Theory of recalling old forgotten dreams while lucid dreaming.

**pepsibluefan** · 06-03-2013 07:00 PM

Hello! I have been a member on here for a while, but my activity is on and off. I have a theory about how to recall old "forgotten"

dreams. Many of you have learned how to recall your dreams right when you wake up; however sometimes dreams just "slip" and

seem to go to the point of no return. While you may not be able to recall it in the waking world, you can more then likely can recall

it in the dreaming world. Let me show you a diagram of what I mean.

The white triangle in the middle represents a "fresh" dream that is in range of your immediate memory recall. You have a limited

amount of time to recall the dream in the triangle before it "moves" into dream memories. Think of dream memories as a storage

for dreams that aren't put into long term memory. This "storage" I believe can be accessed through lucid dreaming. How did I come

up with this idea? I have had dreams where I could recall a dream that was months old, even some old trivial dreams. I am not the

only one who has had this experience before.

Since I am not personally good at lucid dreaming, I really think other experienced lucid dreamers should give this a go. Just to try simply

remember or even ask some random dream characters about your old dreams to see if it sparks something. Try changing

scenery and just experiment in general. Hopefully if I am right you can recall "any" dream from this huge library.

**Scionox** · 06-03-2013 08:21 PM

Yeah, some people have done this in lucid dreams, everything in dream is possible after all.

I have had experiences with it personally as well, though only non-lucid. i've had a dreams where i was accessing DJ here on dreamviews or was just trying to recall dreams in FA and what i got was something that i probably wouldn't remembered otherwise.

**Sibyline** · 06-03-2013 09:34 PM

I'm not sure. I have had LDs in which I remembered previous dreams in great detail, but once I woke up, they didn't feel "real" anymore. As if I had just made them up within the dream. I do hope that it is possible to have better access to the subconscious through LD, and it is a theory that I am actively pursuing, but for me personally, the dreams recalled within a dream don't feel right when I wake up. While I'm dreaming it feels the same as recalling dreams IWL, but when I wake up, it feels too fresh, and I think "Naaah... I just made that up." Does this make any sense?

**006** · 06-10-2013 10:56 AM

For me it always worked, and I didn't get the false dream feeling, but I'm not saying I tried it so many times.

**DreiHundert** · 06-15-2013 07:30 AM

I remembered having dreams multiple times when I was a kid - like deja vu - exactly the same dreams. I never remembered specifically having the same dream, but I got this feeling like I simply KNEW everything, it was overwhelmingly familiar to me.

It's been so long now -- today I have sequels to dreams, but never repeat in a manner similar to deja vu

**Sageous** · 06-15-2013 08:20 AM

In my experience, that is basically a sound theory Pepsibluefan.

I toyed with a similar idea for a while, after I noticed during some LD's that I could not only be reminded of older dreams (some years old, BTW), but I could to some degree summon them. It was pretty cool, but there were a couple of catches:

First catch sort of ties in with what Sybiline said above, in that I found myself, sometimes during the dream but mostly upon waking, wondering if I had made the memory up... I was able to confirm some of the remembered dreams by consulting my dream journal, but even then there might have been some "making up" going on.

Second catch is more bothersome, and that's the "forgotten" part of your theory. Most NLD's (and many LD's, if you're not careful) are not consigned to memory at all, physiologically. In other words, your brain naturally discards most dream material upon waking, so forgotten dreams are literally erased, not buried. So in reality you might only be recalling "remembered" dreams that may have faded, but are indeed still in storage somewhere. That's still a very excellent thing, though, and well worth pursuing, but I thought the difference might be worth considering.

I hope this made sense; it's late and my mind is already more untethered than usual...