Lucid Dreams in Recurring World (Advice/Similar experiences?)

[Yodatoe]

So it started about a month ago..
At first it was just ever couple of days I would remember my dream and it was very real, including people from my life though not as they were in the real world. Never addressed by name, different yet the same in personality, and, somehow, they are all aware that it is my dream and when I wake up I cease to exist in that world. For the past week or so it's been ever night to every other night, with things seeming to have actual time change in real time. Almost as if when I wake up I'm going to sleep in the "dream world". I've come up with the idea to every morning I can, start recording as much of the dream as I can. I remember these dreams more vividly and thoroughly then regular dreams, never losing details when I try to recall it later in the day. I even have pets in this world, a white car and a black cat. Neither have names that I can recall either. The only character in my dreams, who only appeared ones in my most recent dream, and I have addressed directly with a title is my mother who I addressed as "mom" while she sat in what I have grown to recognize as my own apartment in this world. She was with the white cat who I for some reason favor second to the black who is a male and always seems to be near. The only reason I find this appearance significant is because in "the real world", I have a negative relationship with my mother to say the least because of her actions in the past as a mother towards me and my half brother. Yet in the dream she was different. Still the same person, but with all the little bits of her that I wish were there and not replaced by sex and drugs. Her teeth were all intact, her body was healthy, and we talked as though we both knew she wasn't the same, yet it was better that way. I'm not sure what these dreams mean nor why they seem to be increasing I'm length as well as frequency. And all of them seem related to one another in the way that I am on some mission throughout all of them, yet I'm​not sure if I'm just never quite aware of what it is or if it simply will not stay in my memory. I've fought monsters, explored maze-like mansions in a neighborhood nearly identical to my own, gone to three different yet incredibly elaborate amusment parks (two of which were mainly water), woken up in the middle of battle only to fall back asleep and find everyone in the dream world questioning the timing of my spontaneous and dramatic disappearance.
I'm not necessarily wanting these extremely lucid dreams to stop, im just looking to see if anyone on here has any ideas/educated-When on as to what these dreams are or what they may mean. I also would love to hear if anyone has ever had/still has dreams similar to this? Any replies are appreciated

 

[Xorkoth]

I tend to have several dream worlds that I go into when I dream. There are a number of them I have experienced over the years, some of them have phased out and some of them have remained, and sometimes there are new ones. Each has its own properties. I also have dreams that take place in the world I live in while awake. Interestingly, ever since I did ibogaine to get off opiates (the experience was of dreaming whether awake or asleep for 3 days straight), my dreams have been so much more vivid, and I have started going back to the same dream every time I briefly wake up and fall back to sleep, which never used to happen. For like 12+ years before ibogaine, I barely remembered any dreams at all and it was distressing. These days my dream life is pretty full, but yeah, I tend to go into the same worlds every time. My favorite one right now is a mountain world that I know all the roads around, it's extremely beautiful, and there are doors to a massive underground city inside the mountains. To move between rooms in there I go up to these passages that are really narrow that wind blows through, and my body sort of gets sucked through even though it's not large enough to seem like I can go through it.

I think dreams are just reflections of our thought processes, conscious but also largely unconscious/beneath the surface. I think their purpose is to commit stuff to log-term memory, and to allow the under the surface stuff to percolate up. I think a lot is going on there that is necessary to integrate various aspects of consciousness and memory. I don't think there is a real objective way to say, THIS is what a given dream means. I don't buy into the idea of, say, encountering a specific animal meaning a specific thing to everyone.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Hey Yodatoe,

How's it going? As you can tell by my Bluelight name, I have been fascinated with dreaming for as long as I can remember. I would like to explain a few dreaming terms and my own personal experiences with them. Some of these are very common but not everybody is familiar with them, so I will just run through them all briefly...

Vivid Dream: There is no concrete definition for this because people have different ideas of what qualifies as vivid. Dreams can vary greatly in not only detail but emotional content, familiarity and a host of other features. I actually consider the majority of my dreams to be vivid because I can usually remember them in great detail. Even so, the scenery can range anywhere from completely realistic to amazingly surreal.

Lucid Dream: A lucid dream is one in which you are actually aware that you are dreaming. Most people (including myself) don't even realize that they have been dreaming until after they wake up, which amazes me considering how bizarre some of them can be. Just like other aspects, dreams can have varying degrees of lucidity. For instance, I recently had one where I was completely aware that it was a dream, but during part of it I wrote something on a scrap of paper so that I could read it when I woke up!!! (I know, it makes no sense. But then again, neither do a lot of my dreams!) In some, I know that I am dreaming but cannot control any aspect of it. Finally... and these are my all-time favorites... there are the ones where I not only know that I am dreaming but can actually do some pretty cool things that are impossible in real life, such as floating/flying or visiting distant galaxies. You can dream anything that your imagination can conjure up, so the possibilities are basically endless. Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to control any aspect of a dream, but there is a lot of information online on how to become "good" at it.

False Awakening: This is when you dream that you have woken up. Often you can remember great details of your last dream, not even realizing that you are still in one! They often take the form of the dreaded "running late for work/school" dream. Sometimes my dream bedroom looks nearly identical to my real one, although usually after waking up (for real) I realize that at least one thing was out of place.

Nightmare: I know that everybody knows what a nightmare is, but I have included it in order to differentiate from the next one...

Night Terror: This is when you wake suddenly from a sort of mini-dream that usually involves being in some type of immediate danger, and continue to experience it even after your eyes are open. Often people bolt out of bed, unaware of their surroundings. One time I actually ran out the front door because I thought that a train was coming at my room! These plagued me between my mid-teens and early 20's, which I have since learned is when most of them occur. They are also much more common in males for some reason, which I am.

Sleep Paralysis: This is actually not (to me, anyway) nearly as scary as it sounds. It usually occurs when you begin to wake up and are aware of being in your bed, but still not 100% in control of your thoughts and actions. For a moment you may find it difficult to roll over or move in other ways. Sometimes it is accompanied by a feeling of being restrained in some way, and it may feel as though there is somebody else present. Some people believe that this is where the incubus/succubus legend arose (a mythical creature), along with accounts of alien abduction and out-of-body experiences. It has happened to me quite a few times, but it never freaked me out like I would have expected it to. It actually helped me overcome my fear of being trapped in small places or unable to move, because I have already "experienced" it in a way (and had no clue what was happening at the time).

Hypnogogia: This is the state that you are in when you begin to fall asleep. Sometimes you may hear random (and in my case, often ridiculously funny) snatches of conversation or other sounds. A common one is a quick, loud humming that seems to come from inside the head. You will often see brief flashes of imagery that are not quite full-blown dreams. Physical sensations may also occur, along with actual muscle twitches or the movement of limbs.

Let's see... there are probably more but those are the basics. Of course, everybody is free to come to their own conclusions about the meaning and origin of their dreams. A lot of ancient cultures believed that they were visions of a spiritual nature. The common belief is that they are a product of our subconscious mind, and there are numerous theories as to what (if any) purpose they serve. I think that they can be a great tool of self-discovery, since they often seem to provide me with a glimpse of whatever is going on in my head at the time. If nothing else, I have always found them to be a great source of entertainment. Well, I hope that this has helped a bit.

Sweet Dreams!!!
Dreamflyer

 

[Xorkoth]

False Awakening: This is when you dream that you have woken up. Often you can remember great details of your last dream, not even realizing that you are still in one! They often take the form of the dreaded "running late for work/school" dream. Sometimes my dream bedroom looks nearly identical to my real one, although usually after waking up (for real) I realize that at least one thing was out of place.

I've experienced this a few times. The craziest one was one time, I had fallen asleep right after taking a psychedelic, while waiting for it to come up. I woke up when I started to feel it, and was thirsty, so I got up, went down the stairs, got a glass and was about to pour water from the fridge into it, when I woke up in my bed, starting to feel the psychedelic. I was quite amazed since it was 100% vivid, and I thought to myself that this time I'm definitely awake. Started going downstairs and this time, once I got to the bottom of the stairs I again woke up in bed. At this point I was slightly alarmed because I was SURE I was awake the time before. So this time I paused and pinched myself (cliche, yes, but one time as a kid I actually did wake myself up this way), and when I seemed fully awake again, I started going downstairs, but made it only a few steps before I woke up once again in bed, the same as the other times. Now I was actually scared because I started wondering how I could ever be sure I was really awake. This time I did go get the water and didn't wake up in bed again. But the whole night I kept expecting to wake up in bed again, the whole night thus far having been a dream. In fact, for days I wasn't sure that I wasn't dreaming still, to the point that the thought preoccupied me.

So far I haven't woken up in bed again. If I did, 10 years would have passed in a dream, and I'd still be with my abusive ex and I wouldn't have started pursuing my musical passions again, and I would still be addicted to opiates, and it would be many years before I met my lovely love. As a kid I used to imagine waking up years earlier, and find out those years had been a dream. But I never expected to actually fear it. Not that I do fear it anymore, but I did for a while.

I also one time had a dream in which I woke up in my childhood bed, and I was 10 years old again. All the details of my life since then (I was 30 at the time) faded in several moments of bewilderment and confusion, and then I started thinking about how tomorrow was the weekend I would get to play Nintendo all day, and I fell back to sleep, then woke up for real as the 30 year old me.

Night Terror: This is when you wake suddenly from a sort of mini-dream that usually involves being in some type of immediate danger, and continue to experience it even after your eyes are open. Often people bolt out of bed, unaware of their surroundings. One time I actually ran out the front door because I thought that a train was coming at my room! These plagued me between my mid-teens and early 20's, which I have since learned is when most of them occur. They are also much more common in males for some reason, which I am.

This has happened to me only one time, I was 19... I woke up filled with utter panic because I thought that the window next to my bed was an immense stone slab about to fall and crush me and my then-girlfriend. I leaped up and grabbed the window frame and pushed as hard as I could with every muscle in my body to hold it back. She woke up and was like, Xorkoth, what are you doing?? I couldn't explain, but the terror filling me was probably the most intense I have ever felt. Gradually she coaxed me down and I realized I was dreaming. She told me the look on my face totally terrified her. The next morning, every muscle in my body was sore. We looked at the window frame, and I had left fingertip indentations in the wood where I was gripping it. I think what happened was, due to an intense adrenaline burst since I thought I was about to be crushed, my muscles fully activated (read about this if you don't know, it's the reason sometimes mothers can lift a car up to avoid their children being crushed, why people can perform extraordinary feats of strength in times of life or death. Normally we are only capable of using a relatively low percentage of our potential muscle strength, but in moments of extreme adrenaline we can use all of it, but it damages the muscle when we do).

Sleep Paralysis: This is actually not (to me, anyway) nearly as scary as it sounds. It usually occurs when you begin to wake up and are aware of being in your bed, but still not 100% in control of your thoughts and actions. For a moment you may find it difficult to roll over or move in other ways. Sometimes it is accompanied by a feeling of being restrained in some way, and it may feel as though there is somebody else present. Some people believe that this is where the incubus/succubus legend arose (a mythical creature), along with accounts of alien abduction and out-of-body experiences. It has happened to me quite a few times, but it never freaked me out like I would have expected it to. It actually helped me overcome my fear of being trapped in small places or unable to move, because I have already "experienced" it in a way (and had no clue what was happening at the time).

I've experienced this several times after I had abused serotonin releasers (especially AMT but also MDMA)... it was always during the nights of days when I was experiencing brain zaps. I would wake up after falling asleep, with an immense feeling of force pushing me down, utterly unable to move anything but my eyes. The whooshing/buzzing feeling accompanying this was terrifying. I never experienced a sense of an evil presence like many do, but I was filled with terror. I would have to ever so slowly twitch my leg until it fell over the side of the bed, and then it would snap me out of it. Lucid dreams always followed these events, where I would be aware I was dreaming but unable to get myself out of it, so I would become convinced in some cases that I had actually just awoken into a new reality I was trapped in... unfortunately these realities always involved either an impending apocalypse, or a post-apocalyptic world, or being stuck in a reality where I was insane and had dreamed my entire previous life.

 

[Xorkoth]

Ah that's so great. I had the same thing, I read morninggloryseed's reports a lot on Erowid and in one I found a mention of "bluelight". I was curious and googled it and found this place. At the time I had moved across the country recently and wasn't really able to find friends yet, just living with my abusive ex who thought psychedelics were "kid stuff" and didn't support me using them. So I really needed to find some like-minded people. Made some friends on here, and after a few years I moved somewhere else and 2 of my friends from here moved to the same place a year later. Now they're some of my best friends in the world. Well one of them ODd and died recently (they were a couple, I performed their marriage ceremony). But yeah, all of my close friends where I live now I met directly or indirectly through Bluelight.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Hey Xorkoth,

I am deeply sorry to hear about your friend. They are both in my thoughts and prayers, as are you.

 

[Xorkoth]

Thanks.

 

[Noodle]

That might change as you age!

*lol*

 

[Jabberwocky]

that might change as you age!

lmao!
:d

 

[Wrongguy]

Damnn I just some how deleted my post....I will try to paraphrase it

I hate deram paralysis... I have had it over 50 times... I can only decrime it as try to jump on a planet that has 100 times the gravity. It takes everything I have to try to jump out of one...I often find myself stuck in a paralyzed state trying to move but being 100% completely conscious. .. I can think completely fine but am unable to get my body to move and completely realize I am stuck in a paralysis state... it sucks... some times takes what feels like an eternity to escape. ...

I know there was times when I had a girl friend I would know she was next to me and try every thing I could to moan... I had told her to sit me up if that happens... some times she would be sitting on top of me shaking me as hard as she possibly could... one time in particular she sat me up shaking me and yelling at me, and when I came to I proceeded to slap myself till I actually came too...

It can be scary and even terrifying when this happens...


So are lucid dreams where you realize your dreaming that common for you guys..???. I would like to have more of those, they are amazing... but are sadly so rare in my dream life that it has only happened once or twice where I can make reach the point I can make anythings happen....

 

[Xorkoth]

I rarely realize I'm dreaming while I'm dreaming, not often at all, but it has happened.