Will vs. impulse in LDs

Quest for Lucidity
1

I don’t know where would be the right place to post this, but this can’t be too wrong a place:

Most lucid dreamers have ever said things like this: “In my next LD I will meet my spirit guide, see what is in the secret room, ask somebody what the name of the dream team should be”…etc. In stead we often end up flying and playing around, having sex, blowing things up etc. In my last LD, my goals were:

-To sit down and look, feel, smell etc. to become more lucid
-Then find a DC and ask for a dream team name.

When I was standing on that road knowing it was a dream, I sat down and became more lucid using that method. But then I noticed it was possible to grow flowers in the desert…And the rest of the LD was spent that way. It was wonderful, but it wasn’t what I intended to do.

We are supposed to be conscious in a LD. That means we are supposed to have a free will, too. In that dream, I still had my own free will, but I was easily caught by an impulse. Why is it like this? Now, this is only a suggestion based on the sort of thoughts I get in my head when I can’t sleep.

When we are asleep, the brain operates on a lower frequency than when we are awake. In another post on this forum, I believe it was in the “auras” topic, it was said that children have lower brain frequencies than adults. Everybody who have ever had children, know they are easily tempted by impulses, too. :cool: Maybe the controlling, “adult” part of the mind is shut down, or at least turned down in volume, while we are asleep. Maybe we are really “viewing the world as a child” in dreams.

As children grow up, they gain self-control, but lose some imagination. When I was a child, I could see images in my mind when i was listening to music. I can’t anymore. Only when I’m dreaming. Could it be that the “controlling” part of the mind shuts that ability out, too?

Or is all of this just a result of me unknowingly wanting to be a child again, and my dreams giving it to me :cool:

phew…this is probably the longest post I ever made.

2

Hey, that is an interesting thought!

I always have great intentions, but have trouble following through! I thought it was because of my memory. A typical night for me might be:

When I dream tonight, I will practice controlling the weather…
I become lucid and stand around for a little while trying to remember what it was I wanted to do. As often as not, I cannot remember what I wanted to do and decide to just go flying instead.

Could your theory about brain frequency also be tied to memory? My waking memory is pretty bad, but it is much better than my memory when in LDs.

Also, my kids cannot even remember to pick up thier clothes when they get a bath!

3

Wow, that’s so cool! I want to do that!

…Will I now end up doing something else? :smile:

I believe the amygdala produces fiercer feelings such as anger and fear. Perhaps it is more active in REM, which would explain nightmares and the impulses in dreams in general. (When do we ever question why we do something in a dream? …When we’re trainging for lucidity, or after we’ve woken up).

4

Yeah this happens to me a lot. First, I wanted to touch a mirror so bad in my LDs…but when im actually in them, i see like a car go by and i have an urge to blow it up. or if im outside, i just jump and fly. i found my own way of concentrating on what to do though. Very similar to a MILD method. All I do is repeat, “I will do _____ in my dream tonight” I just say that over and over before I go to sleep, and i remember it while im dreaming. I don’t know if this works for everybody…but it works for me at least :smile:

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By the way…how can you have joy in growing flowers in a desert?

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well, i’m a florist :cool: And I could make water come out of the ground.

Btw, when I actually go through with whatever I was planning, I often continue with it even after losing lucidity. It can be hard to tell a real LD from a FLD then.

Seeker: That’s an interesting idea about memory, too. :cool: It seems like the short-term memory can be very bad in a dream. On the other side, it’s sometimes easier to remember things which happened a long time ago, for example what the childhood home looked like.

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Must remember to test out dream memory…

8

For me motivation and distractions seem to be other factors that affects wether I do something I earlier planned to…

If I get lucid “in the middle of something” like flying, running or if it’s generally a lot going on around me, I usually don’t do what I planned.
But if I e.g have a FA-LD I often look around and calmly reflect over my situation and try to remember things to do…

9

Like most things in your dream, access to memory requires certain word command or ritual.
So If I ask myself " what am I gonna do now?", I’m most likely to remember what I intended to do…

otherwise other things will arise…

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That is what happens to me all the time. I set out goals for what I want to achieve over the next few dreams, and after months of dreaming I find I’m no closer to testing those goals than when I was writing the goals down.

From personal experience I’ve found that the types of goals that will generaly be remembered are of the style “Practise Flying” or “Jump around the walls/city and see what you can do”. Other goals such as ‘ask DC where they are come from’ and other goals which seem to be less ‘doing’ oriented and more ‘aquire information’ or something are remembered less often.

Maybe it’s because when you find yourself in a dream you instinctively want to test out your limits rather than do everyday normal stuff that you can do in real life…

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Christian Bouchet, an experienced LDer who made his thesis about LD, thinks it’s because the dream ego is not the same that the wake ego.
I agree with him and moreover I suppose we have a lot of dream egos : these egos have their own memories, beliefs, behaviors, etc. and they can be very different from the wake ego’s.
In my opinion, that’s why we can plan something when we are awake, and not be able to remember it when dreaming.
I suppose too that our dream ego changes during the same dream.

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Interesting…growing flowers in the desert :razz: hehe jk

But this sounds like the more you try, the more you fail. It’s weird.

But, if you’re concious ego can overpower that urge to blow up cars, grow flowers in a desert, etc, then perhaps you can have enough time to remember your intention and actually carry it out.

Odd, a FLD. Never heard of that. Either way, you’re concious. Even if you weren’t lucid dreaming, on some level you are concious. Otherwise you wouldn’t remember dreams.

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I think it’s possible too, cause if our wake ego has been civilized, it’s not the case for our dream egos ( hmmm… if the dream ego theory worths :grin: ).

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Interesting concepts…

I think it would be a good idea to test out the memory thing. Like have an intention right before an LD and then try to remember it in the LD.

Dream-ego? Yeah in many of my dreams its like im someone else, in regards to LD’s my consciousness is very different as well, but i still feel ‘myself.’ if that makes any practical sense at all. How do you all ‘feel’ when you are lucid (mostly like youreself, or mostly not?)

Im wondering if maybe our experiences in dreams are different in terms of like, concept. Like IRL you’ll form an intention but while in a dream (where youre thoughts are different, non-linear a lot and a ton more abstract, etc) its hard to translate into there and so hard to remember? Is there a possible thing as pure intent so that intention is not bound by words and thought?

But mainly i think the source of the phenomena is the different usages of the brain. Then again, i am not sure if the right/left hemisphere activity levels and whatnot are indeed different. Does anyone have any valid scientific links about this?

It could be that the awe and initial impact of becoming lucid may effect your memory. It really brings you into the present moment, possibly making it harder to think outside of when you are? Then again with experience this impact should lessen so if this were true we would see frequent lders as remembering their pre-intentions more and more…unless lucidity has a effect where experience cannot wear down?

just throwing out random ideas. :tongue:

15

What is a dream team?

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I experience the same thing. I often plan to carry out a spiritual exercise or some expairement in my next LD. Yet, I would say about 90% of th time I forget all about my intentions and in stead turn my dreams into a play ground. Sometimes like seeker mentioned I don’t remember my intention. Yet, there are times where I do remember but I loose interest it and instead do the usual things.

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Seeker our long term memory brain part works at theta frequency! in rem sleep that long term memory becomes very active at theta also. Its called the hippocampus.

In my normal dreams my memory is awsome. In lds its normal however even then its sometimes still better then when awake.

They have done test at students eeg…and it showed that theta went up when they answered questions from there long term memory. Thats also the freq that plays an important role in hypnosis and then to ppl have better memory. at least that is when they are under deep hypnosis.

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I always feel “myself”, even if I’m obviously another people. For instance, in a lucid dream, I was a little old woman, but I didn’t notice the difference : this old woman was “myself”.

On the Sealife forum, dreamers form teams. In a team, they share dream diary, experiences and dream projects. Siiw is in one of these teams.

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I have never been another person than Siw in a lucid dream. The moment I realize i’m dreaming, I know what my name, age etc. is.

Jeff: When it’s possible ro remember much better in theta sleep, could it also be possible to learn better? I can easily remember for example what my childhood home looked like in a dream.

Sentient: That sounds familiar, in a way. Things like music and conversations from a dream is hard to remember, because they are in another “language”. Maybe the intent must be translated into “dream-language” to be “understood” properly by the dreaming mind?

Also, does the “dreaming mind” become more and more like the “waking mind” after some practice? It might be the same thing as children learning to control their mind when they “practice” living. Just a thought. :cool:

20

Thanks Jeff!

I remember reading somewhere that it was during theta sleep that your experiences were written to long term memory.

Oh how I wish I had more time to read about these things!