Superman, I was thinking yesterday because of another thread of whether there could be some dreams in which interpreting them or being lucid in them brings too much consciousness into something better left to the subconscious, which is able to then apply creativity and imagination in a more open minded way. And yes, you read right, in my mind this concern applies to both dream interpretation and to lucid dreaming. Some dreams may be better left uninterpretted and non-lucid.
Interpretation imposes the conscious mind's bias on the ideas of the subconscious mind, and especially for long running problems which span many dreams when the subconscious is not done problem solving yet, putting a slant on it may bias the subconscious in future brainstorming.
Similarly lucid dreaming may inject conscious mind into a dream and change it, and even though your subconscious knows that you need to work on a problem, if your conscious is not paying attention to what your subconscious was working on problem solving, then you may have just deprived yourself of the benefit of subconscious problem solving.
I thought about it, and I don't think these dangers are really an issue for many of us:
(1) I think most of us will reach better solutions to issues when the conscious and subconscious work together on solving a problem, and both dream interpretation and lucid dreaming provide opportunities for such team work.
(2) Even in lucid dreaming the subconscious has lots of freedom: it is not confined. This dream of headlessness is an example of that: even though he was lucid, but he dreamed of headlessness even though he had not consciously planned it. This can happen in lucid dreams and often does. Also while your consciousness is lucid in the dream, e dream characters can still speak for your subconscious. Similarly I think in dream interpretation the dreamer's own intuition provides the crucial element of the subconscious: the subconscious has veto power over dream interpretations that seem wrong intuitively.
(3) if there is a problem that a dreamer needs to work on subconsciously, as long as the problem is not resolved, the subconscious will ensure that it gets done one way or another. If the dreamer diverted it in a lucid dream, perhaps the next dream will not be lucid and will return to the interrupted problem solving. Similarly if someone got confused with a conscious interpretation imposing a meaning that the subconscious disagrees with, the dreamer will have another dream trying to work on this issue in a different way. If these are problem solving dreams, they will likely continue until the problem is resolved to the satisfaction of e subconscious mind, not just the conscious.
However, I think that ultimately it is e conscious and subconscious parts of the mind working together that can have some of the most powerful results: a dreamer who is into dream interpretation or into lucid dreaming or both becomes ideally more aware of oneself, different parts of oneself, and starts to ensure that these parts work together.
Through dream interpretation and lucid dreams our conscious mind can get to know the subconscious, accept it, and learn from it.
It is not a coincidence that in lucid dreaming the recommended way of dealing with a nightmare is not to try to change e scene nor to try to fight it, but try to befriend or question it. Thus the lucid dreamer learns more about what the subconscious was trying to tell him, and sometimes also embraces his or her dark or flawed side.
Dream interpretation not only reveals dream signs to the lucid dreamer, but also can reveal some meanings behind the dreams to help the dreamer understand why he or she may be dreaming what he or she is dreaming, and perhaps then recognize dreams better by recognizing the theme in a different way, and also maybe change the dreamer's mind about the desire to dream of something else instead if the conscious mind realizes that a dream may be important to the subconscious.
I think this forum has an unfortunate divide of many people who are into lucid dreaming but have no use for dream interpretation because they think dreams have no meanings, and others who are into dream interpretation but resent lucid dreaming as a way to mess with the subconscious too much not letting it do its work. I personally am into both lucid dreaming and dream interpretation, and I think they can work together beautifully as two powerful tools to help one find a greater unity of one's personality and problem solving together as one, both conscious and subconscious elements respecting and accepting all of one self.
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