Part-time subconscious mind..!

[Lord of the Flies]

Hi all! I know I'm hardly ever around but hey! I've got something on my mind and I was wondering if anyone else has or does experience it.. Ever since I decided to get more serious about zazen my lucid dreams have started to change -- here's how: I'll be fully aware of what's going on (so I'm totally lucid), but instead of taking command of the whole 'world' I simply 'detach' my view from a first person perspective to a third person perspective and observe everything that goes on -- kind of like when someone's on a bench watching the birds in a park. At most, I might ask a question to a dream character or if things start getting messy I enter my dream body, close my eyes, meditate and then bring peace to what could have been a nightmarish hell.. But recently I've been having a lot of disturbing dreams (last night for example there were a lot of zombies, rotting flesh, magots and so on..), and I've come to a point where I can simply sit back and accept everything that goes on.. ..in fact, and this might sound very odd, but it's as if my conscious self were the subconscious of myself when I dream. Which is odd, because now it's as if I were the subconscious of my subconscious and my thoughts actually serve as a base of choices for my 'dream-self' who, oddly enough, gets to make all his own choices. Finally the overall feeling is as if I were living in some kind symbiose with my dreams; during waking hours my dream world is my subconscious, and while I sleep I'm the subconscious of my dream world. Does this make sense to anyone or am I just crazy? --->

[KuRoSaKi]

I thought I was somewhat following you until that last sentence or two then you completely lost me and made me utterly confused. Could you make what you said simpler?

[Lord of the Flies]

Well I start from the premise that our dreams are the manifestation of our subconscious. However as a lucid dreamer it`s as if my control of my dream world has turned my sense of awareness into the subconscious of my dream world. Inverted roles. Or I might just be bananas.

[KuRoSaKi]

Let's see yeah some people also have the idea that the Dreams are the manifestation of the subconscious so I am following you with that. Now lets see Lucid Dream control seems like your dream world has made your awareness into the subconscious of your dream world.....? Nope that didn't make sense let me try again. So like what? Are you saying you are always Lucid because your subconscious is now your awareness? Or like wait nevermind I am completely confused.

[Astral__Explorer]

That is true When you're in 3rd person sort to speak (Conscious but not actually Lucid) you will notice that you're doing this that you'd actually do in that situation. Just sit there and watch yourself handle situations. That is almost exactly what you'd do in that same situation. Why? Because you think with you're conscious mind and whatever you consistently think about starts to get into your subconscious mind. So say if you are scared of bats and you dreamed of bats, you'd most likely run.

[funkmastaj]

My interpretation: IMO free will is an illusion and everything you do in the waking day is really determined by your subconscious mind which is basically a big library of experiences (viewed though various a cultural lenses). This is a belief shared by many evolutionary biologists. However in his lucid dream, his conscious mind is the unseen force behind the scenes controlling everything that goes on.

[Kromoh]

agree with funkmastaj but if you are aware that your subconscious makes its own choices, I can say you are consicous as well I'd just say you got conscious of your own consciousness: a whole new level of consciousness that is. In it (just like in deep meditation) you don't really feel like making choices anymore.

[thegnome54]

If we assume that the people we meet in dreams are really just our brain's models of the behavioral patterns of those people in real life, this sort of makes sense. If any of you read the Scientific American article "I Am a Strange Loop" a while back, the author (I forget his name) theorized that people actually have functional models of THEMSELVES, as well as everyone else, in their brains. In your dream, you could be 'running' your model of yourself, thus giving you the impression that 'you' are making independent decisions just like all the other dream characters. In that sense, it's actually backwards from what you would think - your SUBconscious is 'running' the program down there, while you sit above and watch it happen. Your input, which seems to act as your subconscious normally would, is probably simply your will vaguely affecting the course of the dream.