The LDers here have probably faced many dream adversaries. I’ve faced many over the years:
I’ve had a man punch me through the guts. It actually hurt. I felt pain and woke up.
I have had a dream character trap me in a dark elevator shaft, and, even lucid, I was unable to wake up or change the dream for five minutes.
I’ve bludgeoned a man’s head only to have him rise from the dead and attack me again. I burned him alive and his bones leapt at me.
I’ve also confronted attackers non-violently, and learned that one was “The part of you that hates yourself.” I’ve seen a vampire morph into a little girl when I challenged it. I have merged with my own evil doppleganger. (It felt great.)
Last night, lucid, a man attacked me and I tried to respond non-violently. I tried to hold a feeling of unconditional love. He laughed at me and asked, “Has that worked for you in the past?” and kept attacking me.
I’ve come to the opinion, actually, that fighting is rather pointless. That is, I would rather learn from my dream adversaries than fight them. I want to know what they want and what part of me they represent.
Some dream characters, I’ve found, respond to non-violence quite quickly. Some only fight you harder…
Does anybody have experience with these particularly hateful dream characters? How do you keep your cool with them, even as they stab you in the shin with a screwdriver? (That actually happened to me.)
Believe me, I have plenty of experience with dream control. I can sling fire and fly and have even altered gravity, but there is always–seemingly–a dream character who is as strong as me and who isn’t interested in talking.
My dark DCs are scary as hell. There are the unobedient dream characters, and the down right dark and evil ones.
The dark ones are scary. They usually have insane power, and make the entire world bend and shift. I never tried sending them love. They mock me, and tell me that I have no power. I stare at them straight into their eyes, and tell them that this is my dream. Whenever I say this, they get angry, and attack me with all their power, making the entire dreamland shift and blur out. If I just turn myself to stone and stand still, they won’t be able to do anything.
I don’t know how to take care of the unobedient ones. They turn up later and mess with me whenever I make them go away.
I have successfully overcome dark DCs before, but they are a recurring problem. Most other LDers, when I talk to them about it, basically blame me for not believing in myself enough. All I can say to that is that I’m capable of lots of control in my LDs. I have turned myself into a human torch and have burned my dream enemies to ashes. And I have talked it out.
But still…everyone once in a while there’s a DC that just isn’t easily cowed and doesn’t want to talk.
A couple weeks ago a dream helper showed up after a run-in with a dark DC. He told me that I had the means to kick her (the dark DC) out of my mind and that I had done it before. He said, in so many words, that she didn’t belong in my space. With the pep talk, I proceeded to kick her out.
I don’t think it’s an issue about lacking control. Sometimes they just overpower you, and sometimes they attack you before you have time to think.
My guess is that these “Dark DCs” are actually part of you and have some amount of control over the dream realm, but not as much as you of course. That’s just a theory though.
I’ve had some unpleasant and violent DC’s and I would always make them perish. Some I would take for a hand and trow them as far as I could, other I would fight with various elements and there were cases where I would made them disappear with a thought.
The problem is when I can’t control them of course in non lucid dream. Then their violence and aggression can affect me and made me scare. But if I realize that I’m dreaming then they got what they deserve.
Here’s the example:
So I was in my home with my family and the cavalry arrived. Man on horses with strange weapons. They took us from home and my friends too and they lined us as we were slaves and they had us chained for legs and arms. The scenario was so intense and scary that I couldn’t even had time to think, not time to question reality of the happening. But after they burned down our houses and everything we were walking(better say they were dragging us with horses) on some kind of open landscape and somehow emotions and everything got a little bit less scary and intense. Then when I could think it hit me that this might actually be dream.
After I looked at my hands I knew I’m dreaming and I flew up. So high that I could see whole army and I started to trowing fireballs from my hands and I was screaming at them: “Here you have it! This is what you deserve!”
So I had the whole army against me and they didn’t represent the problem when I knew that I’m dreaming…
My thoughts about DCs have evolved over the years. I think that even within our minds there are power structures. We would like the ego to be on top, but this isn’t even true when we’re awake, if we think carefully. Often, we do and say things that aren’t like us normally. A situation taps some well of anger and we become “someone else.”
Psychologists have observed that, under stress, we revert to earlier modes of coping and thinking. We literally behave the way we used to behave as a child.
I feel intuitively that the way to go forward, in relationship to my mind in lucid dreams, is to get out of politics as much as possible. If I need to defend myself, I will, but what I want is diplomacy, not war.
A while back I asked my Subconscious to give me a dream in which I could face a dark DC, where I wouldn’t feel so threatened. A few days later I had a nightmare, that turned into an LD, where a doppleganger of myself had been trying to kill me. When I became lucid, finally, I had the mental space to do something besides fighting. I absorbed him. I stepped behind my evil twin and walked into his image, absorbing his energy. It felt great! I woke up replenished.
I want to incubate a lucid dream where I can meet with these aspects at a table and talk.
I know what you mean about the DCs. I met three very prominent dream figures, and they seemed like they all represented a part of me. These weren’t evil, but I felt like they really had personalities. I’m also planning to meet them all in a room, and ask them questions.
I do understand your approach toward this kind of DC’s but if you think about it you can use aggression on “unmoral” ways to get rid of them. In WL there is no other way then talking and trying to solve things easily because consequences are too big.
But in a dream you don’t suffer consequences and if you don’t have any other way to solve a problem use aggression. Let’s say that each and every DC represent some aspect of your character or your subconscious. The only reason why he can over power you then is because he knows that you will not use aggression and he knows that talk will not satisfy him.
My point of view is like in a movies. Where you have 2 subjects and one is not having a problem killing(even innocent) and another wouldn’t do that for nothing. So the one that kills has a much greater advantage over the one that doesn’t kill.
Of course I would apply that philosophy only in dreams and only in extreme situations. Your way is much better of course because making a dark DC disappear you feel no fear any more but confronting it and making things work always something wonderful can happen like your previous experience:
This is interesting as I was just thinking the other day about these things. Although I wasn’t blaming the DC’s, but the dream for not “acting as it should” (that might be a lot bigger problem than I’m aware of, expecting the dream to be something instead of just observing and accepting).
Anyway, in my case I don’t remember and dark DC’s, since when I have trouble with them it feels more like it’s a game or a play. You know, like when you were a kid and would play with imaginary guns and “bang!” you’d shoot a friend and he would just run around. You’d be all “Argh, I shot you! you need to fall down!”. Actually, it’s exactly that feeling! This happens a lot with guns, but then I usually blame the gun for not firing properly. I remember the other night someone was atatcking me with knives and I grabbed her wrist, squeezing it as hard as I could (which felt stronger than I could IWL). I got angry that she wouldn’t drop the knife. This was in a ND, though, but even in LD’s I have trouble, but that’s probably a general dream control thing. I do have evil characters in my dreams, but they don’t really scare me that much and I don’t remember confronting them enough and having problems with them.