Quote Originally Posted by Suacy View Post
I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but I notice that my dreams often flow along a gradient of just thinking about things, to watching things appear and play out, to actually being a participant in a scene. It's like going from reading a screenplay to watching a movie to playing a video game, and it flows back and forth. For example, I'll be having a dream where I'm talking to someone and then they get angry and start to fight me, but then instead of having the fight, the dream pauses and I kind of work through all the ways the fight could go and watch them like a movie, then the dream fades away and I just am thinking about self defense in general, all while still asleep I think. Being able to pause situations and think through them is good practice for real life, a reminder to take a second to pause and think. This mostly happens in non-lucid dreams though, but I'm sure it could apply to LDs as well.
I think I have experienced something like that as well. Often I'll have non-lucid dreams where I'll see actual imagery but somehow assume I'm just imagining it and toy around with the situation (as if I'm using it as a means of exploring thought experiments). Or I'll somehow shift from a dream scenario to being awake just daydreaming about it (or, occasionally, this will happen in reverse), only realizing several moments later that I'm awake and then think, “Whoa, wait… When did this actually change from a dream back to me being awake thinking about it?” Those are indeed the sorts of things I'm talking about. Also, getting lost in a daydream without realizing it while going through my day and then suddenly becoming aware and thinking, “Whoa, hold on a second… where am I and what am I doing?” The feeling is sometimes exactly like that of becoming lucid in the middle of an actual dream.