Dreams Explored

Can Dreams Show the Future?

Predicting lottery results or the fate of someone you know; whether dreams allow you to see the future is a debate that is likely to exist for a long time to come. It's easy to say that there is no way a dream could show the future of which I would normally agree, that if anything at the very most it could only be coincidence. But, one particular dream goes beyond what I just said:

To outline, a dream I had one Sunday morning made no sense to me until I arrived at Church. Maybe coincidence, but the dream I had the night before had shown me what we would be learning in Church that day, without any prior knowledge of the theme of that service.

Common Dream Myths Explored

You CAN'T read text in a dream

FALSE!

Sure, when I was younger I found it very difficult to read any form of writing in a dream but over time it became possible, however, text in dreams tends to consist of random words that makes no sense, and changes from time to time. It's almost impossible to remember anything that I've read in a dream though remembering a name of a shop, for example, is somewhat easier.

You CAN'T see colour in a dream

FALSE!

I know I've seen colour in plenty of my dreams, it's just hard to remember colours once you wake up. This is of course similar to real life; if someone asks you to tell them what colour tie the man was wearing that passed you a minute ago, you'd probably struggle!

You CAN'T feel pain in a dream

FALSE?

I would say that while dreaming you are free from pain but I wouldn't say it was impossible for some. The following is a dream I had when I was a child relating to pain:

I was chasing a car along a train track for reasons that I cannot recall. I stepped onto one track, then the next which must have been the live one as I awoke immediately, and felt a brief, mild surge of pain. There are two things to note from this dream:

* Unless I had learned this and forgotten, I was unaware that only one train track was live and the other wasn't; I of course learnt that latter on.

* Although I felt no pain in the dream I did feel an after effect as if I had been electrocuted.

YouTube user mdkcheatz had this to say about feeling pain in dreams:

Mostly, when I recall dreams, I cannot recall any TRUE feelings. Feelings of happiness and fright can be explained as coming from recollection from our memories and innate thoughts or reactions. (Similar to what makes on demand Lucid Dreaming possible; by making a HABIT out of reality checks)...

There was one particular dream, however, where FEELING (not necessarily pain) was introduced actually in the dream itself before I was awakened from this altered state of consciousness. In this dream, I was running. I cannot recall why I was running, but I recall running as fast as I could... from what I do remember, I was NOT running out of fear or excitement, and I do not believe I was running from anything in particular. Then, as I was running, it was dark, and I accidentally ran off a cliff!

As I was falling, I FELT the same feeling as I would if I were falling in real life. The SAME feeling I have experienced while falling down a big slope of a roller coaster ride. Now here's the twist... before I could hit any ground and come to a stop, I woke up. When I woke up, I then realized why I thought and felt like I was falling... 

It turned out, that my body had fallen asleep to the point where any little movement caused that very prickly uncomfortable (kind of painful) feeling. (I'm sure you understand what feeling I'm talking about). That said, I we can assume that if you are FEELING anything in real time, that it's possible to FEEL that same feeling as interpreted by your mind during REM. In my case, my body had fallen asleep and my mind during REM had interpreted this feeling as me falling off a cliff. In other words, I would still be running and wouldn't have fallen off a cliff if my body hadn't fallen asleep on me.

Therefore I conclude, that if your body sends strong enough pain signals without you waking up as a result, then you can indeed feel pain while dreaming. To simplify this conclusion:

Real time pain (feeling) >>>>> can cause interpretationized pain (feeling)

However,

Dreams cannot interpret TRUE feeling without this feeling occurring in real time.

That is just what I believe based on what I experienced...

Common Dream Themes

Dreams are very personal yet there are without a doubt certain themes that pop up again and again, from person to person, throughout the years.

School

Those who enjoyed their time at school or college most likely have far more pleasant dreams involving school yet I cannot pretend I had a good time at school. Even after leaving, I still have frequent dreams about school, though usually more relaxing than a few years ago. More often than not, in the dream I would find myself in a usually crowded corridor sometimes with a friend walking with me, knowing that I had to make my way to the next lesson.

This presents an obvious predicament in that I have no idea of what my next lesson is, since I have no way of finding out the time (or didn't think to check my watch) and the one time I actually had my planner I couldn't read it (as reading text in a dream is often difficult if not impossible). Fortunately, I would just arrive at any class and join the end of the queue or enter the class and sit myself down.  The dream would end then, as if this was the perfect time to stop; that I had acheived a certain goal.

The reason for this type of dream is most likely because of the troubled time I had at school, though to be fair the school themed dreams I had were rather tame, though annoying. There are variations of this type of dream that I've had, as listed below:

* When I sat myself down in class having just entered a random room, the teacher actually pointed out that I was in the wrong class (as would a teacher in real life). This is very rare for me and it gets more interesting; another boy realized that he was in the wrong class too. This is almost like someone else having the same dream as me who joined me in my humiliation that night. But this might just reflect the first couple of days at a new school, not knowing my way around the building well.

* Determined to escape school, while in the playground I would fly away far enough to put enough distance between me and the school, then return to the ground. This is clear in representing my desire to leave school, which of course eventually came true, explaining why I don't have this school variation type dream anymore.

Dreams Explored Video Series

I've done a number of videos on YouTube based around dreams I've had, looking into what that may mean:

Dream Oddities

What is it with light in dreams, when younger I could never turn on a light in a room in a dream, even after changing the lightbulb! This is of course very much a pain as the room would be in complete darkness and thus difficult if not impossible to see any detail.

But later on I have had dreams where I have managed to turn on a light but generally the level of light in one dream is the same as in any other. Having said that, I have had dreams where I'm outside and It's clearly set at night because it's very dark.

Ok, when I'm dreaming that I'm playing a video game seeing the character I am watching or controlling from a third person view is no surprise since I play mainly third person type games. However, why is it in some dreams that I see myself from a third person view and most of the time it doesn't occur to me that I'm actually dreaming?

In a dream you can be happy enough in one place but then find yourself somewhere totally different, as if transported there in seconds. In one dream, for example, I thought I was on holiday which is hundreds of miles away from where I live and then I ended up home.

Speaking of being on holiday, when away I usually dream about being home as if my brain has yet to realze I'm somewhere quite different and when actually at home it's quite rare for me to dream that I'm on holiday. This can confuse me somewhat when I awake as I have to remind myself that I'm actually at home or still on holiday.

Machines including those of the electrical and electronic types don't like to work well in dreams even to the point that unplugging a TV in a dream doesn't stop it from showing a picture. In one dream I had I was using a TV outside in the garden even though that would not be possible for real without a generator or a lead running indoors.

Whether you can feel pain in a dream is something that can be argued but for me most of the time it's wonderful that I can survive an attack in a dream and not feel any discomfort. I've been bitten by zombies in my dreams and not felt any pain, that might be to do with playing video games and watching films since the most they can do is affect your emotions and in the case of video games provide a bit of feedback (i.e. a rumble effect).

As a child I've had dreams where I suddenly realize I'm missing clothing like shoes or more worrying, underpants. The thing is, no one in the dream takes notice which is probably for the best, if that happened in real life I don't know what I'd do. In a dream I had recently I was nearly or totally naked laying somewhere and happy which may be representive of me getting to like my body more.

Dream Symbols

I will always maintain that dreams are very personal, yet there do exist for sure a number of common dream symbols having a set meaning. The brain seems to be clever at integrating these symbols into dreams to get a point across that is familiar to us such as every day objects and that which we may use with our hobbies.

I often dream about famous people in particular soap stars, usually actors and actresses from the soap opera EastEnders. I've always liked the drama Holby City which follows EastEnders for one day a week but when I had a short dream in which I chatted to one of Holby City's actors I at first thought very little of it.

First of all, in the dream I mentioned to who I though to be Elliot Hope (from Holby City) about when he played Nigel in EastEnders to which he was not pleased. This suggests that in the dream I was actually talking to the actor Paul Bradley who plays Elliot in Holby and had played Nigel in EastEnders. That said, though I don't think I was in a hospital (where Holby is mainly set) in the dream, if he was meant to have been the character Elliot, I actually broke the fourth wall, so-to-speak.

But there might have been a pun in the character's name since Elliot's second name is Hope. It gets better; in the program Holby, Elliot has a son called James, which is my name. So, his name almost speaks a message, James Hope; James, have hope? But this might be due to both Elliot and James featuring a lot in recent episodes of Holby and I've already thought to myself about the 'hope' pun before having this dream. But what this might mean is that my brain chose Elliot to serve as a dream symbol knowing I would be aware of the significance.

Dream Tricks You Can Learn

There are aids that you can teach yourself in order to make the most of your dreams, to help yourself.

* As I already mentioned, lucid dreaming allows you to take control of your dreams which can help you to combat dream nasties, for example.

* It is possible to learn to read text, your watch or other writting in a dream; just keep trying!

* As many children have, and adults too, nightmares can be particularly disturbing at the best of times. A trick I taught myself was to, while dreaming, rub my eyes if I wanted to wake up a.s.a.p., and it worked. Now that I think about it, I wonder if that was possible through the power of lucid dreaming?

Lucid Dreams

If you are fortunate to have a lucid dream this simply means that you were aware that you were dreaming while you was actually still dreaming. The virtual world which the brain creates for your sleep is so convincing that often we are fooled into thinking that we are awake, i.e. experiencing real life. However, as we dream we can sometimes spot minor imperfections which reveal to us that we are actually dreaming.

So, what's so special about lucid dreaming? Not much unless you take advantage of your lucidness while dreaming. Generally, when we dream we go with the flow and have little say or impact on how the dream progresses, but when lucid we have the power to dramatically affect the dream in some way. Since a dream is built upon imagination, lucidness allows one to acheive what is not possible in real life and without any consequences, such as getting hurt (that is debatable).

Some may use a lucid dream to prepare for an important speech, for example; see what kind of reaction the dream characters give you. And then there's really using the power of lucid dreaming, such as to fly without wings. Or summon mighty powers to combat evil entities in a super hero style movie sequence. The limit is your imagination!

To initiate a lucid dream, the most common approach is as mentioned above, to realize you're dreaming by spotting something wrong. If you're wearing a watch in your dream check the time, look away, and then check it again. If the time has changed by more than just a few seconds then you are certainly dreaming. This is a common (but useful) flaw with dreams, similar situations I've had are writing that changes or the name of a shop change.

This does not guarantee lucidness but with practice you'll get there. It is supposedly during the last hours of sleep that you are more likely to have a lucid dream, so what time you go to bed and awake are obviously important. But I do believe that lucid dreaming is something that can be learnt, not something that you have to be born with. As for myself, I've had lucid dreams since young but only recently I discovered that there was a proper term for it.

Even when you do become lucid, staying in that mode can be difficult and therefore natural that you slip in and out of the lucid state. However, there are techniques to remain lucid such as spinning around on the spot, though personally I've yet to try out that technique. While dreaming, you should realize when you're about to loose lucidness perhaps because you're about to wake up, this warning should give you enough time to act.

Don't worry if you do wake up, if you fall back to sleep soon afterwards it can actually increase your chances of having a lucid dream again. You might also want to tell yourself that you will have a lucid dream, or say what you will dream about. I once outlined before falling asleep what I would dream about and it worked, so that is one way to control your dreams without having a lucid dream. Similar, when I was much younger I told myself that I would not have nightmares if I slept facing a certain way and regardless of the fact that I most likely turned over more than once during the night, I now rarely have nightmares.

When lucid during dreaming, probably the most fascinating thing to do is explore the world that your brain has created for you. Sure it may seem like the real world but it's not quite as it seems, more as if a horror film in some ways. And then there are the people to talk to; test their reactions or just observe them, assuming that you're surrounded by humans...

If you were planning to talk to someone or ask them something tomorrow, you may get the chance to ask their dream equivalent while lucid. It makes you wonder what judges their response (assuming they give you one) since you don't know how they'll reply in real life. Therefore, the brain must decide what would be the most obvious answer to your question judged by what you know about that person. Surely you've asked someone something and have already predicted what they will most likely say to you, especially a best friend or a member of your family?

I'm not so sure about out of body experiences but while I was having a very lucid dream, towards the end I realised that I was waking up because I could sense my real body as opposed to my dream body. This gave me enough time to finish my tests before I woke up; I checked a pile of DVD or video game cases on the floor in the living room and they had changed size and the pictures on the front were now different to when I had last checked.

Why is it that mechanical, electrical and electronic devices in dreams don't behave as they should do? In the past I've dreamed that I've used a gun despite that not being the case for real life (most likely influenced by films and video games), so it's not hard to understand why the gun never fires any bullets or is slow to react. But then there are computers which I have used a great deal and I understand them very well, yet they too are often suspect in my dreams.

In dreams I can get really worried because I'm using a computer or building something electronic and it goes wrong, only to realize after I've awoken that it had only happened in a dream. This could, of course, represent my fears of making a mistake big time, and that's been playing on my mind. The point is that dreams can appear so real yet if we open our eyes and spot the mistakes in the dream then the power of being lucid can be ours.

I do have the idea that because dreams have been with us humans for generations, before technology was invented, then maybe them misbehaving in our dreams is because they're not treated the same way by our brain as other things, like people, that are more natural to us.

So, if lucid in a dream, it's a good idea to do some tests if you can remember and I have been fortunate enough to have done that a few times. I must warn you that being lucid and trying things out isn't a good idea if you sleep walk, which is just as well I don't for what I'm about to share with you.

I was in the living room of my home, a common place to be in a dream for me, and I was lucid. I knew what I wanted to do as often I go outside the house in my dreams, since then I am not restricted to one place; could a dream really show you the entire world? So I ran to the front door and opened it and headed for the main road which is outside the house that I live in. I was determined to really test the dream as usually when walking across a road in a dream I would manage to avoid the speeding cars but this time I purposely ran into a car to create a crash.

If it had been real life I might have been killed and interesting enough I awoke before the impact which is very revealing. Either I awoke then because I was awaking anyway (which I was aware of as I had ran outside), my brain didn't know what should happen next in the dream, or my brain thought that I was actually awake (which may be something of a contradiction) so the shock woke me up.

I'd like to highlight a few points about this dream:

* This was the last dream I had that day as I awoke around one in the afternoon; I had previously awoken about midday before falling back to sleep (I make a point of checking the time).

* In real life the front door of the house I live in is locked at night, so the dream might have been set during the day; I cannot recall if it was sunny outside in the dream but it wasn't pitch black.

* As I ran across the road in my attempts to collide with a car what I saw was one lane of traffic (where the second lane was I don't know); the different coloured cars (red, white, yellow I think, no vans or other larger vehicles) were so close to each other that it would have been impossible for me to get past them without jumping over a car. In actual life people wouldn't drive that close so it seems to me that in the dream the cars were packed so near to each other to stop me getting to the other side of the road.

* Outside in the dream I felt a strain as if I was waking but also because of the change of direction (going outside instead of staying indoors) as if my brain was having trouble altering the dream. I have had that feeling in other dreams when I've ventured outdoors and those times I did not cross the road, instead I continued down the pavement until I woke up or got distracted and entered someone else's house.

One last thing about that dream, it is kind of ironic that in real life there have been many accidents that have occurred on that main road. I was in complete control of the dream, I knew what I wanted to do; I would never had done such a thing had I been awake since that would have been suicide. So, if I knew I was dreaming but my brain thought otherwise...do you see the contradiction? Let me expand upon that, who really has control, my brain or me; but my brain is me, isn't it?

If I can force myself to wake up as I have done in the past such as to escape a nightmare, is that my power or my brain's? Who really has total control in a dream if lucid, my brain or do I simply tell my brain what should happen? As I believe in the soul as the real me I make the distiction that myself and my brain are two separate objects. In that dream because I was lucid I took control and changed the dream but if you will, the dream or my brain had the last laugh because it ended it before I could do anything else.

I wonder what would have happened had I stayed sleeping, would I have been hurt at all and if so what state would I have been in and would I have felt pain? Or maybe I didn't actually hit the car and so I would have continued to the other side of the road and carried on with my exploring; when would the dream have ended in this situation?

It appears that you can be lucid in a dream from the start or more usual for me, I realize that I'm dreaming later on because of suspecting that something isn't quite right, or it just happens almost naturally. There are also different levels of lucidness, I might be aware that I'm dreaming but not take advantage of that understanding or I can be lucid and use that power in some way.

Another dream I had that's similar to the running out in the road also started indoors, in the hallway. As I went outside it felt as if force was trying to pull me back inside but I imagined myself being pulled towards the door and so I ended up outside. The first thing I saw on the main road outside the house where I live was a huge lorry or other large van, coloured blue I seem to remember. I imagined the lorry coming towards me and it did; I had every intention to crash it into me but I must of awoke up before it did. Why was that lorry in my dream when I only thought to test the dream upon seeing the vehicle? I didn't say to myself that I was dreaming, I just seemed to be lucid perhaps because of the force trying to stop me from going outside.

My Dream Diary

 Please go to My Dream Diary.

Nightmares

Probably most of us have had at least one nightmare but they are not restricted to just childhood, many adults can experience terrifying dreams as well. One particular nightmare that sticks in mind was of dreaming about using a computer which I turned off and unplugged but it stayed on and then actually came alive. I now believe the reason for that dream was due to a teacher who scolded me for not starting my name with a capital 'J' as I was typing it onto the computer.

I have had dreams that could be classed as nightmares because they contain scenes of horror such as zombies yet weren't that terrifying since I felt no pain when attacked; there was never any dire feeling of dread. Compare that to another nightmare that I have had where I was hiding from a monster and really wanted to wake up as it seemed for real my life was in danger.

Recurring Dreams

Having the same or similar dream more than once could be joyful yet bad dreams as repeats is something that are just horrible. To me, the reason for recurring dreams is if we miss what the dream is trying to tell us perhaps to improve our life when we're awake.

School dreams are a common recurring dream that I had but now that I've put that time behind me I have them very rarely. Another recurring dream I've had is that of being in the kitchen and turning the gas on or trying to turn it off and having trouble, worried that I would burn myself. I think that dream is about loosing control so it's a reminder to get back into the driver's seat so-to-speak.

What Influences a Dream?

The most obvious is events that have happened in your life, perhaps from the day before or even many years ago. One reasoning as to the purpose of dreams is to deal with our experiences, to help us with our emotions so thoughts that have been on your mind lately are likely to make there way into your dream. I have found that it can take quite a few days before dreaming about something that has happened not long ago.

Maybe I've mentioned this before, when on holiday I often dream about being at home but that is understandable since that's where I spend most of the time. The living room is usually the starting point for most of my dreams, again as in real life the living room is very familiar to me and is where all of my family are together for the majority of the day. It's where we watch TV, use our computers to go online and play games.

Your senses while sleeping certainly affect your dreams, I have had dreams that begin pleasant and then for no reason turn into more of a nightmare; when I awoke I found that I had been sleeping on my arm in such a way it caused discomfort. Another time I've dreamed of needing to go to the toilet but still needing to go after, this is because I needed to go for real. Temperature also may affect your dreams, I seem to have lucid dreams when it is warm indoors as opposed to cold or hot.

Your Experiences

Thanks to YouTube user Pogman999 for the following:

11th Feb 2018:

Had a dream where I was in a car with Bruce Willis and they announced on the radio they were going to have an interview with Bruce Willis. He was really confused and a bit annoyed because he wasn't told about it. The radio then played a remix of All-Star where the lyrics were changed to be about Bruce Willis, part of it was something like "Bruce Willis has no hair, although he used to-o have some hair-air-air" (To the "All that glitters is gold" bit). I was able to predict what the lyrics would be for that bit and another bit as well, although I wasn't mean to have heard the song before.

30th January 2018:

Dream is set in a future where all babies are genetically enhanced, and I was looking after a baby who was the sibling of the power rangers, who were also my siblings, and the baby was my mother's son, but it wasn't consciously acknowledged that he was my brother. Because he was genetically enhanced it meant that he could use all the power ranger strength at once, and he kicked me in the head while he was asleep which knocked me out. People in my dream then told me to "wake up", which woke me up in real life.

30th January 2018:

Some evil supervillain type bloke had a magic device which lets you apply attributes to objects by writing them on the object. I chased him to the grave of either Dickson Greeting bloke or Charlie Chaplin (I think it changed partway through) who he was trying to resurrect so that he could escape from me. I added the attributes "made of dust" and "not animated", then we both ran away together and he complimented me on the choice of attributes.

30th January 2018:

I had a dream twice where I was asleep (in the dream) and heard my mum complaining that I hadn't gotten up yet, which I got up in response to (in the dream, not in real life).

Unknown date:

I had a dream that I was dreaming while sleepwalking, and the only way to wake up and stop sleepwalking was to lay down on the living room sofa and go to sleep. The dream my sleepwalking self was having was that he was standing at the top of the stairs with no lights on, and he had to run down the stairs really fast to get onto the sofa before the dream restarts. The dream restarted a few times before I worked out what to do. Eventually the dream-within-dream self got to sleep on the sofa, which woke up the sleepwalking dream self, who realised he wasn't in any real danger from his sleepwalking because he wasn't actually at the top of the stairs. I then woke up from this.

27th January 2018:

I had a dream where a seagull had opened a peanut feeder onto a pigeon's back and the pigeon was sitting around with a peanut-covered back. I don't remember anything else that happened.

29th December 2016:

When I was still in bed almost asleep, my mum shouted up about my brother's christmas present arriving, and it made me have a dream about opening it. In the dream, the thing at the top of the box was a folded peice of paper which turned into a notepad. First, it had some stickers in, then loads of his writing, then loads of scribbles - because of this I assumed this was just an old notepad he'd finished using but wanted to store at home. After that there was a page with an pale blue circular emblem, featuring an old man with a crooked nose wearing clothes a bit like Robin Hood. Across this was the text in Times New Roman or similar, "Lenny Henry gruesome death after going off stage for a glass of water". I thought it was weird because the Robin Hood bloke looked like my brother had drawn him but the text was a font, I thought that maybe he'd tried to replicate a font or something. After that I woke up.

Thanks to Michelle for the following:

I'm Michelle and I'm from the US. I enjoy watching your dreams videos and it made me think about trying lucid dreaming. Although I've done it before years ago, it has always been really hard for me to do. Then I tried that advice you gave about checking your watch while you're dreaming. I don't wear a watch but I knew that if I just remembered that advice while dreaming it would dawn on me. So then, as a result, I had a really good lucid dream a few nights ago! It was so cool!

I started somewhere in a house, and similar to the lucid dream you had mentioned in your video, I began tearing down walls the minute I realized I was dreaming. I then was running outside and appeared to be in a neighborhood. I began to practice flying and jumping on top of cars. I then saw an enormous tree and flew to the very top of it. It was so realistic since I was still dreaming. I remember looking around from the tall tree and seeing a very detailed landscape. I then continued to run about the neighborhood doing whatever I liked.

Here is my theory on lucid dreaming:

The more dramatic your actions are while in the dream, the more distorted the dream will become. In other words, if you do things that you physically cannot do such as flying, I think somewhere in your subconscious you realize more and more that you are dreaming and the realistic nature of the dream begins to fade or distort. You may even just wake up as a result. But, if you simply do things you would not do in real life, while still staying within your boundaries of "reality" you can maintain the dream longer.

Thanks to YouTube user ghostlink2027 for the following:

The first one is probably more interesting, but I almost wouldn't count it as lucid dreaming specifically. Back in I believe 2002 or 2003 I had a dream from Zelda the Wind Waker, probably because I had just bought that game. I don't remember much in specific (and it doesn't help that I was only about 8), but I do remember that my parrents had wanted me to get used to waking up to an alarm clock, so this was the first night I had ever used one. Near the end of the dream, I was near the Forrest Haven, coming from the Forbidden Forrest. I flew over to the side of the main island and went in the entrance on it's side. While I was changing rooms (it acted like a loading zone in a game) the alarm went off. I did not fully awaken for some reason, but I was fully aware of the sound and was now also aware that I was still dreaming. The room finally "loaded" and I was now in the Lost Woods in Ocarina, specifically the room where you get the slingshot ammo upgrade. My parrents yelled in at me to turn off the alarm clock, and I yelled back that I wanted to finish my dream first. Needless to say it wasn't a great excuse, but it took them coming in and pulling me out of bed to fully awaken me to where I could not stay asleep. I may have opened my eyes once durring the dream and looked at the clock, but I don't remember for sure. I think that te game change, though, went from a smoother looking game to a rougher game to express the sudden stress on my body, specifically my circulatory and nervous systems because of the shock of the alarm.

The second is less interesting, but about 2 years later, I had a dream that I was in some building with a chain link fence running down the center. It looked like a prison almost, being dark and all grey with few windows, but it had no cells. It's only other feature was a single pool on either side of the fence. There were a lot of children there, some of them I recognized but most I did not. I remember thinking about taking a nap when I realized that that was the last thing I had done and I realized that I was dreaming. I thought immediately of looking at my watch and when I looked a second time exactly five seconds later, two hours had passed. I then thought about what I regretted not doing in my other lucid dream, and that was controling it. I looked up and found a girl running across the pool side on the other side of the fence and I focused on making her levitate. She did after a few seconds, and when I let her down, she complained about what I had done and told me not to do it again. I'm not sure how she recognized me, but I immagine it had to do with everything being in my mind. What I knew, they knew.

Thanks to Brandon L. for the following:

I just wanted to add some theory to your dream logs. I had a fantastic dream last night. It was like living through a movie! And I woke up needing to urinate really badly. I begun thinking. I believe the reason I was able to recall the dream so vividly was because I had to urinate. Now this may seem like an odd concept to grasp, but most of my most clearly remembered dreams have been correlated in some form with real life stimuli.

Thus, my theory is that if you want to remember your dreams more clearly, try drinking a bottle of water before bed. I can't say for sure what the mechanics are that may cause this to be true. But I can certainly guess that it may have to do without your brain having to work overtime to keep signaling to the body to keep the urea heated. In turn, other cognitive processes may also get ''booted up'' such as ones relating to memory transcription.

Try it for yourself! See if I'm right about this. I'm a person who doesn't usually seem to remember much of dreams once I wake up, yet for some reason my dream last night was crystal clear! I recalled an overwhelming amount of detail including colors, patterns, faces, voices, taste.

Another interesting concept that I've read about from multiple sources is possessing the ability to lucid dream with other people who may also be lucid dreaming. For example, there was one story of two people who apparently had mastered lucid dreaming and would meet up in dreams to perform epic battles (for fun). The inferred evidence behind the story was the explanation that that both of the people (who lived across the world from each other) had produced the same exact story.

That said, I always wondered if there may be something more to dreaming than we actually understand. If those kinds of stories are true, then surely there is some kind of portal which allows our energy to travel through. Maybe dreaming occurs because our souls leave our bodies (which can still function on their own, just not consciously). In other words, when our souls leave our bodies it may be assumed that it is still attached in some form. A way to retrieve it instantly as to wake up. Like a balloon on a string

Thanks to Zach Wanamaker for the following:

I read on your website the thing about dreams and i had a dream one time that did see into the future!

my dream was like 10 seconds. i was laying in my bed and in my dream i was in my bed and a blue monster came into my room and i awoke right away. and mabye like 5 years or so later my cousin had this realy cool game about inline skateing.

in the game your enemys in the game are blue looking things and i sayed right away that i saw those guys in my dream!

Thanks to YouTube user DeathBasket for sharing his experiences with us:

I first read about lucid dreams on your site a few months ago and I found it very interesting. Since then I've been wanting to experience it for myself and in fact I had my first lucid dream (sort of) two nights ago. In the dream I was in a car that was moving and I remember looking at the speedometer and noticing it was on the highest speed possible. I thought that it couldn't be right and looked again. This time it was on zero, but the car had remained moving at the same speed. I realised that I was dreaming as this could not be real. I got a strange feeling as if I had woken up, but unfortunately I thought I actually had woken up and this caused me to lose the lucid state within a few seconds and continue dreaming normally before I had the chance to really do anything. 

I think that the reason I thought I must have been awake is because I often have lazy mornings where I wake up and immediately go back to sleep several times, and the colours I remember in my dreams are similar to the colours in my bedroom on a bright morning. These are shades of red, yellow and orange, which happen to be the main colours in my room since I have red curtains and yellow walls.

It was in a way disappointing that I didn't remain in the lucid state for longer and it leaves me wondering what might have happened if I had. It was also encouraging because this experience gives me a better picture of what to expect and this may help me to keep the lucid state for longer the next time it happens. 

Thanks to Jack Stewart for the following:

I have lucid dreams quite commonly, but I don't have much time to realy explore the unusual and realistic but unrealistic worlds that appear almost comicaly in unusual ways in my dreams. Because they change drasticly so quite quickly, and are almost like a movie. I usualy always see the world in a third-person perspective for some reason. I had a lucid dream once where I could jump real high and stuff, then I ran into the wooden gate and it exploded. After my mom's boyfriend scolded me for destroying the gate, I noticed Sonic The Headgehog was talking to my mom, And then I woke up, in another I was swimming around in my house, it was flooded to the ceiling! I was holding my breath, but then I said, "Wait, this is a dream, I can't drown." But I can't remember any more than that sadly.

Thanks to PunchoutFan who has this dream to share with us:

On may 2008 I think it is I had a dream where I was in a video game character and I was the main character where I had to collect game money to by stuff i need to buy stuff to finish the game. Like one thing I need was a green gem thats open this door that takes me to the game ending, the green jem cost 5000 game money which to get money i had to do hard, hard quest like one i had to find his dog which is lost in a dark and in there I had to look around every where the dark room was 

also very, very big.But at the end of that quest I got only 100 game money 

which is not very much.. anyways when i had 5000 game money i got the green gem.. and when I got the gem it some how got in my skin on my right hand. I also saw that the gem said something "if you want to get out of here you need to believe and use this gem" and right when I came to the big door I need to open I put my hand on the door and said "I beleave I can do this" and the door open and I find my self on my bed at my house at 6:00 am and that was my dream.