I was replying to another post talking about how our imaginations fade as we get older, I disagreed strongly, but in replying I realised that many see the sub-conscious in different ways. I have my own perspective and wanted to share and get it clear in my mind. Perhaps also even get others thoughts and ideas on the topic.
When we dream or try to lucid dream, we are in many ways entering a world which reflects our sub-conscious. Assuming of course you believe that some or all our dreams occur only in our heads, which for the purpose of this post, I will assume. Many seem to be under the impression that the sub-conscious is self-aware, that it judges them or is even malicious towards them. I disagree with this, for me it’s like looking at a drill and saying its alive and thinks. I suspect we do this because we have an innate tendency to humanise things. “My car is a she, etc etc” “my computer hates me…” and so on. I don’t see my sub-conscious that way and I don’t think seeing it that way is helpful or useful.
How do you see the sub-conscious?
I see it as a tool; a pattern matcher which does my bidding. It fires and triggers emotions based on many things, animal instincts which are embedded in my dna. Based on my experiences in life, I touched a cooker door when it was hot once, now when I am near a cooker I feel anxiety at touching it. Perhaps if you never touched it, the anxiety comes from imagining how touching it would feel.
The key for me though is the patterns, they can be incredibly complex patterns, but still just patterns. It can react not just by firing our emotions, but by catapulting thoughts and memories into our mind as well. As somebody who often has intuitive flashes, this happens often. I see something and inexplicably think of something else, or remember something. I also feel our thoughts can drift to shaping those patterns and thinking about sub-conscious data. Somewhat how dreams work. When that happens we are driving our sub-conscious, even programming it. As I said earlier, from imagining how it would feel to touch a hot oven door and knowing it would be harmful to us. (rational thought) We built and create the anxiety at doing so. (irrational pattern) telling ourselves it’s stupid to feel that way, doesn’t address the root of the issue. Having faith in or reaffirming our ability to stop ourselves from touching it and burning ourselves however… does.
Why doesn’t it just do what I want if it’s a tool?
For me the answer is simple, we do not understand consciously how to program and shape it. I can’t claim mastery of controlling my sub-conscious but I’ve done enough to know that I have some control over it. My favourite example is being able to set my own internal ‘alarm’ to wake me up at a specific time. I don’t just mean regular times either, I’ve woken myself after varying amounts of sleep like 2-4 hours using this system at 3am, a very unnatural sleep pattern.
There is a difference between what you want, and what you really want at the deepest level. We can’t lie to, or fool ourselves, trying to do so will only lead to misery and a feeling of emptiness. In the case of dreams, it’ll likely lead to failure. When we dream, we are confronted by this in the form of the environment being driven by our deepest thoughts and expectations. Common problems seem to be caused by it, “I can’t fly, I fall” being caused by the deep expectation that you can’t really fly, that would be illogical.
How do you control it then?
One of the most important things I can see is to be honest with yourself. This might seem obvious and even insulting, but it’s incredibly easy to deny how you really feel. Denying how you really feel pushes it from your mind, the patterns remain active and blocking you, but you are no longer even aware of the thought which forms them. This renders you incapable of actually addressing the thought causing the problem. Leading to the belief that your mind is working against you, only further pushing you away from properly interfacing with your sub-conscious.
Once you acknowledge why you feel a certain way, you can start to analyse it. Consider why it is the case, consider the things which might invalidate the idea. To take the flying example from earlier, you can start to think about why in a dream you can do whatever you want. I had the flying problem, after spending some time in real life reminding myself that anything is possible in dreams, (reprogramming my sub-conscious by positive reinforcement.) my next dream saw me soaring into space. I’m doing a similar thing with my attempts to transform into a dragon destabilising the dream. I dreamed of being at the epicentre of a nuclear blast, watching somebody suffer it. Being flying creatures that could blast the world with electricity and seeing the world from space having a slider to move time forwards and backwards. Thinking things like this seems a good way to realise it’s a misconception, more than just denying it.
I’m not guru in this regard, I can only share some of the insights I’ve gained from trial and error. Perhaps others can also share their experiences and we can all gain.
Final thoughts
I was uncertain whether to post this in cloud, or here. Some of what I’ve discussed in my post can be applied to life in general as well. For me that is the massive power of dreams, and how they affect real life. When we dream we are looking at a mirror of ourselves, at all our beliefs, thoughts, ideas and expectations laid bare and uncensored. If we look at them carefully, we can begin to understand ourselves better. You don’t have to be spiritual to believe dreams can be a key to massive potential.
How appropriate that a forum like this has such connections to “through the mirror” 
When I was reading it, I also had to check in what section you posted it, because I thought it was in the Lucidity one. I also doubted it might be in “Beyond Dreaming” 
Thanks. 