Why did the tree and fence stop me?

[MadHatter17]

Hey, Its been a while since I posted here, cause its been a while since I had a lucid dream of any length or significance. But last night I finally had an interesting one. In the dream I found myself half asleep while my car drifted aimlessly down the highway. I immediately started to ponder the possibility that its a dream. I did a breath test. Satisfied that it was a dream I drove the car into a pond, and got out. At this point I became aware of someone else in the pond with me but I'm not sure who. Anyway, I started to float around in the water and eventually discovered I could float above the surface on my back, I then turned over and started to move in circles to gain more altitude. At one point the "someone" tried to give me a boost pushing me up and forwards. At first I didn't want him/her, I guess for some reason I really wanted to do it on my own. When he/she tried to give me a second boost I just accepted it. Anyway, I flew towards a forest at a rather slow speed, a running pace at best. Rather then try to fly around the trees I decided to fly strait through them. It worked until I reached the edge of the forest where there was a rather large tree and a fence. The large tree stopped me. I then drifted to the ground. I tried to pass through the fence but found this was also impossible. I was in the process of willing the individual wires of the fence to break apart when I woke up. So anyway, why did that one tree and fence stop me after I'd passed through an entire forest?

[tyrantt23]

Interesting lucid dream! So anyway, why did that one tree and fence stop me after I'd passed through an entire forest? The answer to that is simple - that one tree and fence stopped you for no specific reason. Our minds can do some unexpected things in our dreams sometimes. Maybe you got stopped because somehow your subconscious thought that this tree and fence were somehow different than the rest of the forest. This sounds it was a fun dream though. I hope there are many more coming your way.

[MadHatter17]

The fence was similar to one that used to surround my back yard when I was a kid. Could that have anything to do with it?

[ninja9578]

Your brain acts like a computer, it won't let you go somewhere if there is nothing there. Your brain hadn't rendered a scene past the forest yet so it improvised to stall you while it finished coming up with something.

[MadHatter17]

Well I could see an empty green field up to the horizon.

[tyrantt23]

The fence was similar to one that used to surround my back yard when I was a kid. Could that have anything to do with it? Yes, its possible. There might be a symbolism relating to that, but the best person to know the answer to your question would be you. Did that fence ever stop you from exploring outside when you were a kid? Did you ever feel trapped by it? Do you ever think about that fence or something related to it nowadays? Only you can figure out if there was a deeper meaning to that dream. Your brain acts like a computer, it won't let you go somewhere if there is nothing there. Your brain hadn't rendered a scene past the forest yet so it improvised to stall you while it finished coming up with something. I don't mean to jack the thread, but Ninja, that analogy is amazing. I've had a few lucid dreams where I flied high up, or tried to fly to space, or tried to fly somewhere, but I flew so very fast that I lost focus of everything. The scenery would literally lag and take some time to render right before my eyes. It was too much information, too much detail to process and the dream would look more like an old video game lacking any detail. This would make me lose focus. A similar thing happened when I tried to walk through a wall... I simply got stuck inside the wall and the other side wouldn't "load" so I got stuck looking at the texture of the wall all around me, until I took a step back again. I've thought about that "rendering" theory for our dreams, but I thought it was probably far-fetched. It's nice to see you have that outlook on it. Do you know of any links that talk about that aspect of dreams? Any ways that I could make my dreams render the scenery faster so that I could fly to space in a more vivid and realistic way?

[ninja9578]

It's not far fetched at all. Dreams are composed of memories, it has to find memories, figure out how to splice them together and then alter them though our knowledge of lighting and physics and stuff. It takes time to come up with it. I first noticed it when I walked through a wall and there was nothing on the other side. There was a bad lag and the scenery rendered in parts.

[MadHatter17]

Definitely not, in fact I often climbed over the fence, it was only about four feet high. Maybe it has something to do with me being held back by childhood issues or something.

[ninja9578]

Just because you know what's on the other side of the fence doesn't mean that the brain can render the scene any faster. The first time I had trouble rendering was outside my grandfather's house, where I am all the time. It's the change in scenery that throws our minds. Going from the forest to the field takes a while. Remember, parts of the brain are shut off.

[MadHatter17]

Well its still kinda weird that it could render the forest so easily, yet the field caused a lag.

[ninja9578]

You said that you flew towards it, that means that you saw it from a distance first? You probably didn't notice that it was fixing itself. I guarantee you every single tree it he entire forest was the same tree. It's just a copy and paste kind of thing, so it was easy.

[MadHatter17]

No, I definitely remember that they were atleast angled in different directions. It looked like a fairly natural forest. They did all seem like the same species of tree (don't ask me which I don't know my trees), maybe it was a copy, paste, flip rotate, resize. Either way the ground was there too. Why would it be so hard to keep the ground going when there's no more trees to paste in. And what about the highway and the car crashing into the pond. All those things seem so much more complicated then a simple empty field.

[MadHatter17]

you know just for the hell of it, I'm gonna sketch out the area a little. I just realized that there should have been a road running through the forest, or in between the forest and the field. Guess my dream world couldn't keep its layout strait.