Had a DLD tonight. And after waking up I became curious, do we have free will and choice to become lucid or to not, when we are dreaming.
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Had a DLD tonight. And after waking up I became curious, do we have free will and choice to become lucid or to not, when we are dreaming.
In my experience, yes. The hard part mainly just seems to be remembering to do so! Being lucid in a dream is a conscious decision, just as going out of “auto-pilot” or “zombie” mode and returning to self awareness in waking life is. (By the way, I'm in the camp that believes that this self-awareness is technically the same thing as being lucid, whether awake or not.) In either case, it's amazingly easy to get distracted and forget all about that decision that we can make, but when we do manage to remember, it's generally fairly easy to do.
I've occasionally experienced some interesting dreams in which I've become lucid gradually enough to be able to observe (and remember upon awakening) an entire underlying chain of thought leading up to my decision to become lucid. In one dream, for instance, when encountering an event that didn't seem to make sense, I noticed a vague back-of-the-mind thought that I have the ability to become lucid during a dream, followed by a memory that I can choose to become lucid anytime I wish, followed by the conscious decision to go ahead and do that, followed finally by my recognition that I was currently dreaming and deciding to remember my LD goals and get going—all in a rapid, largely nonverbal train of thought lasting perhaps a couple of seconds or so. I found that observation quite fascinating and enlightening.
"do we have free will and choice to become lucid or to not, when we are dreaming."
I do not think that a person who has not developed the necessary faculties has the choice to become lucid within the dream state. We create through various methodologies a avenue of freedom which was not available before.
Things beneficial and/or necessary for the freedom to Lucid dream.
1. Intellectual knowledge: The intellectual knowledge that Lucid dreaming is possible is one important aspect of success, but is not sufficient in itself for producing them. Some people do have lucid dreams without knowing before hand it is possible. While some people who have heard lucid dreaming is possible never actually have one, so knowing lucid dreaming is possible is very advantageous but not obligatory.
2. Threshold of adequate Awareness: One absolutely fundamental requirement for the freedom to chose to lucid dream is a certain level of awareness, I will simply define awareness ad hoc as a openness to information, the more aware you are the more information one has on which to base judgements. No matter how one goes about it I think the ability to lucid dream is dependent on the development of this faculty above a certain threshold. Again I think awareness is necessary but not sufficient for the freedom to lucid dream when the opportunity arises.
3.Meta-cognition: which is to put simply "cognition about cognition", "thinking about thinking", or "knowing about knowing".
3.A.Metacognitive knowledge: The ability to reflect on ones immediate cognitive state is clearly important for lucid dreaming. If a person is unable to estimate their current cognitive state then they will not know if their current level of awareness is adequate for their intended project. They thus lack a premise on which to base further and proper action on which will lead them to make awareness sufficient to reach their goal (to become lucid) via some modulating procedure.
3.B.Metacognitive regulation: This deals with learning how to achieve certain results by considering the process one is using. A person who is good at lucid dreaming needs to have the ability to evaluate which type of thinking is antithetical to Lucid dreaming and which is helpful. If a person is unable to think about the way they think and its probable results, then will be unable or unlikely to change their thinking in such a way which is more congruent with their purpose, which is to become 'lucid'. This could also be called self-regulated learning behaviour.
3.C.Metacognitive experience: This "is responsible for creating an identity that matters to an individual. The creation of the identity with metacognitive experience is linked to the identity-based motivation (IBM) model. The identity-based motivation model implies that "identities matter because they provide a basis for meaning making and for action.""
"ME offer awareness that links the present with the past learning experiences and facilitates or inhibits self-regulation of learning in the present as well as in the future. "
That is to say ME relates at least in part about how a person feels about the goal, and their reaction to difficulty. It comes down to does one think that the identity associated with the acquisition is worth the effort in itself, and in reference to other identities. From what I can put together if the person did not want or like the identity of being a lucid dreamer, one probable way they would interpret difficulty is "effort should be suspended", which would obviously mean the person would not be able to muster the energy to do what is necessary to become lucid.
To sum up.
I think that all people have the freedom to develop the freedom to lucid dream, but I do not think that all people do in fact have such a freedom. This freedom to have a lucid dream depends on the construction of these above factors if they are absent, or developing these abilities above a certain minimum point, if they are already present but at inadequate levels.
All of these factors neurological correlates are generally known (all described are located in the Frontal Lobe), but since I have explained many of these correlations in other places I will not go into that in any further detail here.
Sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19178860
Lucid dreams and metacognition: Awareness of thinking