Dream Memories - Real or Not?

**EamonWill** · 10-26-2014 09:35 PM

Last night I was struggling to become lucid and a DC walks up and tells me I'm dreaming. I get really excited and jump up and say something like, "Of course I am, it's you, of course I'm dreaming, I've missed you!" Or maybe I don't say "I've missed you," but it feels like it because I'm so ecstatic about seeing him. I jump up and hug him and say, "You need to stop sending these young guys, they don't know what they are doing." I am referring to the previous dream I had which was lucid and the young guy who was in the dream to deliver a message to me. The idea I'm getting at is that the old man has a job to do in my dreams and he's sending other people to help him do the job. The dream ends very shortly after this when I lose lucidity and end up in a new dream.

In the dream I knew this man, trusted him wholly, loved him like a father, and knew he was their to guide me.

When I woke up this was my reaction:

WTF was that?!?!?!
My waking self does not know this DC AT ALL!!! I don't even know any real people that this DC would represent. And even if I did, I was lucid and would have know they were just a DC! But this guy was not just a DC to me, he was much more!

It's like my dream self and my waking self have different memories!?! I've experienced something like this before when I re-listened to a recording of one of my dreams and heard myself say something while still groggy and half-asleep that my waking self didn't comprehend.

What is this? Anyone else experience this? Any ideas on it?

**Burke** · 10-26-2014 10:46 PM

When you're having a normal dream, you don't consciously have access to your waking memories. When you become lucid, your brain "reactivates" these memories and you can remember what you were doing, any goals you had, etc. which makes the difference between a lucid dream and a non-lucid dream.

It's not known exactly how your brain does this, but when you're in a normal dream and you don't have complete access to your memories, your brain likely mixes and matches information it has, like emotions and people. This can create dream characters and feelings towards those DCs despite you never even knowing them, nor them symbolizing anyone you know. Basically, the DCs are just random people your brain fills your dreams with, and your brain then attaches emotions to these characters to make them more convincing. Then, when you become lucid, you regain conscious access to your memories but also still have the memories from the dream that your brain "made up." Then it gets kind of confusing, since your dream world and waking world kind of collide, but it's not that your waking self and dream self have a different set of memories, it's just that they're presented/stored differently.

This is all just my take on it from my experiences, so none of it is concrete proof, but it's most likely just your brain "creating" DCs and making them realistic. Then upon attaining lucidity, you mix both worlds. Don't worry about it, it's all completely normal and it's not out of the ordinary. I actually just had a LD last night in which I had a GF and was very close to her, despite not knowing her from anywhere.

**EamonWill** · 10-26-2014 11:30 PM

Hmmm... what's weird is that before gaining lucidity he had no meaning or importance. That I can remember anyway. There wasn't a lot of time between him arriving and me becoming lucid. But it felt like he was just gonna pass right by me.
I kinda freaked out as well because this has never happened before.
And, it changed my perspective on a previous dream character (the one from the dream prior who I spoke of as being "sent" by this man).
Although, I don't think that I reached a high level of lucidity in this dream... so maybe that's it. I mean, it was vivid and I had a clear understanding of dreaming/lucidity but I was wrapped up in emotion and my WL was not a clear memory (I didn't instantly get those memories or seek them).
hmmm... so much to ponder...

**EamonWill** · 10-28-2014 07:56 AM

Additional Details:

In my original post I alluded to another incident in which something similar occurred. I was going through my dream recordings to refresh my memory and found it.

As I was recording the dream I said that it was a reoccurring dream, but upon revisiting this recording I have no knowledge of this being a reoccurring dream or even dreamscape or dream fragment!

How can my dream memories and waking life memories be different? Is my subconscious tricking me, or does my subconscious have access to things my conscious does not?

God, I see why they went crazy in Inception, lol!