Non-lucid but kind of dream deja vu

Hello everyone, I'm new to this forum! Nice to meet you! I have always been very fascinated with dreams because i have as far as i remember been able to remember my dreams fairly well. I have had one lucid dream about 7 years ago, i still remember it clearly but i have never really dived into the subject any further. I have only found my dreams fascinating and enjoyed being able to remember them.

Anyhow, recently i started reading about lucid dreams alot and decided that i really want to take my dream interest to a new level and take control over my dreams. So i have started keeping a dream journal. Actually i have only used it for 2 nights yet but i have 2,5 dreams typed down in it so far. This last night though i noticed something weird. It's a really cheesy dream but i dreamed that i was batman and the house i lived in got invaded by bad guys. First i panicked and locked all the doors(at this point i didn't have any crazy batgear) as i ran up towards the second floor i stopped and reminded myself that "hey I'm batman, i can beat these guys" so i focused and suddenly had my batgear. It was a active choice that controlled a part of the dream but it wasn't a lucid dream. I kept going but it didn't go very well for me, these bad guys had installed traps and stuff in my house but suddenly i remembered that i had gone through this before, it was like i knew that i had dreamed this dream before but kind of failed and got beaten. I even got like a flash of how it looked like when i died when i dreamed this dream before. And suddenly i was able to recall the trick they had used to beat me before and could beat them this time.

When i woke up i recalled having the same kind of feelings before in dreams, the feeling of having dreamed it before and using those memories to my advantage. But i still didn't go lucid, which i find kind of weird. Especially now when i have spent quite some time thinking and reading about lucidity and dreams. It was so weird because it was like i knew that i recalled something from a dream in the dream but i still wasn't able to break the plot and take control, i was so focused on just using the information to survive and couldn't collect myself enough to fully realize it was a dream.

If other people have experienced the same thing, do you have any tips or thoughts on how to be able to use these moments to actually break the plot of the dream and increase your chances of going lucid. I fear that i might be too swept away by the dream that even if i know it's obviously a dream i can't really grip it and go lucid.

I know the feeling. I'll dream about a place I know I've dreamed about before, yet not notice it and go lucid. It's a very bizarre sensation, especially when you wake up. I suppose it's possible that you actually did dream of being there in a long forgotten dream, but I doubt it. It's probably just your mind populating the dream world with situations that you are already expecting, thus creating the illusion that your knew about them beforehand. Or perhaps it's just common deja vu.

Yeah i know it's a superweird feeling but it also feels like those moments should be good places to go lucid. Because it's not like i just thought that i know this from before, I'm pretty sure that i felt that i had dreamed it before. I don't know i want to find some way to handle those situations if they appear again, something that will make me react on it even more, to the point that i might actually stop and do a RC.

I've had a dream where I was being chased by bad guys and had to escape. I wasn't lucid, but I thought "I've dreamed this before; last time I went in x direction I died, so I'll go somewhere else this time." It was a crazy-weird feeling. As for becoming lucid though, I didn't.

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Originally Posted by SystemsLock

I know the feeling. I'll dream about a place I know I've dreamed about before, yet not notice it and go lucid. It's a very bizarre sensation, especially when you wake up. I suppose it's possible that you actually did dream of being there in a long forgotten dream, but I doubt it. It's probably just your mind populating the dream world with situations that you are already expecting, thus creating the illusion that your knew about them beforehand. Or perhaps it's just common deja vu.

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I don't think so. I have a feeling that our mind will reuse a lot of the same environments... personally I think the part of our mind that fabricates dreams has its own memory. I've had several dreams where I notice I've had a dream in that environment before, but the environment itself is a complete fabrication (does not actually exist in real life). The same thing goes with certain dream characters who are definitely not real who have re-appeared in several dreams before.

We usually don't remember our dreams when we wake up, but I don't think all is completely forgotten. The best personal anecdotal evidence I have for this is that I'd be in a dream and I'll be non-lucid, but then recognize I'm in a place that I've had a dream in before. Many times its a little different, but large parts of it will be copied. This will clue me in that I'm dreaming. I'll remember the past dream in my dream, and maintain this memory when I get up (at least some times)... The way it tends to work though is that I only remember these previous dreams is when I'm dreaming. I even have rough estimates of when I dreamed them. Not long ago I recalled the scenery from a dream as one that was already used back when I was much younger.

Its possible that our mind is fabricating this, but it seems like a lot of work to fabricate memories. Everything I've experienced has lead me to believe that dreams are actually very non-complicated things.

I've had absolutely loads of deja vu dreams, all non lucid though.
I think it is possibly when you mind thinks that you've done this before, then it latches on and just continues what you were doing the previous time when you did that action. - does that make sense.
Happy Dreams ;)

you are right! I also have this burst of remembering another dream similar to this while i am dreaming. In fact some may say that this is deja vu or false memories, but i don't believe that. because if they were wrong or false you would have known this,, unlike your case where you still believe till now that you have actually dreamed about that dream before. In other words, in the case of deja vu you have that feeling for seconds or minutes- that you have been through this situation before- but that feeling goes and you recognize that it was wrong..in our case it is not! it really happened!!!