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Author Topic: Questions about Lucid Dreamign  (Read 6748 times)

sarahmayer

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Questions about Lucid Dreamign
« on: March 26, 2014, 06:17:11 AM »
Im doing a personal interest project for my philosophy course and i just had some enquiries about lucid dreaming!

Q1 - If you are lucid dreaming, does it mean that you are controlling every aspect of your dream without the help of your subconscious? For instance do you decide what people are saying if you ask them a question? or can your subconscious kind of kick in and answer it for you?

Q2 - If you are lucid dreaming, does it mean that your subconscious doesn't project images that only it would remember, because i read an article on how your subconscious can remember heaps of stuff that you wouldn't even think of while you are awake. So i guess what i am really asking is do unexpected things still happen in your dream without you conjuring them yourself?
 :D :D :D :D :D :D

Tony Crisp

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Re: Questions about Lucid Dreamign
« Reply #1 on: March 26, 2014, 09:16:47 AM »
Sarah - It depends very much on the dreamer, because some dreamers are so frightened of anything that threatens their sense of self they cannot allow anything spontaneous. But of course the unconscious is constantly trying to do its thing. For better references to this see http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/lifes-little-secrets/ - http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/what-we-need-to-remember-about-us-3/#Important and the piece that follows on from it.

It might be useful also to read some of - http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/questions-2/#Summing and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/truths-lucid-dreaming/

In regard to asking questions, never forget that your unconscious holds everything that you are. It is not only wise, but also just under the surface are all your personal fears and prejudices, all your cultural clichés and limitations. Sometimes we have to wade through these – the ‘housework’ – before we can get at useful information and insights. To ‘wade through’ you have to avoid being satisfied with apparently prophetic or sweeping statements that do not bear up to analysis or bring actual results. That level of your unconscious is full of amazing promises – wish fulfilment hoaxes. What you receive must be critically measured against real events and your history. Freud found most people have powerful resistances to actually seeing or experiencing the truth about themselves. So sometimes we need to cut through these brambles to reach the Sleeping Beauty.
This is where your conscious rational and critical evaluation comes in. Without it you may be adrift in symbols and the expression of attitudes that need to be transformed. All the time aim to link what arises from within to your own here and now history and what can be observed externally. See http://dreamhawk.com/interesting-people/edgar-cayce-and-the-cosmic-mind-superminds/ and http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/jesse-watkins-experience-of-enlightenment/
Your unconscious is actually the mother spring of creation, but it usually uses things that you have conscious associations with - because the impulses from your core are formless, like the nerve impulses your eyes send to the brain - so it is all a matter or forming things you can understand, But of course it memories are fantastic.
Here is an example of one of my own dreams and the memories that most people do not want to remember.
Dreamt Pete Taylor was in my father’s shop in London. Someone had shot him in the bicep and I was trying to help him. I had a small box on the counter and there was antiseptic or blood in it, and I put the hurt muscle in it hoping to heal it. When the gunshot flesh was in the antiseptic the blood bubbled and effervesced, becoming hot. I felt the flesh would not be of any use now, but wasn’t sure. In the end though I was considering cleaning away the injured flesh from the arm (left arm I think). All I could see were the sinews with a small amount of flesh on them – no muscle in between. But I began to feel that gradually new cells might grow and develop into a new muscle - granulate.

I started to explore the dream and in the kitchen this feeling developed. I sat on the floor near the fire and began to see things about our house, about Brenda and myself. We were a middle-aged couple, somewhat dried up and impoverished. I kept thinking of French working-class people. Maybe I saw a film a long time back. But here we were in this rather drab house, expressive of the sort of demise of warm human feelings. Such things creep into some people’s lives. We were people who had missed out on life somewhere. No, not that, just very ordinary, not too alive or warm human animals. I could see how worn and dog-eared the kitchen was, and wondered if we were gradually slipping into decadence. But slowly I got into the mood I entered last time, of being an animal - human animal - just the same as my primitive forebears, but now confronted by the complexities of modern life, with its subtle and ingeniously devastating values. A house was a modified cave. It was so easy to get lost in this jungle of values and forget this. As a (primitive) man I recognise what are the basic needs - food, shelter, and human and physical warmth. A cave without emotional warmth was deadly and even if it fitted the modern “values” was deadening. Love was a food that we all needed to face the outside world with outgoingness and pleasure. Without it there was no flowing radiating charge in us to transform the outer world into a place we could meet with courage.

But as soon as I thought of Pete Taylor realisation after realisation began to pour into my mind, and I saw I had found the right key.

I realised I had met Pete on a walk a few days before and heard him shouting out about, “The Lord Jesus Christ,” in a mocking voice. I was in a wood with my children and stood still waiting for Pete and his friends to pass by - Pete being outside of the wood in a field. As I was entering into these feelings from the dream point of view I realised I avoided Pete because of pride. I hadn’t wished to be associated with Pete. Pete, who had a lovely daughter but who had failed at marriage; was a good musician but had failed to do anything with his skill; started businesses but failed at working for himself - failed. Pete, I felt was a failure.

Suddenly I realised with shock that I had tried to avoid meeting Pete because pride was my defence against my own failure. I was hiding away from my own sense of failure.

But Pete had actually come into the wood so we met, and I saw he was keenly ‘chasing’ a young French woman, Katerine.

My wife came up and I explained this, and the talking helped it flow tremendously. Pete, who failed at marriage but was chasing after young girls, as I had seen him chasing Katerine. Yes, no wonder I didn’t want to associate with that part of me, who couldn’t make it in marriage but chased young women. Pete was living out all the things in me that I despised and tried to keep hidden, even from myself. But now they were out in the open and it was painful.

Then a whole mass more came. I saw Katerine as a little pro who was holding herself back, but wanted to wag her fanny everywhere.

Pete, the one who was in battle with his father and who constantly fought authority tooth and nail. He had got to make it alone to prove how much better he was then father/authority. What a waste, when one could have worked together to accomplish more. Conflict wastes so much effort due to the countless retreats.

Now it was coming thick and fast so I went down to my wife in the kitchen as it was so helpful to talk.

Yes, it was my father. The shop was the important point in the dream. It was in that shop our conflict had come to a head. It had been there always. The thing already seen about how he used to show me his school books. He didn’t praise what I did, just showed me how good his work was, how neat, how few blots. But in the shop he had set my pattern of behaviour, stamped it out. Because I had got no praise or support from him – my symbol of authority – I had pulled away and gone on along a path of life that he had no understanding of. I went on to Brenda about how I had stacked the potatoes in the shop for him as well as I could, but never a word of encouragement - always wrong.

What a fucking waste. He was so desperate for success himself he was trying to squeeze out a few drops from me too for the sake of his pride, to prove to England how much better he was. He was still fighting the battle of the school room, because he was too scared to punch the kids on the nose, so he wanted me to be a success to prove his own value. So from then on I was in conflict with him, trying to prove how good I was, how much better than him, never able to co-operate at school, and work, or in my marriage. I had to keep on at my wife over nothing to prove how good we were. What I did for him was never good enough, never enough. What would get a word of praise? What would suffice? I didn’t understand what he wanted of me. So I kept on at my kids like he kept on at me. Trying to attain the unobtainable instead of a little warmth and love. Dad, you fucking killed me right back then. I sobbed uncontrollable with the pain of experiencing it.

What a waste. My schooling ruled by rebellion because I had to make it alone and “differently” not co-operatively. Anything to fight authority. And I had to fail too, even in my efforts to achieve, because if I succeeded dad would fall to pieces, feeling what a failure he was as a man and a father. I needed a Dad so I dared not succeed. I had to fail if I wanted love. And the reverse side of conflict with authority was the cringing underhand crawling to gain love and approval.

The damage to the bicep, to flesh was the whole area of my life that I was trying to save and heal, but which I needed to let go of, and wait for the new muscle tissue to grow. How does start again at 40? Is it with patience to let the new tissues and strength grow?

My left arm is my support system, my confidence to do things in the world. I am right handed so do things with my right hand, but support everything with my left – hold the paper as I write; hold the nail as I bang it in with my right. So the damage to the muscle was the injury to my supportive confidence through my relationship with my father. As all this was felt I sobbed uncontrollably. I wept for the lost years, the wasted years of my youth. I was convulsed with the pain of not having been loved by my father. Tears fell from me for the failure of my life. I would never have believed one could feel so much pain about something missing in ones life. I had always thought to feel that much pain you would have needed to be beaten or abused in childhood. My father was kind, but he showed no warmth. And that was as bad as being beaten, perhaps worse. I had been severely beaten at school, but it hadn’t scarred me like this.

Realising all that was a turning point in my life - otherwise it would still be hidden and active in me in a destructive way. That was only one of many similar things the unconscious presented me with, and the key was not to avoid pain. It is the same thing we find in native initiations - the facing of pain. Something our own culture is desperate to avoid- emotional pain and its cure.

There is also a piece that is very interesting - http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/what-we-need-to-remember-about-us-3/#Levels

Tony

Tony Crisp

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Re: Questions about Lucid Dreamign
« Reply #2 on: March 27, 2014, 08:20:43 AM »
Anna - I don’t think there was any blame in my description of my experience of not being loved by my father. It was simply a report of what it is like to actually dive into oneself deeply. I recognised that my father had similar experiences that led him to be the man he was, a man I loved. What was a great wonder for me was that in the experience I realised that it was a huge burden that was part of human life, and in some way I had lessened it - and there were so many more I experienced, and each one was a wonderful release.

But I came to see through this amazing journey that a huge amount or what we carry is from the culture we have been brought up in, and also from the habits we ourselves had unconsciously developed. My journey was a long, winding and often puzzling one, but it all became clear over the years. There is so much to learn, and I have tried to explain, though perhaps not too well, but it is all I can offer. It is summed up in http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/lifes-little-secrets/ - though it took years to learn how to actually surrender enough to allow it - and then it was years of letting the action work. But I tried other ways in describing in http://dreamhawk.com/news/avoiding-being-my-own-victim/ which has nothing to do with childhood pain, blaming, but is about actually taking hold of your own reactions and gradually changing them. Also so much of our difficulties or pain is simple from our own habits, that can be changed with some perseverance http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/habits/ - http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/prison-prisoner-imprisoned/ - http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/conditioned-reflexes-or-responses/ - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYYXq1Ox4sk the last is a man’s description of how he found a way of living hell.

Life is a great learning experience - and there is a lot to learn.

Tony