"Magic"in dreams

I'm an older guy whose been lucid dreaming for 10 years. The first 5 or so were great...some of the best memories in my life actually as they were so real and I did and saw some incredible things. Then I got caught up in a social virtual reality game and lucid dreaming sorta stopped. Now I'm off that and slowly getting back into lucid dreaming again. Anyway, one thing I haven't been too successful with is changing what I see...like "magically" changing a scene. Last night however I was able to make shoes appear on someone without shoes, and changed long pants on someone to shorts. But then I decided I wanted to make a boxing ring appear so I could fight someone, but that didn't work and I just woke up. Anyone with experiences making a scene change or something you "wish" to appear coming to pass?

I have plenty of experiences like those :)

It really comes down to belief, if you don't believe it, it won't come to pass in your dream.

By belief, I mean not knowing with logic/proof/mental intellect, but more like a simple feeling that it's real, intuitively. The absence of doubt is essentially belief, and it gets more and more pure the more you have less of these doubts and mental blocks.

It may not come how your conscious mind 100% wants it, but it will still be amazing.
After all, even in our most lucid dreams, we still find that some things are just beyond our conscious influence, and it defaults back to the subconscious.

Like if you were to spawn in this boxing ring and your mind wanted it to be red, if you believed it with strong conviction and then it appeared, it may appear red **And blue** in a beautiful floral pattern :P

It is a skill that can be practiced. The end result should be that you fully understand and accept instinctually that what you are seeing is simply the visual output of a virtual reality. If you think you are in a dream, standing on a corner and looking at a nearby dog, that may hold you back. You perhaps want to change the dog into a big snake. You picture it becoming a snake and nothing happens. Why? Well in this case you think you are standing on a corner looking at a dog, but that is not true. You are an awareness experiencing a visual field controlled by a computer (neural net) that you are part of. the computer has filled the visual field with a 3d rendition of a corner and a dog. You influence the program to display a different visual field which instead has the image of a snake.
Why am I saying this? It does work exactly like a VR computer. You are not there, no corner exists, and a dog can not turn into a snake because there is no dog. (there is no spoon- Matrix)
Fine that is a big concept. What practical advice can I give? Train in a logic sequence leading to this state of knowing instinctually. You can do it like this.
Challenge 1) In each dream you must look directly at your hand on purpose. The goal is to get a fairly good version of your hand to fill the visual field.
Challenge 2) In each dream find a simple object that you could almost always find in the setting of a dream. For instance you may choose to find a cell phone. The goal is to have a clear image of a cell phone in the visual field.
Challenge 3) Pick any part of what you are seeing and attempt to smudge the image as if it was painted. You could go up to a wall and rub your hand on it intending a smudge to form or the surface to distort.
Challenge 4) Pick any object in sight and using mental focus cause the object to loose form. Say a glass on the table becomes a blur and is now unclear as to what the computer is attempting to render.
Challenge 5) Do the same as 4 which a whole corner of your visual field so that the part you focus on looses all detail and blurs together.
Challenge 6) Using what you have experienced so far erase part of the field leaving a blank spot where the computer (neural net) is not even attempting to fill in the area. Picture a movie screen were part of your movie does not show up and instead is just white.
By this point you will know you are not standing on a corner looking at a dog in a dream. You will truly understand that the VR imaging portion of the program is portraying those things. You can remove the image of the dog and replace it with an image of a snake.
Now, having said this you still need to develop the skills of dream control, which is an art you can read up on. However you choose to develop dream control you will no longer be restrained by part of you thinking the items have substance.

Thats a very cool technique Sivason! This is definitely a perspective that allows for a lot of control and interesting experiences. With any polar extreme yielding great results, I am interested in seeing the possibillities of it's opposite pole, as the ability to move between them outshines.. But which polarity is this? Internal external? Polar-Nonpolar? It seems be several of the most basic and insinuous ones...

Do you reveal true lack of substance in the dog and the street corner? Or isolate their substance from your experience, through some form of blocking wall which appearance you may influence.... Like a mirror....

This is a hard post to formulate, and I experience it's topic intuitively more than anything. So I don't know exactly what I am pointing at here or how it communicates...

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Originally Posted by LighrkVader

Thats a very cool technique Sivason! This is definitely a perspective that allows for a lot of control and interesting experiences. With any polar extreme yielding great results, I am interested in seeing the possibillities of it's opposite pole, as the ability to move between them outshines.. But which polarity is this? Internal external? Polar-Nonpolar? It seems be several of the most basic and insinuous ones...

Do you reveal true lack of substance in the dog and the street corner? Or isolate their substance from your experience, through some form of blocking wall which appearance you may influence.... Like a mirror....

This is a hard post to formulate, and I experience it's topic intuitively more than anything. So I don't know exactly what I am pointing at here or how it communicates...

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I think I follow you. Do it in steps. The dream has rules and once you understand how to influence the program you actually are basically causing the program to alter. Let's look to the extreme high point of this training so I can explain. Note, this is a level that could take say 10 years of hard work to reach. Lets frame it in the context of the movie The Matrix. In a dream where I take control and exert my power over it (not the best way to dream) I can erase the visual field. I do this through an art that you must simply practice after you have got to step 6 in my above post. You develop an intersection with your consciousness and the computer (neural network) that allows your thoughts to influence the output of the VR world. This effect is like the sceen where on The Matrix Neo was shown a white world with no visual input other than white. Now you can choose a visual field you wish to have displayed. this is like Morpheus summoning the couch and weapons. It is an interaction you must develop and grow. At first you are an awareness in a random crazy VR. At the high point in this kind of control you have taken control of the matrix (lol). It is truly contained in the scene where the kid says --- Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead, only realize the truth... THERE IS NO SPOON. Then you will see that it not the spoon that bends, it is yourself.
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Now let me stress something! That kind of control is not the peak of lucid dreaming. Having complete control to make the VR consist of the sights and other sensations you choose is not really like having a dream. Practice enough to truly, instinctively understand, within the dream, that it is VR and that you have intersect-feed into the control software. When you get that far sometimes not trying to steer things creates adventures. So I am not telling you to loose the excitement of feeling like something amazing is really happening to you. I am just telling you how to work the profound magic you are talking about.

My advice depends on what level of experience you have.

As a beginner, I'd suggest simply asking the dream permission to do what it is you'd like to do. The dream is you after all, or at least some part of you, and you might be surprised by how far showing a little respect and humility to that part of you will go.

As an intermediate, I suggest the more Judo-esque approach of redirecting the power of real-world expectations to assist you in completing fantasy-world tasks. Sivason used a good example of paint and it's real-world ability to be smeared/altered. I've also heard of people "swiping right" on a dream scene to change a dream setting as if it were merely the display of a mobile device. To keep it short, the key to this method is taking the thing you'd like to change, making an association between it and something that can be changed in the manner you desire in the real-world (and before you think about it too much) alter the dream thing in the same fashion you would if it were the real-world thing. Can't walk through a wall? Hmm, the wall is gray and so is clay. That wall IS clay, soft clay in fact, I'll just scoop a hole out of it and walk through!

As an advanced practitioner, it's an existential question, or rather existential recognition, that the dream world is not the real world, which is as simple of an idea as it is difficult to really (and I mean really) have sink in. And understandably so: the relentless pull of gravity, the solidness of matter, our physical limits as fleshy bodies...all of it is reinforced in our minds every moment of every day for our entire lives -- those are a hard expectations to really let go of even when you know you're in a dream.

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Originally Posted by TheUncanny

My advice depends on what level of experience you have.

As a beginner, I'd suggest simply asking the dream permission to do what it is you'd like to do. The dream is you after all, or at least some part of you, and you might be surprised by how far showing a little respect and humility to that part of you will go.

As an intermediate, I suggest the more Judo-esque approach of redirecting the power of real-world expectations to assist you in completing fantasy-world tasks. Sivason used a good example of paint and it's real-world ability to be smeared/altered. I've also heard of people "swiping right" on a dream scene to change a dream setting as if it were merely the display of a mobile device. To keep it short, the key to this method is taking the thing you'd like to change, making an association between it and something that can be changed in the manner you desire in the real-world (and before you think about it too much) alter the dream thing in the same fashion you would if it were the real-world thing. Can't walk through a wall? Hmm, the wall is gray and so is clay. That wall IS clay, soft clay in fact, I'll just scoop a hole out of it and walk through!

As an advanced practitioner, it's an existential question, or rather existential recognition, that the dream world is not the real world, which is as simple of an idea as it is difficult to really (and I mean really) have sink in. And understandably so: the relentless pull of gravity, the solidness of matter, our physical limits as fleshy bodies...all of it is reinforced in our minds every moment of every day for our entire lives -- those are a hard expectations to really let go of even when you know you're in a dream.

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Great stuff! All good advice. I like the idea of a Judo-esque approach.