Dream Dream Dream Dream Dream Dream

So I'm reading Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D. and Howard Rheingold, and now my interest in lucid dreaming is somewhat renewed. The issue is that currently (and for a long time) I've been lacking awareness of my surroundings in some odd sense that makes it very hard to notice when I'm lucid, even though my dreams are generally completely unrealistic and, on top of that, have a constant "dreamlike" feel. This means that if I happen to wonder if I'm dreaming, just that is enough for me to go "Oh yes, duh, of course I am," and start doing lucid things... but it's rare for me to have enough awareness even for that.

I was thinking that my dreamsigns could be things like "a change in context," since that happens almost every time in my dreams, but on the other hand I think my mind simply accepts changes in context without thinking about them at all, and maybe I should pick something a bit more specific that I tend to notice more, such as my dead grandmother, having fully recovered from dementia, making an appearance.

Dream: Castle Shenanigans

So at first it was me, my dad, and my sister, all exploring some sort of enormous castle. And I was trying to get away from my dad (because I hate even being in the same room as him), which turned into me sprinting through the castle at night, down long hallways and up stairs, hoping to eventually lose him. But I don't think I ever did. I distinctly remember turning a corner and sprinting down a long hallway, trying to put the full length of the enormous castle between us, and trying to make it to the end and turn the corner before he could see me. I failed.

A bit later in the dream, I was exploring the castle with him (and it was daytime). It had the feel of him showing me a university that he wanted me to attend, and trying to point out to me what a cool place it was. We visited the castle library (complete with studying students), which had stacks of books against one wall, comprising about three levels of balconies that overlooked the main study space, and with an elevator that somewhat dwarfed its surroundings. I think it may have been for wheelchair accessibility. I think I explored the stacks a bit.

Then the dream changed. Still castle-themed, but now it had the feel of a movie. There was some sort of plucky main character (me) who wanted to get into the castle and join the ranks of the powerful servants of the king, but his approach was to climb in through one of the upper-level windows and try to avoid the wrath of the servants until he'd proved himself enough to be accepted. Or something like that.

Before that, there was a segment where a similarly plucky group was trying not to get killed by lackey-type knights in red who were hunting them with all the personality of machines. One of their solutions was to escape to a church, where, surely, the knights would not be able to perform violent acts. However, upon arrival in the church, they found the pews draped with the bloodstained bodies of several lackey-type knights in white, and through the window spotted the knights in red marching towards the church entrance. So, we all ran down the stairs to the basement, guided by one of us who knew this particular secret, and then crawled through a rather tight, upwards-sloping tunnel in the wall that made an uncomfortable right turn. I hated crawling through this thing because it was such a tight fit, but we made it, and on the other side was a better, safer church. And for whatever reason, my dream repeated this same scenario another few times.

Then, back to the story of the person (lizard?) trying to join the ranks of the castle servants. This time, he was exploring a tower placed just outside the castle, which he hoped to use to jump through into the castle through a window. And this is where things get confusing, because the dream just kind of made up concepts and they made sense to me at the time, and now that I'm awake I'm not sure what was going on. First of all, the main character was a sort of humanoid lizard. And the servants were also animal-themed, I believe, and quite powerful. The lizardman (me) met some of them in the tower and might have been captured by them? And then they might have started putting him through the various tasks that one must pass in order to be one of the castle servants. I'M NOT SURE. IT'S ALL SO HARD TO EXPLAIN. WHATEVER.

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None of this gave my brain any kind of pause or made me think, "Hey now, all this is sort of unrealistic." And I know this is normal for dreams, but if I were to just have that thought for even a moment, I would realize that I was dreaming.

Instead it feels like my brain locks into some kind of "tell me a story" mode and rolls with whatever the dream does. It kind of has an automatic feel to it. Also, my dreams haven't been that vivid lately. Or it feels like even if they were vivid, I wouldn't be aware enough to notice. Uuuuugghhhhh.