Thread: Re-enter dreams by recalling faces?

I don't try to lucid dream, though I've read about it. I remember my dreams once every couple weeks and have had a lucid dream once in my life. Last night, I had even more than a lucid dream, though -- I was able to become conscious briefly, look around my apartment, pet my dog, and then slip back into the dream without losing conscious awareness, and I did this a couple times.

I put what I experienced in quote tags, since it's somewhat lengthy.

Originally Posted by Arkanin

Thursday night, my sleep was pretty screwed up. The trouble is, my apartment's building-wide fire alarm went off at about 2:30 AM. I sleep from 11:00 P.M. to 7:00 A.M. or so, but after the alarm woke me up, I couldn't sleep again until 5:30 AM or so, thereby perfectly torpedoing my rest. I went to work that morning and felt fine until lunch, coasting on adrenaline. As the day wore on, I started to drag and by 3:00 PM I was completely exhausted with a nasty ear-splitting headache. I decided to go home a bit early, at 4:30 P.M., since I couldn't concentrate on my work, and as soon as I got home I took a couple aspirins. I laid down in my bed to take a nap.

When I take a nap, I almost always wake up naturally after a couple hours. Today, I conked right out around 4:40, and when I woke up, it was 11 P.M.! Good thing I ruined my sleep schedule during the weekend. I wanted to go to bed at 11 P.M., but here I am just waking up. I putter around on the internet until about 4 A.M., and then I fall asleep again.

At some point, I was dreaming and I became conscious. In my dream, I was in a small, cozy house when I sensed an unpleasant but not terrifying presence. I looked out a window pane in this dream and saw the face of a man. It was not outright malicious yet the face was an object of fear. I became conscious that I was dreaming, yet I decided not to wake up yet. The awareness that I was dreaming gave me the grit to defy this person who was doing something unpleasant to me.

I locked eyes with him as something bizarre started to happen. He had a power over me, and the details of the world began to spin and fade as he sucked me into another place. All I concentrated on was this man's face. I started to snarl at him defiantly and flailed at him to catch only air -- what he was doing was wrong, and unpleasant, but not terrifying. I knew I could wake up, so I wasn't that afraid and just kept dreaming (As an aside, the only other time I knew I was dreaming I got excited that I was conscious in a dream and that woke me up. I don't know how I kept a cool enough head to stay asleep this time.)

The next thing I knew, I was in a dark, cyllindrical place, a much less imaginatively constructed place than the old one. It was all very hollow, very fake. I knew I was dreaming here. I was more or less floating around, and I was more of an airborne camera than a person. I was alone and I didn't feel afraid, but I could very vividly remember the face of the man. At some point I started to experience something sexual, which woke me up. I was in my bed, lying on my side, and I wanted to dream again beause I was enjoying whatever was going on. I was awake for a couple seconds, long enough to realize I was in my bed and safe. I imagined the face again, with my eyes open.

This time I literally lapsed back into my dream while completely conscious. It was like the face I imagined had such a vivid connection to the dream that it yanked me right in from a state of a wakeness. Entering the dream was an experience that I can hardly describe. It was unpleasant and unfamiliar, yet interesting enough to be worth it. I felt a numbness slide over my back, my vision became black, and I felt some part of me becoming dormant, necrotic even. the entire process was very strange. I wonder now if this is what it feels like to fall asleep every night, and our memories simply don't record it when it happens.

I floated around for a bit in the cylindrical place. Here, the man's face was right at the tip of my memory, always present in my mind. But something woke me up again. I was conscious, in my apartment, for a few moments. I am completely positive I was awake at this point. Everything was real, and crisp. I checked the clock on my wall, and it said it was 5:56 AM. I imagined the face again. At this point, I think I was very curious. I 'fell asleep while conscious' again, my body becoming paralyzed as before. As I got sucked into dreamland I started tingling. I tried to move my hand while falling asleep -- I managed to drag it a couple inches with a superhuman effort. Everything went black and I was in my apartment's bedroom again. This was a dream, but at the time I wasn't sure if I was dreaming or actually behaving like a lunatic in my apartment. I could move freely now, and I was running around my room on my hands, doing cartwheels, and sticking my head into the laundry like a complete lunatic. At some point I fell down on the floor and couldn't figure out how to get up. I became afraid, and woke up.

I was laying on the same side, safely in bed. I hadn't moved, except for my hand, and the clock says 5:59. I try to imagine the face again, to go back to the dream. This time, it doesn't work. I hold still for a few seconds. I get up and start writing this post before I forget it all.

Here is my idea / hypothesis. I have read that people have very specialized and powerful brain functions for storing information about faces, and that the information we remember about faces is very richly and permanently stored so we don't forget them. Is it possible that because the brain stores so much information about faces so well that a face you have made up in a dream might be especially useful as something to directly connect to your dream? If so, it might be very useful as an 'anchor' to a dream, that is, as a way to pull yourself back into a dream right after you have woken up.

Also, are any of you interested in trying this?
1.) Whenever you are lucid dreaming, and you see a face of someone, concentrate on it. Make as important a connection to it as you can.
2.) When you wake up, while conscious, imagine the face and see if it pulls you back into your dream.