Last night I was in the middle of one of those rare dreams that had me going all sorts of strange places when I suddenly woke up and had the heavy thought that I had never been to any of these places. These dreams recur every now and then and after I wake up I realize they’re totally made up, without any relationship to places I have been – or at least they’re so much of a composite that I can’t recognize them.
The one last night was the first one to wake me up with that feeling of how odd the places were, and I spent some little while trying to figure out what real places I have been were being redone by my dreams. I eventually went back to sleep without getting any good answers, but I did get the feeling that by exaggerating various aspects of familiar places my dreams did have some relationships with those familiar places.
In the past I have wondered if maybe these are signs of some previous lifetime’s experiences. Now I’m pretty sure they’re just manifestations of the way dreams distort or pun on the familiar. In any case, I wonder why I keep revisiting the same places in my dreams that (as far as I can tell) I’ve never been to in real life.
Anything like this go on in your dreams? Any idea what’s at work here?