Be Creative!

I’ve read several DJs and posts, and noticed that people always seem to have the same issues about dreams and LDs. When it comes to dream content and things to do in an LD, it’s the same… So here I am to tell you to BE CREATIVE.

Nothing personal, guys, but I really think a lot of us need a change of mind here.

(This first part is a bit of a rant, so sorry about it. The cooler part is the one after, which involves my new creativity theory)

First, about recall/LD issues: Most people have the same kind of issues. However, every single day I see new posts regarding the same old problems. It’s not really the case of using the search function, and I’m not telling you not to post. It’s just that it’s time to learn with other people’s mistakes. When you post something along the lines of “I CAN’T DO IT HELP ME!” you are telling your brain, SC, whatever you want to call it, exactly that - that you can’t do it by yourself and need help! Sure, we all may need help, but really, try to think more before posting something like this. The adverse results of this “programming” can end up in making whatever the problem is to get worse. Besides, this creates a wall to newcomers! What would you think if you had just started LDing and you get into a forum and BAM! there’s 30 topics of people in trouble. Kinda disappointing, if you ask me. So let’s start with a change of mind!

Now, about dream content, and “What to do in an LD”. People have really common dreams. A lot of us do, at least. We dream about our daily lives, we dream about work or school, and that is pretty much okay. But if you ask me, it’s the interesting dreams that get me going with LDing and working on my recall and typing my DJ. So my suggestion is: get more interesting dreams! How do you do it? First of all, the simplest way, the magic spell that solves all dream-related problems: resolve to have more interesting dreams. Do not DEMAND. Work together with you SC. You’ll get used to doing it, and your dreams will get nicer.

The second way (which is equally easy, though a little more time-demanding), is to make your life more interesting! Things in your dreams come, even if indirectly, from your daily life. If you only think about work, that’s probably what you’ll dream about. If you are only depressed and angsty, guess what’ll show up in your dreams? So change your attitude! If your life is boring, try to change it. If you can’t, try to change your state of mind! Open your mind, think about different things. Get some time to read, watch a movie. I’ll use myself as an example here. I love reading. I read a lot. I’ve been working more, though, so I hadn’t had the time to read as much. Still, my dreams are interesting - I read only when I have time, but it’s not just this. It seems to me, and I’m talking out of experience here, with no scientific data to prove it, that the more about a subject you get in your head, even if you are not actively thinking about it, the more “material” you have for your dreams.

Again, I’ll be the example here. I used to watch cartoons a lot. However, since I started college the cartoon-watching time slowly decreased to 0. I still love cartoons, but I just have more interesting or important stuff to do. Occasionally, I may watch a little, but that’d be the exception. Now, does watching less cartoons remove them from my dreams? Of course not! It’s rare for me NOT to have a cartoon character in my dreams. At least once a month I’ll have one. The lesson learned here is that the time I spent watching cartoons, in my mind, wasn’t “wasted”. It’s still all there, registered somewhere. So, according to this theory, the kinds of things you do repeatedly will mark you even when you don’t do them anymore.

This explains a lot why many of us still have dreams about school after we’ve left it (me included). Now think about it - we have an awesome tool. If we managed to unknowingly train our brains to dream about certain stuff because, simply, we lived it more than other stuff… We can teach it to dream about more interesting stuff, certain subjects, if we spent more time IRL thinking or doing something related to it! In a way, the rule is “Make your life more interesting to make your dreams more interesting”, but not quite :razz: I hope I didn’t confuse anyone.

I like your attitude, keep it up :smile:

Few comments,

first of all, there isn’t such a thing as a boring dream . It can’t be not interesting.
Your SC is trying to communicate with your Conscious mind.
But your SC doesn’t speak in words and sentences, that’s conscious language.
It speaks in pictures, situations, scenarios. And it (you) project your (sub) thoughts into the dream screen in order for your conscious mind to learn from it.

Yes, I do agree that if you have a more interesting life, you will probably have more interesting dreams, but that’s not necessarily true. Interesting is a very subjective word. You could find a very ‘boring’ dream amazingly fun and empowering…

If a person is developing, always changing, dealing with his issues and moving forward with his life, he is changing, therefore his dreams will change, and will be more interesting and variant, opposed to a person who is very static and moving in a very slow pace, who will probably have the same themes appear in his dreams over and over again.

Creative dreaming is a completely different subject though ^^
Not to mention, creative lucid dreaming :wink:

Again, cheers for this topic, I wish it (and you) all the best.

I have not had a lucid dream yet. I’ve recently been having plenty of dreams about lucidity, and plenty of dreams when I’m in control of the dream yet not lucid. So take this either with a grain of salt or from a newcomer’s perspective:

I totally agree with your sentiment. Be creative. I’m not talking about getting into a lucid dream, that’s of course the bit you just have to practice at, but I’m talking about the people who complain they can’t transform into a dragon or something along those lines. Problems with controlling the dream itself. It is, of course, just a mental block (to a point - your brain can’t handle looking at something from the 500th dimension) and the only reason you can’t do it is because you ‘know’ you can’t do it. It’s your own mind, not some physical restraint.

No, those things are the newcomer’s problem. If they can have an LD and walk around and shoot lasers out of their hands, and yet can’t transform into a dragon…there’s not much one can say except 'approach the situation with certainty.

The problem with newcomers arises when statements are said like this, however:

What is this? ‘Work together with your sub-conscious’? This is meaningless. As a newcomer, I don’t have a hint of a clue at what this means. Spiritual gobbledegook that I can’t grab onto.

You see, when you ride a bike, the instructor might tell you to ‘shift into second gear now’. When learning a programming language, the teacher might tell you to make sure you clean up memory resources at the end of a program. Something tangible. ‘Working with your SC’ is not tangible. You can’t grab it, you can’t feel it, you can’t move it around. Just a bunch of words that don’t mean anything.

That is what a lot of newcomers have problems with. When they ask a question - due to the nature of the forum’s topic - a lot of the answers can be cryptic and ultimately imperceptible to them. Not just struggling to do the job, but struggling to understand what the job is in the first place.

I’m sure there are many other new people that see/have this problem, although I can’t be certain.

That all makes perfect sense, especially the part about making your life more interesting to have more interesting dreams. I usually have very boring dreams, but last night I watched like 3 action movies on TV (they were the only good thing on) and I ended up having a really interesting, exciting dream. Just simple things can make your dreams more interesting.

Yes.
Actually, I think, movies are a major fuel to your dream engine.

I remember one time I watched Thelma & Louise and the same night I had a dream with a stabbing scene in a parking lot.

I agree, it seems that watching TV can be a blessing or a burden, depending. If I watch a movie, I might have 4 different dreams, that when put together each shares a small part of the movie. As a whole, I remember the movie, but I always have dreams of places I have never been. I never dream of home or work…weird?

Thank you for raising this point :smile: Let me try to make it tangible for you, by guessing what Rodrigo is saying - (and Rodrigo may want to chime in if I am wrong)

What he means is that you can work with yourself as it were. Like, treating your dreaming mind as something you can work with, not fight with, not “demand” to become lucid or have more interesting dreams. Ok, “dreaming mind” definition… Like, the part of you that creates the dreams. That is responsible for what you see in your dreams every night. Basically he means that instead of demanding yourself to have more interesting dreams, you do stuff that will actually have interesting dreams as a result.

And this is not to say that there actually is some part of yourself creating the dreams or you have a “dreaming mind” or whatever you call it (you can call it your subconscious). If you talk to yourself, who are you talking to? If you decide to do something if you tell yourself “ok, now I’m going to do my homework, I’ll play this game later”, who are you talking to? It is in this gist that you could take this statement of “work together with your SC”.

I hope that I clarified that a bit now :smile:

Firstly, to address Rodrigos paragraph regarding the repetative questions…I would be curious to find out where the new members to the forum find out the majority of their information about LD? The reason being, is that for myself and others that I know, learnt a lot of the techniques and the fundementals of dreaming (recall, DJ, incubation) through books on the subject. Unfortunatly, you learn very quickly that most of the books say the same thing and are not really adding too much value to what you already know. But, with a book you tend to read more and find out for yourself what they are talking about. If you come to a forum such as this, you just ask the question hoping to get a response from those LD veterans who will of course have a solution!

The other thing I notice from newbies, and that is what you also get from reading in books, is that this process of learning to LD takes time. There are stages you should go through in order to reach your goal… but people seem to want it all here right now… and the internet can sometimes provide the illusion that this is possible. It is a process - you are reprogramming your brain to do something that its probably not supposed to be doing in the first place. But because everyone is different, how they learn and their progress will be faster or slower. So… newcomers may get the expectation that its something that their passing fad will be easy to achieve and are disappointed when they don’t have a LD in the first night or so.

And now to touch on Rodrigo’s and PasQual’s response to makeing dreams more interesting. In a tangiable word to express the phrase ‘working with you subconscious’ - INCUBATION. If you want more creative dreams, then incubate creative dreams. Again, there are various exercises that you can do before you go to sleep that help you incubate your dreams - but they are worth nothing if you can not recall your dreams and write them down in sufficient detail. Living a more enriching life is a great idea… but I am not sure if you will have more enriching dreams?!

Thanks for replies, guys :happy:

Yes, I agree. What I meant about “boring”, is that, for example, people tend to be unhappy with certain situations and they may show in their dreams, yet they never try to change them. I remember some of my best dreams didn’t exactly involve a lot of action. The dream that gives name to my DJ, for example, was a brief chat with an old man.

Now, sorry if I sounded too cryptic :razz: And yes, Q, that’s exactly my point. When you want to LD, or have a dream about a subject, or improve your recall, and you fail, you shouldn’t complain or anything. Saying “GODDAMNIT THIS DOESN’T WORK!” just makes things worse. Of course, everyone meets with annoying or frustrating situations, and this applies to everything in life. The point is, fighting it is not the real answer, but SOLVING it is. If you get angry at your brain or SC or whatever, you’re only getting angry at yourself, and that doesn’t solve a thing. I won’t write anymore so I won’t be confusing :razz: Q explained it pretty well, I guess.

It’s a strange process. I guess a way of explaining it (sorry if I sound too subjective or cryptic again…) is to believe. Let’s say, I want to have an LD. Telling yourself “I WANT IT! I NEED IT!” or whatever won’t necessarily be helpful. Still, if you act like it’s true, your brain seems to take it in more naturally. This may take a little training, but thinking “I will have an LD” or saying it and believing it also helps. It may sound strange, you may feel like you’re lying to yourself, but trust me - it helps. Do this often, and it won’t seem like a lie anymore. Continue, and it won’t be a lie at all.

Of course, forums are always helpful. My point is: most makes such a fuss over their specific issue that it “contaminates” other newbies. Hell, I’ve seen people scared of seeing the Old Hag without ever experiencing a SP. It’s THAT dangerous. So I guess people shouldn’t just give so much importance to a otherwise simple issue, or, simply, look for other similar cases, older posts… Those always help.

True :smile: Well put, indeed. The process works differently for each one, though… I also believe that’s a downside of forums. When you see all you can do in the future, you don’t want to think of the present.

Sorry, but no, that’s not the point :smile: Sure, Incubation may be a way, to get cooler dreams or LDs or whatever, but my point there isn’t just about dream subjects. I mean the whole process.

As I mentioned before, it’s about attitude. If you believe you will, you will LD. If you think you don’t, it’s much harder. In the same way, complaining about hard it is will make it hard. Your brain accepts anything you say to it.