Thread: Do you move around the dream, or does the dream move around you?

I'm going to give you my input here as a lucid dreamer and my understanding of it, but before I do, I'll provide an excerpt from my last recorded DEILD (dream-exit initiated lucid dream) for reference ...

'Upon awakening without movement, I attempt separation from the body, finding that it is hard to escape from the bed without getting pulled back. I feel trapped in the sleeping position and can hear myself breathing, but I notice that my arm appears to hang unnaturally off the bed. I phantom-wiggle it and yank myself up from the edge of the bed; as I stand, I know I'm in the dream world because I'm blind whilst having a sense of where the bed is, so I walk around it and start deepening by rubbing hands. The door of a bedroom replica emerges in my field of vision and I choose to open it, rather than pass through it, by squeezing and pulling its metal handle—imagining an angel waiting for me in the hallway. To my dismay, there is nobody around in an environment defined by vibrant colours, but I discover a massive mirror where my youngest son's bedroom door should be.

'I notice holographic stickers on the mirror frame. As I rub the surface of the wooden frame and follow my hand with my gaze, I can see that the shapes of the stickers are visually incoherent. In the mirror I find a distorted reflection of myself with an enlarged head, no eyes, and pouting lips. I go through the mirror expecting to meet an angel inside, but encounter great resistance as I gradually pass through it, lose vision, and foul.

'Back in bed and eyes shut, I start rubbing hands and simultaneously sit up. It feels like I've just uncovered my wife but I'm blind when I try to open my eyes, so I know it's still the dream world and not the real world. I make out curtains in front of the balcony door and pass through them to find myself looking at a pale sky and an intricately vivid neighbourhood below. I jump off the balcony and experience a breeze, as I fall slower than I would have done in the real world, to land on the nextdoor neighbour's silver car parked in her driveway. I dash to her front door and open it, wishing to find an angel inside, but there is nobody around, only a staircase surrounded by rust-coloured brick walls. "Angel! Where are you?" I shout, hearing my voice echo. I go up the stairs and lose consciousness after opening a grey door with access to an upper floor.'



Lucid dreams provide great realism to the extent that sensations perceived in them often have a lot more in common with real world perception than ordinary dreaming. However, everything in a lucid dream is a very elaborate illusion ...

You have a dream body, which can feel solid and 'real', but it does not exist in the same sense that your physical one does. The dream body is more like a mental 'avatar' which can arise in your perceptual field from expectation (after all, we are used to perceiving a body in waking life).

The dream world doesn't stop here in its emulation of things that have already been perceived in waking life. Motion, or movement, is another familiar concept in our minds. In a lucid dream, movement is perceived when you walk, run, jump from one rooftop to another, take flight, etc.

Walking or running can feel exactly the same as in the real world (unless you turn into Flash and break the sound barrier). But nothing is really moving—it only seems like something is moving.

And again, your already 'malleable' experience in lucid dreams can also be influenced according to your interpretation. It is absolutely possible, for instance, to stand still on a platform and experience the surroundings moving according to your will; if you spot a building near the horizon, you might wish for it to be literally brought to you. Alternatively, you may wish to take a massive leap to it, experience some G-force, a breeze, and even a little vertigo as it seems that it is your dream body that is traveling through illusory space.

Experience is, in my opinion, open to interpretation. There is what is, what seems to be, what we think it is, and what actually is.

Thanks for this Summerlander, some really interesting points. I have also experienced drawing the environments towards me in the manner that you describe while standing still on the platform. There was a time when I was struggling to 'fly' to a building, and so instead I drew it towards me - which was part of my interest in other peoples' experiences of moving around the dream versus the dream moving around them. And yes, it certainly is all an illusion, with dream and dreamer the same entity!

I find your mirror experience interesting - it must be such a challenge for the mind to replicate ourselves truly in a mirror in the dream. Quite telling!

When you say you were 'blind' on a couple of occasions, what do you mean by this? Thanks!