How many people here care about ketchup bottles?

Not especially.

No.

Intensely.

Have you ever had an odd moment when, though you don’t normally care, the presence or absence of a ketchup bottle registered on your awareness and mood more so than usual?

Sure. That was a dream event. The ketchup bottle mattering in that moment didn’t make any real sense to you did it?

I realize it’s not about the object, but that I am remembering that exact scene from a dream. Actually, it is about the object, or more specifically about how you assemble space in your mind. Inconsistencies trigger a brief moment for something new to reach your subconscious mind like the glitch in the matrix. It happens when you change something or someone’s behaviour changed something in you. Dream shaping is the deliberate triggering and conscious use of this.

So there are two ways to do this, either active meditation, a sort of interactive contemplation practice sometimes called psycho-navigation, or through deliberate disruption of your brains sense of your normal behaviour, throwing your behaviour thermostat off so it will readjust which always includes the new content.

Let’s say you want to dream in a way you never have before, just for the experience of it. You could hang your head over the edge of your bed and carefully inspect that space, imagine you see something there, but you can’t rehearse this specific exercise. It has to be something that breaks your habits, so it has to be done irregularly.

Is this like Second Life bringing a new vocabulary into dreams, like being able to rez things in dreams? It is, and I don’t think I have met a single person whose dreams haven’t been changed by their Second Life experience. The learning curve, and the unique range of expression here, does that like a force of nature, but you can do that for yourself on a smaller scale. If you just want to be more alert in your dreams and remember them better, do something like bang something, make a loud noise at a random time in the evening.

If you want to forget something, write the idea or memory down in as vivid and dramatic way possible, and go further by making BS up to add to it. Then destroy the paper just before bed. Again, you have to avoid rehearsing. It has to register as irregular behaviour.

Spontaneous. Yes. You want to be open to the possibility of new things happening. Then do something that makes no sense to your normal thinking, but is associated with what you are open to having happen, like buying a model of a Rolls Royce, and scatter the parts where you can see it, but don’t build it.

Kind of like your conscious mind is trying to surprise your subconscious? Sneak up on it? Exactly. Otherwise, it acts like a thermostat, just works on automatic and doesn’t take in anything it doesn’t have to. New things still get by it’s resistance of course, repeated exposure always does that, but you can hack your way passed that firewall faster.

So dreams repeat a lot? They do. This is also part of why they are hard to remember. You can’t easily tell one from another. Which time is this that I am eating a sandwich? Another method for being more aware of your dreaming life is to randomly ham act as they say. In your mind, act like it’s the very first time you did something, or saw something, or tasted it.

I have a final exam but haven’t been to one class, again. Why do I keep doing this? Exactly. So get as absurd as possible, “OMG! What is that?! You say it’s a ham sandwich?! I’ve died and gone to heaven! This is delicious!” The William Shatner school of experiencing. Act like brushing your teeth is the most fun you have ever had, or that taking that shower is as intimidating as climbing the Alps.

I ponder how much “surprise” stuff is used in TV commercials. A lot, and for the same reason. This is why comedy is so big in commercials.

It makes your subconscious say ‘WTF?’ Indeed. They make a dream for you, and most people do little to make dream for themselves.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~