Discerning what isn't just part of your own psyche

[Kali's Child]

I always seem to interpret everything as coming from within my own psyche, but I've noticed that a lot of you here seem to see a lot of your dream characters as coming from 'outside'. I'm curious what criteria you are using to decide if a dream entity is independent of your psyche.

[Korpo]

Feeling that they are no dream characters.

Kurt Leland has described an inner sense to do with this in his latest book, and it's the inner senses that help you pick up on this information. There's a feeling or hunch associated with the entity in question. Once you start to trust that sensation it can develop further.

[CFTraveler]

I have to say that I consider all of my characters self-aspects; the only time I've thought of them as something or someone 'other' is when I dreamed about my mother telling me that she was going to pass "soon", and her doing so on the same week as the landmark she gave me about it.
In the same process I consider my grandmother's visitations (and my dad's visitations years ago) as external to me (at least sometimes) when they gave me information that turned out to be precognitive or sideways-cognitive (that is, let me know about what was going on with other relatives that later on turned out to be confirmed). Only in those cases I have tended to think they were 'them' and not some self aspect they symbolized.
Besides those isolated cases, I think it's either all me or mostly me.

[ButterflyWoman]

I have to say that I consider all of my characters self-aspects; the only time I've thought of them as something or someone 'other' is when I dreamed about my mother telling me that she was going to pass "soon", and her doing so on the same week as the landmark she gave me about it.

I'm the same. The only time I've had dream characters where I felt there was more to it than just my own subconscious generating a self-aspect for consideration is a few times when my departed grandmother came to visit me (and would laugh at me when I'd say, "Hey, what are you doing here? Aren't you dead?"), and a period where my father kept turning up in my dreams, almost as an actual intruder, trying to communicate with me. Those cases had a special or "different" quality to them, it's hard to describe.

The dreams with my grandmother stopped on their own.

The ones where my father was pestering me began when I finally worked out the hows and whys of full-on psychic tie cutting (and I got one hell of a psychic attack when he sensed what I'd done, too; I know NOW to shield BEFORE cutting the ties!). The dreams then commenced, and they only stopped when I set up specific psychic shielding against him. The pattern is part of why I conclude that the dream intrusions were a kind of psychic contact, rather than just dream images.

I also have had a few dreams with my mother where it was made clear to me that her mental state is deteriorating (later confirmed by my adult daughter who is still in touch with my mother), and there were a few where my mother showed up and wandered around in my dream annoyingly, like she was looking for me, but once I set up psychic shielding against her, that stopped. Now when she (or my father) show up in a dream, it's always a dream character (they have a different quality that is impossible to explain).

My dreams have, for some years, been populated by only my own dream characters, probably due to the fact that my house is very well warded and I'm in the absolute habit of psychic shielding (apparently, I even do it in my sleep).

[Beekeeper]

Ditto on the dreams of deceased people but some of my visitors popped through on their way out as well as afterwards.

I've also had some incoming visits from nieces and even a couple of friends' kids, which is sweet and helps with advance choosing of baby clothes .

In addition, I've met various other people in dreams briefly before meeting them IRL.

Now, the others. That's harder to know for sure unless you're at Kurt's level of accomplishment. I called a guide once and it came as a dove, which I rejected because I was ignorant and thought it too cliched. I spoke to a couple once that could have been something else but they didn't seem very interested in me and, in retrospect, I'm not sure they qualified as guides, even though they agreed they were. If they were, they had better things to do than chat with me.

I have noticed certain dream characters taking on particular roles and turning up over and over, sometimes in differing dream bodies (older, younger, tidy, sloppy). I feel they are more than dream characters because of the intelligence in them. I remember a bus driver in one dream who kept watching me with a smile on his face as if he was expecting something. I did get lucid a bit after and I'm pretty certain it was because of the look of expectation on his face. He appeared in several dreams before that one. There was also the extremely brief encounter with a woman in a crowded transport hub. The scene repeated thrice and then she stopped it still, looked across at me and said, "Can you talk?" When I said, "Yes," the dream ended.

So, if they are DCs, these guys are of a higher order intelligence than your run-of-the-mill.

And, since I can throw this in because of your title, I feel the apparitions I've encountered were also objective realities, rather than something my brain conjured.

[Korpo]

Actually, expecting that everything is an aspect of your own psyche might block developing this hunch a bit.

On the other hand, Robert Waggoner told people in his dreams they were dream characters, and some were very insistent they were not. I really like his book "Lucid Dreaming".

[ButterflyWoman]

Robert Waggoner told people in his dreams they were dream characters, and some were very insistent they were not.

Yeah, they do that in waking reality, too. Try telling people they're figments of your imagination or some aspect of yourself and they get all kinds of weird on you.

[Beekeeper]

Shheeze, it was just that one time, CW!

[ButterflyWoman]

Oh, it's okay. I don't mind being a figment of someone's imagination. Hell, I'm a figment of my OWN imagination, why would I object to being a figment of someone else's?

[Kali's Child]

Thanks for the responses everyone.

I think there may be something to what you say Korpo. My experiences seem to mirror my expectations very closely. Perhaps I need to open myself up to the idea of more contact with the other.