Thread: In the game of lucid dreaming, is the subconscious an opponent?

Think of the subconscious like a computer inside your brain. It's an ally, but only if you know how to operate it. Hacking skills come in handy for hard-coded instincts like non-lucidity. The better you know your computer, the easier it is to hack it.

A different take on this issue:

You are to blame: you are absent.

Your subconscious is your co-pilot, your servant, maintaining the house in order and waiting for you to arrive and turn the whole place into the mess. He's there to give order to the chaos: subconscious, the god of heuristic and practicalities.
We are but arrogant entities when faced with the world of dreaming: we assume the subconscious is controlling the dream (fight him, punish him!). We feel left out of this battle of conflicts, where emotions and plot spin so fast that remarkable things disappear, all in the service of fast pacing experiences. But no: we are to blame, we are absent. Our subconscious is merely there working things out, giving order to the chaos.
Because he is forced: to serve the adaptive process of learning and memory recycling, the subconscious must weave coherent inconsistencies, else the system will crumble to dust and we will most likely wake up: we weren't made to be lucid. So when the judgement is made, who will be chosen? The servant, or the master?
Of course it's the entity that is keen in finding shortcuts that allow the being to maintain the specified function without interruption: the subconscious doesn't ask, he just acts: an odd event that has an explanation, a reason that exists for a purpose, the end justifies the means.
A dream can be viewed as an absence of the awareness of the self: there is no YOU as agent, there is only YOU as receptor. But praise the subconscious who's keeping things tidy: he's not fighting us for lucidity, but the fact is that he too is unaware of our presence: a clock is showing 28:0A? Self isn't here, let me do my job and we'll just assume it's broken, yes we're good to go.

It's a nocturnal dance where everybody is in the dark: you both spin without seeing your partner, and the causes each one to do their thing. The only problem is that you had the bad luck of being left dancing outside the room, probably because you're the most clumsy of the two ^^

Getting lucid is not a matter of concious vs subconciousness. It is mearly a skill that must be engrained into the neurons, such as riding a bike. Hard work over time, that is what it is about.

Now, as soon as you are lucid you are in a realm where the subconcious is normally best doing its thing. It is very good at creating images out of thoughts you barely realized you had. You can get skilled at that also, but at first your brain is used to leaving that to another portion of your mental process. With hard work and time you can surpass the subconcious in creative force in your dreams. You do not even battle for control. The subconcious has no feelings in that way. It is just a function of the brain, and is happy enough to hand over the control IF you have developed the neural capacity to handle the job.

Actually, in the realm of dreaming we need to be thankful for that subconcious force. I have lucid dreams with varying degrees of subconcious. In the dreams where I have complete control it is less thrilling. A dream with complete control is not like being God. It is like being a programer of a virtual reality program. While you can do most anything, nothing happens unless I think it up and cause it. I actually enjoy when weird random events enter into the mix.

Originally Posted by sivason

It is mearly a skill that must be engrained into the neurons, such as riding a bike. Hard work over time, that is what it is about.

(...) but at first your brain is used to leaving that to another portion of your mental process. (...) and [the subconscious] is happy enough to hand over the control IF you have developed the neural capacity to handle the job.

If I understand correctly your point, the subconscious is in charge of the dream generation by default, because the conscious mind is not there (let's say, asleep). With enough work, new connections in the brain will ease the process of passing the control to the conscious. When the track is sufficiently beaten, turning lucid gets easier and we don't feel what novice oneironauts may perceive as resistance from the subconscious.

Did I get it right? If so, it's good news because it means there is hope for more results with the same level of effort.

That is right. It is all about neural pathways and developed skill. There is no battle going on at all. It may seem that way, but the truth is just that at first you do not have the capacity to run an entire dream with your concious mind.

Originally Posted by Urside

(...) what novice oneironauts may perceive as resistance from the subconscious

I definitely understand this feeling, as I am pretty beginner myself. Especially with false awakenings...when I have a false awakening I feel like my brain has somehow hijacked me, or shoved me out, when I was handling things perfectly well, thank you very much! But it's probably not best to think of your subconscious in a any way separated from yourself, because it is a part of you.

You could also think of it this way; when you are learning a new sport, or dance, or something that requires the muscles to go through certain precise movements, at first it seems like we fight with it. We have to focus on the simplest things and train over and over, and also be willing to have patience with yourself and accept failures. Then after a certain point, muscle memory kicks in and we don't have to even think about how our muscles are moving, and so we can go on to do even bigger and better things.

Given the suggestibility of that part of the mind to expectations and intention, I figure that treating it like an unwilling force to be fought/begged/appealed to could hold one back from success in lucid dreaming, even. Unfortunately, I seemed to make this mistake myself early on in the process.

Originally Posted by Travis E.

(...) I figure that treating it like an unwilling force to be fought/begged/appealed to could hold one back from success in lucid dreaming, even. (...)

That's what I think too.
I guess the feeling of resistance is a natural reaction to the fact that you know how good lucid dreaming is, you applied the technique as precisely as you could, and still make very slow progress.

Based on the suggestions I'm receiving from experienced oneironauts, I will forge a new mantra for my idle mental time. Instead of saying "My subconscious desires that I recognize when I'm dreaming" (which implies that it may not desire so), I will say something like "New connections are being made in my brain to ease lucid dreaming". I will visualize by brain like a growing tree, and turning lucid.

My subconscious has helped me before, I think. I had a dream where all of sudden I knew I was dreaming. Nothing triggered it, I just knew. Then, everything around me flashed the word "LUCID". It was as if my subconscious wanted me to be aware, by directly telling me I was lucid while thrusting me into LSD Dream Emulator. I had a thought while writing this. What if the subconscious is actually the one dreaming and becoming lucid is like taking away control? Not necessarily in a negative way, the transfer is just difficult.

I'd venture to say you're probably closer to being aware of the "unconscious" mind during an LD than most other times. At any time what your LD shows is what your current intention is and any background noise (like memories that float up).

My thoughts on this is that during an LD you control your actions the same way you do in waking life, but what you see depends on your intention. Your intention is like throwing a rock into a lake, with the lake being your brain. Even a small rock that you hardly notice (for example let's say you want to find an object) means that the waves created hit a lot of different memory paths and so you get a lot of content that is somehow related to your intention (you see a whole pile of objects).

If you could slow down your brain by a thousand times, you could most likely follow every event inside your mind and what leads to what leads to what. People that are not particularly self-aware don't seem to even always recognise what their own intentions are, or their own state (angry, happy etc...) think of somebody that has become so angry they go out of control, that's a lack of mindfulness. So the more awareness, the more you know what is going on inside yourself, the more you know what is going on inside the more you can tell what the outcome is going to be.

So my understanding is that what people call the subconsciousness is simply all the processes of the mind that happen too fast to notice without sitting down and slowing everything down (with meditation) or a level of self-awareness that is not good enough to notice some of the more subtle things.

Subconsciousness is relative, if your awareness is of a high enough level then it would probably no longer be sub-conscious because you could see all of it.

This was a bit long winded, my point is that there's no subconscious to fight, any sort of fighting is just you fighting yourself consciously (if you pay attention).

Originally Posted by Memm

So my understanding is that what people call the subconsciousness is simply all the processes of the mind that happen too fast to notice without sitting down and slowing everything down (with meditation) or a level of self-awareness that is not good enough to notice some of the more subtle things.

Subconsciousness is relative, if your awareness is of a high enough level then it would probably no longer be sub-conscious because you could see all of it.

.

This has been my experience. In an LD things do not "just happen." They happen in response to thought processes that were very quick and subtle. You can train enough to get ahead of this process and counteract any part of it, before it effects the actual dream. You also can learn to stear this process, so that much of your control is using this sort of pathway, as opposed to just trying to force the dream to do as you demand.

Originally Posted by Memm

Your intention is like throwing a rock into a lake, with the lake being your brain. Even a small rock that you hardly notice (for example let's say you want to find an object) means that the waves created hit a lot of different memory paths and so you get a lot of content that is somehow related to your intention (you see a whole pile of objects).

That's probably the best description I've heard!

Originally Posted by Memm

So my understanding is that what people call the subconsciousness is simply all the processes of the mind that happen too fast to notice without sitting down and slowing everything down (with meditation) or a level of self-awareness that is not good enough to notice some of the more subtle things.

This is actually something I was going to bring up--worrying about your interaction with your subconscious seems to be based on seeing two distinct parts of your brain, conscious and subconscious. I'm not a psychologist, but I believe this theory of the conscious and subconscious was only popularized in the time of Freud. All I'm trying to say is that it's a theory of psychology, not a physically proved thing, as if you could see your "subconscious" or "conscious" mind lighting up at specific times on an MRI. It is a theory used to try to explain human behavior, some accept it and use that model, others reject the importance of making any distinction.

Veered off topic...

Back to the subject at hand: it's like meditation, it's a difficult skill, but if you start thinking when you're meditating it's counter-productive to fight with yourself; you're supposed to acknowledge the thought and not judge yourself for a lapse, but simply be aware.

I have experienced that the subconscious is an ally but as others say, you have to learn the rules (unique to you). If I work on having a lucid dream (the right intent) I find I usually have a dream with a clear dream sign. However, beyond that I have to become aware from it...the sub set up a good environment but at some point the conscious needs to be roused.