Will vs. impulse in LDs

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!

I think your brain just isn’t as actice(your asleep after all). So you normally do the first thing that comes to mind. If you tell yourself you want to try something before you go to bed, it doesn’t work a lot because you just forget. If you say to yourself you want to do it everything for like a month, then chances are you will do it.

Also anyone noticed that once you do something you just keep doing it? Like you keep telling yourself you want to try and fly and you do, then you want to try something else but you end up flying again. Then its a pain because you fly all the time.

Yes! I was having problems coming up with things to do while being lucid, so I started telling myself every time i did an RC, “If I’m dreaming now, I’m going to fly around over that big field over there” (I was at the Roskilde festival at the time). And after a while, I had a flying LD. In my next LD after that, I wanted to do something else but I couldn’t think of anything so I went flying again.

man, i went lucid last night, right? and since this topic came up, i decided to do some testing. first, i tried to remember simple things like my phone # and my address. and what suprised me is that i could. this is the most lucid ive ever been. i decided to stay totally calm, and do absolutely NOTHING on impluse. Instead, (since this was brought up), i asked a DC where they came from. Unfortunantly, as always, my DC didnt answer me. But the dream was a success, in the fact that i could actually sit and think about my waking life.

90% of my LDs involve having sex through impulse - I keep forgetting I want to meet my spirit guide! thank you for reminding me, hopefully have some luck tonight :smile:

  • Silva

I just realized I have never tried to find my spirit guide. That will be my next quest.

what exactly is a spirit guide?
it said " An entity or part of the sub-conscious that guides or helps a dreamer"
buti dont get it…?

its your subC basucally talking to you as a DC

mine can kick my ass :sad:

This morning I was walking on a road, and I looked at my hand and got lucid.
I thought -Yes!! Finaly an LD!
I decided to change the enviroment. I raised my arms and tried to change everything around me, but instead, I started flying, higher and higher until I woke up. That’s my third flying LD, the next time I’m just going to sit down and try getting as lucid as possible, like iandude

iandude thats very interesting stuff there. I’ll have to try that myself, but hey thats a very good idea! If we all tried this out, it may help us to see if it differs from person to person. Thinking/remembering about waking life, at least. Thinking about things like address, name, number, very ingrained knowledge. We could then try onto more-chaotic specifics like ‘what i ate for dinner’ or ‘what i planned to do in my LD before i went to bed’

[OT]

As far as spirit guides go, i would assume the dualistic definition is there to cross the boundary between those who believe spirit guides are supernatural (or external) and those who believe spirit guides are merely the subconscious (or internal). Which one you believe in is up to you, not that it is very necessary (though you might trust internal more than external, theres the argument that external spirit guides are by implication good by nature.) But the constant remains that the guide is there to help guide you in that you pursue (waking life, LD skills, yourself, whatever). Thus the current definition is very transcendent and practical, though hard to understand because it doesnt really put emphasis on the word guide

[/OT]

Ok, i just realized something. Say that you tell yourself IRL what you are going to do in x amount of time. The more you tell yourself, and/or the less time from the present to when you’ll do it will increase chances that you will remember. Another factor thrown in here in our case, is the fact that we are crossing the border from dreams into reality, which in other words may effect our ability to remember the intention. Im thinking that it does effect it but of course we might wanna test it.

But, another thing, reflecting upon many of my LDs and my most recent ones, is that i am not effected by impulse so much so as i am effected by what opportunities my consciousness becomes aware of in my current dreamscape. A classic example would be:

Before your dream you told yourself that you were going to manipulate your body.

In your dream you are lucid and find yourself in a fascinating dreamscape (say, a huge futuristic city in the sky) that you have never seen or before imagined.

Chances are that you will decide to explore the dreamscape, rather than manipulate your body (esp since you can do the latter in any LD).

The question remains, then, is this action due to impulse? I would say that it is not impulse, but more like present-time free will, especially if you are conscious of your previous intent and the current opportunity at the same time.

Conclusions:
-Just because one does something other than they before intended, does not mean it is impulse.
-Environment plays a part in free will.

Ideas:
-Environment may have a greater weight than previous intentions, because it may be uncommon opportunity (one may not at that point be able to create any dreamscape, or one might like to explore ‘natural’ dreamscape), and because it is more immediate, versus the past.
-The boundary between dreams and reality may have effect on memory, consciousness, etc.

I guess to test it, one could remember their previous intention, as well as be aware of what else they can do. If one has multiple choices in the present and chooses one, then it is free will.

Then again perhaps the memory of the intent can be so arbitrary in comparison to current opportunity that it does not even reach consciousness, but would that make the action impulse?

Perhaps there exists somewhere on the lucidity-ladder two degrees of lucidity:
X-A: Lucidity where one knows they are dreaming but does the first things to come to mind.
X-B: Lucidity where one knows they are dreaming and is also aware of multiple things he/she can do and chooses among them.

Not implying that one is ‘higher’ than the other, btw, for it is easily deducable that each has their faults and benefits.

To reply to other things:

I was wondering if the consciousness differs between IRL and LD, not in terms of perception or feel but in terms of if you are thinking like yourself. I guess we can generally agree that there is no difference (in LD’s).

Im thinking that perhaps it is our very ideals that we experience in our dreams (ND). Like, say you hear really, really good music, the best music youve ever heard in an ND. This could be, in fact, our manifesting and experiencing of our ideal (best music, best whatever) while in a dream. But in waking life we cannot replicate it because here perceptions (the senses) are limited by the physical (keynotes, etc) and perfection, by our societies’ possibly-unhealthy standards, is nonexistent. Its obvious to us all that we can experience what we IRL consider ‘perfection’, in ND’s, but the question is: Can we create in LD’s that which we cannot create in waking life? Can we experience the ideal, the unattainable, in a lucid dream? Or, are we limited to the unpredictable nature of ND’s?

If we are limited, its not so bad. I mean, you could pull a non-lucid-dream incubation and still have a grand experience. In fact, perhaps during the experience you could become lucid, so that though you didnt create it (sorry, no feeling like god ppl) that you can still experience it in ‘normal’ (WL) consciousness.

Brilliant thought. You know, i think that that might be possible. To tie it into your previous paragraph, perhaps with the dream-mind becoming more like the waking mind, the ‘translation’ becomes more complete? Thus, IRL intents can be translated into dream-mind better, and dream-memories can be translated better IRL.

I really do believe that we can think and act intelligently in a lucid dream. when you’re in a ld your thinking and reacting in a place completely sustained by you. practice and apply yourself good and long enough and you’ll surely be able to balance your way through.

That is the case with me sometimes…o.o;… Like I had forgot about something for a while and then suddenly that was the one thing I wanted to acomplish in a LD…o.o

For me it depends on the lenght and stability of the LD. If it is long enough and stable enough i will get over my initial excitement and actually have time to explore and trial new desires.

Only once have i entered a LD and straight away focused on my exact intention that i had before i went to sleep. Usually i fly around do ramdom stuff untill i think “oh what was it that i wanted to try”.

Peace Sensi.

I have been experiencing those impulses lately in my LD’s. Even though I have rehearsed my intention(s) IRL several times… it doesn’t work! I always get distracted by something else or things that I need to work with for my intention doesn’t work properly.

Btw… for memory process that I learned from psychology class… there are three processes…

Sensual Memory where visual are stored for 1/4 sec. and audio is stored for 3 seconds in order for the memory to last longer, it must be transferred to Short-Term Memory (profrontal cortex and medial temporial sp?) which lasts 30 minutes. Though rehearsal… it gets encoded to Long-Term Memory which is hippocampus like Jeff said.

So notice the word REHEARSAL… I believe that our dreams are a part form of rehearsal for our memory to be imprinted in our long-term memory. Theorically, maybe when we’re lucid… our dreams, our emotions, etc. are still mostly controlled by our subconscious so our memory process (rehearsal) still is working. So we experience some strong bursts of impulses to do something else than our intentions sometimes.

Am I making any sense?

I’ll clarify that if needed. Please let me know if I need to.

Yes you make sense and i agree with you!

:wink:

:happy: Oh I love pyschology! I love making theories! ^^ I wish there’s a way for me to major in pyschology without having to study for 10 years! ><

Biopsychology is what you would want Dm7!

wow I researched fast about what biopsychology is… wowowowow YES that’s what I WANT!!! Precisely! I get to study neuroscience too! Thanks :happy: goes off to research more

Edited: It doesnt say how much years I have to go for… >_< It surely sounds interesting though.

I posted an awfully long and quite unreadable topic about that… It’s in the “Theory of Lucidity” under an unbelievable and off-putting title, like “neural networks, random impulses, etc.” Please don’t read it, it will cause you incurable head ashes ! :wink:
In brief, one of the theories I have put in this thread is the following : one of the dream functions is to copy information from short-term memory (STM) to long-term memory (LTM).

Thus your hypothesis was good, Dm7 ! :grin:

Great :happy: :slight_smile: