I apologize for the lack of posts lately. I am dealing with some health issues and have zero energy. What little energy I do have has been given to my memoir and working my part-time job from home.
However, I had a bizarre dream last night and I couldn’t help but post about it. In my dream, I was supposed to attend a dinner party but I had somehow overslept and was still in my nightshirt with messy hair and no makeup. There were other people at my house, people I didn’t recognize, but I was telling everyone that I was dreaming and that’s why I wasn’t ready. I told them to please wake me up so I could get ready for the party.
Did I know that I was dreaming because I told people in my dream that I was dreaming? (Did that make sense?) Is that lucid dreaming? Does anyone have any experience with this?
I occasionally take Klonipin to help me sleep and that sometimes gives me really weird dreams, but I didn’t take any last night.
Either way, I woke up this morning feeling a little uneasy and disoriented. So weird.
Has this ever happened to you?
I would love to hear about some weird dreams you guys have had lately.
“Did I know that I was dreaming because I told people in my dream that I was dreaming? (Did that make sense?) Is that lucid dreaming? Does anyone have any experience with this?”
Not true lucid dreaming; that’s when you do realise you are dreaming yet have full volition within the dream.
But close — you sorta knew you were dreaming, but you didn’t have volition, but rather just went along with it.
I spent some time in my youth trying for it, but it’s quite hard and I’m not well suited to it.
I have managed a few over the decades, and they are glorious.
(Dreaming; the second life!)
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Also, sorry to hear you have been in the doldrums. May you get over it, or at the least revert to the mean.
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been dealing with health issues lately; it can be challenging. Your dream sounds like quite an interesting and surreal experience! The notion of realizing you’re dreaming within the dream is indeed a fascinating phenomenon known as lucid dreaming. It’s like a unique awareness that allows you to, to some extent, control or at least be conscious of the dream environment.
Dreams can be influenced by various factors, including medications like Klonipin, but sometimes they just take on a life of their own. Your vivid description of the dream, with the dinner party and the realization within the dream, adds a touch of mystery and intrigue.
As for unusual dreams, I think many of us have experienced something similar at one point or another. Dreams have a way of surprising us, reflecting our subconscious thoughts and emotions. It’s like a glimpse into the hidden corners of our minds.
I hope your health improves soon, and perhaps sharing dream experiences can bring some lightheartedness to your day. If anyone else has had similar dreams or wants to share their own bizarre experiences, I’d love to hear them too! Wishing you a restful night and more pleasant dreams ahead.
I have lucid dreams from time to time, but I’ve found no way to reliably control when it happens and it seems to be triggered by any number of things; people, locations, colors. The main thing appears to be that the question occurs to you at all: “Am I dreaming?”
I also vote that you were lucid dreaming, if not 100% lucid. The brain is a mysterious organ, isn’t it? Do you have a social obligation coming up? Or are you worried that you’re not fully ready to be part of your life (still in your nightshirt), but want to be (asking people to wake you up)?
It’s rare that I have lucid dreams, but I’ve had them from time to time. For example: after watching a scary movie on tv, I started to dream about it and said quite decisively, “I’m not doing this”…and the dream changed to something less scary.
As for the brain and its workings: at one point in my life, I was in a horrible accident where I nearly died. At one point, in the ambulance, I was certain I was being sent like a package by UPS (later I learned the EMTs wore brown uniforms). As I was either falling into the coma or coming out of the coma but still altered, I told one of the nurses that I was done with this and wanted to wake up. She said to me, “You are awake” and I got mad because I knew I wasn’t (fully?) awake. I knew my thinking was altered the way it is in a dream.
I’ve had one true lucid dream, which came during a prolonged illness, and I wonder for me and for you how much this reflects the body’s issues, trying to work its way back to health.
In some of my dreams I find myself walking and not knowing where I’m going. Then I think “this is a dream, something will happen soon”. Sometimes I realize that I don’t have my purse, and think “I’m dreaming, it will turn up if I need it.”
It never gets to the point of realizing that I could voluntarily change my dream, however.
I’m not sure how “lucid dreaming” is really defined, but I have some forms I dreams I consider to be lucid, similar to yours:
– I realise I’ve forgotten my keys, and think I must’ve left them at work
– I’m looking around at work for my keys, but since “I’ve just woken up” I realise I must have forgotten to put on my underpants
In order to put on my clothes, I need to find my keys. In order to find my keys I need to put on my clothes.
At some point I realise my dream is going in circles, and I realise “I’m dreaming, this is going nowhere… I’d best start dreaming something else!” which I usually manage to do, or I really wake up.
The “since I’ve just woken up” part is important I think, most dreams I remember and have some control over have some component of dreaming that I’m dreaming and then that I wake up. I suspect it’s also why many of these sort of dreams involve us being without underpants or in our nightgown.
There are times when I become conscious of my dream, and as it’s ongoing, breathe a sigh of relief so to speak, “Whew, this is only a dream!”
Then there are those extremely rare occasions when I wake up “asleep”. It seems I come to full consciousness not knowing how to open my eyes or move my limbs, while aware that I am lying immobile on the bed. It only lasts a second or two, and usually ends with a start.
😉
The dream you describe seems to only be a dream about dreaming. If you had realized you were dreaming in the outer dream, then I think you would have recognized the futility and absurdity of having the other members of your dreamed dream try to awaken the dreaming you in the inner dream and remarked on that in your commentary. As you asked, “(Did that make sense?)”
There are two kinds of dreams that I have had that I remember being aware I was dreaming, not counting the lucid dreams of my youth. There are the ones where I remember that the dreams were unpleasant enough that I really didn’t want them to continue and was aware that I could just wake up and then did. These were in the middle of my sleep and didn’t interrupt my rest. The other kind is almost always very pleasant, and I want them to continue, so I go into observer mode for a few more minutes of dreaming, then the alarm goes off and the dream is interrupted. I think the alarm may have already gone off, and as part of awakening I inserted my awareness into the dream and dreamed of minutes within seconds, or perhaps my internal clock knows that the alarm is about to go off, and if I’m dreaming, takes me to the observation deck. I never try to direct these dreams, just observe or awaken. I have not lucid dreamed since I was in my teens, about half a century ago, because I could only do one dream and after a few dozen times it became boring.
I have had hundreds of lucid dreams. They started when I was a teenager (1970s). They have become less frequent as I got older, and shorter, less intense. I don’t have any good recent ones to relate.
My first one was a flying dream. I had a recurring bad dream where I would be running through a beautiful landscape and jumping higher and higher as I went. It was very exciting but then I would suddenly panic because I was too high: I’d fall down and wake up as I hit the ground. Then I had a dream when I got to that stage and just thought “I don’t need to go down”, so I floated around for a bit and had a look around and then woke up.
I had loads of flying dreams. I’d find myself in a non-lucid dream in a situation I didn’t particularly like and just fly away from it, becoming lucid at the same time. Very often these were social situations that were awkward or boring or annoying.
Then it became a bit like Google Earth. I could fly anywhere I wanted and look at all sorts of things. This was back in the 80s so there was no actual Google Earth to compare to. In much the same way as when I first used Google Earth, what I chose to do in lucid dreams was visit my own house and friend’s houses, and places where I used to live, and places where I’d been on holiday, et cetera.
It was better than Google Earth because I could fly right into people’s houses and so forth. On the other hand, it was not so good because it was much less accurate. I could often see inaccuracies while I was flying around. There’s a trick you can use in lucid dreams where you want to change something: you look away and then look back again and the problem may be fixed. I would often fly around in circles to have another look at the same thing. However, usually when I woke up there would be other errors – often worse ones than the ones I’d corrected.
I became interested in how good my brain was in generating imagery. I’m a landscape painter and I know to look for consistencies in light for example. Are all the tree trunks illuminated all on the same side? Are they casting shadows appropriately? I would try to catch myself out making inconsistent images. Eg, one time it was windy and I looked up to the sky to see if the clouds were moving. Reading in dreams never works well. At most a dozen words before things get confused.
I felt invincible in these dreams. I could jump off cliffs and swim underwater and do whatever I wanted with monsters et cetera. Much amusement, but it began to get boring.
I began to feel that the most interesting thing in dreams are dream characters. One fun thing to do is confront them with the fact that you’re in a dream. When I started doing this I was rather aggressive. Their reaction was shock, incredulity, anger. I began to approach them more gently and try to listen to what they had to say and what they thought was going on. I would try to start a discussion instead of being confrontational.
Gradually over the years my dream characters seemed to get the hang of it. They readily accepted we were all in a dream together. Sometimes they already knew that they were in a dream. Sometimes they would even tell me that I was just a character in their dream.
It can be quite difficult to find characters in dreams. I might be flying around a beautiful but depopulated landscape trying to find someone to talk to. Or there’s plenty of people, but they’re not interested. It’s a funny reversal from flying away from people that I didn’t want to be with.
I also sometimes have hypnagogic images as I go to sleep. These are usually faces. They’re kind of sketchy against a dark background, with often very extreme expressions on their faces, and a very wide diversity of people. It’s like my brain is exploring the limits of what a human face can look like. Sometimes I can turn them into lucid dreams, but they are short, and I wake up again.
I also sometimes have hypnopompic mages before I wake up. These are gorgeous colours and patterns and fill the entire visual field. But they are repetitive like complex textures. They are decorative, pretty but no meaning to them. Kind of the opposite of my hypnagogic images. These two types of imagery have not diminished with age.
I’ve never been the lucid-dreaming type. I’ve had very few dreams I even remember for more than a minute after waking up; and the few times I’ve realized I’m dreaming, I always wake up right after.
In your dream, did any of your guests do anything to try to wake you up?
They didn’t. I just ended up waking up on my own.