Watching my previous dream in the cinemas?

A few weeks ago I had a very strange dream, and I haven't been able to find any kind of interpretation of what a certain aspect of it may mean. The dream is incredibly strange, so bear with me while I get up to the interesting part.

The dream started at the bottom of a hill at night time. I was with my friend from school, his older brother and his brothers girlfriend (his brother doesn't actually have a girlfriend and I hadn't seen this girl before in my life). Sherlock (as played by Benedict Cumberpatch in the BBC series) suddenly ran in front of us, chasing a group of Pokemon. After this, My friend, his brother and his brothers girlfriend and I proceeded to the top of the hill, where there was a large shack. The shack was one room, in fact, it was more like a large shed or barn than a shack. We were about to enter the shack when I suddenly remembered the exact same thing happening in Spiderman 3 (of course this didn't actually happen in the movie I just seemed to remember it happening in the movie), and once we went inside the barn/shed/shack the song "let's get physical" started playing and everyone got sucked into a disco ball. I tried to warn everyone about this, but they didn't listen, and sure enough when they tried to go into the shed "let's get physical" started playing and everyone almost got sucked into the disco ball, but I dragged them all out of the shed and closed the door.

This is the strange bit. After that dream, I had another dream that I was at a very old movie theater with wooden seats, and so was my family and a few friends (they were all scattered about the theater, not next to me). There was also a few people I didn't like there. I was sitting towards the back of the theater. The strange thing is that the dream I had just had about the hill with the shack/shed/barn on top was playing in the theaters.

I'm really curious as to what the cinema bit means. Not that the rest of the dream doesn;t have me confused, but the fact that I was watching a dream I just had in the cinemas really sparked my curiosity about what this dream could mean.

My guess is that after having the first peculiar dream, you had a second dream that was contemplating the peculiarity of the first.

Thanks for that but, it was really entertaining to listen to :)

Hi Chivvi,

I've had several similar experiences before, and I here's what I think is happening. I've come to realize that if something in a dream really grabs your attention, it's quite likely you'll re-dream it. I first really understood this at a time when I was using mantras to help me remember my dreams. Mantras are very effective at impressing an idea into your subconscious, and in this case it worked a little too well! Oh, I should also mention that at the same time, I was also using a technique of reviewing my dreams upon waking subvocally, just under my breath, actually using words as if I was telling it to somebody. I find this very effective to get the dream logged into your conscious mind (verbal mind) before you open your eyes and let the waking world flood in and begin erasing everything. So - what happened is the two techniques together caused me to actually re-dream each dream in Nrem sleep after having it. Nrem means non-REM sleep - REM dreams are the familiar ones; little movies we act out immersevely, but Nrem dreams are different - they're just a stream of thoughts or words sometimes accompanied by a single image or pattern that doesn't move, so basically it's like you're looking at a picture and hearing a stream of thoughts running through your head, or a piece of a song playing over and over.

So what happened was I'd sort of tell myself the dream in Nrem sleep after dreaming it in REM, but when I told it it would be a little different - in fact my mind was getting all clever and embellishing it, making little jokes and changing the way things happened. It was really not cool, because what it did was make me forget the actual dream and instead remember my subvocal re-imagining of it. Ghaaa!! :bang: This happened for a while - I'm not sure how long but it was, like a week or more, until I just stopped trying so hard to remember my dreams.

I'ts not exactly like what you describe, but it's basically the same principle. And of course I'm not saying either of yours was an Nrem dream, that's just what mine happened to be. Yours both sound like regular REM dreams, with the second one repeating the first one to some extent. I suspect when you were having the first dream and thought it was happening just the way it did in Spiderman 3 that probably struck you as really impressive or cool, and it's strong emotion like this that makes something stick in your subconscious. Emotion doesn't have to mean elation or grief, it can just be extreme coolness or weirdness. And the sub-c is extremely creative in finding ways to frame things, like having an earlier dream projected up on a movie screen.

That's my theory anyway.

Wow - ok, amap0la said the same thing in like 6 words. Why couldn't I have thought of that??!! :doh:

Haha, I read your post and at firstwas about to comment that you write a lot... But that part where you're mind plays the tricks on you by changing little things in that dream. I thought that never really happened to anyone but me. Glad to see I'm not alone. I have a couple of series of recurring dreams. And then there are others I wish would repeat, but alas, never do.

Also, did you ever have not the plot, but the identical setting (something unfamiliar from reality though) reoccur in your dreams?

Oh definitely!! I've been in places in dreams and suddenly remembered being there long ago, in another dream - somehow without becoming lucid. They're usually places that have a very specific feel to them, like there's one place I think of as "the city that's too far away" - those dreams share a feeling of being lost far from home. Or there's this one particular little grove off deep in the woods somewhere that I've seen several times and always recognize. Love when that happens.

My special place is this mountain that I hike up, but somehow, I am hiking TOWARDS it, but never quite reach there.

Ughhhhhh I just want to become lucid! But somehow, how you say, a long ago memory, is all it is.

I don't often have recurring dreams but I've had these two dreams being on a bus during a storm driving over a swervy bridge; in the end of both dreams the bus fell off the bridge into the water below, and although I think the bridges were different both times it was the same bus with the same driver I think.

^ Yeah, I often find if I re-dream something there are differences, but the feeling is the same. It could be just a somewhat different take on the same thing, or maybe your mind has changed its mind or is saying something slightly different? But of course not every dream is 'saying something' - most of them are just random and might contain some feelings or thoughts that have stuck in your mind - in fact I think thats about as far as any dream really goes toward 'saying something'. Interestingly, and related - did you know that every time you recall a memory you actually change it a little? True story - remembering is active, not passive - recalling something to mind adds a new layer to it. Each time you unpack a memory, review it and then pack it back away whatever emotional baggage you have at the time can be bundled into it. So apparently re-dreaming works the same way.