two important things to note:

firstly, this is a copy and paste job of another post of mine on another forum regarding dreams. apologies if this is against the rules.

secondly, in regards to lucid dreams, although i was aware of the fact that i was dreaming in the following dream, the focus was not at all lucidity - i made no attempt to control it, and it was not an "acute awareness"....youll understand what i mean soon, hopefully.

here goes....

I have had several dreams recently involving mirrors. One dream in particular occured as follows:

I had a false awakening, and walked to the bathroom. I noticed a strange tattoo on my forehead. Upon noticing this, i immediately expereinced a headrush, somewhat similar to being stoned. It was extremely tiring, though i managed to gather my strength together and proceeded to jump through the mirror. I landed on the other side, which was similar yet different to my house. Firstly, and most noticably, everything was black and white (and very dimly lit at that). Secondly, everything was somewhat disproportionate - doors, fixtures and tiles were odd shapes rather than squares and rectangles.

i exited the bathroom, and entered the living room of this strange house. i found a family of monsters throwing some sort of dinner party (not particularly grotesque monsters, and not entirely unfriendly - rather, somewhat distant and unhospitable. not threatening in any way). I began talking to one of these monsters, and it occured to me that he was my "shadow self" (i am unsure as to what this means, it was just the phrase that came into my head in the dream. note that it probably has nothing to do with freud or jung's concept of the shadow self, as i had not read about these until after the dream.) The monster replied, "it's strange that you should mention that, because last night i had a dream where i jumped through a mirror and i met my shadow self too."

note: as i stated above, there was a slight awareness in the previous part of the dream (everything after jumping through the mirror for the first time up until jumping through it for the second time) that i was dreaming. in no way did this dictate the flow of the dream, and it is not the aspect i am interested in. hence why i made this topic here. after going through the mirror the second time, this sense was lost, and i forgot i was dreaming.

At this point, the dream (in my mind) became somewhat sinster, so i decided to leave before any trouble arose. i returned to the mirror and went through it again, this time landing in a foreign house with several friends of mine inside. i left this new bathroom, and entered a large living area. in the middle of this living area was a glass room, and inside this glass room was an old teacher of mine. she was small, about four feet tall. when she saw me, she jumped out of her chair and ran up to me. i put her beack in the chair. she ran at me again however. this happened several times, before i snapped and bashed her half to death. her corpse then began to twist and writhe, turning into a creature not unlike the doppelganger from the spiderman comics. this new creature violently and brutally murdered three of my friends, before turning on me and another two friends. we bolted out the door, not running, but rather leaping, covering distances of about 15 metres with each stride. we ran down the road, and the road split in two. me, being ahead, took the left fork, while my two other friends took the right fork. they called to me that i had gone the wrong way, and that i should follow them. i decided, however, that i had "declared" (the word in my head in the dream), and kept going in the direction i was already going. i then experienced a loss of power of sorts, and crash landed into a grassy paddock. the creature landed about 10 metres away from me, and began approaching. then i woke up.

the second paragraph is what concerns me the most, the whole idea of jumping through mirrors and the concept of a "shadow self". note that by "shadow self" i do not mean the undeveloped or violent aspects of my personality; this was an arbitrary name that came to me in the dream. also, the idea of your dreams dreaming....i know this makes no sense, but coupled with other dreams ive had regarding "dream police" (matrix-esque men who have chased me because i was having a dream that i wasnt meant to be having) and "the dream queen" (a woman who said that she could give me any dream i wanted, with whatever powers i wanted, so long as i would marry her) and the "dream bus" (essentially a bus that takes you between the dream world and the real world...the strange thing is, i saw a friend of mine on the bus [in the dream], and he was coming back from a dream...i asked him what he had dreamt about, and said that he was in a cave full of trolls...the next day, at school (real world), i asked him if he had had a dream about a cave and trolls, and replied that he had, although he didn't remember anything about a dream bus) ...i dont know...i cant help but think that dreams might be more in depth than we think....

(note: i know, logically, that everything in my dream comes from me. i dont mean to come across as a science-fiction type person, i'm merely sharing a dream i've had and several related dream events. please don't flame me, or respond along the lines of "that's not possible"...i know it's not.)

i was wondering, can anyone offer a possible explanation for the mirror aspect of this post? also, in regards to the last major paragraph, has anyone had similar experiences? like...dreams regarding the nature of dreams, sorta thing?

sorry if this post is too long, and thanks for reading it