw, how do you see the eyes of DCs in your dreams? do they look real? This morning was the first time that I actually saw a DC whose eyes looked real to me, there was no blankness or emptyness that had always been in their eyes.

Originally Posted by anomanderis

Btw, how do you see the eyes of DCs in your dreams? do they look real? This morning was the first time that I actually saw a DC whose eyes looked real to me, there was no blankness or emptyness that had always been in their eyes.

I've never noticed anything out of the ordinary about the eyes of my DCs. My zombies usually have a blank empty look in their eyes, but that's to be expected.

Sounds like that would be a good dream sign for you, if you can learn to recognize it.

Originally Posted by anomanderis

I've found that when I become lucid and my sight moves from object to object, I will lose lucidity rather quickly. I have to look at everything very slowly and always keep something in focus for my lucidity to stabilize. But I've only got it to stabilize a few times...
This morning I tried to do that as well, but I guess my awareness was also on the DC that I was solacing by hugging her. I focused on a point in my surrounding, but after some seconds I could sense the dream blurring and then my vision started greying out.

Sounds like you were looking at too many things before you were ready for it.

The exercise Castaneda was practicing consisted of choosing a starting anchor point. Starting from there, he would glance at a few objects, then return to the starting point and repeat the process. Every time he would try to glance at more and more objects before returning to his starting point. I don't even think it would be possible to come up with a better method to practice glancing.

Sounds like you were looking at too many things before you were ready for it.

Originally Posted by The Cusp

In Castaneda's books, the main technique Don Juan made him practice was just glancing at objects in dreams. I've been rereading those books for over 15 years and never understood what that was about until tonight. Just glancing is the best way to "travel" in a dream without disturbing things too much.

When you glance lingers too long, something happens, a change that you can actually feel. It almost feels like two magnets locking together. That feeling can grow in varying degrees of intensity along with your increased focus on that object.

Hi Cusp,
If I remember correctly, DJ tells him to look in short glances because it fixes the scene by fixating the assemblage point.
V.

Originally Posted by The Cusp

Sounds like you were looking at too many things before you were ready for it.

That means that the speed i look with while i am awake is much too fast for when i am lucid, i literally have to move my point of focus a centimeter at a time to not lose focus of the entire dreamscape.

Originally Posted by anomanderis

That means that the speed i look with while i am awake is much too fast for when i am lucid, i literally have to move my point of focus a centimeter at a time to not lose focus of the entire dreamscape.

Nothing wrong with focusing on the entire dreamscape. Peripheral vision works wonders for stability. It's only when focusing on individual items you have to be careful.

I seem to have no problems with looking at one object for a long time, I once looked at a leaf for about 5-10 minutes. Although I'm not insanely experienced with LD's by any means, I don't seem to lose lucidity by looking at one thing.

For me too, looking at things does not make them change. I don't really recall doing this much, but i definitely know that they don't change like that.
maybe its connected with how our minds work: when i look at things, my mind usually falls very quiet. When i see, i see things as they are, not how i think they should be.

It's not the things I'm looking at that change, it's the stuff I'm not.

Originally Posted by Vortex

It's not the things I'm looking at that change, it's the stuff I'm not.

That's exactly right! Thank you, I rely on these comments to see what needs to be explained further. That's an important distinction I seem to have overlooked.

The changes that occur in the things you are not looking at are directly related to the thing that you are looking at. It's not what you are looking at that changes.

I'll try to better illustrate this point with zombies, werewolves and vampires next.

How does everyone create their dreamscape when they are in 'limbo'? When I'm already inside a dream, I usually use the 'beyond that door' or 'behind that corner' method; when I am DEILDing (basically chaining) I use VILD. The first time I used VILD, i had the most amazing dream entry that i have ever experienced: i imagined a scene and the colours started slowly trickling/flowing in in little spiral vortexes that merged into the dreamscape.

Originally Posted by anomanderis

How does everyone create their dreamscape when they are in 'limbo'? When I'm already inside a dream, I usually use the 'beyond that door' or 'behind that corner' method; when I am DEILDing (basically chaining) I use VILD. The first time I used VILD, i had the most amazing dream entry that i have ever experienced: i imagined a scene and the colours started slowly trickling/flowing in in little spiral vortexes that merged into the dreamscape.

I would assume it's a result of whatever lingering schemata are still active in you mind. But to me the spiral vortexes seem to be very important in those kinds of scenarios. So many people dream about sacred geometry without knowing what it is. And what it is is the building blocks of all creation, but I don't have enough understanding of that subject to really explain it.



The Origins of Zombies, Werewolves and Vampire

Without a doubt, the second rule is the most influential in shaping our dreams, and also the easiest to observe.

2.The more attention you give to one element, the more detail it creates in relation to what you are focused on.

So let's take a closer look at the elements that birth these creatures in our dreams. The following examples are from dreams that didn't start out with these creatures all ready in them. I also excluded lucids, because the control afforded by lucidity distracts from the natural formation of elements we are trying to observe here

Vampires
While going through the DJs, I noticed that the main element that causes Vampire to appear in dreams is the classic spooky old mansion or castle. Everyone knows that's where vampires live. If you happen to spot one of these mansions, odds are, you're going to have vampires to deal with.

...I'm now near a castle and have become "NeAvO the vampire slayer"...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...&postcount=594

I'm in this kind of castle/mansion... and confronting this woman who was actually some kind of supernatural being (vampire?)
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...&postcount=543

...We had to go in this dark, spooky house...a strange woman in there who summoned a vampire
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...2&postcount=25

..all the houses were early 1900’s and very big...I kept thinking I’m not a vampire...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...41&postcount=1

...because he was 230 years old.That confused me for a moment until I realized that CB was actually a vampire.
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...&postcount=127

Obviously there are plenty more reasons to dream of vampires, books you read, games you play, halloween, but it all boils down to the same thing. Focusing on something that has a strong association with vamps, even if it's carried over from the waking world rather than something in your dream. Many dream vampires have a sexual nature, especially for women, and have quite different triggers. I can't go into every possible scenario because they are endless, and I'd be entering into the realm of psychology.

Death, corpses, blood, all these are common triggers as well, and can have a cumulative effect. It needn't be just one element like the mansion/castle, those just happen to be very clear examples.


Werewolves
Werewolves are interesting because they seem to reflect a beastial part of ourselves. They have fewer concrete association other that full moons and creepy woods at night, and their presence is most often triggered by strong emotions, namely anger and rage. A good fight or chase will often bring out the werewolves! They are good examples of the third rule in action.

3. Strong emotions flavor everything much like viewing things through a colored lense.


...They pull out a knife with a folding blade... somethings chasing me (werewolf or terminator??)...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...40&postcount=2

...The Werewolf guy was the most prominent. He was chasing us through the woods...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...postcount=1073

...As I viciously beat the old fucker, the people in the grocery store begin to get violent themselves....The infectious disease that is spreading is lycanthropy! ...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...postcount=1081
*That one's mine. Note how my rages completely changed how the DCs were acting.

...People panic near night...many people at the windows and on balconies, panicking...Just then I see the werewolf...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...&postcount=350

...I darted into the trees...so I ran past and kept going...It turns out that he was a werewolf! I was very scared
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...1&postcount=51

...some guy is messing with me or something, and I transformed into a werewolf, and started biting his arm uncontrollably...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...&postcount=101


I only concentrated on emotional werewolf creation in those examples, but there are plenty that follow the second rule as well. The main triggers being scary movies, video games, and halloween. Or of course the dark spooky woods at night like this one...

...I'm up at the cabin with my mom and step dad. I'm outside, it's night, and I have a sword. I'm out near the front of the property, when I'm attacked by a werewolf...
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...postcount=1055


Zombies
Zombies are actually too big of an area to get into right now. It's going to take a bit more time that I have tonight to go through the countless examples of zombie dreams, but I think Vampires and Werewolves get the point across.


After writing this up, any guesses on what I'm likely to dream about tonight?

I've had vampires and werewolves only once, i think, but zombies make an appearance quite often, for some reason.
One of the most interesting experiences I've had was when I was zombified. It almost felt like that time, when my entire body was ripped apart atom by atom, only slightly more violin-ish (i know that makes no sense )

I had a lot of dream re-entrys today (Oh, happy day!) and once I could even stabilize it long enough to look at something for like 5 seconds : the object in question, i can't really recall what it was, didn't change at all.

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.