Hey all.
Now I mentioned this in another thread earlier but last night I had a dream in which some guys nailed me (gouged my eyes and other unpleasant stuff) so should I LD, hunt them down and kill them? (they killed me first)
I heard you’re supposed to befriend your enemies, figure out what part of you they represent and embrace them. Stephen LaBerge says so.
He also says that if the temptation to attack is overwhelming, you should defeat the guys and then ask for a present 
Wonder what they give you (some people say killing them (killing them DEAD!!) has a negative side effect on you, so you might want to consider that._
It comes from the Patricia Garfield book “Creative Dreaming” : she visited the Senoi tribe, in Malaisia, which have a dream culture and practice LD. They say that if you meet an enemy in a LD, you have to face and win him. Then you have to ask him for a present.
In RL, this tribe have non aggressive life style and habits, they seem to be very cool ( according to Garfield ).
Wasn’t the Senoi story, the fact that it was a true dreaming culture, a hoax?
Nevertheless, I think LaBerge’s approach might be more healing because no matter how evil your dream enemies are, they’re still aspects of your self. Dreams offer us a glimpse of our inner psyche, at a level which can never be gained irl. Through nightmares, dreams show us the psychological conflicts which linger below the surface, often before they’ve even manifested in your daily life. The confrontation is so intimately direct, that dreams can be used to heal the true source of the problem. Irl we would only be able to deal with the consequences. The core problem almost always remains unsolved.
Killing DCs is exactly the same thing which people do with irl conflicts: suppress, hide and deny them with the actual source left untouched. But the nature of dreams gives us the opportunity to act differently, understand the nature of the conflicts and heal them from within.
At least in my view 
that is if you believe all dreams having meaning, i think a lot of them don’t.
but a lot of them clearly do.
so if it’s a recurring dc because you’ve been watching too many horror movies and you kill freddy krueger, i don’t think that harms your psyche… maybe it helps you overcome any small fear you might have over him.
i remember this one disney land LD where I’m walking around and all of a sudden Freddy is just standing there in a shop next to me… I freaked out and I was like “hi Freddy” and I left… it was weird (the spontanious appearance of him that is, that’s what took me off guard)
I do not think it harms your psyche either way. If you simply dispatch a dream enemy, you may miss an opportunity to find out what the DC may represents. However, I don’t believe it will cause you any harm to: escape, kill, or in some way render harmless, a frightening DC. You have do decide what is right for you.
Well I don’t think killing DCs will necessarily harm your psyche, but it would certainly leave some issues unsolved. Talking to nightmare creatures however can always help you a little to understand the problem.
And I agree with holy reality that not every dream must have a meaning. Dreams often consist of several layers which are a mixture of past, present and future elements. The past elements may be things you saw on television the day before, or something which happened last week. Present elements are primarily the external influences on the dream, such as barking dogs from the neighbours, thunderstorms, traffic noises, Novadreamer signals,…
Future elements however are the deeper things I talked about. Things you’ve been worrying about, important decisions you have to make, unrecognized conflicts,… The past elements ofcourse can also play a big role here.
The dream often displays a surreal world which uses symbolism to express the most evident and best solution to the conflict. Nightmare creatures often show us that the message is urgent and needs to be heard. It’s very likely that you don’t understand the message immediately, but when the time comes you may encounter situations irl which reflect the dream message. At that moment you can use the gathered information to make the right decision.
This all doesn’t have to be true in every case, and it’s often very hard to make a distinction between valuable dream signals and other, useless signs. But I don’t doubt that approaching DCs can be far more enriching instead of killing them.
You’re right, Mystic. After you wrote this, I searched more information through the web.
Kilton Stewart (1930’s) and Patricia Garfield (1970’s) pointed out that the Senoi tribe was an ideal society, happy, free of violence, disease and mental illness due to techniques of dream control.
Of course, even if the Senoi tribe is relatively “cool”, this description of their life style is completely utopist.
The Senoi do have a dream theory, and dreams are far more important in their culture than in any Western society. But the importance of their dream culture seems to have been exaggerated and their dreaming principles modified to please American readers and fans of Jungian psychology. Moreover, there is no serious discussion of dreams at village councils, no instruction in how to control dreams, and no evidence that the Senoi believe dreams can be controlled. Most of these critics are G. William Domhoff’s.
Recently some researchers, like Jeremy Taylor, feel the criticisms of the Senoi to be exaggerated too and feel that the evidence against them came from the tribe after it had been destroyed by contact with the modern world.