pebblerocker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pebblerocker) wrote2014-07-23 01:08 pm
pebblerocker) wrote2014-07-23 01:08 pm
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My partner was watching a documentary the other evening on sleep and dreams, and there was a section on lucid dreaming. It's fascinating to me that it's potentially possible for brains to do that; I think it would be interesting to experience.
Last night I dreamt I was riding around the streets in the area where I used to live on a small purple bicycle with straight handlebars. I rode around for a bit and then I noticed I was riding a larger red bicycle with swept-back handlebars. I was surprised that the bike had changed while I was riding it; I also had a very strong feeling that there was something very important to remember about why bicycles don't change into different bicycles and what it meant that this had happened. I struggled to work out what it was that I needed to remember, what vital fact this clue was telling me - I wrestled hard with it, but the crowd of children running behind me distracted me and I forgot what I was trying to do.
Every time I'm reminded that lucid dreaming exists I seem to have one of these dreams; this one was the closest I've got so far, with not just the realisation that something odd and impossible had happened, but the knowledge that I could deduce something from the impossibility, even though I didn't quite get to the answer. Odd sights in dreams (day into night, childhood home attached to current garden) don't seem to trigger any realisation, but things that feel wrong do. Both bicycles in my dream are real ones that I'm familiar with riding (though only one is mine) and they feel very different, with different riding positions and gears.
Last night I dreamt I was riding around the streets in the area where I used to live on a small purple bicycle with straight handlebars. I rode around for a bit and then I noticed I was riding a larger red bicycle with swept-back handlebars. I was surprised that the bike had changed while I was riding it; I also had a very strong feeling that there was something very important to remember about why bicycles don't change into different bicycles and what it meant that this had happened. I struggled to work out what it was that I needed to remember, what vital fact this clue was telling me - I wrestled hard with it, but the crowd of children running behind me distracted me and I forgot what I was trying to do.
Every time I'm reminded that lucid dreaming exists I seem to have one of these dreams; this one was the closest I've got so far, with not just the realisation that something odd and impossible had happened, but the knowledge that I could deduce something from the impossibility, even though I didn't quite get to the answer. Odd sights in dreams (day into night, childhood home attached to current garden) don't seem to trigger any realisation, but things that feel wrong do. Both bicycles in my dream are real ones that I'm familiar with riding (though only one is mine) and they feel very different, with different riding positions and gears.
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Much the same principle as reading. Anything that SHOULD remain stable in RL would be a good marker.
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I think though that whether something remains the same or changes in a dream depends on its relevance to our dreaming mind. If something appears in our dream for us to read, we only need to read it once, because then, we've already "gotten the message." If we go back to it, it's usually because something was unclear, or the message was incomplete, so instead of getting the exact same words again, we'll get a paraphrase, or the "thought that follows the first." Same thing with time: why should the arbitrary counting of minutes and seconds, um... count?
But in the waking world,* we're surrounded by objects that have been created outside our own minds, and thus continue in their static forms, independent of our minds' needs.
*(I prefer that to "real world," because dreams are real experiences, too, in that they are often driving forces which effect changes in how I feel about, and sometimes even perceive, the world I wake up to... A really deep dream can change the way I feel about myself for days; I stub my toe on a table leg, and will have forgotten about it an hour or two later. So how can the dream be less real than the table?)