INCEPTION: Hostile Dream Characters. (Warning: spoilers)

I believe that hostile dc´s are projections of the parts of our psyches that wants to maintain status quo. Like the demons that attacked the Buddha as he sat and meditated.
Lucid dreaming is a powerful tool for psychological growth, but there are parts of our psyche that doesnt want healing/self-realisation. These parts can in dreams take the form of hostile dc´s.

While I have always been a natural lucid dreamer, I also have always dealt with hostile DC, usually close family members but they act completely unlike in real life. They can be somewhat conniving all the way to using violence, but my subconscious always pushes me to wake within a dream to forget I am dreaming. I never feared it would happen it just always has.

I am novice , and my lucid experience is very short.I don’t know when i will see lucid dreams.But still , i’m curious about this subject.After i read it , i understood this : When i’m lucid to protect this situation , i shouldn’t do anything suspicious or i will be kicked from the dream.Is that right ?

I’m not sure what you mean by “suspicious,” but not necessarily. If hostile DCs always kicked us when we were lucid and aiming to do things, I doubt you’d ever be able to have battles in dreams, but people have battles in dreams and stay in there. Also, what would be the point of LDs if you weren’t able to do things against the dream? The dream can kick you sometimes, hostile DCs or not. Once my subconscious kicked me from a dream to make a point. Also, remember what Qu said. She mentioned that most of her encounters with DCs are not hostile encounters, but such hostile encounters that kicked her out of the dream have happened a few times.

All in all, I’m just trying to say that this isn’t necessarily the case. I may not always be so successful dealing with hostile DCs, but I’m only kicked if they kill me, and those usually aren’t lucid dreams, so it’s not really interfering with the dream.

Uhm… did that make any sense at all?

I mean isn’t anything to do for not being hostile ? Simply prevent it.If you do something suspicious (for subconscious) of course it will kick you out.But if you don’t do anything like that , you live that dream like it is real , then maybe you won’t be hostile with DCs because of not drawing attention…

Sometimes we live dreams like they’re real, sometimes we don’t. I wouldn’t work on LDing if I wanted to live all my dreams like they were real. I had nightmares when I was little and I still have nightmares now that have hostile DCs without any suspicious activity from me. DCs don’t always appear and act like they did in Inception. It’s not like they’re constantly trying to kick you out when you’re lucid because you’re lucid. My DCs even help me sometimes when I’m attempting to do things in my dreams.

I’m not quite sure what your question is, since the grammar’s hard to understand in the question itself, but I hope that answers it.

No Hisar, I disagree, you can be suspicious by the SC and not kicked out, its not that it always try to kick you out, once I faced the lucid police for doing “dream crimes” and managed to escape from them, its more when I tried to iduce SD that I got kicked out of the dream :tongue:

Very interesting… I have had similar experiences, although for me it normally only occurs with the DC representations of family members, particularly my mother. Nearly every single time I have become lucid near my DC mom, she suddenly takes on a very sinister air and does everything in her power to ruin my dream.

I remember reading once about this girl who had become quite adept at lucid dreaming. She said that everything was great for a while, but one night she felt that she’d crossed a line or “opened a gate” that couldn’t be shut. She claimed that some sort of dream authority captured her because of her lucidity, and every night since then she was forced to work like a slave in this “dream factory.” It sounds crazy, of course, but it got me to thinking. What if there really are things in our dreams that DON’T want us to become lucid? And to what extent will they eventually go to stop us? It is pretty interesting that the majority of these hostile DCs are portrayed as some authority figure, like a cop or, in my case, a parent.

That’s not to say it has to be some weird sci-fi entity residing in the dream plane (although I think that would be awesome). It could be something along the lines of squarepusher’s theory; mere manifestations of our psyche that are afraid of any significant resolutions that we might come across. Either way, it’s not something that should deter us from trying to become lucid. Like any obstacle, it just needs to be overcome.

I think that dream characters generally behave in the way you expect them to. If they are hostile, it’s probably because the dreamer expects the hostility. It might be difficult to do, but if you can train yourself to expect better behaviour from your dream characters, then they should be less hostile. As someone posted earlier, if you remind yourself (and the characters, if necessary) that it’s YOUR dream and that YOU are in control of it, you might be able to turn the situation around.

I rarely encounter hostility from dream characters and I must admit I’ve never had them try to kick me out of a dream before. I don’t get chased, but if I ever get into a fight with them, I can always beat them easily (despite being small and not very physically strong in reality). I expect to win the fight, because it’s my dream; and therefore, I do win.

As I see, what you are mostly discussing here, is “Shared Dreams”. I must tell you, that such thing is not scientifically possible. Our brains are not some sort of connection cards which connect us to a LAN network of dreams or something. It is not physically possible, as that would be telephacy.
The dreams you’re talking about are 100% yours. They are created by your subconscious and they are controlled by your subconscious. If you become lucid, you may control them as well, however, major part of the dream, the dream characters would still be under the control of your subconscious. Therefore, there is a lot of possibilities, how those characters could act like. They can be angry and threatening, as you say, or friendly. Most of their actions depend on your expectations. If you expect them to act like DC’s in the “Inception” movie, they will do that, and possibly, make you wake up. So, the reason, in my opinion, is that you are looking too serious at movies like “Inception”. Remember, that’s just a movie, full of fantasies, just like our dreams. If you look serious at such things, they will happen in your dreams. Dreams are controlled by our minds and therefore, you should make sure that your mind is clean of such nonsense as Dream hackers, Shared dreams etc. That’s my opinion, yours may be different.

I’m definitely going to keep an eye out for this once I get a long lucid dream…when that happen’s if it happens soon i’ll be sure to let you know. But I believe you are right when you talk about it being your fear of the dream being ended - I think you just have to get confidence in your ability’s to have them multiple times a week so you won’t have that fear, no?

I agree and disgree with most of you :razz:
DCs are a projection of your schemas and expectations - You can call it your SC (partly)
If you expect the DC to be hostile when you try to LD , then he will be hostile.
My moto - “Expect the best and think positive”.
About those “being kicked out” - same here, it is built from your expectations - You expected to wake up since you logically thought that the cop/ security guard is kicking you out, but from what? the dream.
There are 2 problems with that assumption:

  1. Logic in Dream?
  2. You let the DC control your dream.

Conclusion: Remember that:

  1. This is YOUR dream.
  2. Expect the best.
  3. Think positively (“I will fly” is better than “I won’t fall” etc…)

3 nights ago I had this annoying DC in my lucid dream that kept stalking and bugging me, making it impossible to do stuff. She was a lucid dreamer as well, so if I flew away she just followed me. :grrr:

Sooooo, if any of you lucid dreamers was lucid 3 days ago, running around in a red/yellow superwoman suit and found it funny to bug another lucid dreamer…it wasn’t funny! :wink:

I think that in your case the reason that characters become hostile when you become lucid is because when a person becomes lucid in a dream, certain parts and areas of the brain become more active… That is why a lot of the time a person will wake up soon after realizing that they are dreaming, because they have become more conscious and a lot of the time conscious enough to wake up. Your hostile characters might just be a representation of the fact that your dreamworld is breaking down or breaking apart because you are waking up or have become too conscious to the fact that you are dreaming. Basically the rules of the dreamworld no longer apply to you, so the rules of the dreamworld no longer apply to the dream characters as well. In a lot of ways I think that you probably have hostile characters because deep down you know that you shouldn’t be able to be doing what you are doing while lucid, kind of a voyeuristic feeling but instead of looking at something you shouldn’t, you are experiencing something that normally you shouldn’t, that you are taking control of a dream that you were meant to just experience the way that your subconscious created it and deep down you know that, so the hostile characters are your knowledge of the fact that you are breaking the rules of dreams and so they come at you or get mad at you or send you away because of that/because you are waking up. Just what I think, maybe I am wrong, but still a very interesting article none the less. Thanks for posting!

Dream Adventurously,

  • Dreamscape Adventurer

Sounds just like inception :eek:

I think, that this stems from a deep down idea that lucid dreaming is ‘breaking rules’, so your SC tries to stop you from doing so. Perhaps…

I think I’m thinking too hard… :spinning:

My last OBE involved in encounter with another dream character. The dream character it’s self was of the type that I’ve come to think harbors independent awareness. I cannot prove this, of course, but it’s a way that I’ve come to interpret this type of energetic signature experienced amidst dreaming.

Anyways, in the lucid dream I confronted the dream character in a way that I had hoped would help cut through the dream to some fundamental truth that I feel is hidden beneath the content of dreaming. Well, as of experience many times before with these types of entities, either from them or from something within me which seeks to perpetuate the dream state. Someone else mentioned a plot device which which keeps the stream of dreaming going, and it manifests as a certain resistance to cutting through to whatever is hidden behind the curtains of the dream. I think that’s a great way of describing a very distinct possibility. I’ve often had the impression that there is this vast infinite awareness underlying everything that is dreaming itself through layers upon layers upon layers of multitudinous dreaming possibilities… And that is just doing it for the hell of it :smile: . Part of the impression comes from having read it somewhere before, of course. The other part comes from certain uncanny hints that seem to come through dreams and through the content of daily life in very specific synchronous ways. It’s like something winking at me from beyond the dream through the dream. It’s as if it wants me to know that it’s “all just a dream” and yet it wants me to keep dreaming so it puts a barriers to fully awakening.

LOL this is just my way of interpreting all the little nuances that I experience with regard to this type of thing and dreaming. In no way am I speaking for anyone else but myself. In no way can I definitively say that things are “this way” or “that way” with any degree of certainty. And certainly not for anybody else.

Anyways, I’m not entirely convinced that any of you exist at all :razz:

Sorry…last post was from my phone and with some errors. Looked for the “edit” option, but not available in this thread for some reason. This sentence…

“Well, as of experience many times before with these types of entities, either from them or from something within me which seeks to perpetuate the dream state.”

Is better written as…

“Well, as I’ve experienced many times before with these types of dreaming entities, either from some extraneous impetus from them as real entities somehow involved in my dream, or from something within me which seeks to perpetuate the dream state and thus resists this ‘cutting through’ , the DC refused to play any part in ‘waking up’ within the dream. It evaded the proposal whole-sale.”

Sorry…I’ll try to be more careful with my posting in the future…edit before I press “submit” :smile:

I have had this type of thing happen a couple of times.

The first time it happened I was standing on a balcony with some of my mates when I randomly became lucid. This is how i become lucid most of the time, i just know i’m dreaming without preforming and kind of reality check. I said to my mates “hey you know you’re in a dream right?” and they all gave m a confused look. I then said “watch this” and began floating about a meter off the ground. They all gave me an aggressive look. I was instantly pulled backwards by an unknown force. It kept on pulling me back and away from the earth. I continued back travailing hundreds of times faster that the speed of light. I exited the solar system and then the galaxy and further. Finally it ended and I was awake on my floor doing reality checks.

I was confused at the time as to what has happened but this post may have explained it in part. I did however get a positive out of this experience: I can now fly at the speed that I was pulled back at. This has allowed me to explore outer space allot easier.

The other time something like this happened was when I used my clarity shout to make the dream visually clear and increase detail. But unfortunately some of the effects of my shouts have been “leaked” into other shouts. This is a problem I have been working on for some time now. At the moment my clarity shout sometimes damages parts of the dreamscape and this often annoys DC s , probably because I just damaged their house or something else. They are usually just annoyed but sometimes they become very aggressive and violent. At this point I usually deal with the hostiles by shouting at them or I just leave. I never feel threatened by hostiles and sometimes just toy with them for a bit.

I was minding my own business doing my own thing in my lucid dream. Doing cool things like swimming and breathing underwater, skateboarding on crazy half pipes, and just exploring until I remembered a story that if you convinced your lucid dream characters that they were dreaming they could be your partner on your journey. The very interesting thing is that I remembered that I wanted to do that in a ld so immediately I wanted to find a dream character. I saw a white lady and I immediately went toward her direction but unfortunately she knew that I was coming and was trying to hide and avoid me as if I was an attacker wanting to do harm to her. I just wanted to talk to her then all of a sudden a white man with a green shirt puts his hand in front of my chest and blocks me from getting to her. She gets away and the green shirt man asks me “what are you doing?” I said I just want to talk to her. I remember even in the earlier parts of the dream the same exact incident occurred. I saw the white lady and then the white green shirted man steps in and blocks my way. He was very hostile towards me and he really didn’t want me to talk to her. Why does she not want to talk to me? Why does another dream character come in and stop me?!

Oh my…another 2 cents in my pocket.

So, DC’s…a couple ways (among myriad other ways, I’m sure) to regard them. One, is as if they are projections of your mind…or subconscious. And another, as something having real or independent awareness, somehow interacting with you in your dreams. And yet another, as some combination or variation of the two.

My thought is, any way you look at it is bound to shift the way they react. Might be fun to play around with this feature. How do DC’s react when I treat them like they are real, conscious entities? How do DC’s react when I treat them like they are an inextricable part of myself?