DSs Say the Darndest Things

(DSs = Dream Selves) This is a spin-off, obviously, of the DC thread, but also of this thread I made:
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ad.php?t=61996

My contention is that if we could come to the collective understanding that our dream selves are just as silly and preposterous and prone to saying/doing idiotic things, we might then see the need to improve. I mean, why bother being an idiot all night long when you could be quite the rational and intelligent person? Perhaps, quite the lucid person? I mean, why hand over control to the absolute fools that take our place in dreams? What sort of effect does that have on our waking self?

Basically, the point of this thread isn't to just have fun laughing at ourselves, but as a way to create change and develop our dream selves towards a more stable, capable, and lucid creature.

Odd that we don't realize we're laughing at our own hollow subconscious interpretations of the average person in the other thread. The irony! But lets not get down on ourselves too much, and lets try to have some fun.

I'll start:

So, my dream self goes to an airsoft event (paintball with BBs). But the guy is so forgetful, he can't even be bothered to remember to bring his gun with him! I feel for him, quite literally, but seriously now, it can't be that hard to remember a gun when everyone else in the van has one. Not that it would have done him any good, because in all the years I've known him, he has yet to learn how to actually shoot a gun successfully. You'd think after the 1,000th try he'd hit something, but no... "It always jams or something, I don't know, God hates me!"

So, what does he do? He decides to walk home to get it across a busy, 4-lane street. Not bothering to wait for the light to change, he just goes. And as he's going, the van passes him and he doesn't even bother getting a lift! After almost getting hit by a mail truck, he makes it across. Can't even run, so lazy and out of shape. And then he can't climb up an 8-ft hill to get home. Too bad he wasn't as agile as the small child that made it up. He then tries to climb it, makes it 4 feet up (never mind he's 6 feet tall), and then gets stuck! He then hangs on for dear life, God forbid he fell half a foot, until a girl forest ranger comes by to rescue him from his "impeding doom", swinging wildly around the sheer cliff face of the small dirt mound.

He then meets up with a bunch of people, and does he bother saying hello, getting to know them, introducing himself? Nope. Just goes to the pool to swim. And then he decides to skinny dip because... I'm really not sure why, and then wonders why he's naked in front of everyone. and then he can't even find his clothes. Hey, guy, those dreams where you're taking a test in your underwear? Yeah, they wouldn't happen if you put some clothes on in the first place! Eureka!

Yeah, this is the same guy that thought WWI was fought exclusively in Russia and during his extremely important covert mission into enemy territory spends all his time looking for a nice hat in the store. And when he has to make his great escapes? He gets on a boat in the middle of a mall fountain. Yeah, that's going to get you real far.

Sigh... The guy can't even realize he's in a dream. That's pretty sad, as it should be quite obvious considering the fact that there's a boat in the middle of a mall fountain. I don't know what sort of malls he's going to, but that's not normal.

I got one I had a dream where me and my dad were hiding from these people who had guns outside and I just went outside and said we mean no harm we come in peace then they shot me and I woke.

Did he even remember why they were after him in the first place?

I was running away from some gangsters or something in a scrap yard, jumped in a big tire to hide, but it was filled with water. I didn't get out cause I didn't wanna get shot.. so I stayed there and drowned. :?

Yeah, accidentally drowing in a foot of water takes some sort of special skills.

Well, last night my DS was fairly smart, although he did die like 5 times. But he gave it a pretty good shot. I think he was trying to prove something. Then he beat someone up for stealing his spatula and got fired, and thought that boxes emitted large quantities of heat just because they were boxes. I'm fairly lost on that one. I think he invented some new branch of physics.

"Look. I've got a bear in the car and it needs to use the bathroom. We have to stop somewhere." - whilst driving a stickshift Ford Explorer with a black bear in the front passenger's seat.

My DS ran into a random house once, changed the TV channel to porn and ran back out.

I always thought it was interesting how so many people say they commonly don't have any control over themselves or their thoughts/actions, while non-lucid dreaming. It's actually very rare that my dream self isn't a close (at least) representative of my waking self, but it does happen.

I'll browse around through my journal in a bit and see if I can find anything that really stands out.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Torcher

"Look. I've got a bear in the car and it needs to use the bathroom. We have to stop somewhere." - whilst driving a stickshift Ford Explorer with a black bear in the front passenger's seat.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by HyperNova

My DS ran into a random house once, changed the TV channel to porn and ran back out.

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I got a good laugh out of both of these :lol:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Oneironaut

I always thought it was interesting how so many people say they commonly don't have any control over themselves or their thoughts/actions, while non-lucid dreaming. It's actually very rare that my dream self isn't a close (at least) representative of my waking self, but it does happen.

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Well, I'm not saying my DS isn't a close representation of me, just that he does a LOT of things I wouldn't do in reality and can't do a lot of things I can. I'm being overly critical here, but it's for a point. I'm hoping that by judging my DS as though he were acting in waking reality, it will cause my dreams to be more coherent and realistic, or at least his actions to be so. I don't particularly enjoy it in the morning when I think back to all the silly things my DS did.

So far it seems to be working, actually. My dreams the last few nights have been a good bit better (for the most part). My DS isn't making silly mistakes as much, isn't holding on to doorknobs for dear life, nor is he taking his clothes off for no good reason. He's too busy starting revolutions and falling in love. Basically, the point is to make non-lucid dreams as lucid as possible by creating an expectation of a lucid DS. Even if I'm not lucid, he will be, which I guess would technically make me lucid. It's confusing, but it should work.

I'm going to move most of this over to a DJ on that forum, where I'll make a self-critical, yet humorous and light-hearted journal. I'll post the good ones in here, though.

Once I was having a dream while visiting the UK and my dream was basically me and my (now ex) girlfriend running around and I remember, she said "Aren't you supposed to be in Europe?" and I did, as a matter of fact say "Shh, don't tell anybody." hahahaha :P

Last night, this guy beat me up. Later, he said "Sorry, man" I said "your welcome"

Edit: I also had some free will there, but was not lucid. DSs think very strangely.

I once dreamt of a haunted classroom, with flickering lights. When the lights briefly went on, you could see someone crying in a corner. normally i would freak out and run, but noooo, what did i do? i ran right in, grabbed the girl and shook her out ouf her trance

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BraveryOnions

Last night, this guy beat me up. Later, he said "Sorry, man" I said "your welcome"

Edit: I also had some free will there, but was not lucid. DSs think very strangely.

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If your saying DS's think very strangely, its technically you thinking very strangely as you sleep, even though you have no control :P

I was playing computer game in the bathtub O_O It filled up with water past my head and I just sat there and continued to play. Luckily for me, I could breath underwater :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by allensig3654

I was playing computer game in the bathtub O_O It filled up with water past my head and I just sat there and continued to play. Luckily for me, I could breath underwater :D

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Luckily for you, electricity doesn't conduct well in dream water :D

Bad night last night, so no new idiocy to report. On the contrary, the guy did well for himself. He's getting smarter, although he did think he could hide himself behind a 2x2ft piece of semi-transparent cloth. Yeah, that didn't work out so well... He knew better, but went with it anyway.

My dream self thought it would be a good idea to go to a restaraunt where the feature is that they have room-sized ovens in which you cook your own body as the main course.

Not sure it really counts, but it says something about my subconscious, I guess.

In a lucid dream last night, in order to stay lucid, I tasted the ground (which is sometimes suggested). For some reason it tasted like pepperoni. I then got up and screamed at a passing DC, "It's pepperoni! It's all pepperoni!"

Guess I wasn't quite lucid enough. :D

This post is going to be more about the psychology behind this rather than just a silly anecdote.

I've noticed in dreams that my subconscious and conscious get very "comfy" when alarming or surreal things happen. Of course, surreal things are constantly happening, but as I become more aware my subconscious actually moves to alter the course of the dream in order to keep me non-lucid. I get the beginning thoughts of, "this isn't real," those wtf moments that should make me lucid, but then the dream and my imagination seem to work in tandem to create a more plausible scenario.

I wonder if this is an emotional thing. It is when I am immersed emotionally in the dream world that I am not thinking lucidly and am just the typical DS; it is the moments where I am shaken from that immersion that lucidity comes to the fore. It makes sense: in any given mindset it is emotional immersion that prevents an aware and detached perspective. Emotion is that which clouds the mind, bends the consciousness into the odd shapes of one or another system of thought. I then wonder what emotions hold me in the regular dream, what emotions hold me in regular waking life. Nothing intense, but nothing more than a background feeling, yet one so fundamental to my existence that it permeates everything and is still unknown to me for the most part. That essence of being both in a moment yet in no moment, lost between the moments.

In the dream I was in some sort of game and then went into a car. I was driving/being driven around a large, futuristic city. Everything was fairly flat, yet with subtle layering, the buildings being a cross between apartments and industrial zones, everything in white concrete. We drove down an 8-lane highway, and I stopped paying attention to where we were going, perhaps lost on the scenery. I look ahead of us, and as I do I notice a cliff. I was mildly aware of it before, but had seen a bridge and assumed we would drive on fine. It was a very modern city in good shape, I has assumed the roads would not simply have us drive off a cliff. Yet there is a cliff with no road, and there are no warning signs or barricades.

Within a second the car has driven off the cliff and I see below and beyond a vast, vast complex of buildings and factories, stretching into the horizon. The cliff itself is almost perfectly perpendicular to the ground, and thousands of feet high (quite unrealistically, it must have been a mile or two at least). My vision at this point is fairly vivid, and as the car passes over the threshold and I notice the road give way to thin air beneath us, I am somewhat snapped out of my dreaming stupor. In the back of my mind somewhere, before the shock can set in, I remind myself it is only a dream, but this is a subtle thought, like a light breeze. At the same time I think of the absurdity, and immediately consider that it is the future and it may be on purpose. Like a faithful servant, my dream and subconscious stop the car from falling.

What little downward motion had been created at that point was held, but not accelerated. The momentum of my thoughts had led towards doom, yet in my moment of hesitation and doubt, I had stopped that doom short. The car gracefully followed an invisible track towards the other half of the highway, landing nicely on the downward slope of it. In fact it sloped less than the car at that point, and the moment of near-lucidity passed, and the previous moment's momentum resumed. The road became a water slide, and my car never quite landed right. It began accelerating again, skipping off the road, again unaware and out of control, and the road beneath became ever more steep until it plunged almost straight down. The car could not keep up and flew off the track, face down I could feel the rush of the drop. I could feel my face pushing heavily back into my skull, my body being sucked down, I could hear the wind around the car breaking into a loud scream, the speed increasing to hundreds of miles an hour, the world around me a dizzying swirl of a far off dark surface, a massive dark pool, accelerating towards me. The realism was uncanny for someone that had never experienced this (obviously). That surface, the ground (but such definitions don't matter - it is only the inevitability of the hard crash that does) was still some ways off, due to the height, but I knew it was only a matter of seconds, a minute or so tops. I began to think how the world had lost so much of its substance, and at the same time the fear kicked me out, into my bed.



In this dream I moved between vivid and immersing reality and near-lucid awareness and reflexivity. Whatever started the lucidity was quickly outweighed by the desires of the dream, the desires to dream, only overcome by the awareness of the breakdown of the plot, the inevitability of its demise, my demise, and the desire to not be hurt within that dream desire. The dream lost its reality both because I saw no further purpose in its reality and because I did not want its reality.

If I become aware of the reasons for my becoming aware, I should become aware in ways I hadn't previously. If it's done enough, it should become a tendency, an alteration of the natural balance of my desires and emotional constructs.

I just posted this in my dream journal today.
From this morning's dream - I was travelling to the beach and met up with a girl calling herself Ellie. It turned out that she lived at the coast, and I told her that I wanted to move the coast, and I hoped to be able to do so soon. That way I could see her at the beach and in the grocery store too! How dorky can I be?? :oops:

:) quite, apparently.

Anyway, an update: I got an all-too-quick LD last night finally. I think writing all that out certainly helped. Awareness begets awareness.