#directed dreaming

Mindfulness, is a part of meditation, who's practices are taught as part of the Buddhist Community. Mindfulness, is not a religion, but more a practice of staying present. In the moment. Or, aware of what is happening around you vs having your focus or attention on an inner monologue, thought stream or conversation.

Don't confuse mindfulness with being a religion, just because it is taught as part of the Buddhist practices. Mindfulness is a very secular process that doesn't require faith. It just requires patience and practice.

Mindfulness is hard because it comes from a meditation practice where everything but the task you are working on is present in your mind. Many ADHDrs at this point are going .. Good Luck!!! Though, it should be noted that even NTs spend decades training to achieve this state of concentration.

So, I'm here to help you get started.

Why is it so hard

Our brains require new material all the time. More so for ADHDrs than NTs. So, it knows that if it's not getting new input, it has to poke and prod us to get it. It's method of doing this is throwing memories, thoughts, and changing our inner monologue until it provokes us to get up and do something new.

GO HUNT FOR THAT DOPAMINE!!!

We need to teach the brain that there are other places that dopamine can be generated. New places where happiness can be found. New places and ways where input can be explored.

Consider this, when you sleep at nite, you dream. This is your brains way of entertaining itself. And, we can tap into this to help just start your mindfulness meditation practices. You've read of people that are able to change their dreams, well, you can do it too.

Getting Started

Meditation comes in several modes.

Audio

Visual

Physical

When ever possible, try to use all 3. It will help your mind focus and see how the new event streams are just as exciting as the old.

Let's do this by creating a doll house in our minds. The more detailed the doll house and the activities of the people in it, the easier it will become to remain focused on it. (PS .. it doesn't have to be a doll house, it can be any scene you want.)

In your doll house, choose a room, and fill it with things. Here are a few scenarios ...

Are you sitting at a kitchen table trying to study a math problem?

Are you in a library trying to find a book to read?

Are you in the living room looking at a intricately decorated easter egg?

Are you in the kitchen preparing a 5 course meal for your guests?

Are you in your office taking a business call?

Are you in the garage, fixing a car.

Are you in the gym lifting weights?

Are you at the pool lounging or swimming?

Are you in the backyard playing hide and seek with a puppy?

There are infinitely many scenarios.

In addition to these scenarios, we are going to add one more caveat. They all need to be happy scenes, filled with positive events. Our ADHD brain doesn't like negative events, and uses negative events to provoke change, so we want it to learn how positive events can be used for change.

Measuring Success

In order for meditation and mindfulness to be successful, you need to have a positive outcome, almost every time. It's how an ADHDr's brain knows that it's having fun. It generates dopamine when it has fun, wins, and experiences happiness.

Success, then, is measured not by how long we sit. How present we stay. Or, by comparing the depth of our scenarios with previous days. No, instead, success is measured by how much fun we have while meditating or being mindful.

While you are practicing, notice when your mind races off the chosen topic and heads to another topic. When that happens, patiently bring it back to the chosen scenario. Give it a happy bit of candy, squeeze on the cheek, and say, "Let's go play chess some more!"

The Next Level

If you are able to sit for a designated period of time and hold onto your scenario, then you are ready to try the next level.

You are the character in the doll house. You are washing the dishes. You are cleaning the bathroom. You are working in the office. You are doing the laundry.

Just like in your imaginary doll house, you can make the events happy and positive. You can choose to have fun. The way to do this is to focus on the senses being engaged. Your touch, taste, smell, site, and sound. Can you feel the cloths as you fold them? Can you feel the water dripping over your fingers as you rinse a bowl? Or, the soup bubbles as they tickle your fingers?

These are the events you want your mind to focus on now. These are positive events. Things that takes your brain to a happy space, and generate dopamine.

Directing Your Dreams

As mentioned, there are people who can wake up in their dreams and do things. They accomplish this by preparing for bed each night, by writing a story about what they want to dream about. Or, a problem they want to solve.

Just like the scenarios involving the doll house, write a scenario about what you are doing, where you are going, why you are trying to get there, the obstetrical you have to over come, the plot points, the things that will keep your mind engaged and interested in solving this problem. Be the hero in your story.

This will influence your sleep, and will show up in your dreams. As an example, people who play video games all the time, start seeing the video games in their dreams.

Just Sitting

If you've made it this far, then the next level in meditation and mindfulness is to just sit in silence. You will hear the birds chirping and insects buzzing around. Maybe, you'll hear animals scurrying around, or if you're in an apartment building, the other tenants going about their day.

You will also feel your rhythmic breathing .. In, Out, In, Out ...

You will feel your knees and back complain, unless they are super flexible =)

Your mind will find all of this entertaining, and the movies and conversations your mind needed to have before will slowly subside on their own. And, if they don't, that's ok too.

When the Mind Plays a Movie or Has a Conversation

It's normal for the mind to never stop creating images and conversations. Here's a helpful hint on how to view this problem. Play a radio or TV in the background. You can hear the sound, but you ignore it while you're doing your work. You don't necessarily engage until something interesting comes along.

You can use this same training in your meditation. If your brain never stops creating movies or conversations, then pretend your brain is a radio or TV. You don't have to watch or listen to them. They are just there.

When you find yourself engaged in what your brain is presenting or the topic of conversation, simply thank yourself for catching yourself getting off topic, take a deep breath, and return to just sitting, relaxing, and enjoying the warm sun as it shines on your face.

One Last Thing

Your mind uses negative events .. memories and conversations .. to provoke you. You can fight this by writing down 10 things that make you happy. They don't have to be big things. Small wins. Or just how it feels to slide into a freshly made bed with new sheets.

When your mind chooses to attack you, read the list of fun things. It will distract the mind long enough for you to return to what you were doing.

I took it two nights ago and suffered no ill effects.

But last night? HOLY SHIT.

I found myself actually controlling the dream. Something I've heard about in directed dreaming, but never experienced before. I could manipulate every variable in real time. That field of tulips? Nah I want them to be mushrooms! The road? Now it's cobblestone not paved! The sky is orange now. It's raining oil.

The thing is whenever I made changes, I snapped awake, scaring myself at the changes I was making, so there was a lot of stopping and starting. And hence a lot of waking up.

The adventures seemed practically limitless though. I was dancing through ideas I wanted to see play out, but only the one that filled my mind right before I fell asleep loaded and since twilight thoughts are often nonsensical there were a lot of odd things afoot. I erased it was able to change the majority of it but I did wait to see where most of it went.

This post is in response to s friend who asked me to review and contrast techniques.

http://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-suggest-three-tips-for-lucid-dreams

First checking reality. I learned to do that in dreams, vs how inception does it, by having a unique token in reality. Or, building a logical frsmework in reality. I was afraid back then of becoming stuck in a dream, thinking it was reality, so i devised a way to know when i was dreaming.

2nd is using a phrase. While their phrase had sucess, i choose to give myself permission to remember my dreams as i fell off to sleep. I feel more people will have better success with this. This morphed into directed dream, where i began asking a question that i wanted to work on while dreaming.

The last technique - waking up to enter REM .. doesnt work. Instead there are 2 better techniques that do.

1st .. start with meditation just before bed, esp when extremely tired. As you meditate you brain will shift your visual input from the eyes to REM. The trick here is to remain conscious while the shift is happening. To remain conscious, keep your eyes open.

2nd .. using the first technique, lay in bed and watch how your body changes as you approach REM. Uf you succeded at reaching REM with your eyes open, then you csn lsy in bed with your eyes closed. Just catch yourself as you enter REM.

The problem with entering REM is that the brain resets your awareness. All thoughts you were thinking suddenly disappear, and a new thread is started. It,s so stark, that when it happens, it can be quite disconcerting and cause you to wake up. The reset happens again just before enter REM. Thus why most people dont realize they,ve entered REM, and forgotten about the outside world.

Every person who is able to interact with their dreams - or enter a lucid dreaming state - has super powers at their disposal.  What strength, it determined by how well the practitioner experiments with the power and knows how it works.  So, let’s take a look at many of the super powers that have been described in comic books.

Speed, Mind Control, Regeneration, Phasing, Strength, Force Fields, Force Sensitive, Impenetrable, Kinetic Power, Energy Transfer, Immortality, Elemental Control, Pyro Kinesis, Plant Control, Change Size, Elasticity, Vision, Energy Projection, Temperature Control, Metamorph, Kimara, Absorption, Superior Intellect, Astral Projection, Physical Size, Invisibility, Time Manipulation, Teleportation.

In The Avengers, Infinity War, we see Thanos collecting the Infinity Stones ... Time, Power, Soul, Space, Mind, and Reality.  Supposedly with these 6 stones, you can control the Multi-Verse.

So let’s look at how these powers affect your lucid dreaming state.

Reality

In previous blogs, I described how the mind was capable of multi tasking - creating whole realities for you to inhabit, along with other sentient beings.  This power allows you, those that are aware of how your reality works, to warp and bend it at your will.  You can literally change reality to anything you wish.

Technically with this ability you have the ability to manifest all the other abilities.  As reality can bend to your will, speed is neither needed or too fast for you to see, as you can speed up reality or slow it down as you need. And, you can move yourself from spot to spot without walking.  

Not having full control over this ability though allows reality to change at a whim.  Thus in lucid dreams, reality changes quite frequently.  It actually takes a lot of minds to build a reality and keep it stable, as all the minds are looking at the same image being projected by others.  Those that can spot the gaps, can walk through it.  Magicians use this - which we mere mortals call, “Magic”.

Reality, though, it nothing more than the construct. The basis for which all other life, matter, material will come into being, and how it will be organized.  Like the Matrix, its reality started out as a giant white room, later training simulations were programmed into the construct.  Things fell the right way. Things reacted the right way.  But, nothing says that anything has to act this way, expect what how you expect things to react.

Soul 

How aware are you of the people who are in your dream with you?  Do you realize when the pop into existence and when they leave? While Reality provides the construct for things will react, this provides the shape of that reality. The soul.  When a building is built, or a person created, they both have shape, form, and are made of materials that interact in a specific way.

And like a computer which creates shapes from a stored set, these shapes are stored and used in your brain.  They are the soul of your reality. Every tingle thing in your dream is created by you. It is a reflection of you.  And at this point, it is changing as you change in an interactive cycle of seen / response. A space where cause and effect have no meaning, as both cause and effect are happening at the same time. While moving forward in time.

The more aware you are of the objects that come into your dreams and leave, the more you will be able to leave your Reality and see behind it.  See the world outside your reality, where things are stored and how.  Where things come from, and how they interact with you.

Mind 

How do animate and inanimate objects in your lucid dreams interact with you.  It is through your mind.  While your mind creates the reality you experience in, and it fills that environment with information you are familiar with, it also uses the very AI you are to bring life to the entities that inhabit your mind.  

It’s not to fathom that your mind builds a personality profile for every single person you meet. This profile covers every detail in how a person acts and reacts.  Have you had dreams of deceased relatives who seems to life like that, you’d swear they came from heaven just to visit you and pass you a message.  Well, unless others experience the exact same event, your brain is relying on this personality profile to help you hear the message.

While psychologists believe that every person in your dream is a representation of you, that’s not exactly true.  Every person in your dreams is created by you, but their representation is based on how you interacted with them, and what your brain stored about them.    There is another perspective from psychologists that every person in your dreams is someone you’ve met, if even only in passing.  While I can’t give you a number on how many different people you will come in contact on a daily basis, I can tell you that based on Linked In’s data, the average person only builds relationships with 1000 people in their life time.  The exceptions are those that are in fields which require them to build networks, and then the numbers reach into the 100,000′s.

But if you just look at the first 18 years of your life, you can pretty much track most of the personalities you dream about.

To control this power, you need to recognize the inner workings of the personality engine as it’s running in real time.  You need to see and be able to test in real time how doing something causes that person to react as expected.  And how doing something out side of their range of expectations causes the engine to search for an appropriate response.  It’s during that time that magic can happen.

Time

Time moves forward.  Does it. Then why do dreams jump all over the place? One minute you’re an adult working in the garden with your grand mother having a conversation about owning a house, and the next you are a child at your grand mothers house, watching her take care of her house.  Time, doesn’t flow in a straight line in lucid dreaming.  Maybe it does in day dream, since we need it to. To predict a future event, but this is not about a future event.

No, Time in a lucid dream has a far different purpose.  Time, is the story teller.  Have you ever watched a movie or television series where the characters jump through time - you know, like, “Dr. Who?”.  Time in a dream is not about cause and effect. It’s about telling a story.  The story, you need to experience in order to understand or realize something.

The Oracle in The Matrix tells Neo that he has already made the decision, he now just needs to understand it.  What if the outcome were predetermined, what then needs to happen in order to reach that outcome.  But does the outcome have the meaning you think it has?  Thus the journey to the outcome can also help you become enlightened about what lies beyond the outcome.

To reflect on an early post from this blog, the mind is searching for a solution to a problem and it’s looking through all possible paths to reach the outcome.  If you don’t like the outcome, then it has to take that into account as well, when solving the problem.  

Space

Unlike Reality, Space allows you to move through it.  Where Reality is the construct that determines the rules on how things interact, Space is the ability to break the rules and travel via portal to different places.  Open a door, step through, and instantly you’re somewhere else.  Were you paying attention?

This is why I hate spaces, and confined areas in dreams.  Houses for example have lots of rooms, with lots of things that need your attention. It’s a distraction.  Or, it’s used to bring you back to a problem that you need to address.  Like Time, Space can be rebuilt to address the same issue over and over again.

This is why time has no real meaning in a lucid dream.  Space will reset the scenario, and you will relive it over and over again, until you resolve the problem.  If this problem happens to be caused by a medical condition, I feel sorry for you. This is the closest thing to eternal hell I can imagine, and it’s not even your fault that you’re there.

Mastering space requires you to hold an image of the construct you want to be in.  It requires so much focus that when you first experiment with it, you will literally pull yourself out of the dream state. It’s as if you are refusing to listen to the story that is being told, thus the story teller kicks you out of it’s reality.

The trick here is to remain interested in the story, while you slip through the cracks of the story.  The story teller will have to catch up with you instead.  Or, you have to hold interest in the story, but ask the story teller questions about why things are happening, which distracts them, and allows you an opportunity to keep the environment as you like it.

Power

Raw power is the energy that gives creating it’s ability to change.  Entropy.  In many of the movies and television series power comes from creating a high pressure and a low pressure system. It is in this dynamic that things can tap into the universes need to equalize. But, in dreams this energy is far different.

There is no pressure in a dream, which means that entropy uses a different power source to cause change.  There is no pressure.  Which raises the question, what drives the dream.  To answer this, we have to go back to Time .. the story teller.  They are the power source for your dreams.  The inspiration for the actual environment that is created comes from the problems and life experiences you are having or have had.

As I pointed out, you can control the power source (or story teller) by causing it to loose focus or become hyper focused on something.  Then you can slip through the cracks in the dream and go where you want to go.  This is real power.

The real power in a dream is the ability to slip through the cracks in the story being told. It is in this moment that you can change the dream. 

Closing

While there are a lot of super powers that you can try in a dream, and I suggest that you try to master them all, you will have better luck if you can master the reality in which a dream is created in.  This way the story teller won’t kick you out for forcing the dream to change dramatically.

But if you want to have a dream that constantly stays in in specific space over and over again, well, use time and space together to create an environment that loops.  But to keep the loop going, you have to find a way to convince the story teller that it’s needed.  

In the last article I described how the brain is able to manifest multiple intelligent personas in real time, while you dream.  I suggested building these persona’s by interviewing the character.  There is another way.  There are various books, animations, TV shows, and movies that you read, watch, and listen to.  Each has a litany of characters to choose from, but at some point, you identify with different characters for different reasons.  People you would want to be, or people you would want to have help you on a quest.

In another blog that I maintain on Leadership, I look at the definition of Leadership, different people, situations and discussion topics raised around leadership. When you build this cadre of characters who are going to follow you, you are acting as the leader.  Maybe more than acting, you are the leader. 

But more than just being the leader to followers, your followers are amplifiers of your perspective on what life should be like.  Your hopes, your beliefs, your ways of doing things, your rituals, your routines, your emotions, ...  Followers hold you accountable for mistakes or missed opportunities, or failing to execute something.  They are not accolades to resound your point of view, but there to challenge you to be more than you are. Better than you are.  Work through your issues and help others.

Finding Supporting Characters

What books do you read?  

What TV shows do you watch?

Who do you follow in Facebook, Twitter, Social Media?

Which characters do you relate to?

Why do you hurt when they are emotionally hurt?

Why do you laugh when they make stupid mistakes?

Do you feel the way they feel when they feel an injustice has occurred?

Do they want the same type of world you do?

Once you find the characters that you would want to support you, write about them.  

Who are they?  

How much do you know about them?  

Can you build a profile of how they react to situations?  

When have they had good days vs bad days?  

How do they mesh up with your goals, beliefs, values, ...

Would they be willing to support you, why or why not?

If they are not willing to support you, why is that?

Is it worth fighting with a Supporting Character to get their Support?

I don’t have an answer for this.  But what I will tell you, is based on the movie, Jacob’s Ladder.  It had a profound affect on me, as it did relate to the way I viewed the world around me.  For those that haven’t seen or heard of Jacob’s Ladder, it is a story of a soldier during the Cambodian War, who was subjected to a drug called Ladder. It was designed to take the soldiers right down to their base instincts and fight with a ferocity never before seen.  And that they did. 100% kill.

However, Jacob, the primary character is flipping between two realities. We as the audience are not sure if the soldier is reality, or him loosing his son is reality.  But both play out.

At one point, he is seen by his Chiropractor who provides a pivotal piece in the movie. “What if the daemons are really angels, ripping away all the things we think are important to us. Leaving us open to accept the reality that is?”

If you have to fight with a Supporting Character to get their support, then are you really fighting with them, or are they telling you what you have to give up in order to get what you want?  

In other words, why is their support so important? What support are they going to provide you, that you would give anything to get it?  And if you would give anything, then what would you give up to get it?  And, if you gave it up, would you need their support anymore?

Instead of asking a supporting character to help you resolve a problem, ask them what they would do in a situation.  I once had an opportunity to ask a friend that is a millionaire a similar question.  “I know you probably won’t invest in me, but out of curiosity, what do you invest in and why?”  His answer to my question here is not important. What is, is that instead of trying to win support from a potential supporting character, understand what the character supports, when and why.

Finding the Essential Support Character

No one support character is going to be ideal for a particular problem, but they can be present to help you work through a problem with someone being the primary support character.  In a recent dream, I asked, “Who is going to help me solve this problem?” Yes, the question is open ended, on purpose.  Of all the people I know, my subconscious will sort through them and find the right situation to make me aware of who that is.  And, if possible how they will help.

As it turned out, I’m working on a programming project, and need help promoting my product.  The person that was chosen to help me, is a former employer of mine.  He sold an accounting / manufacturing mini computer system to manufactures of Tier 3 suppliers to GM, Ford and Chrysler. 

In the dream, while he was not present specifically, his support staff where.  So, whether it’s him, or the accumulated knowledge that the group has, I can’t be sure. But I do know, that this group as a whole worked to acquire clients, support their clients, and maintain a business.  I admired them for that.

Sometimes the essential supporting character is not a person at all, but instead an environment.

Is it a Supporting Character or a Supporting Environment?

Every hero fights an injustice. An injustice that has become ingrained / accepted into the fabric of society.  Thus a hero goes through several phases to resolve the injustice and triumph, also known as the hero’s journey.  

Though the hero’s journey is does not happen in one place. It happens through a series of places, or land scapes, or scene scapes.  Each environment, just like a video game, provides the hero with a series of tools in which to build their skills in.  For example, when you which to learn a martial art, you may enter a Dojo where a teacher shows you the technique.  The teacher is not part of the environment, it is the Dojo that is the environment. You can see, smell, hear, touch, taste, and interact with it, but it in itself does not interact with you in the same way.  A teacher does.

Thus your subconscious is able to generate both interactive personalities as well as environments in which you to interact with these personalities. So, what type of environment is it?

Was it bright a color?

Was is gray?

Was it dark and gloomy?

Was it pitch black?

What characteristics were there?

Furniture

Walls

Carpeting

Inside or Outside?

If you can’t find the words to describe the environment you were in, go to a library and research architecture style books. They have lots of pretty pictures, demonstrating different accouterments that can adorn any building or open area. This will also help you build a larger dreamscape pallet  for a safe space.

If you can draft or sketch, you can draw basic outlines of the environment to help you identify unique qualities of what is needed in the environment, as well as identify things that don’t seem to fit.

Interviewing the Support Character

As you fall off too sleep, as that a specific character appear in a safe environment for an interview.  Get to know them.

What is their philosophy of life?

Do they care about humanity?

How could they support you?

When do they appear in your dreams?

What can you learn from them?

How much time do they think you will need their support?

What types of situations would they like to explore with you to resolve?

If they were to write a story about an aspect of your life, which chapter would they work on?

3 Times

Before asking your support characters to help you with a main issue, have them work with you on 3 different minor issues first.  You are building a team, not trying to stop a tsunami from occurring, while the earth is crumbling underneath your feet, and you have to learn to fly, while saving everyone.  No, this is not team building, this is crisis therapy.

Team building is the art of building trust that your characters will be there for you when you need them.  And, that you have learned how to call upon them through out your dreaming experience.  Practice.

As a Jujitsu Instructor, it takes drilling 1000 times to master a specific technique. So then you should drill your technique. Patiently, repeatedly, and constantly, every night, until your subconscious knows what you are trying to do.  Unlike reality, the subconscious takes about 2 weeks to master a technique.

Start with the safe environment for you and your support character.  Once you can reach that environment, then begin inviting your support characters, one at a time, to your safe space.

Once in your safe space, ask each character to be interviewed.  If they don’t want to be interviewed, then just sit with them there.  Maybe the their lesson is helping you learn to be calm in a safe place, while they are just there.

Leadership Essentials

So, you’ve taken about 6 months to build your support network. You know who is going to help you. Who is going to be on the side lines. And who is pretty much not going to follow you.  There are others.

Leadership, is guiding intent with integrity towards a goal.  There are those that will follow and those that won’t (a range if you will).  There are those that don’t care either way.  And, then there are those that will observe and report on your progress, execution, style, or other characteristics of your leadership.

5 groups:

Leaders

Followers

Not Followers

Outsiders

Observers

You need them all. But you don’t have to worry about all of them.  Not Followers and Outsiders will tell you what you need to know, but it’s each will tell you based on your level of confidence.  Followers will build your confidence through accolades.  Non Followers will attack all aspects of your leadership.  Observers will be critical of different aspects of your leadership.  Outsiders won’t care, and at this point in Directed Dreaming are background characters needed to help move the lesson along.

It’s the Non Followers you have to be careful with.  Critical Observers will usually help you understand both what you did, and how you could have done it better.  Non Followers will only tell you what you did wrong, in order to destroy your confidence.  However, their attacks have a golden lining in them.  They told you what you did wrong.  So, what was the right way to do it?

The Non Followers will never tell you what the right way to do it was. That is the job of the Observers, Followers, and the Outsiders.  Sometimes an Outsider is actually doing what is supposed to be done, just outside of your awareness.  So, pay attention to as much detail as you can about your dreams.

“WTF?!?  How does this relate to Directed Dreaming”, you ask?  It’s a topic I’ve been playing with for a long time, concerning another story like, and I think you’ll like it.

On the StarTrek Enterprise, they have shields.  These are high energy particles of a positive charge that are held in place by a electromagnetic oscillating field around the ship.  This is the first kind of shield technology we are presently developing.  Learning to hold a series of particles in place to construct a static barrier that prevents other solid matter objects from going through them.  The problem with this type of shielding is that when an object comes in contact with it, it produces lightening.  Remember the objects are of a positive charge, looking for their polar opposites to neutralize them. Thus the spark one sees when someone touches the force field.

The next version of the force field is a quark based field.  Which gets interesting.  Super cooled atoms loose their structure, and the quarks that make them up, start flowing around as one larger super object.  Again, this material is manipulated by an electromagnetic force.  Anything that hits this field, causes the field to heat up, and instantly changed to a new substance as the quarks interfere with it’s structure.

The next version of the field, is, what I call, a energy projection shield.  Not only is it a shield made of quarks, but the quarks are now aligned into a new structure.  Where you are most familiar with this type of shielding is in the replicator.  Quarks are assembled into atoms, molecues and eventually into an object for use or consumption.  Say like a phaser? What if the shield were constructed to allow energy to flow from a power source to a point on the shield which can then project it at a target.  Things get interesting here.  First a ship that has no visible weapons, looks defenseless until the shields are up. And, as the shields are a defensive, not offensive weapon, no one would suspect that the shields were the actual weapons.  But I’m getting off track, why this is at all relevant to Directed Dream.

Enter the 4th version of shields.  This type of shield is programmed to monitor for specific events and interact with them.  This doesn’t require AI level awareness, just your basic touch responses.  Scientists are working on a type of shield that uses lasers to heat Oxygen atoms (the first type of shields) to interact with humans, in a holographic effect.  However, this is humans interacting with at static dead environment, vs a dynamically responding environment.

The 5th version of shields is the Doctor from Voyager. Dr. Wolzy, if you will, as I’m using his character name from StarGate SG1.  He is an AI, completely aware, capable of reprogramming himself, and interacting with his environment.  The computer, probably builds his entire being from quarks, and manages most of his body functions from an internal computer built right into the shield / hologram.  Thus relieving the computer from having to do anything more than just store his current state when he is shut off.

Why this is important to Directed Dreaming?

When you dream, your brain is generating all the sites, sounds, touches, tastes, textures, smells, colors .... everything you sense.  What if, in a dream, you are nothing more than a hologram, walking around in a hologram, interacting with holograms you’ve created.  And, if every thing or person in the environment of the dream is created from your sole single mind, then how many different people are you creating?

In my dreams, I have created up to 100 people.  How do I know, well, when was the last time you were to a beach?  How many people where there?  On a packed beach, about a half mile long, there are about 100 people in eye site.  And, if they are all doing their own thing, then each one has their own individual program (AI) guiding their actions.  That program came from YOU!

Oh, and here’s another little facet, each AI has it’s own personality, based on someone at some point in time in your life.  It could be you at age 5, or your GodMother, or a teacher, or some random person you met on the street, or a combination there of.  The personality is loaded into the representation of a person by your brain.

Humans Can’t Multitask

Let’s assume for a moment that humans can’t multi task. The only thing we can do in our conscious waking state is focus on one thing at a time. However, our brain while sleeping is quite capable of not only creating a whole environment, but running 100+ AI’s to interact with us. Which suggests that we can multi task, but not in the way we originally thinking.

Let’s go back to the 4th version of Shielding Technology. What if you could create a series of shields that represented various people in your life, and give them the personalities to represent the people in your life at different stages in your life.  What would these personality profiles be?  How would they respond to various input?  What stories would you re-enact?

From a therapeutic standpoint there are many major advantages to this.  From a business perspective, people would be created that would respond exactly as needed to each situation, based on a pre packaged personality profile.  And, from a military perspective, the perfect soldier would be created. One that has no fear, feels no pain, and is capable of attacking the enemy without conscious.

Ok, let’s get back to the therapeutic aspect of Meta Genic Shields.

How do you use this theory for healing?

If every character you create has a personality, what is their personality profile?

A personality profile is a list of ways that a personality chooses to respond to different stimuli.  So, take anyone you know.  For the purposes of this blog, let’s create a teacher.  Authors do this all the time.  Their look, their twitches, characteristics, how they respond to different events, their history.

What does the perfect teacher look like?

To help you build a character, let’s start with a list of stock characters from wikipedia.

Is this character Male or Female?

What do they teach?

How do they dressed? (most people have 12 to 20 outfits)

How do they walk?

What do they like to eat?

How do they teach?

How do they tease you?

How do they inspire you?

How do they help you when you’re struggling?

What is their history?

Do they have secrets that disrupt their lives?

How do they respond to different events ...

Loss of life

Rain storms

Drills

Challenging Problems

Easy Problems

Nasty People

When they get angry

When they are giddy / excited with joy

On an average day

I’ve only listed a few questions, but you get the point. The more you examine their characteristics and how they respond to events, the more you will understand why they are a positive influence in your life.  And, how this profile helps you with the next part of Directed Dreaming.

By the way, don’t forget to examine their Limiting Beliefs. Everyone has beliefs that limit them.  Thus every character has them.  If your character is the absent minded professor, then what limiting beliefs does he hold about other subjects?

The Questions of Directed Dreaming...

What is the issue?

What is causing the issue?

What are the solutions you’ve researched about this problem?

Can you live with this problem?

How do you feel about this issue?

What judgments do you hold about yourself in relationship to this problem?

What are you getting from this problem?

What would you give up to resolve this problem?

What would you get if this problem were resolved?

What do you want?

Extending the Questions ...

Who is there that causes these problems?

Who is there that helps you resolve these problems?

Now, there may be a psychiatrist in the room that takes umbridge to the question about “Who is there that causes these problems?”  You can’t assign blame to them, as you are now an adult.  I call bullshit on that, as this person most likely was the one that created your behavioral response to the way you respond to an event. Just as your teacher above responds to events.  Somewhere in their history, an event occurred that caused them to respond in a peculiar way.

And just as your teacher has a peculiar way of responding to events, so does the antagonist in your story.  

Comparing and Contrasting Profiles

What makes these two characters so diametrically opposed to each other?  If they were to sit down and have a conversation about their differences, what would they say to each other and you about themselves?  In fact, you can ask them, through directed dreaming.  Ask your dreams to have an interview with each character so that you see them individually, as well as together.

Build a list of interview questions that will help you discover and uncover their past.  Your brain holds a very large profile database for 10,000 people (the average number of people you interact with throughout your life.)  If it doesn’t know the exact answer, it will create an answer that is very near to the correct answer, based on all the profiles it has experienced.

If you wish to practice your interviewing skills before diving into the dreaming world with them, then interview a stranger.  Build a profile about them, and create them in your dreams, and begin interacting with them there, solely based on the personality profile you created.  I suggest scheduling several meeting with them in order to ensure that the dream persona and the real person are meshing up.

Then begin asking them both how they would respond to different events.  From this perspective, you can create the environment in which you wish to meet your dream character and walk through the event, and see what their reaction is.  Then discuss the event, but not the dream, with the real person.  See how they would react to it.

Supporting Characters

Now, main characters don’t have a lot of power, unless they some some repeating and support their actions.  Who are these characters?

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, then think about this ... There is an interesting theory, that was tested in the White House during the Obama administration.  Women, in meetings, use an echo effect to drive ideas through committee meetings.  Basically, if one women presented an idea, the other women would constantly identify the women that brought the idea to the table, and provide a positive spin on the idea, until it was accepted.

The idea was tested with monkeys.  5 monkeys were put into a cage with fresh bananas at the top of a ladder. If any monkey crawled up the ladder after the bananas, the other monkeys would get a cold shower. So eventually, anyone that tried to crawl up the ladder would be pulled back down.  Then 1 by one, one of the original 5 monkeys were replaced with new monkeys. Even though the new monkeys never got the cold shower, the new monkeys kept the new monkeys from going up the ladder.

Using this idea, we can use supporting characters to echo / enhance actions of the good and bad characters.  

Using Character Profiles in Directed Dreaming

How to use the good teacher, bad teacher, profiles in your dreams.  First, the bad teacher disciplined you when some trauma happened in your life. One scenario is to go back as the adult you and state how you feel to bad teacher.  And, then state how you would have preferred to have had the situation handled.  

In order to understand what how you would have preferred to have had the traumatic event handled, this requires the good teacher.  What would the good teacher have done in this situation?  

By understanding how differently they handled the situation, you can describe it to the bad teacher.  You may not change their minds, but it will help you.  If, while confronting the bad teacher, with you they affected you, you can ask the good teacher to be present.  And, you can ask the supporting characters of the good teacher to be present as well.

And, since you’re making a case as to how the bad teacher’s teaching was wrong for you, you can show the bad teacher over time how their teaching affected you.  And, how had the positive teaching been used instead, how that teaching would have helped you progress.

Meta Genic Shields

So, how do meta generated shields work in directed dreaming, they are the best metaphor I can find to describe the reality created by dreams. These shields are created by us, given life by us, interact with us in real time, and share our consciousness.  Thus, by finding positive ways to interact with them, we can build an internal healing mechanism through reflection. 

Since we have access to all the profile information for a particular character, we can examine it, how it affected us and is affecting us, and choose to build a character that is able to stand up to the other character and their support group.

In other words, we don’t have to do all the changes alone. We can create characters that support us, every night.  And, while they may not be real, we can change the fear of going to bed, to excitement as this group reappears to help us face the next challenge, each and every night.

The resolution to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), per an episode of NCIS, was to rediscover purpose and learn to trust.

With the anger work that I'm doing, I think there is more involved than just rediscovering purpose. I've had that for quite some time. Ladder has driven me, relentlessly. Having since published the demo server, I need to continue working on many other parts of the project ... and the most important .. building a following.

There are three components of recovery that I have discovered so far.

The first is that there has to be a positive future outcome. There must be a light at the end of the tunnel. Without this, why continue to strive for anything. Living because you don't to die, it's living. Living because there is something that you're affecting though ...

The second is relief. PTSD is a constant re-triggering of the old trauma. The solution to resolving the trauma is to become desensitized to it. While I may no longer respond to the original triggers, that doesn't mean that I feel relief on many other levels.

Third, is the quality of life issue that 1 and 2 speak to. But this quality of life, focuses on enjoyment. It's hard enough to separate two major issues in my life, "Am I gay because of the sexual assault?" Or, "Did my being gay cause the sexual assault?" Thankfully, I was lucky, I had memories of being gay well before the sexual assault started. However, another question arose when this problem was solved, "Did I have sex because I enjoyed it?" or "Was I coerced into having sex?" The later question when generalized, now begins to unlock the problems that I've been experiencing. "Am I working because I enjoy it?" or "Am I working because I am being coerced into pay bills?" I'm sure that many of you would say that it doesn't matter whether or not you enjoy working, you have bills you have to pay. And yet, science has shown that productivity is severely affected if you don't enjoy the work you're doing. Let's take money out of the equation, and just look at this humanistic issues. Taking a shower, getting dressed, cleaning, washing dishes, washing cloths, grocery shopping, mending things, taking care of pets, working out, cooking food, reading a book, learning something new, grappling, playing the piano, and so on. While these require some money to complete, they in themselves speak to the pure question of enjoyment. Which leads to the 4th issue I've always known about in my trauma therapy.

In 5th and 6th grade, many traumas occurred at the hands of an RWNJ teacher, who ran a capitalist system in his classroom. Both grades participated. What I saw happen, is exactly what is playing out in the political theater now, the rich are manipulating the government to give them the best deals, while everyone else has to suffer with what the government can offer after all the money they've taken has been loaned back to them at an increased interest rate. It's a sick cyclic game that I neither enjoyed or wanted to play. And, in protest decided not to play. The 4th issue in PTSD recovery is, "understanding". I've always known that if I understood all aspects of the trauma, the trauma would resolve and dissolve.