This is completely fascinating to me. I think the best I can describe it is that (for me) the majority of my dreams (the non-lucid ones) are like totally immersive virtual reality experiences. But I don’t realize it’s VR until I wake up. Then I sometimes try to figure out what my brain was processing.
Within the dream, it’s just like living in the world. I take what happens as reality (at the time) and roll with it and react to the consequences.
ETA: @BakaNeko - regarding your dream with your late father, I’m not a big believer in a lot of stuff, but maybe you were actually getting to visit with him or his memory? I find it a comfort every time I get to see and hang out with my Grampy again, or other old lost friends, in dreams.
Neat. I’d love to experience that sometime. Is there any kind of awareness that it’s a dream or do you just suddenly end up back in bed with your eyes closed?
Are they always first person? A percentage of mine are 3rd person. I don’t think it’s a regular thing, but it happens from time to time. Sometimes it’s an over the shoulder kind of view, other times there’s almost like a rotating camera.
For non lucid dreams (which is what I think you’re asking about):
Sometimes it’s like you say, I end up back in bed with my eyes closed. Mostly this is when I wake up right after a sleep/dream cycle, and the memory is vivid.
The alternative is waking up in the morning and having hazy, fading memories of dreams. I remember snippets, and emotions are still there, but…it’s fleeting.
Mine aren’t always only first person, but I can’t recall one where I’m not at least some part first person. Commonly I’m that, but also an observer. Like an actor and also maybe a director or observer?
When you’re 3rd person, are you experiencing the emotions and sensations of the dream, or more observing them from a distance (though it’s hard to draw the line…) ?
I wonder if this is because you’re actually trying to move your hands, but can’t, because you’re asleep. I can always remember being unable to run in a dream, it was extremely slow. One night I noticed my sister moving her legs in her sleep, as though she were trying to run, but very slowly (and clumsily, because she was in the bed). It occurred to me that this is what actually happens when one dreams about running too slowly.
Me, too. Makes me want to look more into the sleep cycle and the connection to the meat space.
I find sometimes I can go gangbusters in my dreams (physically speaking, flying, etc.) and sometimes I can’t even climb up some stairs (in the dream). Would be cool to know better how to manage that, is it a timing thing, something else?
Sometimes I get the sensation of falling upward, out of sleep. Like getting sucked up out of a party I want to hang out at longer. But it’s not bad, just a bummer that I have to leave the party.
I can’t remember the last time I fell “down” in a dream, but your question has me wracking my brain. I’ll let you know if I recall anything.
That’s the same for me, more or less. I kind of transition from dream state to awake state. Same with that lingering feeling of having dreamed, without remembering.
Sometimes it’s the same, sometimes I think there’s a bit more of a detachment from the emotion. A lot of the times in a dream it almost feel like it’s less that I’m experiencing the emotion and more that the sensation washes over me. I know it’s a dream emotion, although sometimes it isn’t the dream emotion. It’s the conscious brain emotion, an “I really don’t like this. I hope I don’t stay here long. Thing X scares me.” I think the most common emotion might be the frustration I experience around the lack of control I have.
I’m pretty sure this is what’s happening. It took me 30-something years to figure that out, though.
I have dreams where I slip and fall as a part of the dream, but it’s never a dream of falling. The only time I can think of that happening is when I passed out in grade four and I had a flash of myself falling through the air.
I had a dream once, sort of, of falling. The odd thing about it is that I tought I was awake. I was laying on bed, I could see the room, but I had that sensation when you trip up and fall in a dream. I woke up with my muscles tense, like I was ready to hit the floor. I was sure I was awake, but then it happened.
Oh, that’s a whole different weird thing. When you feel like you’re awake or have woken up, but you’re kind of paralyzed. That happened to me a lot between ages 15 and 18 mostly.
Sacks talks about it somewhere in here:
I still get it sometimes, but not as intensely, or as often. And when it does happen now, I usually can recognize that it’s a dream relatively soon.
That’s a super freaky sensation, though. Like being locked in my body, unable to move or otherwise respond. (Shudder)
Rinpoche (Tenzin Wangyal) wrote a book on dream yoga, which I read years ago when it first was published. This thread reminds me of some of its content.
(I am trying to not link to Amazon these days, so here’s a link to the book at the publisher’s web site:
I have The Mysticism of Sound and Music by Hazrat Inayat Khan from Shambhala. FWIW. He seems to have had a low (or at best grudging) opinion of jazz, but regardless, I start every day with his Phrases to Be Repeated.
I’ve dreamt of people I’ve lost in my life. My sister told me she faked her death in one dream and in another she said she got better. It was nice to see her, even though I was sad when I woke up. But it makes sense that they show up in your dreams because they’re still a part of you.
I’ve shifted in several dreams between these. Sometimes I’ll start just as an observer and not even really there except as a view of the characters in the dream, like watching a movie rather than being there in person, but then at some point I become one of the people I was watching and I’m in the middle of the story.
Oh, I hadn’t made the connection, but I got my first vaccine last Wednesday (moderna) and that’s what kicked off the spate of really vivid and lucid dreams that prompted this thread.
Last night was a bust, dream wise. I wonder if it’s wearing off.
Yes.
Pfizer first vacc, some vivid dreams that I can no longer recall.
Pfizer second was yesterday (17 Apr 2021, 14:30) and my night was filled with weird dreams. I went to bed early (~20:48) and basically slept 11 hours, which I seldom do unless I’m really ill.
So, last night, my dreams were in German and in English, something about maps, and having to argue with the maps person that the maps are wrong. I just drove about 2200 miles last week, so maps have been on my mind a lot anyway.
