Dream characters: Friends or Puppets?

Good point. Actually this might come as a surprise for many, but we don’t have such a thing as a “concious mind”. What we call our everyday self is the sum of a vast amount of thoughts as self-images that we identify as ourselves, taking turns in handling us.

People lacks of psychic integrity, something greatly described by Gurdjieff and Ounspensky in many of their books.

In the case of lucid dreaming it depends on the general intent of the dream. If you intent an empty landscape or a populated city. At any rate you are in direct or indirect control of everything your mind projects.

The questionis: Is it all being projected by you?

That was I was trying to say: many people do identify themselves with their thoughts, losing often a stable contact with the rest of the mind.

It is of course possible to gain control of oneself and be conscious to the whole mind, but it is not the norm, and as such, terms like conscious and SC become useful in describing the workings of the everyday mind.

Like many can do an action without participating in it (like driving home on autopilot), in the same way a dream can or cannot be directly controlled by the conscious dreamer; it is all a product of our mind, of course, but we can willingly leave the workings unknown to the present experience of the self.

I like where you guys are going with this. Your tapping into what I was really trying to portray. Like how it was mentioned that a dream character could possibly think for itself and come up with something that you wouldn’t have in real life. (Referring to what Tosxychor said) And also how it was mentioned that a dream character could do so if one let it.

So, let’s say you do. You’re somehow able to let the dream character develop it’s own personality. What then? I say that’d be pretty cool/interesting. A new friend maybe? (once again, to that certain extent)

:smile:

~Namine

The fundamental point of meditation is that you shut off the movie that goes on in your head.

No movies means no actors and no actors means not having something to identify yourself with.

And that’s one of the reasons why I am practicing it :tongue: I even let almost completely go of the idea of having a DG… (my SC told me I would have to create one myself); you could say DC are a way of communicating with different sides of yourself while you’re going for the enlightenment :smile:

Anyway, back on topic, having a persistent DC with you is very cool to begin with, and more so to a friends’ person; I’d say it’s a very nice way to look forward to next LD’s, thus raising chances of having them.
Just keep in mind that they’re always a part of yourself, so there’s not really the risk of the relationship running on undesired tracks (you do like yourself afterall, don’t you? :colgate:), plus whatever they did for you (like sharing some insight, or some art), it was really you, doubling the reasons to be happy :happy: .

I find that an odd statement. [size=75]Disclaimer: I don’t mean to imply it’s “wrong” in any way!!![/size]

I believe I’m a friend’s person (as Tosxychor puts it), and also a weakling empath, which means I have a little insight to people’s emotions - that explains a lot of my life, and why I’ve always been attracted to acting, music, writing, friends and many other things.

So, what strucks me as odd is that although I don’t have any recurring DC s (except people IWL which do reoccur), every single DC of mine has it’s own (and usually quite strong) personality… Do I make sense? For me it’s very strong, like they are pure personality (since they don’t have physical bodies, etc), which makes me think as odd that DC might have to develop one.

One could always ask the guidance of the higher self; the part of us that not embodied and indirectly guide us.

That’s a real “independent” guide from our bodily-self that we are. It has better perspective than us in our evolutionary trip.

The more you get close to your higher self, the more you’ll know what you came here to do.

Call your Higher Self up for a dream meeting!

I see DC s as a fragment of my mind and thus, I see them as teachers to my conciouss, limited self :wink:

I’ve had DC experiences during my childhood. I had friends, that would stick with me for a period of time, until I would realize something, then we would merge. I also had an innocent love for one of my female characters. But we both realized this sort of relationship was to end when the time would come. And it came. I don’t see falling in love with a DC as literal love for a individual or person, it’s just your mind sending a message in the most appealing way ^^ I mean, it’s way better than the unintentional, primitive erotic dreams I sometimes allow myself to have now in my teenage phaze :happy: not that I have trouble with relationships in RL. I just think life and emotion is not only around you, but also within you. Grasp the moment and the DC / your mind may teach you so much.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with thinking of Dcs as friends. I have met some Dcs that didn’t seem that intelligent or coherent, but I wouldn’t go as far too call them puppets. I can’t really control my Dcs in my dreams. There have been times when I made Dcs disappear by yelling at them, but that’s as far as I have gone in controlling my dream characters.

There are three types of Dcs I’ve met; those who I can tell are a figment of my imagination, those with their own personalities, which make them seem real and the ones that seem like separate entities. I’ve only ran into the third type once or twice, but even that was enough to change my perception of Dcs and what they really are.

Could you tell us more about that last type? :eh:

Interesting thoughts everyone!

I think I’m getting to the point where I could see dream characters as friends, that is if they seem to have a personality of some sort. I guess I don’t see why not.

~Namine

Typical lucid dreamer?

No, not even Q gets LD’s every night.

Or does she? :eh:

I know a few. Pedro, Writerscube, Grand Speculator, Presence of Light, Wyvern, some more active users, and a lot more who keep themselves hidden because they have basically nothing to ask :tongue:

Haha, you’re right. They probably don’t have anything to ask. Luckies… ): I’d do anything to LD dream every night at will.

When it comes to DC’s who happen to be best friends of mine IRL I can tell them that they are in a dream, and they act as though they were separate beings of conscious within my dream.

My favourite dream I ever remember was I was in high school with my friend Andrew and Dave, And right near the science block, I became lucid. I turned to them and said,

“Guys, we’re actually in a dream right now, This isn’t real?”

Huge grins appeared on their faces and Andrew said, “Cool, I had a feeling…”

Then we went around using superpowers around the school, which is a lot easier when you have “friends” who you see doing them first.

“Hey have you tried this power Truman?”

“No, I can’t get that power to ever wor—wait it’s working!”

Get a label maker.

Have had dreams with puppets. They sent a rocket through to a puppet house with large big explosions.
(in a high pitch voice) Puppet World!

[Ordinary] DCs Friends or Puppets?

[My two cents (are they at least accurate)?]

Neither!

They are yourself

sometimes even your higher self!

unless it’s a separate entity, like an enlightened friend who can visit you

that might happen sometimes

not much that i know of

maybe we run into random people? or maybe a lot of the real stuff occurs in the moments in between dreams that we don’t remember just yet (and of course, not just random people, but significant people)

and maybe sometimes negative entities, but only if you have that tendency…a lot of them might just be negative symbols in your psyche, remember that

but some can be real

I have several “dream friends” who pop up in my dreams time after time :smile: But they’re not completely fictive (sometimes they are, but completely fictive persons are usually seen only in 1-2 dreams) - they’re based on my old school mates!
But still they ARE quite fictive, because those schoolmates are some people that I never even knew very well (I was shy in school :neutral: ) and whom I haven’t met for many, many years (they’re from the elementary school)! :eek: Besides, they have many differences to the real persons they’re based on - first of all they have of course grown up from the times when I actually saw them, and secondly, many of them have a new name, that sort of remainds of their real name, but isn’t similar :eek:
Then there’s also this girl that I used to have a crush on, but who now is out of reach - she’s often in my dreams, and in the dreams we share the same feelings towards each other :wiske:
Am I weird? :shy: Maybe I should get a real life or something? :tongue: (hey, it’s not like I don’t have any real friends! :grrr: My real friends just nowadays live far away, all of them :cry: hmmm… now seriously goes to get some new real friends! :tongue:

Oh… I forgat the question itself! :woo:
Well, I don’t see them as puppets at all - even if I’d be sooo lucid, I can’t control their behavior. Or actually I’ve never even tried, 'cause that would feel somehow wrong and boring.
And btw, the discussions with the dream friends are really hilarious if you remember them afterwards from word to word :woo: Usually their talk sounds slightly like nonsense, but when you really think about it or ask more precise questions, it starts to make sense (in the dream, at least). Anyhow, there is always something mysterious about what they say, and their jokes are reeeally weird, but feel funny in the dream. Besides, they’re always mixing languages - my two native languages plus english - just randomly… and the words they choose, are never really accurate, but something “directional”.
And yes, they certainly do have their own personalities.

I treat my DC’s with respect, I don’t go starting fights or intentionally killing DC’s. When it comes to sex in them I’m normally very shy and try and talk, and be like would you like to… i mean it’s okay if you don’t want to…

I’m going to treat them with more respect after reading this.

I had an issue with my lucid dreaming.

Yesterday, I read this thread and decided to try it out. I slept from midnight until about 4:30am, I didn't really dream much then (that I remembered at all at 4:30am) I went back to sleep thinking "great, now's the perfect time!" I drifted back to sleep and started dreaming. I stopped in the middle of someone's sentence, in my dream, and told them "HEY. I'm lucid dreaming! I can do whatever I want! And then I took a couple steps back so I could push off to fly and some force pressed down on me, like hands on my shoulders. The person I was speaking to said "just because you realize it, doesn't mean you can forget about OUR reality" I told her "nope, you don't mean a thing" and started to focus on my hands. Her face appeared over my hands and just said "No, ____ ____ ____ (my full name)"

What the fuck.

There a higher power, and some of them might be having a shared dream with you or something. I can’t even believe I typed that since I’m usually the skeptic.