Dreaming vs. Dream-making, Etc.

[wstein]

There are other skills used in advanced lucid dreaming like activating the watcher who watches the dream from the outside (does not participate)...

I'm curious by what you mean by "activating the watcher."

During most dreams, you are a participant. Thus when you become lucid, you are experiencing the dream first person (participating in it). The watcher does not participate in the dream, rather it watches from the outside as if watching play. Making alterations to the dream is much easier from this perspective. It's possible to do both at the same time, be in the dream and watch at the same time. I use the term 'activate the watcher' to mean that when you become lucid in a dream, you 'wake up' the watcher consciousness in addition to your participation in the dream.

The watcher can be invoked when awake also. It's kind of like watching over your own shoulder to observe your actions and more informatively, watch your motivations.

* Is being able to clearly see your visualizations the effect of getting your subconscious mind to project the image your conscious mind is focused on? Or is it something else?

More probably a function of visual 'recall'.

I'm not sure what you mean by visual recall.

Visual recall is most easily recognized when remembering. When you remember something, some of the sensory experiences are replayed. Especially for visual thinkers, this includes the images associated with the experience. You are seeing it again. The images displayed are not always what you are focused on.

[CFTraveler]

The watcher can be invoked when awake also. It's kind of like watching over your own shoulder to observe your actions and more informatively, watch your motivations.

It's the way I stay 'sane' or what passes for sane for me.

[dreamosis]

I use the term 'activate the watcher' to mean that when you become lucid in a dream, you 'wake up' the watcher consciousness in addition to your participation in the dream.

You know, I've had a handful of watcher experiences, but I've never specifically tried to "activate the watcher" in a lucid dream. Most of my watcher experiences have been vivid, non-lucid dreams in which I'm watching with the watcher as the watcher explains things to me. As I think about it, though, I can remember at least one example of a lucid dream in which the watcher spoke to me directly. It was literally a God-like voice in the air, from a presence that understood what I was thinking and feeling. It spoke to give me insight.

Do you have any specific way of activating the watcher? Other than just calling on it?

...It's weird what's coming back to me as I think about this. I remember another lucid dream in which I suddenly dissolved into the environment, and was the environment for a moment. Then I re-materialized myself, finding that a bit more comfortable. Dreaming from the watcher perpsective probably takes some getting used to. Although I guess a part of us does it all the time...

The watcher can be invoked when awake also. It's kind of like watching over your own shoulder to observe your actions and more informatively, watch your motivations.

Awareness of awareness...

Visual recall is most easily recognized when remembering. When you remember something, some of the sensory experiences are replayed. Especially for visual thinkers, this includes the images associated with the experience. You are seeing it again. The images displayed are not always what you are focused on.

For me, most of the time when I'm remembering -- like a passage from a book for example -- I'm remembering the arrangement of the text on the page and roughly where the words were that I'm remembering. Although, if I have to memorize long tracts, I find this gets in the way. It allows me to recall well, but it doesn't allow me to recall as fast as learning something by sound. Memorizing by sound takes longer for me, but allows faster recall, and I retain it longer. Memorizing visually takes a short amount of time, but makes recall slower and I retain less of it over time. That's how it seems, anyway. It's probably an individual quirk. I've done a lot of acting and so I've done a lot of memorizing. I began noticing at one point, as I was acting, that I was sometimes accessing my lines visually -- by looking for the page of the script I was on in my mind.

Dreaming versus dream-making...

Dream-making requires some degree of watcherness. To make a dream, you must be aware that you're dreaming for one, but also aware of the different "dream pressures" ready to manifest. This is coming from my intuition so I'm just going to follow it...It might be gobbledygook.

As the body rests and the dreaming process begins, there are already a number of "dream pressures" in the mind-field. They needn't be called "dream pressures" really because is actuality they're ordinary emotional/mental pressures. The first priority in dreaming is processing these pressures. For people who live high-stress, spiritually shallow lives, most dreams that they have -- if they remember them at all -- are processing-type dreams. Somehow, the early stages of dreaming, are the Third Eye turned toward one's own mind-field. Clairvoyance is difficult without an active dreaming practice because without it attempts to use the Third Eye will be dominated by energy-material that hasn't been processed in dreams.

A regular meditation and energywork practice deepens dreams because the person is entering sleep with less energy-material to process -- and is therefore freer to dream at deeper levels.

But back to the pressures...Without perspective on your own mental pressures, dream-making -- and, by extension, dream control -- will tend to be like a weird science experiment. True control comes from knowing yourself.

[wstein]

Do you have any specific way of activating the watcher? Other than just calling on it?

Not really.

A subtle point, you should be able to be the watcher (first person), not just have it be present. Of course if you are on conscious only at the dream level, the watcher would appear as you describe it. Being the watcher is kind of like playing god to the dream. Maintaining both first person views simultaneously is where is gets 'interesting' (and really important if you activate the watcher while awake).

The watcher can be invoked when awake also. It's kind of like watching over your own shoulder to observe your actions and more informatively, watch your motivations.

Awareness of awareness...

If you want to kill some brain cells, you can activate a watcher of the watcher. Maintaining 3 levels at a time requires extreme focus.

[dreamosis]

Three levels at the same time...

We are spirit, mind, and body; the dreamer, the character, and the dream; the perceiver, the fantasm, and the simulation; space, sun, and earth.

Reflecting on the idea of the watcher in dreams, who can either witness or participate, I realized that it's important to remember that fantasmation can occur either with the participation of spirit or without it. The watcher, or Perceiver, is the spinner of dreams, but allows its lower aspect to explore them without guidance. This is akin to a computer programmer building a program like the Sims and then letting its character alone, to interact with the program in all ways possible. A lucid dream isn't necessarily the character becoming the directly controlled avatar of the watcher, though. Spirit is the player, but the videogame metaphor breaks down when we realize that there are degrees of spiritual influence. And it's complicated further by realizing that it's the character who must reach toward the dreamer to gain its benign influence; although, occasionally, the dreamer seems to reach toward us.

That a lucid dream is not equal to total symbiosis with the dreamer implies that heightened awareness while in the physical is not equal to transcendence. This means that heightened awareness, while occuring through the work of spirit, is still a phenomenon of the mind. To gain the highest awareness is to completely merge the mind with the spirit.

The influence of the spirit cannot be grabbed, it must be received in a reaching, open palm.

Dream-making cannot be performed by the same part of us that lucid dreams; rather, the part of us that's lucid must merge with the part of us that's weaving the dream.

To effectively create within the dream (that is, fantasmate), we cannot only rely on the part of us that's lucid; rather, the conscious mind must temporarily "spread itself apart" to form fantasms. I seem to do this quite well reflexively in semi-lucid and non-lucid dreams. If I'm ever very afraid, my mind automatically creates tools and talismans for me. That it's generally easier for me in either a semi-conscious or subconscious state is telling.

Offhand, I'd say to successfully thoughtform (to coin a verb) in a lucid dream, you must in essence, willingly reduce your lucidity. This jives with reality creation principles, in particular the maxim that awareness repels or prevents. It also explains easily why dream-flying is difficult if you focus on it too much. Thoughtforming takes a kind of blurring of the mind. To be specific, I mean that creating a coherent thoughtform takes a blurring of the mind. I describe "conscious fantasmation" above, but it seems to me now that if fantasmation is too conscious, the energy will not congeal -- for a lack of a better description.

If you're following me, though, you can see that degrees of conscious fantasmation could be used to dissolve the unwanted products of semi- and subconcious fantasmation. Probably, though, using conscious fantasmation in this catabolic way would still be more effective if the mind/consciousness were slightly blurred (while aligned to the highest parts of itself, and the spirit).

Some of that's really vague, but I know it will become more specific as I sit with the concepts.

The whole idea of "blurring" or "spreading apart" the mind makes more concrete sense of the term Mystery for me. The Mystery is the spirit, of course, but it is experienced by scattering the mists of the mind.

[dreamosis]

Last night was full of what I would call "Physiopassive Semi-Conscious Perception."

Every once in a while, I'm aware of having been thinking all night. That is, I'll fall asleep with something on my mind and periodically surface from sleep realizing that my mind has been circling the same thoughts. I'll half-consciously engage in the process, then fall back asleep.

This is quite distinct from dreaming, although it often involves "daydreaming." I have to put that word in quotes because it happens when I'm physically fully or mostly asleep.

Sometimes these night-daydreams, these physiopassive fantasmations, border on being dreams. Usually they're not visual. I don't clearly see what my mind is thinking about it, but I'm much more involved in the imagination process than I would be if my body were fully active and awake. Very often I surface from these episodes feeling like I was dreaming, but then I realize I wasn't actually seeing anything. Other times, I'm not sure if I was having a visual experience or not -- as I become as involved in these experiences as I do dreams. I react to them like dreams.

Last night, though, I was aware of being somewhere between perception and fantasmation for a good deal of the night. I wasn't dreaming, not in the conventional sense. My body was passive, at rest, sleeping, but I was aware of lying in bed. I was "seeing" the room, my cat, my partner sleeping next to me, but it wasn't like real-time sight.
The best I can describe it is to say that I was "feel-seeing." It was like highly detailed empathy extended to everything around me. (Direct mind perception.)

I was either working things out on my own, receiving information, or both.

Some of it felt like night-daydreaming because I was, off and on, aware of thinking. The most striking feature of it all, though, was being able to sense my surroundings while my body was asleep (not through my etheric eye(s), but in some other way).

The information I got is now slipping away from me and is vague. It had to do with the fact that, in the lower realms, everything is a manifestation of difference or opposition, and that the Higher Self and "archangels" being energetically harmonized are usually not perceptible in the lower realms (although they're there...).

I felt like I was seeing through spirit. It wasn't seeing at all, but it wasn't blindness either.