Dreaming – Wish Fulfilment
by pre.
You have been learning to become conscious in your dreams, to take better control of them and of course this gives you god-like powers that you never have in waking life. The power to fly, to move things with your mind, to travel in time, to meet historical figures, to have sex with film stars and take part in epic apocalyptic battles between good and evil.
This can be incredibly rewarding, extremely fun and amusing. The question, of course, is whether or not that is helpful? Could it even be destructive?
Is it destructive?
Wish fulfilment in dreams is essentially fantasy. Big, exciting stories with massive emotional rushes. A world gone right, exaggerated to impossible extremes. If this leads you to expect those impossible heights, to get used to them and begin to think that they are attainable, then their potential destructive effects depend on just how impossible they are. Expecting and wanting impossible dreams can lead you to put misguided effort into chasing those dreams. Wasted effort. Wasting effort which could be put towards attainable goals is surely unhelpful.
However, effort is a conscious process. Most people, especially more transcended people, will quickly dismiss the idea of working towards things which are obviously impossible. As long as realism is a part of your waking consciousness, it’s unlikely you’ll start to practice levitation or begin work on your time-travel machine.
Is there any subconscious process which could be harmed by excessive fantasy? Some system in your mind which would be wrong-footed by spending each night in ecstatic joyous experiences?
There are: You could be treating dream-people as objects, to be used and cast aside. This kind of dream-behaviour, practising using people as means rather than ends, could easily begin to seep into your behaviour patterns in the waking world.
The fact that everything in a dream-world is so easy can lead you to expect the waking world to be just as easy, to expect the world to give into your desires just because you desire them. When things in the real world aren’t as simple your mood could be affected. Disappointment at the normal order of things isn’t a useful trait to develop.
However, the whole point of lucid dreaming is that you are conscious of your dreaming actions, so avoiding this kind of dream-behaviour should be relatively simple. Remember, in your wish-fulfilment dreams, to keep your ethics turned on. To keep in mind that this is just a dream world, that reality is not so simple. So long as you can do this, there is likely no harm is spending at least some of your dream time conjuring up your greatest desire.
Is it possible to get so attached to the fun, excitement and adventure in your dream world that you lose attachment to the real, waking world? Become a being who’s existence is directed towards spending as much time dreaming as possible, to neglect waking life in favour of the awesomeness of your dream world?
It may well be. We would certainly not advise that every dream you have is directed toward wish-fulfilment. Keep your real-world goals in mind. Try and ensure that a large proportion of your lucid dreaming is directed towards improving yourself, towards ensuring you are more capable, aware, more transcended in your waking life.
Is it helpful?
Dream wish fulfilment then is, at least if done carefully and with restraint, unlikely to lead to any long term problems. But can it have any use other than the happy memories you wake up with? Can it help you to achieve your waking goals?
Yes!
You could, for instance, use a lucid dream to test a goal. To see just how happy some vague building desire would make you, to compare it to other desires, to see which will have the greatest emotional impact. You can use dream wish fulfilment to help keep focus, to remind you just exactly what your realistic aims will feel like. To remind yourself why you are working so hard towards some ambition.
Imagine that you find yourself conscious in a dream, able to direct it according to will, and decide you want to see how it would feel to be more transcended, to have better persuasion skills, or to be hyper-aware of everything that happens around you. Being able to experience that mental power, to know what it feels like will in fact enable you to judge more accurately whether or not you are on track. It’ll remind you why you are working on those skills, and give a glimpse of a waking world in which you have improved your powers.
As long as you keep conscious tracking of your dream exploits, you ensure that you’re not relying too heavily on fulfilment in the dream-world, you don’t devote your entire sleeping time to endless orgasm and impossible feats, using some of your dream-time to just relax and explore what you want is likely a good thing which will help you to understand your own goals, and to see how they may actually be achieved.