My Theory About Personal Dream-worlds

I would appreciate if those of you that are interested in this theory take the time to read it and offer me some feedback.

This theory began opening up to me as I was lying in bed last night, considering some of my dreams. I remembered a dream from the night before, where I was walking toward a place that, in my dream, I remembered being at in a dream a few months ago (I was not lucid, though). I was approaching this place from a different direction, but it was still the same place, with a few differences.

Then I began to come up with my theory. I thought about some of my other dreams, where I would revisit certain areas in my dreams that I had been before. Each time, in the dream, I would partially realize this, yet not fully acknowledge it, unless I was lucid. But when I woke up, I would usually forget the occurance.

So here is a summarized explanation of my theory: I believe that each person has a subconscious world in their mind, that is visited each time we dream. This world has been formed by our experiences, memories, desires, fears, thoughts, etc, over the years. This world is a map of our subconscious, yet is always evolving and expanding from day to day. Where we go in the world is determined by what we've been thinking, what has been happening in our lives, what desires we have nurtured, etc. Certain things might seem to remain the same over the years, though. Those are probably the corest part of ourselves, which can result in emotional recurring dreams and repetitive dream locations. But because of the malleability of our subconscious mind, each location, or objects at the location, are subject to change by the plot of the dream. Maybe a castle on a hill that you visit one night may morph into a warehouse with gunmen another night, since the plot involves some sort of chase or violence. But you still have the very distinct feeling that you've been there before in another dream; and you have. You remember that hill, and the inexplicable feeling associated with that place each time you visit it.

This world is based both upon the conscious world we live in every day, and the substance of our subconscious, which, in the dream-state, is transformed into a visual representation. There is a tennis court that I often visit in my dreams. The tennis court is real, and exists. But each time I visit it in my dreams, which is often, it is slightly different each time, due to the plot of the dream, and the interweaving of the actual place with the subconscious feelings associated with it, which manifest themselves as a visual alterration of the actual place.

So I believe this world is an intricate blending of real-world locations, and visually manifested subconscious substance. When we have a dream where we remember having been there in a dream once before, that is caused by the real-world influence of that place, which is unchanging. But the varying appearance of the location is caused by the changeable subconscious version of the place. So it would probably be possible to actually map out our subconscious world, if only we were able to access it freely in the conscious state and travel through it. But I still believe it is already mapped out in our brain, and always expanding outward as our lives go on, not to mention each place evolving based on our experiences and feelings with those places.

Now, I've mentioned real-world places that comprise our subconscious world, but are there places in our subconscious world that are completely based on our subconscious, and unaffected by real-world influence? Yes. These places are created by our unique and original thoughts and fantasies. These places may consist of real-world objects, textures, and our understanding of the tangible world, but the places themselves are manifested by either a single fantasy, or a combination of different fantasy elements. The balance of the reality/fantasy ratio of the subconscious world depends greatly on the type of mind the person has.

PART 2:

Creative and imaginative persons will tend to have a much more flexible world which contains a greater number of fantasy and subconscious elements. Left-brained and logic-heavy individuals are those that likely dream of very normal places with fewer imaginative elements. These individuals are likely those that dream in black and white. Right-brained and creative individuals experience a dream-world that is very flexible and imaginative. These tend to be those that experience lucid dreams most often, because, since their conscious minds tend to already use creative and imaginative parts of their brain, it increases the connectivity between their conscious and subconscious. Their brains desire to create and form things. When they enter a dream, where everything is being created as it goes, certain key visual and emotional elements can trigger the conscious mind, unifying it with the subconscious, and thus, attaining lucidity. Their dreaming experience becomes much like the conscious creative process of an active right-brained person, and so this creative process of the subconscious branches out to the conscious mind, which, if routinely exercised in creative activity during the day, is triggered by the familiar happenings of the subconscious, and included in the creative process of dreaming. That is why when someone starts attaining lucidity and exerts effort to exercise the mind during lucid sessions and experiment with different ideas, the conscious mind becomes more accustomed to joining the subconscious in dreaming sessions. Thenceforth, when vivid dreaming or particular dream signs occur, the reaction of the conscious mind is much like that of Pavlov's dogs, hearing the bell and reacting to it.

I believe that one key to becoming adept at lucid dreaming is to become very familiar and acquainted with your dream world/dream landscape. Write down all of the different real world places you tend to revisit, as well as the imaginary landscapes or locations that you visit on an occasional to frequent basis. If you begin remembering different imaginary landscapes, you will probably notice that even though they are not true real-world places, they are probably heavily influenced by a certain place or habitat, or a blended combination of different areas that are of interest to you. It is my experience that the only true fantasy dreamworld locations occur during the most vivid dreaming sessions, or during highly controlled lucid dreams. Even in some of my strangest fantasy dreams, if I took a bit of time to dissect different visual elements of it, I begin to see a mesh of real-world influence. But that is hardly an insult to the creative potential of the mind. It is a true wonder that the mind can seamlessly incorporate so many different places, objects, fantasies, thoughts, and emotions into a real-time dreamscape. An interesting part of vivid dreaming is the occurance of some form of synaesthesia. The emotion of an object or place is felt, instead of the isolated internal emotion of self. That is because we are no longer experiencing the world as a body in the world, where we experience emotions caused by input from the outside. But instead, in a dreamworld, we ARE the dreamworld. Each part is a piece of the person. And so, as the dream is happening, we react to and feel each change that takes place during the dream.

For example, a colorful sunlit meadow may be a representation of a certain emotion or feeling you have in real life; maybe representing a desire for peaceful solitude. Every time you have a dream about that meadow or a similar meadow, you wake up with that odd clinging dream emotion, although you may not be sure why or what it is from. You feel peaceful, and almost poignant for several hours. This is because you just experienced a direct contact with one of your core emotions/desires that triggered multiple senses at once. Even after you wake up, that emotion remains active, and will only begin to subside when it becomes ignored or buried under other activities and emotions.

So now, when you experience one of those highly affective dreams that seems to leave a strong afterglow, or aftershock, you can realize that certain parts of that affective dream were expressions of some of your strongest core emotions. This can be useful, because when you learn to isolate what facets of the dream were the strongest affecters, you can try to understand what those things mean to you, and why they have the affect they do. This is particularly useful for dreams that you find perturbing, and that leave a negative vibe on you. You can isolate the negative elements and then find a way to work through the negativity of it. The visual aspect gives the problems and emotions a visual or tangible association, which can make it easier for some people to understand and isolate. This kind of problem-solving drives directly into your subconscious, because you are revisiting a subconscious situation, and then attempting to alter it in a positive way.

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This concludes the extent of my theory and ideas on this subject for now. I will probably later attempt to make an actual essay of it. But for now I just wanted to get the ideas down. Please offer me some feedback if you have any! And I also thank you if you took the time to read it all.

That was very well-put and interesting! I also think it makes a lot of sense. I wish I could make a map of my dream world. x3

Very long and very informative

I think it may have been a tad too ellaborate; nonetheless you can't be too careful these days. Some people are hard at grasping.

Kudos, though, for the theory. I will read it later, and give it more thoughts (as per feedback) :D

I agree..and disagree. I have lots of places and even themes that I visit a lot in my dream. Whether is a suburban area always with the same style of houses and ground plan, or a theme park with the same attractions and same major areas, or a house where I know there is going to be a secret hallway leading to an attic....I think a lot of us do revisit these same places, that change slightly from dream to dream

but I disagree with the idea that we have this layed out dream world that we visit EVERY night. That its a world mapped out in expanding, no. That world disappears and gets destroyed every time you wake up. In some of my dreams I traveled the dream world and did not find the more typical areas that show up in often in my dreams, they did not exist in that dream. And in many dreams I visit many places that I never visit ever again.

Sure, they are visual manifestations of our subconscious thoughts like you have said. But our subconscious doesn't stay the same forever. I dont have the subconscious mind of a little kid, I've got the subconscious mind of a young adult. All those places that I visited so often in dreams as a child are gone. I dont see them in dreams anymore and when I fly over landscapes *which I do often* they are never there.

I dont think of it as a world that is always expanding as you grow. I think of it as a manifestation of your current subconscious which carries with it many archetypes. Youre not revisiting places because your dream is mapped out, youre revisiting them becuase they are archetypes in your subconscious.

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Originally Posted by juroara

I agree..and disagree. I have lots of places and even themes that I visit a lot in my dream. Whether is a suburban area always with the same style of houses and ground plan, or a theme park with the same attractions and same major areas, or a house where I know there is going to be a secret hallway leading to an attic....I think a lot of us do revisit these same places, that change slightly from dream to dream

but I disagree with the idea that we have this layed out dream world that we visit EVERY night. That its a world mapped out in expanding, no. That world disappears and gets destroyed every time you wake up. In some of my dreams I traveled the dream world and did not find the more typical areas that show up in often in my dreams, they did not exist in that dream. And in many dreams I visit many places that I never visit ever again.

Sure, they are visual manifestations of our subconscious thoughts like you have said. But our subconscious doesn't stay the same forever. I dont have the subconscious mind of a little kid, I've got the subconscious mind of a young adult. All those places that I visited so often in dreams as a child are gone. I dont see them in dreams anymore and when I fly over landscapes *which I do often* they are never there.

I dont think of it as a world that is always expanding as you grow. I think of it as a manifestation of your current subconscious which carries with it many archetypes. Youre not revisiting places because your dream is mapped out, youre revisiting them becuase they are archetypes in your subconscious.
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I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I am not suggesting there are only a certain amount of places in our dreamworld that we go each night, and that it is fixed. You will always be experiencing new dreamscapes, and that is how that world expands as our feelings and experiences change in real life and begin to change our dreams as well. The "world" I theorize isn't supposed to be some globe of fixed dream-terrain. But I believe that certain areas of the world are interconnected like the way our subconscious thoughts are interconnected. One thought often leads to another thought; one emotion to another emotion. So that is what I meant by saying it could be mapped out; maybe somewhat like interconnected islands. And as we transition and move between these islands (emotions, desires, ideas, people, places), we visually experience the kind of transition we would experience if it were in waking life.

Let me try to offer a vivid example of how one can travel and transition through the dreamworld. Imagine this dream terrain - a large ski hill. Whenever you visit a ski hill in a dream, you find yourself excited and enthused, and you always seem to take insanely risky jumps. People are often watching you from the sides. This may represent your desire to live on the edge and take risks and earn respect from others. But then, one of your real-life competitive rivals appears in the dream, skiing next to you. You look over at him/her; the mood changes. You look back and now the snowy scene is in a schoolyard, much like the grade school you went to in 6th grade. In real life, this person was always trying to beat you at everything and rise above you in grade school, and it affected you powerfully. In this example, you have transitioned from a dream scene of Desire "A", where you are demonstrating your confidence to earn some respect from others; something you wish to accomplish in real life. But you are the type of person that, although you desire to use confidence, you usually have low self-esteem. And whenever you try doing something confidently, you end up succumbing to the pressure of low self-esteem. This transitions us to Emotion/Scenario "B". The confidence has led to a slide into insecurity and insufficiency, and the dream presents one of the deeper causes of that insecurity.

You mentioned you think the dream world is destroyed every time we wake up, and apparently a new one appears the next night. And you said you visit places that are unfamiliar, new, or places you don't visit again. First, I disagree that the dream world is destroyed every time we wake up, because if the dream world represents areas of our subconscious, it is not destroyed, but certain parts may become inactive and be replaced by more active or urgent areas of the subconscious the next day. Secondly, seeing unfamiliar or new places does not conflict with my theory. I mentioned overlapping and meshing of different elements. Take this off-the-wall example: You have an important football game tomorrow, but you are afraid you'll probably lose to the other team that is stronger. Your dad is a big football guy, and he WANTS you to win very badly. So that night you end up having a dream that you are scaling a blizzard-covered precipice with members of your football team. Everyone is getting tired. You can see the top, but you don't know if you'll make it. Suddenly you see rabid-looking wolves shooting down the mountain toward all of you. Everyone starts running down the mountain. You trip and fall, and when you look to your side you see your dad, dead in the snow!... What could this mean? Scaling the mountain representing the difficulty in trying to win, wolves as the other team that you fear will clobber you, you fall and lose, which your dad takes really hard, so you see him as dead in the snow. Anyway, that example turned out a little more morbid than I intended, but do you see what I'm saying? You may be completely unfamiliar with that dreamscape, but it was full of real-life elements. In that example, you have several overlappings. Maybe you recognize the distinct "feeling" of that dream before, though. You may have had another mountain/precipice dream that gave the same feeling, but visually, they seem unrelated.

I'm still working through the ideas in my head, though, and how to explain them. I understand it doesn't make complete sense as it is, and could probably be easily misconstrued as well.

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Originally Posted by juroara

I agree..and disagree. I have lots of places and even themes that I visit a lot in my dream. Whether is a suburban area always with the same style of houses and ground plan, or a theme park with the same attractions and same major areas, or a house where I know there is going to be a secret hallway leading to an attic....I think a lot of us do revisit these same places, that change slightly from dream to dream

but I disagree with the idea that we have this layed out dream world that we visit EVERY night. That its a world mapped out in expanding, no. That world disappears and gets destroyed every time you wake up. In some of my dreams I traveled the dream world and did not find the more typical areas that show up in often in my dreams, they did not exist in that dream. And in many dreams I visit many places that I never visit ever again.

Sure, they are visual manifestations of our subconscious thoughts like you have said. But our subconscious doesn't stay the same forever. I dont have the subconscious mind of a little kid, I've got the subconscious mind of a young adult. All those places that I visited so often in dreams as a child are gone. I dont see them in dreams anymore and when I fly over landscapes *which I do often* they are never there.

I dont think of it as a world that is always expanding as you grow. I think of it as a manifestation of your current subconscious which carries with it many archetypes. Youre not revisiting places because your dream is mapped out, youre revisiting them becuase they are archetypes in your subconscious.
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I like the way you put this. In an older thread Subconscious Theory someone posted a similar description from a book

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"The purpose of dreaming is the creation and maintenance of each dreamer's own personal virtual reality, each dreamer's own internal model of the self, the external world, and the relationship between self and world. Dreaming is our method of assimilating the new by either discarding it or integrating it into our world model. During dreaming we eliminate errors from and make modification to our internal private virtual reality, our world model."[/b]

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When you say archetypes I'm wondering if you are talking about personal archetypes or cultural/evolutionary ones. Maybe both exist and give form to the content of our dreams? In this case, like Matchbook elaborated, our real world experiences are infused and given free reign in their own dream space, but the space itself has archetypal patterns ready for encoding. You both are saying the same thing maybe?

YES!
I was just about to post this theory.
Would be interseting to explore in a lucid dream.
Maybe to try and draw a map of your dream world, or even find a place where all the locationsconnect, like a corridor of doors each leading to an individual dream landscape.

Very interesting discussion and I agree mostly, though I wouldnt use the word "fixed" at all because it might confuse people a bit (as I guess already happened). You should maybe more see it along the lines of "high interconnectedness between subconscious and dreamcontent", if that makes sense.

I fixed the "fixed" part of my post. I have the basis for that idea in my head, but didn't quite use the right words to get it across, I think.

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Originally Posted by memeticverb

In this case, like Matchbook elaborated, our real world experiences are infused and given free reign in their own dream space, but the space itself has archetypal patterns ready for encoding. You both are saying the same thing maybe?
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Right. I was suggesting that our ideas were pretty much the same, but we were both putting it differently. Or we were looking at it from a different angle.

I agree wholeheartedly. I remember a room from my first real lucid since joining Dream Views (I've had several during my childhood), and how familiar it was. I was like: Oh, here again?
I woke up, and remembered the basic design of the room, but not where in the world I was remembering it from. I've also noticed that some dreamscapes change as you grow older. A secret compartment in Disneyland that I've tried to revisit has been torn down to make room for attractions less unnecessary.

Even though these are just ideas concocted to have a firmer grasp of the places we visit and the things we see in our dreams, I think that achieving a better understanding of that world can be a useful asset to more successful lucid dreaming. If you form a conscious-subconscious relationship with your dream locations, and understand what they mean to you and what they represent, you begin creating an association with your conscious to your dream scenes, and you will have a better likelihood of becoming lucid when you enter one of those scenes in future dreams. Plus, visualizing unique and outstanding aspects of your favorite recurring dream scenes while awake encourages your conscious mind to activate in a dream state when certain triggers are present.

If what we experience and think about while awake affects what we dream when we are asleep, then why shouldn't thinking about what we see when we sleep have an affect on our dreams as well? That is why consciously creating a visual map of meaningful dream locations can be important. By doing so, we are involving the conscious mind in the creative process of our dreams... which is basically the definition of lucid dreaming!

This can be taken one step further. Try visualizing one of your meaningful dream locations. Preferably do this in a relaxed state. See in your mind's eye all of the elements of that place. Become as detailed as you can. But then, instead of ending there, begin to travel from that place, creating new things as you go. Change the vegetation as you go. Change the people, the buildings. And then try ending up in another one of your dream scenes. This imagination exercise implements both your conscious and subconscious at the same time, causing them to work together, and creating that important association with the conscious mind working with the subconscious mind in a dream state.

Just last night I visited a beach that I've been to before in my dreams. It has changed a little, but the layout was the same.

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Originally Posted by Amzie

Just last night I visited a beach that I've been to before in my dreams. It has changed a little, but the layout was the same.
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I have a beach that I visit a lot, too. It changes a little bit each time, but certain characteristics remain the same. Each time I go there I see massive waves crashing on the shoreline. The waves are always movingly powerful, and I notice this everytime. Then, when I walk onto the beach I usually end up either diving into the ocean or into tidepools where I search for these incredibly beautiful rocks and gems of different colors.

It must have some meaning but I haven't put much thought into it.

This is fascinating! Not least of all because I have been theorizng along very similar lines for some time now and I'm now really excited that I'm not the only one!

Just last week I spent pretty much every night in the same dream area.

I have to run but I have a lot more to say about this, just wanted to let you know that I think you're onto something, Matchbook.

I'll be back...

I don't have any strong evidence of my own to support this theory personally, but one of my freinds mentioned that he commonly had a very strong feeling of where he was in dreams. He could tell for example, that he was in the store talking to, say, me, in his dream, even though in his dream it looked like he was in his room talking to Mr Bean. This seems to support what you say, and may even take it a step further; maybe we have certain recurring DC's that are part of our "dreamscape", too. I will have to research this, when I get enough dreams in my DJ.

Matchbook,

Of course you are correct and have observed an astute point. Also dreamers must have a local in which to dream. I don't know of too many (if at all) dreams that do not take place "somewhere".

When in the awake world we don't have any control over our environment that we are in except then to either leave that location or change it..(both physically).

When our mind "creates" a dreamscape there are many things to be considered with the broader pallete at our disposal.

Our minds "paint" our dreams with not only shape and color but also with things such as memory, culturism, emotions, mannerisms, etc.

It is created through a pallete of psychology which is abstract to say the least. While you can infer certain global view assumptions (traits or characteristics) from psychology, every single person is individualy and infinitely unique.

Our dreamworlds are wrapped in our personal symbolism. We create this from what our mind finds suitable to the tasks that which our subconcious needs to express itself.

So yes, personally I agree with your summation and observation. I don't think that these dream worlds are merely created and destroyed each night. They are simply transformed in different ways as we can only be individualistic in our subconcious thought. While some empirical things do exist in the creation of our dreamscape, it is the other broader and more abstract elements of the individual thought process that makes our dreams so very unique in their settings. These are the very reasons that the dream world is a place, everchanging and malleable yet remains a unique worldview to each dreamer due to it's creation with the broad and abstract pallete of individual psychology.

Good observation MB!

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Creative and imaginative persons will tend to have a much more flexible world which contains a greater number of fantasy and subconscious elements.[/b]

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thats me in a nutshell...i agree completely with that theory....well said...

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Originally Posted by Amzie

That was very well-put and interesting! I also think it makes a lot of sense. I wish I could make a map of my dream world. x3
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You could, just explore and when you wake up make a map :content:

I have made attempts at dreamworld mapping before but, being pessimistic by nature, I have tended to abandon them thinking they were pointless.

The possibility of increasing lucidity, however, has re-fired my enthusiasm, though a problem I've always had in the past was seeing how to connect the different areas of my dreamworld.

In other words, my map was really more of a list of the different environments that appear in my dreams with no relation to each other in terms of location, direction etc.

Nonetheless I am thinking that Matchbook's illustration of the ski-jump might help me out.

Since a dreamworld is not a physical place in the way the consciousness understands it but a more abstract manifestation of emotions, values, associations etc, places are linked to each other by means of these abstract connections eg. ski-jump and schoolyard.
(I'm hypothesising here so please correct me if I'm wrong.)

So I'm guessing a map of one's dreamworld would be more of an emotionally topographic one, than a physical landscape.
For example a bottom-of-the-sea location might be right next door to a kitchen?, however illogical this may seem.

I agree to a certain extent, for those of you who say that you have tried to explore beyond the location you "woke up" in and could not explore any further. Maybe your "dreamscape" is not always connected in the sense that there are many planets in a universe yet there is no direct connection except that they exist. So theoretically speaking you could be dreaming in "miniature" worlds that are apart of a larger one. I don't know if that makes any sense. Also, it could be that there are different worlds depending on how deep in your subconscience you are, for example you when you are inside a house or a room for that matter. All you perceive at that point is what is in the room, but when you move outside that room you get a broader view and how things are connected gradually become more obvious.

Very well-thought theory.

Mitravelus

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Originally Posted by mitravelus

Maybe or "dreamscape" is not always connected in the sense that there are many planets in a universe yet there is no direct connection except that they exist. So theoretically speaking you could be dreaming in "miniature" worlds that are apart of a larger one. Also, it could be that there are different worlds depending on how deep in your subconscience you are
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I like that idea.

The interesting thing now would be if we could find a way to test out all this theorising.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to proceed with devising some experiments to test this stuff out.

If my medecine doesnt affect my sleep patterns tonight as they sometimes do I will be more than willing to attempt "mapping" my subconscience. I will give you the results tomorrow if there are any present to give.

EDIT: While thinking this through I realized that simply because I wrote that post or anyone who has read it for that matter the results will have been tampered with. Let me explain, (this is all obvious but please read on) dreams are obviously recollections of what your day has been or they are used to represent something that you have been subconsciencely thinking about, granted dreams do not always include what you have been thinking about. So if the previously said is true then theoretically my mind will make links to itself, although those links may make mend my seperate "dreamscapes" together it will not give me the desired result as my conscience is the one that initially made those links, when i want the results of that of my subconscience. There will be shortcuts inside shortcuts so to speak. Therefore I will still give you the results but I will monitor and compare each dreamscape from different days to see if there is a significant enough change to justify that it is indeed my subconscience using my conscience thoughts to make links within itself. Because as said in the starting post your dreamscape constantly changes. I apologize if I do not give results right away as I've been in a bit of a dry spell lately. Wish me luck.


Mitravelus

I am sorry to say my dry spell still continues. Last night I went to bed shortly after posting my above, induced myself into I believe you call them a "WILD", as it is the fastest method for me to fall asleep, then blackness for most of the night with few exceptions of gently "brushing" my subconscience but not enough to constitute even a short dream. I will attempt again tonight.

Mitravelus

I totally agree. There are numerous times when I'm dreaming and all a sudden I get the feeling of "I've been here before" - though usually this always occurs when I'm not lucid, so I never acknowledge until I wake up like you've mentioned.