“I was sitting on a bench with a dream character while lucid dreaming. I turned to them and calmly said, ‘I'm dreaming.’ The character continued to look straight ahead and said, ‘I know. Me too.’ I think about it to this day.”
— comment on the Reddit r/LucidDreaming Forum
Ancillary characters playing a minor role in your dreams offer you an opportunity to understand and influence the dream. These characters are relative bystanders, like theatrical extras in a drama being put on for your benefit.
Because these characters play narrowly defined roles, they can react spontaneously and, in doing so, provide a perspective that differs from what’s being shown in the dream. They rarely have much to say or the ability to say anything at all, but their responses will be illuminating if you take the right actions.
You are not the only person who lives in your head. You may think so, but your autonomy is a figment of your imagination. You are an artificial intelligence, but you are not the only one inside you. You are just the most widely capable one. There are others who are more adept at putting ideas together. They are the source of your ideas and your dreams, and you would hardly recognize them.
Dreams Make You What You Are
Dreams consolidate your personality, which is built upon attitudes, inclinations, memories, and desires. You cannot see the full process because it’s too holistic. It is not logical or deductive, so what you see is a collapsed time-narrative view of a higher dimensional structure.
What you see and remember in a dream is like what a dog sees traveling down the road with their tongue hanging out and their head out the window. For a dog, the experience is more one of smell than sight, and for you, the dream experience is more a procession of characters than thought forms.
I had a menacing dream in which there were two lanes of traffic on a busy road. An army or police force was stopping all the traffic going in one direction and forcing everyone to turn around. The road was being dug up, and those cars that didn’t turn around were being buried in the asphalt.
Many people were in distress. I was by myself and I didn’t recognize anyone, but at one point I found myself in a crowded room with many upset people. No one knew what was happening, and the current of the dream was foreboding.
I did not fully believe in the whole scenario. It seemed implausible, with chaotic crowds and unreliable authorities. This is what I think of most authorities. The competence of all authorities is questionable.
Breaks in the dream narrative give you a moment of clarity and provide the opportunity to question the experience. Finding breaks in the narrative is the most important step in therapeutic dreaming. These are doorways to insight because you have no opportunity for reflection until you have alternatives.
Dream Invitation to Alternatives
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