My dreams heavily reflect whatever movie or television series or novel has last gripped my attention before heading to bed. When I do realise I am dreaming, I tend to realise that it’s my brain sorting through the stuff I have recently not only just seen, but also imagined and it replaying, examining the imaginative potential. It bumps me into a new level of realising what the meat computer is doing, and I tend to relax, just let it do its thing. It may seem terribly, terribly mundane but I find it fascinating, a miracle in and of itself how my brain works, how I am trying to understand myself from the inside.
All very bad for mining for story ideas, but I no longer have the ambition to be a novelist.
I’ve had a few lucid dreams in my time on this planet, however this post really resonated with me from something that wasn’t really a lucid dream, at least not from my side of things. In the dream I was at a party in London and for some reason was sitting on the floor in a room full of people. I could hear the general chatter of people talking and suddenly found myself locking eyes with a girl sitting across the room, about 12 feet away. You know how usually in dreams, faces are indistinct and blurry? Not here, I could see her face so clearly and she was looking right at me. I remember asking her, you can see me? I’m dreaming right now and you’re in my dream. Only other thing I remember was she told me she worked for a company named “Lisa”
I taught myself lucid dreaming many years ago from a book and found it very useful. Shortly before the pandemic I invented a dream house for myself where I could go and be alone. I live with several people and work with the general public ( thank you, condolences accepted) and just wanted to have a place completely for myself. I imagined everything about this house. The drive up to it, the way the light fell through the trees near the back window in the evening, my little study with the wood paneling that was scratched a bit near the door on the left side because I kept forgetting that the light switch was actually on the right side.
Well, during the pandemic I got a little lonely and invented a neighbor for myself who would come over and help with the garden, move the row boat into the boathouse ( yes, it has the sweetest little row boat) and maybe stay for a steak on the grill. Nick or Jack- I couldnt really decide on the name though I knew what he looked like exactly.
Eventually, I went back to looking at the general public again all day and then having people around, even imaginary ones, started to pall so I started wanting to be my house alone. I forgot about Jack or Nick or whoever.
The night before last, I went to my house again in my sleep and was standing in my kitchen when I heard something and whirled around. There was Jack/Nick, standing behind me, arms straight down at his sides. He was looking at me angrily, eyes dark and said, " you’ve been here again many times and never let me come over. Aren’t we friends any more?"
I woke straight up, terrified and since then I’m afraid that I can’t back to my dream house ever again.
That’s creepy! I learned a trick from the book, “Creative Dreaming” back in college where, when someone or something scares or threatens you in a dream, you ask it for, nay DEMAND, a gift. It’s quite effective. Maybe you could go back to your house and if Nick/Jack scares you again, demand a gift?
I’ve gotten secret words, names, whole poems, songs, and cool images that I later drew.
Maybe if the gift is cool enough you can build Nick/Jack their own wing of the house
Interesting idea! I haven’t tried that before. Maybe I can turn this around- " Jack, I’ve been a bad neighbor it’s true. Let’s light up the grill, whack on a few steaks and let bygones be bygones. In exchange, I think you should also do something for me. What do you say? Great! Ok, there’s already 36million in the BigLottery Jackpot that hasn’t been cracked yet but I’m going to need a few lucky numbers… "
Haha! Not at all. I was trying to think how to gently let you down that you can’t demand what the gift is, and in my limited experience, winning lottery numbers are not on the table.
Dream work is really fascinating to me.
Oh, I have quite the opposite problem! I will be in a dream, needing to use the restroom and constantly having something come up in the dream that prevents me from going. This goes on for what feels like FAR TOO LONG before I finally wake up, desperate to pee!
I wonder if it’s the same as mine, as in meaning. I get a few versions, but whenever I bother to try to work out the meaning it boils down to, “you gotta deal with your shit!” Sometimes the meat machine is very literal.
Just about 30 years ago to the day, I had one of those dreams where I wake up and there’s a whole story in my head, all I have to do is type it out*, it’s just semi-automatic. The result was a short story, well-written if I do say so (and someone else told me as well). Unfortunately the dream I wrote about was in this very topic area and was quite disgusting. Now I’m wondering if I still have it around at all, in digital or print form… It used to be on my website but I took it down for, I guess, modesty’s sake.
