I believe there is a correspondence between the way waking life characters respond to us and the way dream characters respond to us. When I began lucid dreaming I would talk to dream characters and they wouldn't understand that we were dreaming. Then I began to program my intent to ask for messages from the dream characters and I received meaningful messages. It's kind of like asking people on the street in waking life about lucidity. They generally don't know or care about it..... but if my intent is to find people who are interested in higher consciousness, like a Zen Master, then I will get a response.