About 80% of the time I have nightmares I become aware of that I’m dreaming. It’s like I suddenly realize: “This can’t happen, I must be dreaming”, and so I try to wake up. It usually takes (as I believe) five to ten seconds for me to wake up.
One time a few weeks ago, I had a nightmare, and became aware of that I was dreaming. I tried to wake up but couldn’t. I live together with my girlfriend, so I tried (in my sleep) to call her name so that she could wake me up! After a few attempts I called her name rather loud, and she woke up and then woke me up. Kind of spooky.
Anyway, I wonder if this kind of dream awareness is common?
I suspect this is headed to IMHO, but I’ll go ahead and hop on for the ride.
My “dream awareness” is absolute in the sense that the moment I realize I am dreaming, the dream ends. If I so much as question myself in a dream (“Hey, I wonder if I’m just dreaming?”) then it’s over.
The drag of this is that I regularly experience premonitions in dreams, sometimes days before actual events occur, sometimes years. When the event actually takes place, I can always tell where I woke up from the dream version because it’s always the same place I start experiencing the deja vu. It’s like the opposite side of the coin. The minute I realize, “Hey I dreamed this,” it’s too late to do anything about it, because that’s where my dream stopped and I stop knowing what’s coming next.
Same thing happens to me… usually about 5 times a month.
I absouletly hate it. I too sleep next to my girlfriend so I try screaming her name, but it usually just comes out as moans. She then wakes up and wakes me up and all is good.
It all seemed to have started happening after I tried acid. So I blame it all on that. shrugs I was hoping that it would stop after I stopped doing acid, but nope… it still happens.
I think this experience is called “Lucid Dreaming”.
Any search engine sould pull up tons of pages about it. Lots of people I know say that it frightens them when they realize they’re dreaming, but are powerless to wake up. I say it’s a blessing, not a curse. Lucid dreams give you a chance to explore your own unconscious mind. I only wish I had them regularly, or at all, for that matter.
I had my first lucid dream when I was in high school. It was a nightmare; monsters were flying at me from all directions. I decided, “hey, this is a dream” and started turning the monsters into Cyndi Lauper. (?) I don’t know why that came to mind, but it did, and my nightmare turned into a very cool lucid dream.
Don’t be afraid of lucid dreams. You can do anything you wish; you can make anyone or anything you wish appear just by wishing it. You can turn scary monsters into something else, or make them simply disappear. Usually, I fly in my lucid dreams. I’m afraid of heights, so I start to lose confidence, which causes me to fall- but then I remind myself that it’s a dream. I concentrate, then I rise back up into the sky.
You can breathe underwater, have an affair with a supermodel, teleport to anywhere you wish…
Next time you have a lucid dream, do not try to wake up. Instead, go with it. It’s the closest a human being can get to omnipotence.
I can sometimes have control over what happens in a dream.
It usually happens in a nightmare/bad dream…I know I’m
dreaming and can do something or add something to make the
dream go more how I want it to. Or I can make myself wake up.
I’ve never tried to ‘modify’ a good dream other than
extend it by a few minutes before I would normally wake
up (in other words extend sleep by a few minutes).
Unfortunately I don’t dream very often so I don’t get the
chance to ‘experiment’ very often, nor do I know exactly
how I can control dreams…
The only thing I’ve noticed is that is seem to take alot
more mental energy to dream and control it
There are a number of devices available that are supposed to enable lucid dreaming; they somehow sense that you’re in REM sleep and flash some LEDs in a pair of rather uncomforable-looking wraparound shades that you have to wear in bed, this is supposed to be just enough stimulus that, with training, you can be alerted to the fact you’re dreaming, but not wake up.
Not sure if they really work though, sounds a little fanciful to me; here’s a link: Dream Weaver
