Thread: Memories of Dreams Within My Dreams

This has happened to me a few times. While you're dreaming it seems to be easier to recall things from deeper inside your mind. It is also harder to recall things from waking life while you're inside a dream. In waking life it is easier to remember things you've experienced while awake. The opposite happens when you're dreaming though. It's funny to think about it.

I have read a lot of posts and threads about this exact same thing. It happens often, to me included.

It's perfectly normal.

I have had ancient memories resurface in my dreams. When I was in my late twenties I saw a building on my way to work that had appeared in a dream. In the dream I was in the building but I knew I had never been there.

A couple of weeks later I told my mom about the dream. It turns out I had been in the building when I was 2 or 3 years old.

I was awed. It was at that moment I realized how deep memories could be without our conscious mind having any access to them. It's happened a few times and led to some odd deja vu moments.

I also remember past dreams within dreams. It leaves me with an equally odd feeling.

The mind is an amazing machine.

Wow, that's so interesting. I never even heard of remembering dreams while inside a dream. Makes me kinda think if those were really dreams that you had remembered, or some other past happenings. Don't know if you believe in past lives? Of course, not claiming it to be that. Happy dreams.

I've also had memories of dreams within dreams, but I'm certain that at least one of them was not a real memory of a dream I've had before. In one, I passed out and woke up in a barn, and even though there was hay in front of my face when I woke up I knew where I was and had an overwhelming excitement, and when I moved the hay out the way I saw a house and had numerous memories of dreams I'd had about the house before,and there was a person I knew I was going to see in the house. I said to them in the dream "I've dreamt about this house so many times, it must be significant" but on waking I had no previous memory of it whatsoever. It's so hard to know if it's a memory of a dream you've actually had or not!

Also quite often in dreams I have additional memories about waking life, some that have definitely never happened, but in the dream they have happened. Some are very real, and some are wobbly and not very believable, as if someone put them there to fool me but didn't do a very good job.

What an interesting subject~!
Memories within a dream... It think its kind of like 'it is best to recall a dream while you are half awake and half asleep.'
Once I am fully awake... the dream dims away into subconscious... I wish I could experience it later on...

Originally Posted by gab

Wow, that's so interesting. I never even heard of remembering dreams while inside a dream. Makes me kinda think if those were really dreams that you had remembered, or some other past happenings. Don't know if you believe in past lives? Of course, not claiming it to be that. Happy dreams.

Yeah, this has happened to me a number of times. Sometimes I know the memory within the dream is that of another dream, and other times I don't seem to recognize them as dreams at all until I've woken up.

The ones I actively recall I know are not past lives but actual memories of other dreams. It's neat.

I remembered visiting the same dream scene numerous times in different dreams on different days, and I knew in the dream that I've been there before. But I can't quite remember it now, it stopped happening to me recently.

I frequently recall events/places from real life in my dreams, but rarely places in past dreams. However, a few weeks ago I recalled two dreams from the night before (without waking up). In the second dream, I told my friend about a dream I had, which was the first dream. So I guess I recognized my first dream as a dream in my second dream?

The strangest things happen in dreams.

[B]THIS HAS HAPPENED TO ME! I have had 3 false awakenings in a row last night, and in each false awakening, I woke up in my bed and I took out my dream journal, and I wrote about a dream I had last night, and one before last night, and one I never even remember. Weird stuff...

Hi everyone, first post here!

I've had a handful of dreams within a dream myself.

Once I had a dream that my son had come over to me when I was reading a very glossy music magazine like the Rolling Stone (not my normal reading) and he pointed an article out to me and said he was actually a member of that band, Limp Bizcut. And I looked at him, a high school student studying music with only a minor interest and told him he was crazy. Then the "other me" came over to me and said "don't blame him, it's your dream" which I found to be very funny upon awakening.

Then, interestingly enough, a few months later my son's band played at a local talent contest and he told me he was written up in the local paper. So, while he was at music lessons I went to the library nearby to find the paper. I did and the first article I read was about the contest and no mention at all about his band and I though, "my son's crazy, this article didn't mention him" and then a page or two more into the paper there indeed was a write up about his band only.

I had a dream last night where I passed by a hidden crescent cove that I had dreamed about a year or two ago and I remembered the dream I had about a year ago as a memory that really happened and wondered if I could still get ahold of the person the cove belonged to so I could go swimming again. It was really weird to think about when I got up. It made me think about the possibility of being able to map out my dream world if I was able to go to the same place more than once in such a spread out amount of time. I know that's impossible, but it's cool to think about.

so cool to find this thread... i was wondering about this just this morning.

for me, i will usually remember a dream as i wake up or fall asleep. What's really strange is that i can't remember when the dream was from. Sometimes i'm certain it's a dream i had ages ago... even as a kid sometimes. Other times i can't figure out if it's a dream i just had or if it's the memory of an old dream. Really, really odd.

I had a dream in which I dreamed that I did something like in the movie inception, where I layed down on this cot and went to sleep and lucid dreamed.

I had the same thing happen to me recently. A google search led me to this page. It was really weird.

I started off in this big building, and knew exactly where I was going and what I was looking for. A bike glider located in a maintainance wing on the side of this mall like building. I had ridden it before, and taken trips with it (or a trip), this is the memory part, or some of it.

I got there and the man there wasn't who I was expecting (remembered). He was someone different than the last time I was there. He let me borrow it anyway. The last time (memory) that I had taken this out, I remember gauging my speed as I glided through an L shaped alley based off of this yellow strip on the side of a building as I left the alley and went to land on the sidewalk next to a huge highway.

In my memory of this trek that I was taking for the second time, apparently, I ended up in what I knew was Kentucky, but it was definitely not Kentucky; it was far too oriental. So as I'm gliding off of this mountainside (thousands of feet in the air, on a pedal bicycle with a cloth glider fixed, idk how, onto the top), there are these trees, huge trees, that split near the base and branch off into flat tops. I landed on one of these flat tops. I then ended up shortly thereafter (not sure how) up in this room, it must have been an information kiosk of some sorts, trying to figure out how to get across the other side of the mountain. The weird thing about this place was that it was up in the tree tops, a cemented building located up in the tree tops.

They didn't want me to, but I needed to, as that was where my destination was. It sort of had this "forbidden city" type vibe about it. This is the most prominent part of the memory I had in this dream.

Now to go back, I borrow this bike again, and I'm not going to the same place I was going before, I'm going to the kiosk like building, which according to my map, was just over 1000 miles away. So there's some boring traveling stuff, and I get there, to the valley with the trees. I can see the tree that I had landed on before. It had 3 splits near the base, and the one that I had landed on previously had been cut down, so there were 3 splits, but only 2 extended upwards all the way; the 3rd was a tree stump.

I end up in the room (kiosk, as I've been calling it) and it's a little different than I (dream self) remembered it. There were Asian girls in black t-shirts and short shorts there as what I would guess to be entertainers (not in the stripper sense). I ended up, apparently, hitting it off with one of them, and asked her for her number. She wouldn't give it to me. There was this computer and projector in the corner of the room, projecting onto the wall that was most adjacent to the destination I had gone to previously, and it had a chat room sort of thing up that allowed you to put in pre approved responses. Things such as hello, etc. If you wanted to do more with it, you needed a city password, which the girl had. The whole sense almost made me feel like I was somewhere to the effect of North Korea, where you can come in and see the tourist side, but they conceal the real nature of the place.

She wouldn't give me her number, but she would give me her facebook, and she pulled it up on the computer so I could get her username, etc. Within a few minutes, she wasn't welcome there working for the "forbidden city" (I don't think it was ever called that officially) anymore.

I'll stop here, because I don't want to bore you with all the details of my dream. What I find really weird is the vividness of not only the dream, but the memories of my travels in the same dream scenario. The place I visited, as well as the places I remembered visiting but never went to. (I never actually visited the building with the yellow strip outside the L shaped alley, I just remembered it, as well as a few others, like a storage unit that I saw my guitar player at, I feel like I rode this bike-glider to his wedding, but am not sure)

I have literally never had this happen before, and I am all but 100% sure that my memories don't have an actual dream associated with them, other than the dream that they were memories within.

Is this what you're referring to as memories within a dream, OP?

I think this happens all the time, especially in nonlucid dreams. Any time you are dreaming you are some kind of character and that character is supposed to have a memory of something, you dream kind of retroactively adds in the memory, though that is a little less common in lucid dreams where you are yourself rather than some other person. I do think some of the memories may actually be references to earlier dreams, though it can be hard to tell the difference. Especially since most people commonly forget most of their dreams.

I find it fascinating when that happens. I've had it happen to me on non-lucid dreams more times than I can count. Actually, last night it happened and it was even weirder than usual, because apparently I shared the dream I remembered with a dream character. I looked at my DC and he was like, "Wait. You had that dream too?"

Also, I just realized this thread is from 2012.

My dreams are like this. I'll remember past dreams, like years ago. I get the same sort of familiar I've dreamt/experienced this feeling/scene before, like I would in waking life.

One of my favorites (all different dreams spanned out months or weeks apart. The a,b may have been in the same night but different dreams.):

0. Thinking back in real life how I used to be able to fly in my dreams. Wishing for another flying dream.
1a. I was watching people flying, realizing how sad I was that I lost that ability.
1b. Going into an old building of some sort and finding an old man. Inside the building, he taught me how to hold out my hands and how to fly.
2. Flying on my own.
3. I was then teaching others (children) how to fly, just as the instructor had taught me.

I also have an alternative parallel/future life in my dreams, where I seem to be moving into an new home, or living in my own home vs an apartment. Different dreams play this place semi different, but I've seen various rooms of this place. I've seen various areas of the lawn and neighborhood of the house too. Sometimes quite vividly. One such dream had furniture borrowed from my parent's house that at the moment in real life is unused. Like as if after I moved into the house I packed up some things from my parent's house to furnish it. That same dream showed me as an older self working a different job too.

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I also have had memories show up in my dreams. One was so vivid that I couldn't dismiss it. I could see the floor, know that one end had old toys and stuff buried in it and the other unknown. I was on all fours, crawling. I could feel the coldness of the floor under my hands. The smoothness of plastic and the yellow patterned "tiles."The floor was special because it was only partially done with rolled out linoleum (made to look like tiles). I had to tell my dad about it and he was like "Oh that's the basement of the house you were in when you were around 2 years old." Turned out one room did have stuff like my toys in it and the "unknown" room was where they kept me out. Actually the whole basement was off limits to me, but like the sense of "oh this is cool, I'm exploring a new place" I must had managed to crawl down the stairs somehow. There was also a scene with an old man in my dream and me thinking of saying to some other adult "Why doesn't he belly/sit/crawl up the stairs like I do?"

I'm thinking that old man might have been my real grandpa who died some time when I was around that age or just a little younger. He had a stroke and needed help getting anywhere without a wheelchair. My grandma may have been visiting the house. This is just speculation. The actual scene and room in the dream seemed to be falling apart (not actual, just blending with newer places that I remember more clearly) My earliest memories are kind of that way. I only remember bits of detail. The rest is just blurred shapes or non existent. The whole thing threw me quite a surprise because this was no memory I could recall before that dream. I have a few other memories around that time, just not that one.

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After looking at family photos last December, I finally was able to make a connection between a reoccurring city, some bridges and an odd domed building to be the Iowa State Capital and city where my dad worked around the time. I remember how drop jawed I was when i saw those pictures. It was OMG I just pieced together a major puzzle in my life.
Since then, elements of that city come and go in my dreams, but not nearly as frightening and mysterious as it was before.

Originally Posted by JumpyMcGee

Something pretty weird happens every so often in my dreams. I'll be in my dream, thinking it's real life as usual (I still haven't had a lucid dream), and I'll have a sudden memory of a dream. My dream self might relate it to something else in the current dream, or it'll just pop into my head randomly. When I wake up from my dream, I'll think of the memory I had, and at first I usually take the memory as an actual dream I had at some point in the past. But then, as I start to really think about it, I realize I can't think of a time in the past in real life when I remembered this dream. So it makes me wonder if it really was a dream I had, or if it's just a dream I made up within dream... it's very bizarre, and my mind can never really decide.

I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but I'm curious about what your guys's ideas on this are.

This has been happening to me lately, a dream memory within a dream. And just now I am pretty sure that it was not my real memory as it's impossible for me to do that thing. I won't share it because it's too personal.

Thus, one possibility is that it was from my previous dream. Whereas, I haven't known in my reality but served as a memory/ past within my latest dream.

Another possibilty that I think is that it was not a memory at all. It was a thought that played as a memory/past within my dream.

PS, I re-read your statements. Realized we don't have the exact case. Yours is a memory of a dream within your dream while mine is a memory of a past within my dream. Please correct me if I am wrong.