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

I not only browsed this site, but also the Internet, and cannot--for the life of me--find one person's account of ever talking to their subconscious. What little I could find, I can condense into a few points.

• People ask for singular things, like a dream job, soul mate, a fear, or a secret about themselves (usually from the dream itself or a random character), but never have an actual conversation.
• They try to talk to their subconscious, but receive very unclear answers (likely due to inexperience)
• People always inquire about themselves and never the subconscious itself
• Those who have actually properly conversed with it, never share their experiences for whatever reasons
• People claim they have, but never elaborate or offer any details at all
• The rest just claim it can't be done or are unaware of it

But has anyone ever had a proper conversation with their subconscious? As far as all the accounts I can find, the answer is no. You'd think people would jump at the chance to learn everything about themselves, essentially from themselves. Or learn more about the nature of lucid dreaming and what new things they can do, without trying to figure it out from trial-and-error or random ideas.

Who else could these supposed "dream guides" be who know what they do about you? Unless you believe they're some form of foreign entities.

Since dreams are nothing more than environments made by your mind, and the subconscious is this largely unexplored part of your mind which plays a vital role to the creation of your dreams, doesn't it make sense to try and learn more about your subconscious? It's not like you have to debate whether it exists, and communicating with it is very possible. And yet, there's so little information on it regarding personal experiences in communicating with it.

If anything, attempt to communicate with it not for the purposes of personal curiosity, but to learn more about how to properly lucid dream. What's the point of lucid dreaming if it can't be done efficiently, right? And the reason I haven't done any of this yet is because I haven't had the chance to. If my previous attempts at lucid dreaming worked, believe me, it would have been the first thing I did, and then share the information with the rest of you. Hopefully information that can help the poor souls who for unknown reasons, can't have a lucid dream until months. And that's due largely to ignorance, because we don't know what factors separate the "lucky" ones from those who have to struggle.

I don't know how else people expect to improve lucid dreaming if not through this method. Where else are they going to learn? Unless they, again, plan doing trial-and-error with random ideas in the hopes they're successful. Or wait for scientists to develop a solution (and I'm not holding my breath for however long that will take). Hell, this site could have a few proficient volunteers try out this method and see what they come up. It's not asking them to sacrifice a large portion of their dream time, nor something difficult that would take practice to master like, say, shape-shifting.

So, please, if you can prove me wrong, please do. Or if you know a story I managed to miss, please share it. What little stories I found were far from enlightening, and frankly, just plain boring. And lastly, if we can have some people to try out this method, I only see all the things we have to benefit from doing so, and I'd personally appreciate it a great deal.

Why do you believe the subconscious and you are different beings? You are both one and the same, in many parts but one as a sum.

That doesn't answer anything I've asked, and you clearly didn't read what I wrote.

"You'd think people would jump at the chance to learn everything about themselves, essentially from themselves." The subconscious is your own brain, just a different part of it. I don't know how you concluded I "believed" people and their subconscious minds were two different things.

Good point, I can't recall anyone ever talking about having a conversation with their subconscious mind either. This might sound mean but maybe most people are just kind of selfish and they just want to have fun in their dreams? Maybe they don't care about stuff like that, and only use LDing as a playground and an answering machine.

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Originally Posted by Screen

If anything, attempt to communicate with it not for the purposes of personal curiosity, but to learn more about how to properly lucid dream.

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That's one of my most important goals when I LD. Ask what method works best for me so I can stop all this trial and error stuff and only do my ideal technique, you know one thing doesn't work for everyone, it's varies on individual. Frankly, I don't understand why more people don't do this. One would think a newbie who managed to maintain a little control over their dreams would take advantage of it and learn what works best for them.

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Originally Posted by Screen

Since dreams are nothing more than environments made by your mind

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Well, that's what we assume, we don't know that for sure yet, just saying. Humans are not nearly as smart as they like to think they are.

Interesting topic as I too have wondered about it and tried to directly find and speak with my subconscious. From my experience I have had a hard time doing so, maybe there is some kind of defense mechanism to prevent me from doing so, I don't know about others but when I have tried in various occasions I have found that the dream seems to crash and destabilize almost immediately as i tried to call my subconscious even when I had a stable dream.

The most success I have had was when I expected my subconscious to come in through the door to me and lifted my hands towards the door and found it start opening and in comes a clone of myself. As soon as he got near me the dream ended.

What I have been doing instead is communicating with my inner self during the day and before going to sleep and just letting myself know that I am open to hear from it in whatever way it wishes to communicate, whether through dreams, or even in waking life. It is proving helpful, as i feel more in tune with my instincts and sometimes have the feeling that the way something happened was a direct message.

As for improving my lucid dreams, before I go to sleep or when i wake during the night, I ask myself in a kind way to allow me to have a lucid dream that night, not demanding but asking myself as if it's entirely up to my inner self's decision whether I do or not and that I do not wish to take shortcuts and progress with it at the right pace. This has been working for me, I get at least one lucid dream every week and it also depends on how determined I want that lucid dream too, as sometimes i just ask for a lucid dream automatically, but when i have genuine intent i seem to get results.

Now instead of trying to speak with myself in those lucid dreams I go on about the dream and see what any dc may have in store for me rather than having to be my clone dc.

Hope this helped you somehow, just a bit of how I see this now.

The subconscious mind consists of thoughts and feelings that you have no direct access to in waking life.
That's the very reason why people can learn lots of things by talking to their subconscious self - they find out things about themselves that are inaccessible in the waking world.

It's like getting superhuman sight and hearing that allows you to see in ultraviolet and infrared, and hear extremely low and high frequencies - you technically "see" and "hear" them in waking life, but you cannot actually notice them.
It's the same with your subconscious mind - you have no direct access to it in waking life, but in dreams it finally manifests itself in a a way that you can notice it.

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Originally Posted by Screen

if we can have some people to try out this method, I only see all the things we have to benefit from doing so, and I'd personally appreciate it a great deal.

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Couldn't quite understand - what exactly is the method to try?

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Originally Posted by NyxCC

Couldn't quite understand - what exactly is the method to try?

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Attempt to contact the subconscious and converse with it. Ask it what exactly it is, how to be a better lucid dreamer, things like that.

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Originally Posted by Screen

Since dreams are nothing more than environments made by your mind, and the subconscious is this largely unexplored part of your mind which plays a vital role to the creation of your dreams, doesn't it make sense to try and learn more about your subconscious? It's not like you have to debate whether it exists, and communicating with it is very possible. And yet, there's so little information on it regarding personal experiences in communicating with it.

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This is why people keep a dream journal and record the symbols, associations and signs.

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Originally Posted by Screen

So, please, if you can prove me wrong, please do. Or if you know a story I managed to miss, please share it. What little stories I found were far from enlightening, and frankly, just plain boring.

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I'm not here to prove anybody wrong but there is plenty of inspiration out there.
Check out Ewold, Ewoid, Surrealism, etc...

If you find that 'boring' then...?

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Originally Posted by Screen

I not only browsed this site, but also the Internet, and cannot--for the life of me--find one person's account of ever talking to their subconscious. What little I could find, I can condense into a few points.

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Maybe it was because the Shaman, the Yogi, Nikola Tesla, Franz Mesmer, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Salvador Dalí, etc. etc. never used the Internet?


The Shaman relied on Psychedelic plants to communicate with the ancestors and to bring back knowledge.

The Yogi via meditation in the attempt to reach enlightenment.

Freud and his work as a psychoanalyst, inc. free association, sexual symbolism, repression, libido, ego, etc.

Jung on the collective unconscious, archetypes, extraversion and intraversion, etc.

Red Book

In 1913, at the age of thirty-eight, Jung experienced a horrible "confrontation with the unconscious". He saw visions and heard voices. He worried at times that he was "menaced by a psychosis" or was "doing a schizophrenia". He decided that it was valuable experience and, in private, he induced hallucinations or, in his words, "active imaginations". He recorded everything he felt in small journals. Jung began to transcribe his notes into a large red leather-bound book, on which he worked intermittently for sixteen years.[13]

[13] ^ Jump up to: a b c d Corbett, Sara (16 September 2009). "The Holy Grail of the Unconscious". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-09-20.


Dalí - The paranoiac-critical method is a surrealist technique developed by Salvador Dalí in the early 1930s. He employed it in the production of paintings and other artworks, especially those that involved optical illusions and other multiple images. (Source: via Wikipedia.)


The subconscious language is symbolic, as in made up of pictures and metaphor. That's how the unconscious 'talks' to us.
We are all prone to using left-brain language methods and descriptions (I.e. words!)
Dreaming (and specifically) lucid dreaming gives us all a chance to interact with our inner-selves which is normally occluded.

TL;DR: I don't think your method is anything 'new.'

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Originally Posted by Screen

Attempt to contact the subconscious and converse with it. Ask it what exactly it is, how to be a better lucid dreamer, things like that.

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Well, I'm totally for finding ways to be a better lucid dreamer one way or another. It may be a bit difficult to get a straight answer from a DC though, as people who have participated in some of the "ask a DC" totms might have already noticed.

Highlander made a number of excellent points above, which leads me to the the following thoughts and question: We are indeed interacting with the subconscious but just the means of communication are different. Do we necessary have to personalize the subconscious as a DC and ask it direct questions or are there other ways to access it?

Something to think about. ;)

Highlander, I appreciate you trying to share information, but you completely missed my entire point. Using lucid dreaming to converse with the subconscious, to inquire about dreams and the subconscious itself. Symbols are one way it allegedly speaks to us, but it leaves too much room for interpretation and doesn't offer concise, clear answers. With lucid dreaming, that doesn't have to be the only method. None of the people you mentioned did what I specifically asked about. Use lucid dreaming to clearly converse and inquire about the subconscious and dreams. It's obviously nothing new and I don't know why you think I claimed it was. It's the most optimum way I can think of to learn more about lucid dreaming, and despite it's proven possibility, hardly anyone has tried, and fewer have succeeded, but I can't find their experiences. It's probably like mimihigurashi said, people in general don't care about it and have their priorities elsewhere.


Now, as for NyxCC, the solution to your question is simple: change the method. Characters offer too many varied responses. Sometimes they don't know, they have to "think" about it, they offer unclear answers, or they dismiss you altogether. I've seen accounts of people using alternatives methods for gathering information, without using characters. One is a man had a drawer, and when he opened it, there would be a piece of paper with his answers.

You could use a book, receive a text message, watch it as a movie, whatever you choose. I think the only reason using dream characters are so common is because that's the main--and for some people, only--method that's referenced in books, videos, etc. From the experiences I've read, people have had more success using inanimate objects for gathering information than they did with characters. At least with the former, when it generally didn't work, they merely "refreshed" it or tried again and got their answers.

The problem with that idea is that the subconscious doesn't work the same way the conscious mind does. The conscious mind is linear, focused, and thinks in terms of language, but the subconscious is holistic, unfocused, and thinks in images and symbols. When people 'talk to the subconscious' what they're really doing is as someone said above, trying to manifest it as a DC that they can talk to, expecting to get straight answers in simple straightforward terms. But that's like expecting a great poet to explain his deeply symbolic, ambiguous works in straightforward English - or asking somebody to explain a joke. The medium is the message.

You're always communicating with the subconscious, especially when dreaming. It's still running on the backchannel when you're awake, but the conscious is so much 'louder' and in your face so to speak, that it's hard to pick up the subtle quiet stuff going on in the background. Meditation helps with this. Quiet the monkey mind. But I think trying to force it to manifest artificially as a DC and talk to you is a strange and very unlikely approach. It's sort of like trying to talk with a foreigner and angrily demanding that they just talk to you in plain English, making no effort to understand through body language and subtle clues what they're trying earnestly to express. The subconscious is talking to you all the time, you just need to learn to hear it in its native language.

I think the above explanations are more than enough, so I won't be bringing more arguments to support them. Instead, I would like to quote Jung himself, which I think gives a direct answer to the question asked in OP.

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About the Red Book, Jung said:

The years… when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Everything later was merely the outer classification, scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then.

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So, basically, the entire work of Jung is based on his direct and indirect interaction (verbal and non-verbal) with the subconscious.

Darkmatters, have you actually ever tried what I'm suggesting? You're already assuming it will fail. And what about the other method I mentioned about using inanimate objects as opposed to characters? It would be different if you had some experiences to relate to it, but you're discounting it on the personal idea it sounds unlikely, even though there's still a great deal to learn about it.

Regardless of that, you and NyxCC are still missing my point. I'm not talking about just finding any form of communicating with the subconscious. I already know people have found ways to "talk" to it in the past mostly through imagery or cryptic answers. I'm talking about using lucid dreaming to inquire about the subconscious and lucid dreaming itself. And neither you, NyxCC, or Highlander, made that distinction in your posts.

Not trying to sound mean, for what it's worth. But you're neglecting that key point. Have you used lucid dreaming to inquire about the aforementioned? No, none of you have. And that's the point I'm making. If anyone has, they're not talking.

Ok, since there was no reply, I decided to delete my previous comment, because I think I have indeed missed the key point.

We got carried away arguing about things because we might have different definitions and understanding of how things work. I think there might have been some confusion coming from the title too.

We have looked at your suggestions as we do have a little bit of experience that it's not easy to get a meaningful logical answer in an ld, no matter what kind of question you ask.

Still, the process of exploration and discovery during lds enables each one to actually try and obtain such answers. No matter what the result, it may make for an interesting dream. So, do by all means try to find the answers you are looking for. If someone else decides to give your method a try, then they will post back here.

Most importantly, if you do need any help about ways to get lucid, we can start another thread where people can give you some nice tips. Or I can pm you some links or other info.

Hope this helps!

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Originally Posted by Screen

But has anyone ever had a proper conversation with their subconscious? As far as all the accounts I can find, the answer is no.

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You and I have a very different view of what the subconscious mind consists of. In my opinion the idea of trying to have a proper conversation with it makes about as much sense as trying to have a conversation with a fire hydrant.

The subconscious mind is just a collection of held out of view mental stuff. Lot's of luck looking for somebody there to have a conversation with because there's nobody home... let alone anyone that knows something about lucid dreaming.

"KNOCK KNOCK"
"Who's there?"
"Subconscious"
"Subconscious who?"
"How would I know? I'm subconscious."

There's nothing stopping us from doing a sock puppet act on the subject and thereby tricking ourselves into seeing some things we've long since pushed out of our own view, but that's about it.

My guess is that you're confusing the subconscious mind with some kind of all-knowing entity or higher power. Whether or not such an entity or being exists, and whether or not we can communicate with same, is another subject altogether.

All this is just my opinion of course, and if your mileage varies, that's okay by me.

I think this is a great idea. One of those things that is so obvious once I see it, that I am kicking myself for not thinking of it on my own. Taking into account the proposition that the subconscious communicates in a completely non-straightforward english method, I have a plan for my next LD:

Step 1: Stabilize it by rubbing my hands together or something
Step 2: Openly ask my subconscious in general to show me the most effective method for communicating with it in order to receive definite, clear responses that can be communicated with others in waking life.
Step 3: Use whatever method that is to ask my subconscious to reveal itself to me, in particular, what I need to know to have more lucid dreams.

Sounds like a solid plan to me. Unfortunately, my track record for lucid dreams is on the order of 12 per year, often all in groups of 3 or 4 at a time, so it may be a while before I report back. But the good news is that they do in fact happen, and it's only a matter of time :-)

If anyone has any ideas or tweaks to this plan, a better plan, or another idea, let us know.

I've talked to my sub-conscious before... I think I just mentioned it in an earlier post. Basically, I kind of wasted my time with it... I asked stupid questions that I already knew the answer to, to make sure he was real. He was... but still no closer to unlocking it... :(

@ Screen.

I'm sorry if I have missed your point in your posts where it is specific to lucid dreaming. Even so I couldn't discount the pioneering work on research into the subconscious from the last Century, etc; hence my original post.

- I thought that all roads might lead to Rome?

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Originally Posted by Screen

Or if you know a story I managed to miss, please share it. What little stories I found were far from enlightening, and frankly, just plain boring. And lastly, if we can have some people to try out this method, I only see all the things we have to benefit from doing so, and I'd personally appreciate it a great deal.

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You are quite free to read my dream journal entries. I'm pretty sure you will find examples of me interacting with my subconscious, athough I'm not sure if it relates to your specific model?

I hope I haven't wasted the last 3 years of my life with my stories?

Stories are for tabloid newspapers!


In my eyes having a 'proper' lucid dream is like a dog trying to chase its own tail.
There are difficulties even when you have mastered the basics. The schema is very fluid and challenging for example.

For me accurate recall is of prime importance as it is no good in 'communicating' with your subconscious (however 'way' you do it) if you cannot remember the experience clearly, or in most cases, not at all. :)


Edit:
Talking to the subconscious reminds me of a José Mourinho press interview...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV9V1UsF1FU

Well, we're working on it. Lots of us are. Keep reading. :)

So, I have a question. When asking questions to the subconscious, what do you expect the subconscious to be? Do you want it to manifest as a singular, specific object/character, or are you open to the idea that the entirety of your dreamworld is your manifested subconscious? If the latter, I think there are many examples of what you're looking for, just not in the specific form you want it to be delivered in.

I recently read a book about LDing that talks about testing the limits of self-awareness within the dream. Some of it you may find interesting, other parts maybe not so much. I suggest giving it a read, it's a pretty quick read in my opinion: Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self. I did a quick review below if you want to see if you might be interested:

Spoiler for Book Review:

Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self by Robert Waggoner was my most recent read for this blog. Though I finished it some weeks ago, I’ve neglected to write up my review.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It wasn’t particularly dense, so if you’re not willing to chew through a lot, this is a good pick. I read through it pretty quickly, and was pleased to find that it expanded on my already broad knowledge of lucid dreaming. For the first time I was introduced to the concept of bricoleur or “dream-maker” (a force behind the dream which generates all the little details that you did not specify), which I’m interested in exploring further.

The book is divided into two parts. Part I focuses primarily on the basics of lucid dreaming and quickly works its way into the author’s experiences in testing the limits of LDing. Part II focuses on using LDs as a tool for exploring the self, the psyche, and the limits of our consciousness.

Not only does this book further explore questions that I’ve recently been thinking about myself, it gave me some ideas for interesting LD experiments. For example: when you are lucid, ask the dream what different elements of the dream mean or symbolize. I’ve always had dreams about these crazy personified tornado beings, and I’d love to find out what the hell those are supposed to be.

The second part goes pretty deep into explorations of the consciousness, which I think I’ll have to revisit once I’m able to start lucid dreaming again.

Interesting thread screen. I like what you put on on most threads, even if you come over a bit rude some times. :) you seem honest and on a hunt for knowledge.

You ask if anyone has had a proper conversation with their subconscious. I have heard this from a million people on here:
I want to LD so that I can talk to my subconscious.
I don't quite understand what they want. I am guessing a DC that has a name tag that says "hello my name is your subconscious" and they will tell them about all the things that they ever need to know. Lol. This seems ridiculous to me. How would me or a part of me know something that I dont?I am the active player in my game of life. I know more than my subconscious. People want this mystical thing inside themselves to let them know "who they are". I know who I am, and it didn't take years of meditating or lucid dreaming to find it out. Everyone has "voices" in their head always hinting at where they should go and things that they should do. Listening to this, I realized that it is just things that I already know being pulled up., and I have it in me to be the next Ghandi or the next Dahmer, depending on what I choose. So it isn't some crazy philosophical answer, but it is the truth. Yes, things like circumstances or hormonal imbalances may lean you one way or the other, but in the end, you are who you choose to be.

What talking to your subconscious is really like:
Every dream character, every dream scene, every universe you are put in is your subconscious talking to you. This may contradict what I said last, lol, but I believe that dreams are a product of our thoughts mixed with our state of mind. So if you want a quick look at your state of mind, check out your non lucids.
Every dream character.
Technically, every dream character is your subconscious, but if you think of it that way 99% of the time, especially in lucids, you will think that your subconscious is mentally challenged. It seems like their are 3 types of dream characters, when lucid you can change things with dream control, but if you are just letting it run or not exercizing power, you will run into.
1) object DCs.
These are no more than parts of the background, but since you became lucid, you wanted to talk to them. They will stare at you. They aren't really meant to be in the foreground. If you look at them a little too much, you might notice a lack of detail. You would get more of an answer from the couch. Note object. Haha.

2) purpose DCs.
This DC was originally in the dream for a purpose. He was planning on saying "Marco!" And that was it. You walk up to him and think I will have a conversation with a DC! you put out your hand for him to shake it and have a conversation.
Me: what do you represent in the dream?
Him: Marco!
maybe he didn't hear you. Or that is his name
Me: Marco, what do you represent?
"Marco": Marco!
His eyes are wide and he is looking at you strange.
"Marco": Marco!
You leave.

After they do their purpose, they may leave or repeat. They may say more or less than this and are actually very similar to object DCs in the first place. Or if you exercise dream control, you might be able to change them into:

3) character dream characters.
You know these. They are just like people. Most of the time they are douches though. They can steal lucidity, stab you in the back or just convince you of something stupid. These are the ones that people call dream guides if they find one that wants to help. They seem to have a full blown personality with a personality of their own.

My phone rings, and I try to answer it, I had been lucid for about 20 minutes already.
Receptionist: those don't work down here.
I try to slide to answer the phone anyways. It is my mother.
Receptionist: look, it is morning already anyways.
I look from the moon base and see the sun rising on the horizon
Receptionist: you should wake up now.
Me: ok
I concentrate on both sets of eyes and open my real ones.

I am now awake in my bed. The clock reads 3 AM... That B.

Now... About them telling you how to LD better.
I would post links, but I am sure that you have seen them everywhere. Lots and lots of people including me have a DC that acts as a guide to the dream world. I wouldn't be able to do much dream control if I hadn't been taught the "walk method" by the old man. This can go as "my subconscious knowing me more than i know myself", expectation, or schema dream control.

So I think that everyone "talks to their subconscious" they just dont realize that it isn't a sentient being. If it is, it gets its "sentience" from you, so it doesn't has all that much to say. :P

edit: oh crap! I wrote more than the OP :P
Oh! I am putting up a thread about dream contents tomorrow. Be sure to check it out. :)

As others have said before - why do you expect, your unconscious knows how to get more lucid dreams?

ColdRusalka: dreams have to be--to an extent--a product of your mind that you're not consciously forming. Until becoming lucid, no one is making an active decision in what occurs in their dream. Even while lucid, they don't consciously create every single detail. I think it's similar to our bodies where some things are conscious like muscle movements, but others are not, like our hearts beating. I don't think dream characters are any more "aware" than a rock on the ground. They just give the impression. They're all just trying to fulfill a role based on our expectations. We expect the sky to be blue and objects stationary, and we expect people to talk, think, and have personalities, but by the end of the day, we know none of it is "real." What the subconscious will manifest as is up to chance. I think it's a matter of what it will be that's easiest to consult. In my case, preferably something like a book. Which sounds much easier to consult than a dream character for information.

StephL: Well, why do you expect it won't? How does it know things like your soul mate, dream job, or just plain how to perform a certain technique better? Somehow it--or whatever we're communicating with if you think the source is external--knows things about ourselves we consciously don't, and the nature of lucid dreaming. To this day, we don't even know why we dream, so there's obviously more to learn. What better place to start?

BrandonBoss: I'm not assuming to know anything about the subconscious, because it's still not a very understood topic. Is it just a library of every tiny detail we don't consciously remember like how many cracks are on a sidewalk? Or does it have a level of knowledge and understanding we've yet to access? Based on people's stories, somehow it knows things that we don't--or at the very least, don't remember as some confirmed--, and if you saw my post about Interviewing the Subconscious, you'll remember that was one of my planned questions. Who/What exactly is it, how is it different from us, etc. Since lucid dreaming allows the exploration of parts of our minds that we're normally cut off from, it invites new opportunities for learning. Now, I know, in a sense, people have "communicated' with the subconscious. But as I clarified earlier: who has used lucid dreaming to inquire about the subconscious itself, and the nature of lucid dreaming? Doing that specifically seems to be one of the best ways to start getting answers. The closest story resembling this that I've read is from a fellow member named kilham. Better to read her experiences for yourself in her posts, but in short, apparently the subconscious (or at least, the DC she talked to) considered itself and the conscious mind (her) a "team," which (in my opinion) is why it was talking in plural tenses. Suffice it to say, no one knows the full extent to what the subconscious mind truly is, or what--if possible--it identifies itself as. It doesn't make sense to me to think of it as a separate entity, but more as an unexplored part of the mind. Scientists are always learning new things about our bodies and the nature of reality that often surprise and shock them. Humans and nature still hold many secrets to discover--like the subconscious mind and dreams--and again, lucid dreaming invites an opportunity of learning we normally wouldn't have before.

But, regardless of all of that, my primary goal--as you may have read in my other posts--is to discover how I can reprogram my subconscious mind through lucid dreaming, and accomplish in a night, which may have taken days with other methods like hypnotism or affirmations. That, at the very least, is very possible and very practical.

Lastly, I wasn't trying to come off as rude to anyone. Remember our first encounter? A misunderstanding from what the other person is trying to say, or how. Honestly, it's why I don't like having many conversations online, because you always encounter this annoyance eventually. To be fair, I know maybe my title might have given a not fully positive impression. I was really just trying to make it more of an attention-grabber, since my previous posts generated little views, and thus, few replies.

This is an interesting topic. I've never focused on this aspect of dreaming. I don't think I've tried talking to my subconscious itself, but I've had people appear in my dreams to give me messages. They felt "outside" of the dream if that makes any sense? For example, there are your regular DCs, and then there are characters that seem so clear to you, like a star shining bright out of the darkness of space. There's something different about them. I had one of those people, (his name was Lucian), tell me "Trust no one but yourself." But then again it might have just been my subconscious projecting something that I have trouble with in real life (trusting people). *shrug*

I'll try focusing on speaking with my subconscious for the next couple days and report if I had any success. Granted, my dreams are always action packed and it's hard to catch a break or have a peaceful moment. As for the people who are "lucky" (which is an arguable term) and don't struggle with remembering their dreams, I suppose I'm one of those. I've done some research and experimentation to try and figure out why I lucid dream every night. Anyways, I believe those who remember their dreams most often have short REM latencies; the amount of time between REM and consciousness. If it takes less time for you to wake up after a REM cycle it makes sense the dream would be fresher in your mind. I clocked myself at falling into REM, dreaming, and waking up under 10 minutes. (It's usually from me pressing the snooze button too much :lol: ) You should look up REM latency though if you haven't already. That's the only reason I can think of that would cause lucid dreaming every night.

That is quite interesting. I think that it should know more about LDing, as I said, but I doubt it will have more than purely knowledge up there. I have actually heard a sermon in a dream that I was working on and taught it at a bible study. Maybe it is like this:
There are some functions that I know that my brain can do (like see through my eyelids and such) that it only does on occasion, what if in a dream we are simply at a place with nothing stopping it. No restrictors on. What if i could make myself idetic? Or always be able to remember what is behind me with 100% and to guess what else would be there just from the other senses? What if I could make time seem to move slower when i am having fun and faster when i am bored. These are things that the subconscious is in control of. So instead of letting these things be like our heart (completely controlled by subconscious) let them be like our lungs (controlled by subconscious unless we want it otherwise). I simply don't think that talking to it is the right answer since it isn't another person. I will definitely keep an eye out on your experiments!

I didn't think you were trying to come off rude. :P the title sounded kind of rude, and as I said, you just seem like you have a thirst for knowledge and it would take too much time to put everything in "happy" format. :P it comes out good and honest. I like it!

Well - it's worth a try!
Good luck anybody with it!
I'd like to "converse" with myself as well, but am battling with my insufficient skill-level at the moment, still.
Things like my soul-mate or dream-job - hm.
Theoretically - if I got the background information stored away somewhere - could be possible to be reminded of something.
I wouldn't ever come up with asking for who my true love would be - not only because of being married - what should it throw up, if not the actual or a past lover?
But since it was a TOTM basic and seemed easy enough to do - I asked a DC.
This is what happened:

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So I sat down on a bar stool and asked her, who my true love would be.
She got a conspirational look on her face, took out a piece of paper and pen and wrote down a sentence - one word per line.
And I couldn't read it - the letters were clear, and I could read it as in read it out loud, but didn't understand it.

So I asked what it means - and she said, it would be in a language, I was yet to learn.
A mix of Latin and something else. It became apparent then, that there was indeed Latin shining through the words.
She said - once I learn that other language - I would know the answer, too.

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This seems sort of typical from what I read of others - if you ask things right out - in words, for which you don't consciously have an answer - such cryptic stuff is what people tend to get.

Sometimes, deep in meditation, we can gain insights into things, and the solutions to problems present themselves. I did this a little while ago, lay down, meditated for a good long while, and then thought about this thread oddly enough. I didn't plan on that, but I reminded myself of my determination to check on this in my next lucid dream. I then got an answer that just appeared to my mind. Not sure where it came from really, but it makes sense to me.

If you want to be more aware that you are dreaming when you are dreaming, try to be more aware that you are awake when you are awake.

I think the method for actually doing that is going to be unique for everyone, and it sounds very similar to doing reality checks in my opinion. But with the difference of what you do afterwards. If you determine you are awake, hold onto that realization, and live life accordingly, without forgetting you are awake. By making the waking hours lucid, that habit of mind will manifest during dreams as well.

I'm still going to ask in my lucid dreams for the sake of the thread, but I'm satisfied.

Hey screen, you of course asked an impossible question at the outset, because proving you talked to your subconscious would be impossible, even to yourself.
However, I do think that lucid dreaming probably allows you to get closer to achieving that goal.
The first problem is to define what your subconscious actually is, and that debate could go on and on.
I like to think of it as something that influences the way you think and act without conscious input.
An example would be the fight or flight response.
So, if your lucid dream conjures up stuff that you are not consciously controlling, that, to me, is your subconscious coming through.
Then it just becomes a case of interpreting what your subconscious is "saying".
If you meant literally having a conversation with your subconscious, then whether incarnate as a DC, or as a feeling or disembodied voice, I still assert that you are conversing with your subconscious if it's not a consciously created scene or feeling.

It seems that you are implying that the subconscious has some mysterious inner depth, a bit akin to a soul. I think of it as simply all the stuff you mind does that your conscious thought is unaware of.

There are now known to be 2 thought levels, the fast and slow. Fast is the automatic learned responses, and slow is the deliberate logical process. Fast is like the auto-pilot stuff we all do without thinking, or the fast reflex stuff in sport etc..
For me the subconscious is the fast automatic response type thinking that goes on, that is below (sub) the conscious logical thought processes; the slow logical thinking.

If you start wondering about whether your subconscious has the answers to some high level moral or religious questions, I don't think it works like that. It's more basic - we are, after all , just apes when you remove the top layer of slow conscious thought.

Extra edit to the post: Since I can't edit the original now, I want to add this clarification to anyone who still reads this. "Has anyone used lucid dreaming to actively communicate with and inquire about the subconscious itself?" I hate having to clarify the, "not trying to be rude part," but I have to because it's the Internet and you can't hear my tone. But that's all I'm asking about, nothing else. And anyone who might have done what I asked has never published their experiences, or I simply can't find them.

Some people still weren't getting that point, so I wanted to clarify. Again, not intending to be rude. So if you have done what I've asked, please share your experiences and the questions you asked.

There was one time, a few years back, that in a dream I had something very odd happen. I assume it was my subconscious and not anything else as I don't believe in other things that it could have been. (evil spirits etc)
I was having a nightmare, very common for me, but this one took a rather ugly turn like I had never had before. I'm almost always self aware in dreams but I don't let myself know.. Hard to describe.. Like I know but I don't try to change things. I let the dream just sort of flow and see where it goes.
Well this one time it passed a place of my comfort zone big time and I wanted to wake up. I said in the dream, Wake up now. Normally doing this snaps me out of a dream very fast and I wake up in a panic from it. But it works.. However, this time it did not.. First time for everything right? I was so startled that it was not working I started to panic and felt like I was going to stop breathing in the dream.

Then things just stopped, like time standing still. There was a person standing in front of me. They looked like something or someone I had seen before. They just stood there. All I could say was "Who are you?" As I said it it's mouth moved with mine saying the same words.. I had this overwhelming sense of fear and dread just looking at it.

Then it said, "You know me." This time I said the same as it as it spoke.Then it said "This is what I like." "I miss you." "Stay." I said the same things as it did again.
After that it looked sad and came close to me. Then without any warning it touched me and as it did I woke up.

Never again have I seen this person in a dream. But I also don't ever try to leave a dream now...
I do sometimes wonder if they would come back if I tried to. But I could feel they knew things that I could never understand and frankly I don't think I would want to.

Also I don't think I could have asked it anything even if I had wanted to.. The feeling I had with it was so overpowering that I could hardly move let alone talk with it. So sadly if that was my subconscious I don't think I'll ever get info out of it.

Screen, I guess I was saying that when we LD we ARE sort of "talking to our subconscious", depending on how you define subconscious and how you define talking.
What you appear to be asking is a bit like saying, "has anyone talked to God, you know, the old guy with a beard in the clouds, have you actually had a conversation with him?"

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Originally Posted by Bimulous

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That's really fascinating, I've just gotten into LD'ing recently (despite doing it as a child all the time)

I think thats a really powerful metaphor for what the subconscious is even if its 'not' your subconscious

I had a dream a while back, details are fuzzy but it had the same mirroring type thing happening I think dreaming can train us to be more empathic and to me that sounds like the most empathic you can be, with yourself! This sounds like time for some ultra-realization to have a subconscious you love if thats possible, "I LOVE ME".

edit: to elaborate on my dream it was an endless amount of people but we all couldn't touch, if I moved forward everyone moved forward, and anything I did was 'mirrored' in that effect

I don't think you really ever could talk to your subconscious. It's pure information, everything you don't think about, every little thing going on that you do without thinking.. That's what ones subconscious is to me. I would picture it as a very primal, all knowing thing (Well, it would know everything you have every seen, felt or heard).. But that's just me.

Goldenspark, it's clear you're not even trying to understand what I'm saying. I am not, nor was I ever, asking anyone to define the subconscious to me. You'll never be able to quote that question in any part of my post. I haven't been told an idea about what it is, or its possible nature to lucid dreaming, that I haven't already considered. I'm not discounting any of your theories about it, but you're presenting them in a way as if you're trying to educate me when it's only your opinion, and I find that very rude.

Regardless of how you define the subconscious, have you both actively and consciously, sought out, communicated with, and inquired about its existence? No, you haven't. But it's your own fault you didn't understand my point even after I added clarification. And judging by your choice of words of, "appear to be asking," you still didn't understand my point, so you should have just asked and I would have gladly explained further. Instead of reaching a rash conclusion and making that completely irrelevant comparison. That, was very rude.

I understand why it is quite confusing for almost everyone, we all know that DC's, dreams, objects in dreams, etc... all of it is subconscious and we are able to talk to it, we all have done it, but the question Screen is asking is if anyone has tried talking to your subconscious about ITSELF. Not like: "hey, can you tell me which path is better for me?", but more like: "what are you?, how are you constructed?, are there any differences between the conscious me and you?". It's an interesting idea, no harm in doing it. I asked some of it today during a LD, it's not a shocking or interesting answer but since you're interested in these experiences I'll share my attempts and keep trying:

I was inside a house I didn't know, suddenly I remembered that a few seconds ago I was lying in my bed so I became lucid and touched the walls to stabilize the dream. The house was empty, I found my ex-BF opening the fridge, avoiding eye-contact (I'm starting to feel like Cobb in inception movie, because my ex-BF keeps appearing first in my LD's). I knew this DC wasn't the best option for a deep conversation, so I just asked him:
Me: "can you tell me something I need to know?".
P: "no... I don't have anything to say..."
Me: "ok.. then, can you tell me where can I find how to talk to my subconscious...uhmm.. in a deeper way I mean".
P: look outside in the hammock

I didn't understand so I went out of the house and there was indeed a hammock, and and old man sleeping there. I woke him up.
Me: sorry to bother you, but can you tell me what are you?? what the subconscious is??
old man: I'm not the one who answers but the one who asks. So I'll answer you with a question.

And... that's it, I lost lucidity, regained it later but didn't last enough to keep trying on that subject. But what I've been thinking about is that in LD's I don't need to explain myself, my words, my intention, nor do the DC's as well, there's some -intuitive- conversation. It's not like when you're talking to someone in waking life that you need to explain what do you mean so that they don't get it the wrong way. I didn't have to explain to the old man in my dream that by "what are you?" I didn't mean as a person. It's interesting because there are no assumptions like the ones there are in ANY human conversation.

So, before anyone ASSUME it's intention by answering "I'm not the one who answers, but the one who asks", I'll explain that I felt that he answered the question as being subconscious itself, not like a pretentious person trying to say "hey hey, calm down, I'm the one who makes the questions"... no, I didn't FEEL it that way. I felt that it was a plain answer, with no intention in it, so the answer could be read as this: "The subconscious is not the one who answers, but the one who asks".
I'm explaining this because I know it can be misunderstood.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Screen

Regardless of how you define the subconscious, have you both actively and consciously, sought out, communicated with, and inquired about its existence?

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Screen,

Have you tried to communicate with the subconscious mind this way? If so, did you do so in a waking state or a lucid dreaming state, and what happened?

Niall

kilham: yes, thank you for adding the extra clarification, and sharing your experiences--always interesting to read about. I'm not sure why dream characters offer the answers they do. Maybe it's part expectation of complex human nature, and part difficulty in creating characters with enough sentience.

Nailler: not yet, but I plan to. And the next part I'm about to say goes to you, too, kilham. I think everything in the dream is made of the same "material." By that, I mean they all originate from a source before they become the sky, a tree, or a character. Their seeming sentience probably shares a single origin as well. Since you can "grant" sentience to objects and talk to them, maybe you're not communicating with a singular thing, but an expression of that same origin. This is why I think characters aren't really sentient, they just give us that impression. What's truly sentient, is the source they're an expression of: the subconscious. Again, I don't know any of this yet, just working on the idea.

So, if everything is an expression of that same intelligence, you could use anything to communicate with it. My idea is to try and use a book that might be like an encyclopedia of my mind, and I can browse its pages for the answers I'm looking for. I think this method might be more concise and less cryptic. I think part of this relies on expectation. We expect people to be complex, and so that's how they manifest. Like how we expect the sky to be blue, and so it is, even though there's no reason it should be in a dream, right? So we expect a book to be concise and clear in its answers, and that's how it should manifest. If this approach works, I'll be able to see what answers I can learn from it.

I've re-read your posts and mine and I can't see anything rude in my responses to you. Of course what I said was my opinion and I apologise that you have interpreted it as trying to educate you. The answer to your simple question is "no".

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Originally Posted by Screen

What's truly sentient, is the source they're an expression of: the subconscious.

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In my opinion, the only thing truly sentient in the mix is you. All those things you mention, including the subconscious mind, are an expression of you.

That said, I do think your experiment of visualizing your subconscious as a book might prove interesting... a neat via for learning more about your own nature.

didn't Robert Waggoner basically do this? he talks about it in his book, how he shouts out to the dream and it responds? He calls it the dream awareness, or awareness behind the dream, or something like that.

Screen--
Interesting questions. I developed lucidity, the ability to operate consciously in dreams, not according to the models here, but to begin to gain control over a realm which has been occupied by...foreign powers, largely religious, who have swallowed us like Jonah into the belly of their whale in order to program their history. I developed "lucid abilities" in dreaming as a response to this, to try to change it, so the human future holds sway here. My principal "guru," was my daughter when very young. She was in tune with this to a degree that was scary and encouraged me to develop all the control possible in this unconscious realm. "Lucidity" is, for me, simply a term that describes the multiple ways one can enter the unconscious with the sword of human conscience and power to reclaim it.

Hummer

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hummer

Screen--
Interesting questions. I developed lucidity, the ability to operate consciously in dreams, not according to the models here, but to begin to gain control over a realm which has been occupied by...foreign powers, largely religious, who have swallowed us like Jonah into the belly of their whale in order to program their history. I developed "lucid abilities" in dreaming as a response to this, to try to change it, so the human future holds sway here

Hummer

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Fantastic a like-minded soul.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tofur

didn't Robert Waggoner basically do this? he talks about it in his book, how he shouts out to the dream and it responds? He calls it the dream awareness, or awareness behind the dream, or something like that.

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This is supposedly exactly so:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LucidJordan

..
During a lucid dream last night I remembered an interview I watched a few nights earlier with Robert Waggoner on Conscious TV:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf0g1YZa8co

and he said that he had started to address questions to the awareness behind the dream rather than the objects in the dream with interesting results of an inner voice responding, "an awareness within an awareness", and so I stopped and asked out loud during my lucid dream "What is the meaning of this?". When I asked the question I didn't really think about what "this" was, or what exactly I was asking about, and as soon as I asked that question it felt like something heavy had hit me in the back of the head only there was no pain, just a white flash that persisted for a few seconds, a faint dizzy feeling and a white noise ringing sound. Then I lost conscious thought and continued to just dream as normal.

...

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Now something to Goldenspark:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Goldenspark

Screen, I guess I was saying that when we LD we ARE sort of "talking to our subconscious", depending on how you define subconscious and how you define talking.
What you appear to be asking is a bit like saying, "has anyone talked to God, you know, the old guy with a beard in the clouds, have you actually had a conversation with him?"

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While I understand, that you feel, it's not an answer to your question, Screen - I think it is, and it grasps something, which shimmered through your question.
That is the idea of there being a unified unconscious ("sub" would indicate I subscribe to Freud).
Just like a god, in principle - but I also hold the opinion, there is not.
There is an unconscious, which by the very "un-" suggests unity - in the end effect, with what you could communicate will always be a partition of that whole complex of neural functions.
And so the "literally" in the title does not make a lot of sense.
I hope, I made myself clear here and didn't come over rude.

I know I am more than a little late to this game (story of my life), and folks like Darkmatters, BrandonBoss, and Steph have already said anything I would have said in direct terms, but as long as I'm here:

Unfortunately, Screen, you may have the whole thing backward. I have been working on this for many years, and have found that LD'ing seems to be a great tool for exploring the unconscious; indeed, it might be the best tool, given the unique perspective you have when consciously observing your self from a dream.

This observation is done almost totally through metaphor and emotion, since verbal communication seems a function of the conscious end of the mind's spectrum (so a direct verbal conversation is likely impossible, or would be little more than a DC repeating exactly what you expect to hear, because that marks the limit of unconscious verbal communication). But the observation can only occur after you've gotten good enough at LD'ing to actively pay attention to the right things; you are not going to learn how to do it from your unconscious. Why? Because your unconscious doesn't know how to do it!

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.

So, if there were a separate being in your head that was the unconscious (which there is not), and you could communicate verbally with it (which you cannot), it would likely just say "Hell if I know" to your question about how to be lucid; or, more likely, it would offer up a way to LD that is a direct reflection or projection of what you already know.

I am by no means belittling the unconscious here. I believe that the unconscious mind does represent a vast storehouse of knowledge and action, because it has a more global access to memory and body than we do consciously. In a sense, that rest of Freud's "iceberg" is memory, perhaps even everything you've ever experienced. Combine that with unconscious connections to otherwise autonomic processes (i.e., memory creation and storage, social behavior, maintenance of your physical body), and you have a potentially very powerful tool for learning about yourself, bettering yourself, and maybe even making yourself (and your Self) a bit more healthy. But that combination would result from a conscious connection with the machinery of your mind (the unconscious being its control room), and that conscious connection could happen with lucid dreaming. But you need to teach our unconscious how to LD, and not the other way around.

Finally, even if your unconscious held all the secrets of LD'ing, the skills you would need to master to unearth those secrets during a dream are vastly more difficult than simply learning to LD... so if you are able to literally ask your unconscious how to LD, you probably would already know how to do it, and likely wouldn't even care anymore!

tl;dr: You must know how to lucid dream before you can ask your unconscious anything, and not the other way around. Also, you must know how to do it quite well before you can assemble metaphors and emotional cues that mean something unconsciously, that will coax it into desired action (i.e., memory retrieval, physical healing, problem solving). Similarly, you must have these skills well in hand before you can truly observe and understand the foundations of the communications coming from your unconscious in dreams (if there truly are any). In a sense, you are teaching your unconscious to LD, not vise-verse.


A little aside:

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Originally Posted by StephL

That is the idea of there being a unified unconscious ("sub" would indicate I subscribe to Freud).

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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.

Hey Sageous and StephL, don't subconscious and unconscious mean virtually the same thing? They are defined as synonyms of each other in some dictionary definitions?

Unconscious is just the preferred term.

^^ Right. Unconscious is not only the preferred term, but the term used by the actual people studying it -- specifically to indicate that there is no "sub," and perhaps to separate it from any Freudian references.

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.

It'd be a shame if that bit of word trivia is all you got out of our posts, though... ;)

Sageous StephL : I appreciate the input you gave. And no, StephL, you didn't come across as rude. But as I explained earlier, my title wasn't meant to be taken word for word. The real question was explained throughout the post. The main problem was people were trying to address my title specifically. I made it the way I did mostly to gather attention to an important question I had, since my other posts didn't generate many views for unknown reasons.

Now, as you already guessed, no, it doesn't answer my clarified question. 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.

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.

Bottom line, the subconscious seems to be the easiest lead to begin with. If lucid dreaming gives you the chance to interact with it, what would it say? And by "interact," I mean consult it in a concise, clear way that doesn't need to be interpreted. Like consulting a book, as I previously mentioned. It doesn't have to be a person. And if the subconscious isn't the source of this information, maybe accessing what it does know will point us in the right direction. I wouldn't know how to validate anything it would say, but you have to start somewhere.

Lastly, there have been people here who have had many lucid dreams and did complicated things. Much more complicated than what I'm suggesting; shape-shifting, teleporting--visit those tasks of the months if you want a list of examples. Yet, no one has directly inquired about this in their dreams. Which surprised me, given the many opportunities people had to do so. But, as a fellow member mentioned, it's probably because they don't care. I don't blame them. The sole reason I'm interested in any of this, is to help answer these questions to improve lucid dreaming, like being able to clearly answer why some people can't lucid dream after several attempts.

But as I said, no one has done exactly what I'm asking about. Or at the very least, published it for whatever reason. I think by now I've made my points pretty clear, and I'm done talking about it as I'm not trying to debate anything. Not trying to sound rude, I just don't want to continue. If anyone comes across my post and you have inquired about the subconscious, or experienced something similar, I look forward to what you have to share.

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Originally Posted by Sageous

It'd be a shame if that bit of word trivia is all you got out of our posts, though... ;)

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I've been reading these posts with interest, and have gained quite a lot from them. I guess I'm reluctant to comment much further in terms of the link with unconscious discovery through lucid dreaming due to lack of experience in LDing.
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.
This touches on the reasons why it's difficult to communicate with the subconscious mind, because by definition it is too base to command ordinary spoken language.
Therefore I would guess that communication with the subconscious has to take the form of actions and in metaphor.
Take the classic example of wondering how you might react in a life-threatening situation. The real-life life-threatening situation often causes the ancient subconscious brain to take command, say in a fight or flight decision, and your actions are often not consciously thought through. I would assume that an LD could allow you to present that scenario and experience the subconscious response without the same actual danger.
That to me would be communicating with your subconscious in an LD.

^^ Okay; I guess you didn't read my post.

Which part of "I have been working on this for many years, and have found that LD'ing seems to be a great tool for exploring the unconscious; indeed, it might be the best tool, given the unique perspective you have when consciously observing your self from a dream" implies that I have not tried to communicate with my unconscious, and am not still trying to do so? I'm not seeing it. I also suggest that you look again at my post, and not do so from the stance that I was trying to tell you you were wrong, but was trying to offer you a bit of my experience to help you on your search... I'd appreciate it if you would, just so I don't feel like I totally wasted my time.

For what it's worth (and as I already said), I spend quite a bit of time attempting to communicate with my unconscious, and during the early years of my efforts I did indeed ask direct questions, to the point of building schemata that had me sitting at a table with a DC who was my Official Unconscious Representative, and spending many hours (over many dreams) asking questions about all those secrets and other big things. I tried many different versions of seeking to converse directly, and never once learned anything I did not already consciously know. After a time I realized that asking in English was not a route that was going to work. I have had more success in recent years forming metaphors that I hope will act as "information collectors" during LD's, and have been making very slow progress in this, mostly because it is not easy.

I was not telling you that your unconscious does not know how to LD for the fun of it; I have come to realize this through long experience. I had hoped that offering you my perspective would have given you something to think about rather than just deny.

I guess I knew there was a reason I waited so long to post here. In spite of your OP, you seem to be waiting for an single desired answer that does not exist, Screen, and seem to be calling anyone giving you thoughtful, knowledgeable, opinions about this subject liars, or proclaiming that we just don't understand you. You need to get past that, Screen, or else you'll never move forward.

Oh, and if someone comes on here telling you that taking to your unconscious is no problem, here's all you gotta do, take their words with a grain of salt.

tl;dr: Screen, I for one have spent many years trying to communicate with my unconscious, and have learned that simply speaking words does not work (at least for me); communication is possible, but it will take much more effort on your part, though success will be more than worth it. Also, I have also learned that the unconscious has no interest in LD'ing, so it will not teach you how. You still must learn on your own; there is no magic bullet!

:cheers:

I said I appreciated your input, I didn't discount any of it. Nor did I call anyone a liar, or wrong. The closest to any of that was I said people didn't understand what I was specifically asking because it was misinterpreted. Which I clarified, and I don't see anything wrong with that. And honestly, I don't appreciate you saying that about me, when that's not what I did.

I looked at what you had to share and considered it. It's been difficult for you to communicate with your subconscious, and you haven't learn anything you didn't already know. It was appreciated, but again, it wasn't exactly anything new to what I've both read and thought about.

But this is why I don't like extended exchanges online like this, because eventually you got misinterpreted (BrandonBoss and I had a similar incident), and the topic strays off course. But, Sageous, if I "appeared" to be saying or doing something you didn't properly understand, all you had to do was ask and I would have gladly clarified. So if there is still something about what I did or said you want clarification on, please private message me--as I feel like I'm adding too many unnecessary posts to my own thread which can be resolved through messaging--and I would gladly tell you. If not, and you still have something you wish to say, please continue it in private, as I feel it more appropriate. I'd rather the continuing posts remain more about what people have to share regarding my inquiry.

Edit: The rest goes to anyone else. If you need me to clarify anything I previously said, please private message me and I will answer your questions as soon as I can.

Thank you

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 ;-)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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Originally Posted by Nailler

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

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

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Originally Posted by dutchraptor

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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...

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But you did get this answer - it is not called your unconscious for nothing! :wink:
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.

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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"

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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"!

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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!

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by StephL

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

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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 :P

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.

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Originally Posted by Schmaven

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Originally Posted by StephL

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

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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 :P

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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.

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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.

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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.




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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.

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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 :P
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:

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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.

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

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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.

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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:

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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.

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

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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! Attachment 7076

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

Spoiler for more examples dream-to-dream memories:

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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.

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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

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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...

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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.

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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.

Thanks for elaborating - I understand you much better now!
Happy lucid living - us all, I guess!
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