I love it when this happens to me, and it happened last night. It’s been a very long time since the last conscious dream (monsters chasing me and I begin “willing” guns).
My dream (not as weird as they usually are)…I was in my very old apartment, with an ex-roommate and my brother. My bro kept following me around the apartment like he had something to say, while my roommate was just sitting on the floor. I couldn’t figure out why my bro was following me, and it was driving me crazy. I looked down at my feet and noticed I had a really bad fungal infection, on both feet. The skin was peeling away and the infection had spread to the top of my feet as well. My brother finally pointed at my feet and started laughing and trying to tell my ex-roommate that I had this horrible fungal infection. I was embarrassed and tried to hide my feet with my hands. I then ran to another room and it was the laundry room of my parents house. I looked all over for a pair of socks, but there just weren’t any to be found. My brother had followed me to the laundry room, still laughing of course. I ran out a side door, and as soon as I was through the door frame I became “aware”. It was such a great feeling!! I said to myself I need some socks…BAM! I had clean, white socks in my hands. I went to go put them on and was thinking fuck that, they’re already on…and they were already on. I took a stroll through the backyard and headed to the lake. It was really windy and the water level was at flood height. I made the wind stop blowing and just stood there thinking about what I should do next. Then I was awakened to my girl shouting “Stylus! Stylus!” I opened my eyes, and my girl’s standing there with a boot on one foot and a shoe on the other and says, “Which one?” AAAAAHHHHHH!!! I can’t believe she got me up for that!! Especially from someone with zero fashion sense.
It’s called lucid dreaming, because during the dream, you’re aware that that you are indeed, dreaming.
With a little practice, you can “control” (inasmuch as you can “control” your subconscious) your dreams and even decide to have a lucid dream. Do a quick search on lucid dreaming on any search engine and take a look at the FAQ’s on different websites.
My favorites have been when I woke up in my dream and realized I was dreaming. The best one was when I was dreaming that I was flying, and I realized “Hey, I’m dreaming! Let’s milk this for all it’s worth!” So I controlled my flight and swooped all over the place. Pretty damn cool.
I’ve had a few lucid dreams along the way, though I can’t remember them - they weren’t particularly meaningful. The sensation of knowing you’re in a dream is pretty cool, when it doesn’t just pop you out of the dream and into wakefulness (which is the usual outcome for me).
Anyone had a dream that kept on going after they opened their eyes? I’d been on a hiking and camping trip across the SW US quite a few years ago. At the end of this, I was asleep in a hotel room, and dreamed that I was camped out on a ledge halfway down the side of the Grand Canyon. My eyes were open, and my mind incorporated the vertical bands of light and shadow through the room’s curtain at night into the landscape of the dream, turning them into the walls of the canyon at night. I remember being scared of slipping off the edge of the ledge, and wondering how the hell I could have chosen such a dangerous place to camp out.
And then I saw the horizontal line of light from under the hotel room door, and I realized where I was.
I learned this trick to get out of nightmares. I became such a nitpicker.
Neat trick. I learned I wasn’t imagining all those odd buildings, I was picking details from different ones and combining them. Odd when Church A and Church B’s carpet.
Hey Zero, me too!
Usually now I wake up right after I start thinking “oh fer crisakes”. I never got the hang of “willing” stuff, I just used it to wake myself.
I do this on a regular basis. The easiest ones to control are recurring dreams, I think because I recognize the pattern early on.
I also talk in my sleep. Some of the funniest dreams are when I’m awake but still dreaming and I can hear myself talking out loud but still keep dreaming.
