Lack of will (or volition) in dreams

Quest for Lucidity
1

Hello from a neophyte,

I have only recently found about this forum and I am new to LD. I have quickly discovered that mere intention to remember dreams has increased my dream recall from 1-2 per month to 1-2 per night. I am concerned with a different thing, however: all my dreams seem to unwind like a movie in a cinema, like they were someone else’s – I mean I don’t really feel there’s any influence of my free will. No decisions made, no options pondered, nothing. This of course means no RC’s executed or no DS’s recognized. Even if I have flying dream I will never for a second doubt the reality of it. What can I do?

–NL

2

thats the most irratating thing!

I can say its largely down to practice, you either get your first LD in a couple of days or you’ll have to wait weeks.

RCs can be used in many different ways,
you can use them to check that you are dreaming when your unsure or you can do the following

do RCs in real life (IRL)
do them all the time, turn them into a habit that you dont really even think about doing, like clicking your joints
you could even assosiate doing RCs when a particular event occurs (particualy ones that happen in dreamd)
I am currently experimenting with doing an RC every time i go through a door

this is another reason why a dream journal is important, so that you can identify consistant events in your dreams which will help you do a RC

hope that helps :smile:

3

Ah, yes—this is probably one of the main reasons why some people find lucid dreams to be so difficult to induce in the first place! (I don’t have too much difficulty with it, but we’ll get back to that later). In nearly all of my normal dreams, and a few of my low level lucid dreams, I have no will power or decisions made at all—the dreams just continue to flow.

In some ways, I can also see how this topic relates to one that I just visited a few minutes ago, entitled, “Logic part of brain shuts off during REM, then how lucidity?” Both deal with the fact that we just plain aren’t ourselves while we’re dreaming, now are we?

There are ways around this problem, and doing reality checks all day in hopes of doing it in a dream is one of them, although it doesn’t exactly guarantee anything. Personally, I only do them on occasion, pauses typing to plug nose since a lot of the time, I manage to become lucid without even having to do reality checks. It’s simple: Wham! I’m dreaming! (I mostly rely on meditation and autosuggestion).

It’s the meditation that helps me to become more aware of my situation, aiding in the realization that I’m dreaming, and the autosuggestion that convinces my mind that I will have plenty of lucid dreams.

My form of autosuggestion goes as follows: Before going to sleep, as I lay on my back in the darkness, I repeat either of the following phrases in my mind at least twenty times, while concentrating all of my will into what I’m thinkng:

“I will have a lucid dream tonight,”

or

“I will know that I’m dreaming.”

When working on my recall, I use the phrase, “I will remember my dreams.”

It’s also important to concentrate on the phrase rather than drift off into my own thoughts, since that has a nasty habit of happening every once in a while. :roll:

:happy: Yes! That has happened to me! In fact, over the summer, I remember a dream in which I and a few other DCs were flying around a city and I thought to myself, “This situation is rather dream-like. It makes me think of a dream that I would have.” Guess what? I didn’t become lucid! Ding Ding Ding! I was too convinced that it was real! :ack:

:ding:

4

Hell ! Today i had something like this : i was saving some kinda small space tribe from destruction by the sentient miniature black hole or something, and then i had to leave them and fight some huge fat woman-bug cyborg hybrid that wanted to have sex with me and create an evil race that will conquer the galaxy, and i had to do it in the videogame manner, first making her vulnerable, then hitting her with all my might using some giant axe !
I remember the sheer pleasure i had when i finally defeated her.

And never, not for a second, i doubted it was reality.
Damn.

I think i made a good progress with autosuggestion, now i can relax in 5 minutes, instead of an hour. Or maybe its just that my body finally understood what i wanted from it ? ANyway, now i’ll try giving it all to suggest myself to get damn lucid already !

5

Heh… your mind will always make you think what you dream is reality. That’s where the challenge of becoming lucid is.

If you have a common dream sign, tell yourself to do a reality check next time you encounter it. If it’s something that appears in the real world, all for the better!

6

With months of practise, you’ll find you dont even need reality checks to get lucid.

You’ll just be dreaming along, then all the sudden you’ll be ‘in’ your dream body, lucid, and think “… well that was easy”.