Thread: (Prove Me Wrong) No One Has Literally Ever Talked to Their Subconscious. Ever.

Okay then.

Good luck in your search, Screen, and I hope that one day someone tells you exactly what you want to hear.

Screen , When you start a thread on here that is inevitably complex and very easy to misinterpret, you mustn't be too surprised when people come in with different angles or don't understand what you were getting at. That can often be very enlightening, because you get the perspectives from different people. It's a pity you seem to be so touchy about people not understanding what you meant, as the subject you brought up is fascinating. Please try to be a little more tolerant of our ineptitude

I'm not looking for definite terms of the subconscious or unconscious because I know there isn't any. It's still something we're learning, as we don't know everything there is to know about it. Same with lucid dreaming: we've pretty much only scratched the surface of its nature, and we know very little about it. For example: I've talked to people like myself who struggle to have lucid dreams even though we do everything right. But we can't give an explanation as to what's being done wrong, only recommendations. That's one of the things I hope we discover.

I would first like to say this when it comes to the subconscious. My understanding of the subconscious is that it is more like a huge expanding database that picks up on every thing we experience and the things we experience but are not aware of. So you might agree with me so far I guess. But when it comes to our common awareness and understanding. I believe that our intention and feelings are the ones who prevents us from getting the results we wants. So basically I see our minds working like this. Our subcounscious doesnt cling to any feeling or experience at all, but merely keep them in storage. And our daily awareness with feelings and intentions have basically no understanding of anything until it manage to connect with the "right" information from the subconscious. But as long as we dont have built a strong connection between the intention and the information that the intention seeks. Then we keep feeling frustration or disappointment in our struggle to learn. If we dont feeling frustration in our learning process, then we are capable to go thru more failures wich also means that we being able to scan through many more of all the sublte layers of information that might hold what our intention seeks. Imagine if Thomas Edison gave up his idea of the lightbulb after his 9000 attempts to make it work. Well a 1000 more, and he got it working! He had probably been close enough to solve it many times, but smal adjustments had to be done to get hes intention to hit the bullseye. Probably as much hes state of mind, as he's current understanding.

I see our daily awareness as a fishing boat in the big sea. And the subconscious as the sea. And we are the captain of that boat. So here is a little story I made. The little fishing boat are about to go out there in the big ocean with the intention to cath some specific fish. With many tries without luck on the little fishing boat, the captain might get frustrated so he is about to give up. The sea is perfectly calm though, but are keep giving away the wrong fishes to the boat, because the sea knows that the frustration that occurs on the smal fishing boat. Is the true intention of the captains feelings, of that he probably wont have the right fish. Even if there is a chance to get the right fish. So after many many tries, the captain the captains frustration are so big that he are about to emotionally explode after all failures to get his fish. So he let go of his dream and all the emotions that have been going on. So without any expectations and emotions left of his urge to have that fish. All there is left is the stilness of the sea. A wave of calmness suddenly flows thru his body. And he decide to make a last try to catch that fish. But this time hes intenton is pure. He's intention is to cath the fish, but he doest even thinking about the end result. If he succeed or fail isn't in he's intention anymore, he just know what fish he would like. So the sea are always aware of this intention, and the message is now very clear. And he finally ends up with he's fish that he came to get. The End

Intention is a very powerfull force. And I actually find that way more important to learn, than focusing to much about the subconscious. But I do find the subconscious very very interesting of course.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Okay then.

Good luck in your search, Screen, and I hope that one day someone tells you exactly what you want to hear.

This is kind of like a thread about the best time of year to plant spaghetti.

Originally Posted by Nailler

This is kind of like a thread about the best time of year to plant spaghetti.

With one person refusing to understand that spaghetti can't be planted.

Originally Posted by dutchraptor

With one person refusing to understand that spaghetti can't be planted.

Planting spaghetti in dreams, how else would you make dreamsghetti?

Why is it so important to speak with something with half-mythical absoluteness-claim?
In the moment, I speak with a DC and it says something, I did not consciously expect - then that's necessarily (parts of) the unconscious talking - what else?

It is something else, if I make a DC say something, like Sageous mentioned it in high-level LDs.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Thank you, Steph, for being pretty much the only one here who recognizes that unconscious is the recognized term for what we're talking about; I was beginning to feel a bit lonely. For what it's worth, I used to try to point this out, but it's pretty useless... one of Freud's great successes was firmly embedding "subconscious" in the pop-culture lexicon.

You are welcome - such things - any time.
It was not Freud's fault - he was Austrian and we have three completely different words: Unterbewußtsein (Freud) -
Unbewußtes (our un here), Bewußtlosigkeit (as in knocked out).
You can't express the difference between the latter two in English, nobody made a third word - it is confusing.

Originally Posted by Goldenspark

However, having thought about it a bit more, I think there is a difference between unconscious and subconsious that is worth expanding on, in that the noun unconcious, to me, suggests "not conscious", whereas subconscious means "below" conscious, i.e. a form of consciousness below "normal" conscious thought. Subconscious also conjures up the idea of thoughts that originate from the below-brain, or ancient brain, that are more basic in their nature.
I think of this not as another form of consciousness that is somehow parallel but normally un-seen, but at a baser level, a more animal level if you will.

We are on a forum here, and can call it what we want, basically - but in the outside world, among experts, it is clear, which word means what.
It does not help to sit down and think it through, what would make more sense.
These things are defined, and what you deem better to be called subconsciousness has taken on the official name "the unconscious".
And yes - that is the same word as in knocking somebody out - that is "being unconscious".
Like I said - there are three words in German, and that might help with English too.

The subconscious is an expression totally in the grasp of Freud and psychoanalysts on the side of the professionals.
Esp. because America fell into such a fad with Freud - lay-persons often think, it's the correct expression. They think it would be a neutral, ideology-free word, used by scientists.
It is not - and the more lay-persons with a hobby like LDing know the difference - the better!


I found something on topic - I'll just throw it in:
NST - Named Subconscious* Technique - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

*there we go again..

So I randomly found myself in a lucid dream this morning, and thought about this thread. I inquired "What is the best way to communicate with my subconscious/unconscious/dreaming mind (or w/e you want to call it). The reply I got was that the best way is to personally interpret the dream experience after asking, as a whole, using whatever symbolism is personally significant to me. I wasn't satisfied, so I asked one of the DCs nearby if they would just talk to me about it. They said no.

I barely remembered this dream, because I slept for 18 total hours and it was somewhere in the middle, so for me, the dream ended there, with no chance to ask about lucid dreaming. Although, there is an amazing thread about lucid dreaming that in my opinion illuminates whatever you would need to know to have greater success with lucid dreams.

For the purposes of unveiling any biases I have that may influence the happenings of my dreams, I have been interpreting my dreams as a whole for 6 years now, based on what some shamanic traditions do. One way to do it (as there are many) is to recall your dream, and mentally transform it into a sphere, with all the dream experiences present in the sphere, and then just ask it things. Such as, "What does this dream mean to me? What lesson can I learn from this? Why did that _____ happen? What significance does _________ have in the dream?" etc. If you are serious about it, you always get answers. Whether or not they are reliable and worth anything is of course up to you.

Now the difference here, is doing that while in the dream, and interpreting the results as they are happening. I've only done that with respect to what the best way to communicate is, and definitely got an answer.

Hebdomeros--
Thanks for the kind thought. I do not know how the "friend" function here works, maybe, if you get this you can help me get it to work.

Hummer

Thanks for clarifying the difference in terminology. Ironically, I am a big fan of Jung's work, and yet never thought to use the term "unconscious". That shall be corrected immediately.

Originally Posted by Meskhetyw

Thanks for clarifying the difference in terminology. Ironically, I am a big fan of Jung's work, and yet never thought to use the term "unconscious". That shall be corrected immediately.

Not sure - sorry if that is a misunderstanding on my side now - just to make sure:
Psychoanalysis lingo is "subconsciousness" - while "the unconscious" is the neutral term.

Okay, so I had another lucid dream and thought I'd give this a better try. I was camping outside a temple, in the rain, in the cold, far from home, in the woods when I had this dream. The whole day before the dream, I was working on being mindful of a particular beneficial thought as often as possible, and I think that mindfulness carried over a bit into sleep leading to a lucid dream.

After commanding trees to move themselves out of the way, and summoning waffles for all the nearby dream characters to eat, I verbally asked myself / the dream that I recognized as being created by my own mind the following, "How can I have lucid dreams more often? and what is the best way to communicate with my subconscious?" I then saw a girl walking past the bottom of the stairs to the tree fort I was in. "Hello!" I shouted her way, excited to see this manifestation of my own mind. This scared her and she ran around the corner. I ran after her and apologized, "Sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you, I just have a few questions." as I mentally thought of what I just asked moments ago. In direct answer to how to have more lucid dreams, she told me, "Oxycodon, and Hydrocoma" I don't know what those are, I assumed they were supplements or drugs or something. I wasn't expecting such a technical answer, so I had to repeat them to myself over and over. I just remember how the name sounds, so I spelled it phonetically, I am fairly certain there is another spelling if they exist at all.

I don't want to rely on supplements or drugs, so I clarified my question further, asking her, "How do I have more lucid dreams without taking anything?" She tries to dodge this question by telling me she's cold. My initial reaction is not to turn up the heat to save money, but it's a dream! So I turn the heat up for her. I also use my mind to blast her with comfortable warming energy. She sits on the stairs, looks me directly in the eyes, and says, "When a cancer patient finds the cure, it's not so important that you get it right anymore" I am reminded of the practices of living a lucid life during the day, self awareness and memory. I feel that this is what she is referring to, albeit rather indirectly. I tell her, "I don't want to spend a lot of time doing something that won't work" She looks at me, and non-verbally tells me not to worry about that. She then tries to distract me by asking about a tattoo on my arm. I am still mindful that it is a dream, and that I don't have any tattoos, but since it is a dream, and I could have one in a dream, I look at my arm - still no tattoo. Laughing at her failed attempts to distract me from knowing it is a dream, I wake up, really having to pee.

Personally, I'm satisfied with the answers I've found. Maybe that's just it, whatever is personally satisfying and logical to each person is what will work. Like the placebo effect.

Not sure if it was my subconscious but I did have a few recurring dreams in a week that involved a GOD-like person who knew everything. On the very last night I was super pissed off because every time I tried to as him a question he would ignore me....I grabbed his arm and screamed "YOU WILL ANSWER MY QUESTIONS NOW" he sat in front of me with a slight smile. We were in a small room and there were little distractions but I cleared my head and started to ask...

ME:"What is my purpose in life?"
GOD?/SUB?:"For you to be your very best"
ME:"Why am I going through so much despair in my life?"
GOD?/SUB?:"That is what happens to those who possess great power"
ME:"How long will I live?"
GOD?/SUB?:"Think about it do you really want to know? what would you do with that information?"
ME:"I guess not...are you GOD?"

**End of Dream***

Quite honestly I woke up even more pissed because I did not get any clear answers but after that I like to grab a random person in my dreams and ask them random questions like "Do you know that you do not exist?" they usually just stare at me and smile.......the God-like person was tall and handsome with a perfect voice I guess thats what I would imagine God to be like c:

I know this is your dream Schmaven - but I find it so wonderful - fantastic of you to really try it out - so I want to give you my take on it, which is quite different from yours:

Originally Posted by Schmaven

In direct answer to how to have more lucid dreams, she told me, "Oxycodon, and Hydrocoma" I don't know what those are, I assumed they were supplements or drugs or something. I wasn't expecting such a technical answer...

But you did get this answer - it is not called your unconscious for nothing!
I interpret this as your unconscious telling you, that you believe supps to be the thing, with could give you more lucid dreams.
Additionally to what you are consciously doing irl already.

Originally Posted by Schmaven

I don't want to rely on supplements or drugs, so I clarified my question further, asking her, "How do I have more lucid dreams without taking anything?"
She tries to dodge this question by telling me she's cold. My initial reaction is not to turn up the heat to save money, but it's a dream! So I turn the heat up for her. I also use my mind to blast her with comfortable warming energy. She sits on the stairs, looks me directly in the eyes, and says,
"When a cancer patient finds the cure, it's not so important that you get it right anymore"

So you ask for clarification, say that you want something other than drugs.
She dodges, she has no other answer for you.
You comfort her most sweetly - and she offers up a metaphor to try to explain to you, why her prior answer was her final answer.

Cancer patient finding cure is clearly a medical analogy - and she suggests, that you wouldn't depend on getting it right so much any more. This might mean daytime practice quality and quantity.

Originally Posted by Schmaven

I am reminded of the practices of living a lucid life during the day, self awareness and memory. I feel that this is what she is referring to, albeit rather indirectly. I tell her, "I don't want to spend a lot of time doing something that won't work"
Personally, I'm satisfied with the answers I've found. Maybe that's just it, whatever is personally satisfying and logical to each person is what will work. Like the placebo effect.

How come this whole sequence has got something to do with lucid living in your eyes?
I am not saying, that you should take supps to boost your lucidity without wasting time - but I venture the proposal, that this is what you unconsciously believe. It makes sense, too, since you probably do your daytime practice as best as you know and can and want to.

Unfortunate that this experiment went so well on the one hand - and on the other doesn't help you, since you consciously decide against this recommendation. And there are good reasons, too - I didn't yet, it seems to avoid tolerance, you should rotate schemes and take breaks and whatnot ..

Spoiler for some points from older posts and my thoughts on them:

Originally Posted by Sageous

LD'ing is an extremely conscious event, couched in self-awareness and waking-life conscious activity. In a sense, LD'ing is an affront to the unconscious, because during dreams we are daring to meld our conscious selves with its natural nighttime function -- dreaming, whose engine is the unconscious, exclusively. Indeed, every time we LD we are communicating directly with our unconscious minds, because it is the dreaming mind: the engine driving the dreams we are exploring, changing, and learning from. But its purview is creating dreams, and it has no interest or experience in this melding with it that you are attempting while lucid. In fact, it could be said that your unconscious is wired to prevent you from being self-aware in dreams; not only does it not know how to get you lucid, it actively attempts to prevent it.

Going over the previous page once more - I would like to pick up this point. It feels intuitively wrong to me to assume, the unconscious would be wired to prevent LDs.
Maybe it is rather doing it's thing, and the back-ground level of self-awareness is either sufficient for chiming in or not, independently of what the normal dream-machine does. You have vastly more experience of course - but lately Nailler reported of his DCs, telling him he would be dreaming.
Now that looks like an active invitation of the unconscious for self-awareness to emerge!
The unconscious getting visited by meta-consciousness, which coalesces from a certain background awareness and can even be prodded on by the normal dream-machine - not only hindered.
Maybe our dreams lack a bit behind in evolution of consciousness - our precious LDing might even be in the process of becoming common place. Pure conjecture - but as I see it, dreams have the evolutionary purpose of (mostly threat) simulation for animals to hone their skills and anchor their memories, build their schemes of predators - we also know, that the same brain areas that control running light up, when dreaming of running - so it also can perfect complex motor sequences.

All good and well - but since not so long ago with the onset of culture - our nightly practising-for-life-time could be used much, much better in order to enhance one's "personal value" and such propagation of genes.
Coming generations might naturally and generally LD, and use their dreams in the most astonishing and productive ways - not only simulation, but with control over the virtual reality and deciding, what to practise!

Originally Posted by Sageous

Subconscious has simply been around so long, and so ubiquitously used by the media (I guess it sounds better), that it has indeed become a synonym of sorts. I suppose in the future even the scientific crowd will start using subconscious as well, because that's the only word they heard growing up. That is how language changes.

No we won't change our terminology - I do not even come from an English speaking country, but it's almost inconceivable that serious scientists or psychologists will use "the subconsciousness" without clearly and purposefully referring to outdated Freudian ideology.
I mean - for people who are not interested in consciousness - it might be okay the use the Freudian term - but we on here, taking part in a forum on LDing and expressively posting on topic - we at least should know, what is what!
If you want to be neutral and call it scientifically correctly: It is "the unconscious"!

Originally Posted by Screen

Also, I don't even assume that dreams are made entirely by our minds. We don't know completely what a dream is, or why humans have them in the first place. It's an understandable conclusion, but we don't know. For all we know, when we dream, we're actually entering some sort of new realm as certain astral travelers believe. I've considered those ideas as well for explanations, and I currently don't discount any of them.

What is the extent our minds know that we're not aware of? I don't know. I came across the idea of interviewing the subconscious because people would ask secrets about themselves like soul mates and dream jobs, and somehow received accurate to precise answers. Then there's precognitive dreams, with plenty of cases to read about that it would be foolish to conclude that it's not possible. In both examples, where is the information coming from? If not your own mind, it has to be from somewhere, something, or even someone.

This explains, why you seem so adamant in a way - you hope for having access to information, which comes from outside of your mind, your brain. Now this is wishful thinking and not justified in my eyes - and I disagree with the plenty of convincing cases of precognitive dreams, too. I find it very sensible to conclude it is not possible. Of course I can't prove that - but the conclusion looks the only non-foolish to me.

Originally Posted by StephL

Going over the previous page once more - I would like to pick up this point. It feels intuitively wrong to me to assume, the unconscious would be wired to prevent LDs.
Maybe it is rather doing it's thing, and the back-ground level of self-awareness is either sufficient for chiming in or not, independently of what the normal dream-machine does. You have vastly more experience of course - but lately Nailler reported of his DCs, telling him he would be dreaming.
Now that looks like an active invitation of the unconscious for self-awareness to emerge!
The unconscious getting visited by meta-consciousness, which coalesces from a certain background awareness and can even be prodded on by the normal dream-machine - not only hindered.
Maybe our dreams lack a bit behind in evolution of consciousness - our precious LDing might even be in the process of becoming common place. Pure conjecture - but as I see it, dreams have the evolutionary purpose of (mostly threat) simulation for animals to hone their skills and anchor their memories, build their schemes of predators - we also know, that the same brain areas that control running light up, when dreaming of running - so it also can perfect complex motor sequences.

All good and well - but since not so long ago with the onset of culture - our nightly practising-for-life-time could be used much, much better in order to enhance one's "personal value" and such propagation of genes.
Coming generations might naturally and generally LD, and use their dreams in the most astonishing and productive ways - not only simulation, but with control over the virtual reality and deciding, what to practise!

I think the true concern here is memory formation. The biggest proponent suggesting that being unconscious during a dream is your brain natural state, is that memory formation is inhibited during sleep.

This makes a lot of sense when you think about what your brain is trying to achieve. By being unconscious through a dream our brain has time to test and strengthening(or weaken) different neurons. The type of learning done in dreams is almost exclusively implicit memory. This likely developed from brain activation in fetus and young children where purely primitive brain functions are repeatedly activated (which will help the child to learn very basic tasks).

Enabling memory formation through out this period could be counter-intuitive. The fact that our brain requires 8 hours of sleep to process our memories probably implies that the time spent actually dreaming is crucial.
While a single memory of a dream might not impede the vast database your brain already holds, it could still pose a problem.

The second reason why it might be better to be unconscious (still pertaining to memory formation) is that our state of consciousness directly affects memory strengthening. The neurotransmitter acetycholine for instance is what makes visualizations strong, but also causes all the other transition to dreaming in the brain (coupled with a decrease in norepinephrine and serotonin). It could very well be linked directly to memory strengthening. At the same rate it could very well be that an increase in serotonin or norepinphrine would inhibit that process. In this view it would make sense for dreams to occur purely in the unconscious state of mind.

The last point to make is that, dreaming, having evolved from a completely unconscious and primal system, is not capable of understanding the effects of conscious reasoning, but it is capable of understanding the meddling that the conscious can cause on memories.
For instance, we learn by observing, trying and then strengthening the neurons that help build a coherent image of something. From the view point of dreams, by forming new memories during a period of strengthening unrelated neurons, one can introduce links which must later be removed (links which cost the brain a lot of energy).

Anyways, that's just some ramblings on potential reasons why is might be beneficial for the brain to remain unconscious throughout dreams. Though these idea's are paired with the viewpoint that dreams occur for the most part to strengthen implicit memories. Arguments against can probably be easily formed if someone where to advocate a simulation theory over memory consolidation theory.

^^ That post, Dutchraptor, ought to be the beginning of its own, much needed, thread... though I do tend to disagree with it.

I do not disagree with the science (except for the bit about brains needing 8 hours to process memory and do its nightly maintenance -- that number is likely a lot lower), but with what I took to be your opinion of the impact of self-awareness in a dream (sort of makes me wonder why you practice LD'ing, BTW!). Even if, or rather even though, everything you say is true regarding memory processing during sleep and dreams, I don't think the act of LD'ing or recalling dreams has much of an impact on the functions of memory formation.

When lucid, we are just not there long enough, and the waking-life consciousness we exercise during a LD is usually more of a rider than a usurper. In other words, when lucid we are generally observing the processes, and not interfering with it; an extremely high level of lucidity is needed to actually interfere with the dreaming process, and I personally think that level is very rare. And no, changing the images in a dream is not interference, because your unconscious is still doing all the work for you, and doing so still very much within the process loop of normal nightly activity; in other words, you may think that you are making profound changes to your dreams and your dream world, but what you are really doing is simply shifting the imagery that is already being presented without having much effect on the neural base from which the dream is being generated. This is, of course, conjecture on my part, but it is carefully considered conjecture.

Also, if we practice our dreaming after several hours of sleep, the heavy lifting of memory processing has probably been mostly completed anyway. And, of course, even the most successful of LD'ers is "present" in dreams for very short periods of time, and likely the impact of their presence would be minimal.

So Steph could be right, in that sentience may be working its way into the evolutionary formula, and LD'ing may have a place in the natural order of things. It seems to me that the system of memory formation will "find a way" regardless of our conscious attention to dreaming, even if that attention seems to be a problem on paper. Chemicals have a way of adjusting to new situations; that is why we are here.

Who knows? Lucid dreamers may be riding the crest of a new evolutionary wave, a wave that will create a natural condition of conscious communication with all aspects of our brains, in the name of efficiency and creativity rather than the usual purpose of survival... sentience may finally be having an impact on making us better rather than just more comfortable, and lucid dreaming could be one of its tools!

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ That post, Dutchraptor, ought to be the beginning of its own, much needed, thread... though I do tend to disagree with it.

I do not disagree with the science (except for the bit about brains needing 8 hours to process memory and do its nightly maintenance -- that number is likely a lot lower), but with what I took to be your opinion of the impact of self-awareness in a dream (sort of makes me wonder why you practice LD'ing, BTW!). Even if, or rather even though, everything you say is true regarding memory processing during sleep and dreams, I don't think the act of LD'ing or recalling dreams has much of an impact on the functions of memory formation.

When lucid, we are just not there long enough, and the waking-life consciousness we exercise during a LD is usually more of a rider than a usurper. In other words, when lucid we are generally observing the processes, and not interfering with it; an extremely high level of lucidity is needed to actually interfere with the dreaming process, and I personally think that level is very rare. And no, changing the images in a dream is not interference, because your unconscious is still doing all the work for you, and doing so still very much within the process loop of normal nightly activity; in other words, you may think that you are making profound changes to your dreams and your dream world, but what you are really doing is simply shifting the imagery that is already being presented without having much effect on the neural base from which the dream is being generated. This is, of course, conjecture on my part, but it is carefully considered conjecture.

Also, if we practice our dreaming after several hours of sleep, the heavy lifting of memory processing has probably been mostly completed anyway. And, of course, even the most successful of LD'ers is "present" in dreams for very short periods of time, and likely the impact of their presence would be minimal.

So Steph could be right, in that sentience may be working its way into the evolutionary formula, and LD'ing may have a place in the natural order of things. It seems to me that the system of memory formation will "find a way" regardless of our conscious attention to dreaming, even if that attention seems to be a problem on paper. Chemicals have a way of adjusting to new situations; that is why we are here.

Who knows? Lucid dreamers may be riding the crest of a new evolutionary wave, a wave that will create a natural condition of conscious communication with all aspects of our brains, in the name of efficiency and creativity rather than the usual purpose of survival... sentience may finally be having an impact on making us better rather than just more comfortable, and lucid dreaming could be one of its tools!

Actually I agree with everything you say. My post was simply exploring the possibilities.
The actual effect of consciousness may be negligible as far as I'm concerned, I was just trying to show that there is reasoning behind the thought that unconscious would try to prevent LD's.
And the bit on hours sleep is actually true, because to get to the stages of bulk REM dreaming we must first sleep for a certain number of hours. We are not processing memories throughout the whole 8 hours, mainly in the last few.
The first few hours are reserved for body restoration purposes among others.
In terms of ratio's, it seems likely that the actual memories formed during an LD would be very tiny compared to the memories of an entire day, usually an experience of merely a few minutes.

The actual problem is that memory formation might directly interfere with memory strengthening. Actual time spent dreaming is a lot less than the time you sleep, so whatever memory strengthening is going on is probably quick powerful to be capable of analyzing a days worth of information. If memory formation does inhibit that process then it could theoretically have a profound effect, because 10 minutes of dream time could be equal to half an hour of life for example.

But I don't actually believe it's of that magnitude. I do believe that memory strengthening is a core feature of dreams, and that dreams are not specifically purposed towards lucid dreaming (Almost all evidence points to the contrary).
From personal experience I believe that lucid dreaming doesn't really affect implicit memory, but it really is impossible to say at this point.

The reason I practice lucid dreaming is because you can learn things in a lucid dream. While sleep is important, you will see that many people function just fine without the required amount of it. The pay off for enjoying a lucid dream is more than enough to compensate for any side effects it causes.

I like the idea of lucid dreaming of being part of the equation. If there's one thing we've learned from history is that evolution can take all kinds quick turns. Although, we've probably changed much more than we even realize over the past 10000 years. It's just a matter of time, the primal brain did get a huge head start, now we get to watch as the sentient side ingrains itself

Asking the other parts of the mind questions during a lucid dream is certainly a fun way to find out more about underlying beliefs we hold, bringing them more into our awareness than they otherwise would be without such dreams. It's sometimes harder for me to see what I'm doing than for someone else to see it.

Originally Posted by StephL

I interpret this as your unconscious telling you, that you believe supps to be the thing, with could give you more lucid dreams.
Additionally to what you are consciously doing irl already.

I do believe supplements can help, but also that they are not necessary. So, while they may help, and while we may be able to do the same without them, I am biased toward doing things without them. Or at least limiting them to regular foods. I would be okay supplementing my diet with more mangoes if that would help.

Originally Posted by StephL

How come this whole sequence has got something to do with lucid living in your eyes?

I definitely believe that making a waking habit of being lucid will equal more lucid dreams. At least based on my personal conglomeration of supporting beliefs and definitions. And that has no doubt influenced the response I got from asking my unconscious in the dream. It must be a stronger belief than I thought

I suppose the reason I believe that, is because I have seen just about every habit I've changed show up in its new form in my dreams, but with about a month of lag time after I've sealed in the change in my daily activities. It seems to me that dreams are a reflection of our waking life and imagination, so that if we change our waking experience, that will be reflected in the dreams. The 'lucid daily life' idea is basically just a creative reality check we can do; but aimed at positively influencing the day. The goal being that if it makes the day better, I'll be more likely to do it during the day and make it a habit.

Spoiler for an unusual example of habit changes showing up in dreams:

I used to have the habit of panicking when in seemingly dangerous situations. I panicked also in dangerous dream situations. Over a few years, I changed this. Now my waking reaction is to love the aggressor, to genuinely care about them, with a warm heart. This fills me with the courage to face whatever situation I am in, potential pain and all, while still keeping my head on my shoulders. Instead of panicking and making poor decisions that I regret later, I am able to skillfully mitigate the situation with no regrets. I now do this in all my dreams that would otherwise invoke that panicky fearful response (like having a sword rammed through me multiple times, being robbed and shot, or whatever else).

I've seen this with other habits, but this one is the most obvious one to spot for me. I don't have scary dreams anymore, just really intense ones filled with the courage to face them. I'd include something here about some of the amazing benefits of love in waking life situations, but I doubt you would ever believe me.

Great exchange dutchraptor and Sageous!
I just want to say one thing to you dutchraptor - don't overlook the fact, that we are by no means unconscious in our normal dreams - we just lack proper self-reflective capabilities and memory access. But we could just have nREM all the time, if it really was a disturbing factor to have actual experiences during sleep - which always means new memories, if we hold on to them or not. Lucid or not - we do live out time in a virtual reality in our dreams - so I can't see the harm in doing it lucidly. It seems really rather like an update to me - same as our self-reflective waking capabilities are an update to animal-consciousness.



I think, you misunderstood my question Schmaven. First of all - I am not saying, taking something is a good idea per se - I am only saying, that I can't see another interpretation of your dream's answers.

Originally Posted by Schmaven

Originally Posted by StephL

How come this whole sequence has got something to do with lucid living in your eyes?

I definitely believe that making a waking habit of being lucid will equal more lucid dreams. At least based on my personal conglomeration of supporting beliefs and definitions. And that has no doubt influenced the response I got from asking my unconscious in the dream. It must be a stronger belief than I thought

How has this influenced the response? I can't see it has - first you get names reminiscent of supps - then you ask for something other than that - and get a medical metaphor, saying that if a cancer cure works - the rest doesn't matter.

Originally Posted by Schmaven

It seems to me that dreams are a reflection of our waking life and imagination, so that if we change our waking experience, that will be reflected in the dreams. The 'lucid daily life' idea is basically just a creative reality check we can do; but aimed at positively influencing the day. The goal being that if it makes the day better, I'll be more likely to do it during the day and make it a habit.

Yeah - this makes all perfect sense - but where is the reference in your dream to lucid living, or as you so nicely put it - doing creative reality checks? If you don't actually have something from your dream to deduce that from - you're just saying it out of the blue sky, because that would have been the answer, which you would have wanted to get.

And I guess, that's the one, you should be following too! Trust thy consciousness!!

The thing why I bring it up again is not because I want to pester you - I find it highly interesting, how and why it is, that you take this extraordinary jump in conclusions - it's fascinating.




..

Originally Posted by StephL

Great exchange dutchraptor and Sageous!
I just want to say one thing to you dutchraptor - don't overlook the fact, that we are by no means unconscious in our normal dreams - we just lack proper self-reflective capabilities and memory access. But we could just have nREM all the time, if it really was a disturbing factor to have actual experiences during sleep - which always means new memories, if we hold on to them or not. Lucid or not - we do live out time in a virtual reality in our dreams - so I can't see the harm in doing it lucidly. It seems really rather like an update to me - same as our self-reflective waking capabilities are an update to animal-consciousness.

Thanks
But I never implied (I hope I didn't) that experiences impede memory strengthening. My posts explored the possibilities that since activating higher functions results in increased norepinephrine production (which causes enhanced memory formation) it makes sense why dreams would try limit them.

And you could be very wrong on the part where you say that experience equates to memories. A memory must be stored to be labelled as a memory, and an experience in a dream that we do not remember is not stored as a memory precisely because the lack of neurotransmitters. It cannot be regarded as a memory, it never reaches that stage and is never even stored outside of a very temporary cache like memory. Evidence points towards lucid dreams being radically different than normal dreams, and on that same note an experience where memories are stored is going to be different to an experience where memories never even get to that point.

This possibility can absolutely not be disputed at this point in time.

The further you go down our ancestors, the lower self awareness goes you will notice that there is more and more reason for the dreams to occur in a largely unconscious fashion. It is beneficial for a primitive animal to dream in this state, because otherwise the confusion between dreams and reality could lead to life threatening behavior.
In humans, children until the age of 4 actually have a very hard time differentiating between the two. And if higher functions where common within a dream then we probably couldn't survive very long without the knowledge of what a dream is.
This all leads back to the argument that perhaps it is beneficial for the brain to limit our higher functions.
We've only had a few thousand years of actually living in circumstances where confusing a dream for reality is likely to not be a great disadvantage to the human.

So as I said earlier, while it feels intuitively wrong for you to believe, there is in fact a very large base of evidence backing the possibility, and the true reality of the situation is that we can't say for sure until we get more evidence. There really is no need to pick a side.

^^ One small point, Dutchraptor: you might be conflating consciousness with self-awareness. Though self-awareness certainly requires consciousness, you can be conscious without self-awareness or memory.

Everything alive exhibits some form of consciousness, or awareness, but almost everything alive does not know, ever, that it is conscious. We humans, however, have that capability... except, as Steph already said, when we are dreaming non-lucidly. In other words, during non-lucid dreams, our consciousness -- our simple primal awareness -- is working just fine; it is our self-awareness and memory that are absent.

In short: Yes, you are literally unconscious when you are asleep, but when you are dreaming the basic mechanisms of consciousness are working just fine; it's the higher mechanisms, self-awareness and memory, which are not available.

This could be semantics, I suppose, but I'm not sure.

Oh yes. It seems that these discussion are always riddled with semantics, I think we can blame the English language for that
Sorry if reading my posts are like deciphering cryptograms. Literary skills aren't my strongest point.

I was in fact trying to say that it is self awareness, and other higher functions that are the factors possibly inhibiting memory strengthening.

The basic difference between our views, dutchraptor, is that you discard what is called the threat simulation theory (TST) of dreams.
Could be my post comes across too aggressive - that is not my aim - it's just that I really disagree.
I even don't see, where you are going with it all - do you say, we should restrict LDing, because of otherwise impairing memory-management?

Why do you think, that mere memory consolidation and pruning would require to have a virtual theatre in your head in the first place?
Why have a point of view, even if dim view, and why do we do things in our dreams, make experiences?
Also dream-content doesn't point in that direction. Why should animals dream, if it was not for practising behaviour? What does get consolidated in dreams is procedural/spatial memory - like running, throwing - such things. This is something you got to do in dreams - works the same in LDs - see the findings, that regions that control the motoric of running light up when lucid running.
Latest findings point towards other memory consolidation actually taking place in non-REM:

Originally Posted by from Wikipedia

Cognitive neuroscience of dreams - Memory-related theories

According to one theory, certain memories are consolidated during REM sleep. Numerous studies have suggested that REM sleep is important for consolidation of procedural memory and spatial memory.
(Slow-wave sleep, part of non-REM sleep, appears to be important for declarative memory.)
A recent study shows that artificial enhancement of the non-REM sleep improves the next-day recall of memorized pairs of words.
Tucker et al. demonstrated that a daytime nap containing solely non-REM sleep enhances declarative memory but not procedural memory. Monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors and tricyclic antidepressants can suppress REM sleep and these drugs show no evidence of impairing memory.
Some studies show MAO inhibitors improve memory. Moreover, one case study of an individual who had little or no REM sleep due to a shrapnel injury to the brainstem did not find the individual's memory to be impaired.

So that makes it quite doubtful, that dreams are specifically and only responsible for memory management.

Originally Posted by dutchraptor

My posts explored the possibilities that since activating higher functions results in increased norepinephrine production (which causes enhanced memory formation) it makes sense why dreams would try limit them.

While it is true, that with any arousal norepinephrine levels will rise - it does not play a distinct or special role in memory formation. It has been shown to be associated with memory retrieval:

A distinct role for norepinephrine in memory retrieval. [Cell. 2004] - PubMed - NCBI

A role for norepinephrine in learning and memory has been elusive and controversial.
A longstanding hypothesis states that the adrenergic nervous system mediates enhanced memory consolidation of emotional events.
We tested this hypothesis in several learning tasks using mutant mice conditionally lacking norepinephrine and epinephrine, as well as control mice and rats treated with adrenergic receptor agonists and antagonists.
We find that adrenergic signaling is critical for the retrieval of intermediate-term contextual and spatial memories, but is not necessary for the retrieval or consolidation of emotional memories in general. The role of norepinephrine in retrieval requires signaling through the beta(1)-adrenergic receptor in the hippocampus. The results demonstrate that mechanisms of memory retrieval can vary over time and can be different from those required for acquisition or consolidation. These findings may be relevant to symptoms in several neuropsychiatric disorders as well as the treatment of cardiac failure with beta blockers.

This is no cherry picking - check NA and memory and the above is what you get primarily.

Originally Posted by dutchraptor

And you could be very wrong on the part where you say that experience equates to memories. A memory must be stored to be labelled as a memory, and an experience in a dream that we do not remember is not stored as a memory precisely because the lack of neurotransmitters. It cannot be regarded as a memory, it never reaches that stage and is never even stored outside of a very temporary cache like memory.

Well - this is now a semantic question.
A completely forgotten experience is something for example coming about with amnesic drugs - being given midazolam causes an anterograde amnesia - meaning you can't lay down memories for what follows.
It's done for example for a colonoscopy, where it's not justified to do a narcosis, because of it's dangers - but the aim of the midazolam is, that you don't have the memory of the suffering - mainly to be willing to have it done again. Usually they don't say that - but I did have a strong memory not of the pain, but of having said directly afterwards that never in my life would I forget that. But I did.

It feels like not having had the experience, but you obviously did, while it happened.
So there is a difference.

But normal dreams are another thing again, I think.
First of all - you say yourself, that memories of them get stored in a cache. And nobody would doubt that they can be potentially and also generally assessed consciously after awakening. And that is exactly what memories are - something initially only intermediately stored and retrievable.

It depends on the attention and intention to remember them, if they are to become more permanent. But they are stored in intermediate caches and such are experiences as well as memorized experiences. One can train and come to remember (almost) all of one's dreams.
If they are impressive - it's easy to remember dreams also just like that.
So I don't understand, how you come to generalize, and say the following about non-lucids:

Originally Posted by dutchraptor

Evidence points towards lucid dreams being radically different than normal dreams, and on that same note an experience where memories are stored is going to be different to an experience where memories never even get to that point.

This possibility can absolutely not be disputed at this point in time.

Well - either something is a mere possibility - or it is indisputable - an indisputable possibility, hm.
If you mean, that one can remember LDs much better - surely - not only possible.
But it goes for waking life as well - if I spend time on autopilot, doing whatever without self-awareness - I won't remember it well.
I very much doubt that memories "never even get to that point" in normal dreams, though. If I understand correctly, what you actually want to mean by that.

Originally Posted by dutchraptor

The further you go down our ancestors, the lower self awareness goes you will notice that there is more and more reason for the dreams to occur in a largely unconscious fashion. It is beneficial for a primitive animal to dream in this state, because otherwise the confusion between dreams and reality could lead to life threatening behavior.
In humans, children until the age of 4 actually have a very hard time differentiating between the two.
And if higher functions where common within a dream then we probably couldn't survive very long without the knowledge of what a dream is.
This all leads back to the argument that perhaps it is beneficial for the brain to limit our higher functions.

No - I don't notice anything the like. Our ancestors just didn't have meta-consciousness like we do - and so animals of course dream without it. Why would you think, it is beneficial to an animal to dream at all?
And why would it be a problem for it, if it thought, that it's dreams are real? Where is the danger in that? I am pretty sure, they can't differentiate.
There is only a hypothetical danger of this for humans - we are the ones, who define themselves and decide things on the basis of our past experiences, which could get problematic, when memories are mixed with dream-memories.
But we learn the difference while growing up. And we discard dreams as irrelevant mostly - and cease to remember them like kids do.

It's almost as if it were fashionable to accuse higher mental faculties of being harmful, I think sometimes.
Like with claiming that consciousness and sapience would have been evolutionary mishaps. That is so ridiculous in a way - how did we get to survive better than all the other (higher) critters, who competed with us, ever? Except maybe bacteria - but there are different ways to world-domination - ours looks quite effective, if not necessarily sustainable. Maybe - hopefully - we are even clever enough to do something about this.

Originally Posted by dutchraptor

We've only had a few thousand years of actually living in circumstances where confusing a dream for reality is likely to not be a great disadvantage to the human.

See above - quite the contrary is true, if you want to follow that thought by all means.
If you dream of having signed a contract, and think it really happened, and then make some business decisions based on that - good luck, I'd say.
We know the difference - and we know, what a lucid dream is even more - at least that's the normal state of affairs with mainly dreaming non-lucidly. But I agree with you, sort of, in that LDing is only really useful - not harmless - since some thousands of years.
Again for practising life in simulation.

Since having meta-consciousness irl - we should practise with it for maximal effect of the nightly practice sessions, but evolution of dream-consciousness might lag a bit behind. Now that's just my thinking, but why shouldn't it make sense? LDing is not in the TST, but should be!

If we have easy and total access to LDing all REM-night, we will face the danger of addiction to it, I fear, and trying to escape reality to an unbecoming degree.

Originally Posted by dutchraptor

So as I said earlier, while it feels intuitively wrong for you to believe, there is in fact a very large base of evidence backing the possibility, and the true reality of the situation is that we can't say for sure until we get more evidence. There really is no need to pick a side.

It is not only my intuition - there is also evidence backing my ideas up. And I didn't say, I know, what is really the matter - I just say I follow another theory than you do - said threat simulation theory.
You will always be right, when posing that there are other possibilities as well, until we know much, much more about consciousness and dreaming and lucid dreaming. But it is not correct to say, my beliefs spring only from intuition, as opposed to yours being backed up by evidence.
The TST actually warrants a thread of it's own.



Some anecdotal stuff of mine around dreaming and memories:

Last night - the first dream has me throwing my bag with my camera in it out of a window.
I didn't wake up in between, and then dreamt the following:
I was telling people, that I would have dreamt of throwing my bag out of a window last night. A friend of mine goes - yes!! I have dreamt of this as well - how stupid - out of the 23rd story-window and your camera was in it - and she knew more details.
Then it dawned on me - that sounds as if we had a shared dream!! Oh damn - how can I explain that rationally??

Another dream was me dreaming something, I had exactly so dreamt before - conclusion in-dream upon remembering that - that must have been a precognitive dream! rolleyes.gif

I'll copy paste more from my workbooks and DJ in the spoiler:

Spoiler for more examples dream-to-dream memories:

I just wanted to mention, that in a dream last night, I justified hearing something about flying trains with the memory of that other dream, which featured a flying train.

Originally Posted by spd

Interesting StephL I can only recall a similar experience once I had a dream there was a blue goat that was getting chased by a bigger blue creature and later on that night I was telling someone about that exact scene and I even had a flashback in the dream repeating the scene. They are unusual experiences

They are spd - thanks for sharing!
I believe by thinking about such instances, one might be able to gain a bit of insight into the workings of dreaming-mind memory.
What I have quite often, is that certain features of my dream-sceneries stays more or less the same over many dreams.
Something derived from actual reality, but with distinct features, which are missing irl.
Like for example a little wooden house, I had built in a dream to have something to sleep in, when visiting the place I grew up, since my mother moved away. It's rather a small shack - and I have dreamt of it at least three times. I don't have overly good recall, so it might have been much more often.
And many more things - a flat with similar to identical layout, which is completely dream-generated, not a memory.
Funnily for a while, I had often dreamt of our old house still standing and me staying there. So I used it as dream-sign - incubated it. But after getting lucid twice from realizing, it has been ripped down irl - the stupid thing doesn't show up any more...

Originally Posted by StephL

Yeah - this makes all perfect sense - but where is the reference in your dream to lucid living, or as you so nicely put it - doing creative reality checks? If you don't actually have something from your dream to deduce that from - you're just saying it out of the blue sky, because that would have been the answer, which you would have wanted to get.

And I guess, that's the one, you should be following too! Trust thy consciousness!!

The thing why I bring it up again is not because I want to pester you - I find it highly interesting, how and why it is, that you take this extraordinary jump in conclusions - it's fascinating.

I suppose I didn't really elaborate on that much at all did I. Since it was a lucid dream, I can communicate telepathically with the dream characters. I can read their body language with 100% accuracy, and they know my every thought (if I want them to). Since this particular DC was talking too much, and not giving me any verbal space to get my question out, I had to pose it mentally. I directed a mental question along the lines of, "Isn't lucid living (basically self awareness and memory) the most effective way for me to have more lucid dreams?" and her cryptic reply about "when a cancer patient finds the cure, it isn't so important to try anymore" was a very indirect way of saying, 'you got it, run with that, stop your search' As she said that to me, it immediately brought to my mind the lucid living idea again, as if she were finding a way to express it inside my own mind.

From my personal experience in the dream, telepathic communication and all, it was like she was first baiting me for an easy out with supplements to see if I would just give up at that, but when I pushed more, with a direct question about what I thought, she agreed with me that it was the best idea. Best for me that is. Which opens up a whole can of worms about superlatives. It's best for now, but I'm pretty sure I'll improve upon it or find something better when new information presents itself to me.

Spoiler for TMI?:

Recognizing that the whole dream is me, every part of it, the communication is a bit more complex, because the entire dream is a message. I thought all these extra bits were just TMI for people. I don't recall if I included this bit earlier, but after I got my answer from her, just before I woke up, I stood there, and took in every bit of the whole experience and listened to it with every fiber of my being, every perceptive capability I have, and just absorbed it for the message it was giving me. Basically being hyper alert/mindful of every aspect of the moment, with a recognition that it is speaking to me on some level, and I can learn from it. The fact that I woke up shortly after doing this could be due to many things. Maybe it was telling me to start living this way right now. Or maybe I drank too much water before bed. Or maybe my subtle thoughts in my mind triggered the dream to occur just before waking and having to pee, precisely to give me that message. That last one sounds crazy, I'm just throwing out random interpretations at this point, I think I just had to pee...

Since I chose to believe that lucid living is the best reality check for my personal situation, I did ask directly (telepathically) about it, and since it is what I believe, it makes sense that my subconscious/unconscious/dreamcharacter/younameit would agree with me, since it is me. If I didn't believe it personally, I probably would've asked something different, and gotten a different answer. The whole premise of how to have more lucid dreams seems to me to be very dependent on the individual, and their likes/dislikes/daily life/responsibilities, etc, and I must say I have learned a lot from people on this site, which has shaped my beliefs about lucid dreaming to a good extent.