A revelation about Dream Characters

[rugbyelite13]

I just had the most shocking revelation that I’ve ever had in a lucid dream.

Let me give you a quick overview of my dream:

[color=blue]I was standing in a driveway in the suburbs and due to the previous events of the dreams I suddenly realize “of course I’m dreaming, it was so obvious”. I stay very calm in order to stay in the dream.
First, I see a pretty Chinese girl standing in the driveway in very stylish “Luis Vutton” jeans and blouse. I walk up to her with a mischievous grin and inform her “you’re a dream character, I can get you to do whatever I want” I ask her to do some yoga poses ( I do a lot of yoga) and while she bends forwards and backward I touch the outside of her jeans, very erotically . I’ve had sex in a lucid dream before though, so I thought I would try flying for the first time instead.
I fly into the sky after a few tries, and go over some pretty mountain ranges, but this soon morphs into the scene of a super market. I’m walking down one of the aisles still telling myself “I’m dreaming, this is all a dream” to reassure myself.

A blonde girl pushes me from behind, and in exchange, I wrestle her to the floor. I tell her “your just my dream character, do you have any idea what I could do to you right now?” to scare her. I get up with confidence and start telling people around me that this is all a dream, and they are powerless in front of me.

Then the crazy part happened: a wise looking old white man with a green sweater passes me with his shopping cart and says “ I have a message for you” he looks deep into my eyes and gets out a piece of paper from the cart. It says: “all labor beings have value” I look into his eyes and realize that he is talking about the dream characters! I am so shocked I start pleading with him that it’s all my imagination. But everyone is staring at me now, with these penetrating green eyes. Then I woke up, very shaken[/color].

My interpretation of the note is the dream characters are beings of labor and so derserve to be treated with respect and dignity, i mean you wouldnt punch the guy serving you coffee of tearing you ticket at the movies, so why DC’s?

I’m a Buddhist, so this gave me deep feelings of uneasiness. Buddhists say that all beings are sentient beings. But from this dream I realized even dream characters are sentient beings and deserve to be treated well. I was so shocked by this I don’t think I can ever hurt another dream character again!
I think this was a very important message, and if anyone is at all spiritual, they should think hard about it.

Can anyone comment, I really need help with this one…

[EllyEve]

I think that everything in a dream is in our minds, drawing the energy to make their forms from our souls and going about their business to help us process our life. In that sense, they have value because their work has value, but I wouldn’t stop myself from abusing them merely as a courtesy and I wouldn’t stop myself from abusing them because I think they are sentient (I don’t believe they are.) I would stop myself from abusing them because they are me.

So, the way I see it, you are a coquettish, gullible, easily bossed around, and clumsy girl, (at least, a couple of parts of you are like this,) and you seem relish in abusing and intimidating this part of yourself. It’s like mentally cutting yourself and putting yourself down. Maybe you feel better from the endorphins, or feel like you “own it” if you become your own harshest critic, but the net effect is one of damage… not helpful in personal development, is it?

Luckily, you are also a wise old man who can keep your own ego in check, so that all these different parts of you can continue harmoniously about their business.
Just as dream characters can give you revelations, though, some can give you trouble. I’ve been fighting a part of me who’s a wicked witch. I would weaken myself in giving up this power of a wild primal connection, but it’s necessary to do so because she’s gone out of control. This energy-form is no longer harmonious and needs to be transformed through death. So, just as the old man kept the lucid “you” in check, it may now be your responsibility to see to which dream characters/creatures/settings need to be transformed or “pruned” and which can be “harvested” for revelations. At least, that’s the way I see it. Congrats on your awakening!

[rugbyelite13]

Thank you EllyEve for the well thought out, and passionate response

I think there’s a lot of truth to what you said, especially about the ego thing. I guess I feel in my lucid dreaming state that I have to dominate my feminine side (my imagination) in order for the dominant male side (the rationality) to kick in and keep me lucid.

As for the dream characters being sentient or not, I suppose the jury is still out on that one. I’ve been reading a lot of the objective-subjective discussion on the forums lately so maybe it snuck into my subconscious.

I think it’s impossible to say if our dream characters are completely part of us, or completely independent of us, it’s a little of both. I like what you said about your witch, but maybe she’s not completely inside of you? We’ve all known some people that were pretty witchy to us in our lives.

I think I’m opening up a whole philosophical bag of worms here, but can we truly say any part of us really belongs to us? Hume said that if a baby were born without any senses, it would be impossible for that baby to dream, because all subjective reality comes from the way we perceive the world through sight, touch, hearing, smelling and tasting. So the subjective dream character may be some sort of amalgamation of people/events in the outside world.

Id like to think that my dream characters, although most likely not sentient, can teach me as much about myself as they can other people. But I think your right; you can’t work on others until you work on yourself, that where I went wrong in the dream, and I’m glad the “wise old man” corrected me.

Thanks again for the great insights!!

[Lucid76092]

Wow that was really interesting. I’m glad I read that.

A blonde girl pushes me from behind, and in exchange, I wrestle her to the floor. I tell her “your just my dream character, do you have any idea what I could do to you right now?” to scare her. I get up with confidence and start telling people around me that this is all a dream, and they are powerless in front of me.

It seems at first you were power hungry, and wanted everyone to notice that you had power over them.

Maybe DCs are, in a way, real people. There are real people in reality, maybe they’re no different from a dream. I’ve never really thought of DCs this way before.

I recently had a dream, where once I become lucid, they all stopped their conversation in respect of me. It was like mutualism. We were both benefiting. Their benefits were that they were actually alive, and my benefit was that I could now think clearly, and become lucid. It was like they were actors or magicians, acting out a play or a trick, and once I figured out they’re trick, they knew it wasn’t going anywhere and stopped, respectfully.

I never have really harmed any dream characters on purpose. And maybe that’s why the DCs helped me out. Maybe it’s karma, or maybe it’s the subconscious.

I don’t know but it’s very interesting.

[EllyEve]

I think I’m opening up a whole philosophical bag of worms here, but can we truly say any part of us really belongs to us? Hume said that if a baby were born without any senses, it would be impossible for that baby to dream, because all subjective reality comes from the way we perceive the world through sight, touch, hearing, smelling and tasting. So the subjective dream character may be some sort of amalgamation of people/events in the outside world.

Certainly possible! But I’m often happy to forget that possibility
(Don’t mind me, just breakin’ yer brain…)
youtube.com/watch?v=OD-LRUptxFU

Couldn’t the feeling of self that each of us holds within us also be just geometry? In other words, what if this interlocking web of memes were exactly like the interlocking web of physical realities (implied by the Many Worlds theory)? This would mean that the potential for all ways of viewing the world, and the potential for all the different systems we think of as being our own “soul” are also held within an indeterminate wave of potential…

[Prashn64]

Interesting revelation. Now consider this. What if all dream characters are people from the real world also having a dream?

[Lord_Antares]

Then the rugbyelite’s guy would be a lucid one.

I don’t really believe that.I think dream characters are just a part of our imagination.
I think if killing a DC is a crime, then just visualizing that you’re killing someone while you are awake is also a crime.

I think it’s just our mind.
But then again, I myself didn’t experience this…if I did, maybe I would change my opinion.

[tosxyChor]

First and foremost, i firmly believe it’s all in your mind. It’s your imagination only, what you are seeing and feeling in a dream is a product of oyur mind and yours only.
Second, dreams are quite obiously influenced by what you are thinking at the moment.
Here i quote, from LaBerge’s EWLD, two version of how a dream could be influenced by your thoughts:

Dream version 1:

Now I notice that it’s night and the street is dimly lit. This activates an associated set of schemas (previously unconscious or preconscious) relating to the dangers of being on some streets at night, including the expectation of someone, perhaps a mugger, who is likely to do me harm. The same moment that this fearful expectation emerges, a shadowy figure appears across the street. Who is he? I can’t see him well enough to tell what he looks like, but the thought crosses my mind that he could be the mugger I’ve heard about. And so he now is that mugger: he looks menacingly in my direction, so I turn round and start to walk the other way. I am afraid (that is I expect) he will follow me, and so he does. I begin to run, and he runs after me. I try to lose him, going up and down various streets and alleys, but somehow he always finds me.

Dream version 2:

The experience of being on a street at night activates other schemas related to this experience – the one that comes to the fore is the idea that I must be on my way to a movie. I see a shadowy figure down the street. I can’t see him or her well, but the movie schema encourages me to believe that this is a friend I am meeting before seeing the film. When I get closer, I see that it is indeed my friend.

DC’s, while imaginary, are still precieved as people: in fact, if one of your human DC’s started barking out of the blue, i bet you would be struck, as you never tought he/she should behave like a dog.
DC’s in everyone’s dreams are often behaving like IWL, because that’s what you always see people do. When you see a random person walking and minding his business on the street, unless you’re daydreaming heavily, you subconsciously guess he will go on with his life and continue what he was doing before you saw him, not throw a tantrum, start flying or destroying houses with a fireball (if he really did, that would indeed trigger an alarm, because his behavior didn’t meet your expectations).
In the same way, even if you know they’re not real, dream people SC’ly trigger the “common person” schema, and they answered your taunts because that’s what you SC’ly thought they could do in their situation, and i guess you knew violence on their part would have been utterly useless, so they (you) thought of a cleverer retort instead.

[Problem]

As a Buddhist why would you be wrestling girls to the floor to “scare” them? lol