What brought me here?

Well, I've lucid dreamed in the past enough but it wasn't really deep. It is a regular thing for me in dreams to be able to fly. I always find it a lot of fun to fly in my dreams and I do it very regularly. Normally I'm restricted in how high I can go, though not really how fast. I can travel long distances when Flying. Last night was a much more vivid dream though in which 3 significant events occurred that I found interesting, well kind of 4 but it is 3 of them that have my attention and make me think that this is more than just entertainment and there is a connection between this dream and things that I am going to do or need to do in real life.

so before my 3 am pee I did have some normal dreams. My sleeping schedule is a bit whacked right now as I've been doing a lot more napping and such. I was quite tired last night. It was when I went back to sleep at around 4 am that the big one started. I found myself in a large store. Like a Walmart but it wasn't one that I recognize. While in the store there was a power outage. Up to this point it was more of a normal dream. As the lights were out I started flying around a bit, as normal, but someone yelled at me that I wasn't allowed to fly. At this time I became aware that I was dreaming. I became a bit mischievous at this point and started messing around with some of the customers in the store. They couldn't see hardly anything at all but I was able to see in the dark partially because I wanted the ability I guess. In the store I saw an open display of candy and sampled a few pieces of it. I remember specifically eating one of those sour rope candy things, blueberry in particular, it was delicious. I had a few other flavors of those candy ropes and some other candies. Eventually the lights came back on and the guy, who apparently was a manager at the store, approached me again and invited me to come upstairs into the store office to talk. This is where I think events became important.

I was led to a flight of stairs that went up about 1 1/2 stories high. He speficly told me that he knew that I could fly but it was very important that I walked up those stairs instead of flew. I don't know why it was important and he didn't tell me. I did argue a bit that it would be much faster and easier for me to just fly up to the office, but he said to just trust him that it was important for me to walk up the stairs. The climb up the stairs was exhausting. The last 1/4 of the climb also I had to work very hard to get my legs to move. At the top I was worn out and had to stop to rest before I could actually walk to the office. I felt that it was some kind of a test that I had manged to pass. I think that for whatever reason this climbing of the stairs was the most important part of my dream. It wasn't fun or excited and took a lot of time, at least from my dreaming mind. It probably took place in less than a second in real time. Anyway someone mentioned that i was going to be exahasted and dehydrated a bit becuase of this and it would be important to drink some water (haven't done that yet, I'm going to go grab a bottle of water right now).

I'm back, was out of bottled water and grabbed some iced tea instead.

Anyway in the office I found my sister already seated at a computer. The store manager told me the name of a guy who lived somewhere in the north west part of the town I grew up in. I wasn't very familiar with that part of town and I don't know the exact spot but I know that there are probably about 40 or 50 houses in that area, so it shouldn't be very hard to figure out if in fact that person does actually live in that area. The guy I was given the name of is somewhere within 10 years of my own age and was a name I recognized when told, but now I can't remember it. I was in fact given both a first and last name and I think I would remember it if I was told it again. Also important about this part was that I told my sister in the dream that I was dreaming at the time and none of it was real. I had told some other people in the dream that I was dreaming also. As far as I could tell that store manager was the only one that was aware ahead of time that I was dreaming. I'm not completely sure if it was because of him that I figured out it was a dream or if I figured it out entirely on my own. The dream ended when I had been shown relatively where the guy lived and references to go by. It was interesting that the map shown on the dream computer was a very old map from perhaps before I was born and didn't have houses in that area. In real life when I looked at that are of the map I was able to find that there were in fact several houses in that general area.

The last significant part of this is that I haven't lived in that town for over 15 years. I'm going to be moving back not to there exactly but a place very close to it less than 2 weeks from now. My sister already lives there. I don't think the store that the dream was talking place in exists outside of the dream. It wasn't familiar to me.

Mark, welcome to DV! While most of our forum is about lucid dreaming phenomena that have been scientifically proven, we do have a section Beyond Dreaming for those of us who wish to explore the possibility of phenomena that have not been scientifically proven or accepted (yet) by mainstream science, such as precognitive dreaming.

While I am personally quite open to the possibility of precognitive dreams, since I have had two dreams that were too close to future events for me to be satisfied with the "just a coincidence" explanation, however, I think that we need to be careful in interpreting a dream as portraying what will happen and especially what we need to do. What made you think that this dream was precognitive? What about this dream made you think that there is more to it than you initially thought? I would say that it may be worthwhile to think about explanations that do not require supernatural phenomena first, and only if those answers are not satisfactory, then consider other explanations.

The manager in the dream is a part of your subconscious, and thus it may be that you subconsciously knew this was a dream, possibly before you knew consciously, that happens. It is interesting that he insists that you are not supposed to fly but must climb the stairs: that is an example of a dream character taking charge of the situation, and your conscious self not being in control enough and perhaps not aware enough that the dream character does not have authority over you. Of course, you could choose to climb the stairs anyway, but a dream character "should" not be able to tell you what to do in a lucid dream, except of course that dream characters do that all the time and a lot of lucid dreamers choose listen to their subconscious - and that's ok too. Since in waking life you know you will move to close to your childhood town, and that your sister is already there, so that knowledge is based on your waking knowledge. It is a shame that you do not remember the name of that guy because then you could have verified it, but without verifying it, there is alas no way to tell whether it is significant or not.

Perhaps though I am missing something important, so to reiterate my question: what is it about this dream that made you realize it was significant and might be precognitive? And since emotions do not carry well over electronic text, my question is meant in a friendly curious way - as I said I myself am very open to precognitive possibilities, and thus am not judgemental about it, but curious to find out more.

One thing that you mention though is that the dream may be showing you what you "need" to do. I would be very cautious about that. While it is possible, I think, however since so many dreams are exaggerated and our most critical and rational faculties may not be fully aware while asleep, therefore, if I were you, I would not listen to a dream's commands and apply them to waking life, without first carefully evaluating them whether they still make sense in waking life, because unfortunately too often dreams do not follow our best interests, and it is our responsibility in waking life to evaluate that. I hope you do not mind that I caution you thus. All the best!

I think you did misunderstand it. I'm not assuming anything. I know this was a lucid dream. I think it may be something more, or it may not. That is part of what brought me here to see if others had experience that might let me know if it was more than that or not. Also that store manager in the dream didn't have power over me. I wasn't scared of him. I think you missed the part that the first time he told me not to fly that I did it anyway and messed with people that couldn't see quite as well as I could. It was when he came back and told me that it was important to climb the stairs and not just fly that I made the choice to listen to him that time and do as he said. In the dream I did that because I wanted to accept the challenge of a sort. It was new to me to climb the stairs, much harder than flying would have been. I knew darn well that he couldn't have stopped me from flying. I think though that the 2nd part with the maps on the computer might never have happened if I had flown instead of walked up. There are three possibilities I think that computer part and mentioning to my sister that it was all a dream and not real may have meant.

First of all I already talked to my sister about this dream. She told me that she had no dream that she remembered, so that part about communicating with her has to be assumed to have not happened and been completely a dream. The person that I mentioned could be someone I remember that I need to make contact with due to something in real life that I just can't remember in my conscious mind. It could be a message or it could be nothing. I'm not making an assumption either way and am keeping my mind open. I don't think it was precognitive though. I don't expect this scenario to play out in real life. I think the possibility that my subconscious was trying to reveal something previously forgotten is a real likely scenario. That would explain why in the dream when I was told the name that it sounded very familiar but now I can't remember the name.

My past lucid dreams have been very much like a virtual reality video game or me participating in a movie or even a thing like a LARP where I can have the actual powers of my character. My two most memorable previous LD's were zombie apocalypse type things. In neither of them were I scared and they were in fact quite entertaining. It is also rather strange that it would be Zombie apocalypse dreams that I remember most since I'm really not that huge into the Zombie thing and haven't seen a huge amount of the movies on it. I still think the walking up the stairs was very significant and I made the right choice by walking up them instead of flying. It does seem that something inside my mind was unlocked when I did that. I guess I'll find out in future dreams if they become even more lucid from this point on. I know I'll be quite happy if dreams like my last one become a regular thing for me. I probably won't be so unwilling to go to bed at night if that is the case.

Oh, another thing I forgot to mention is that I never really started having Lucid dreams by seeking them out. I had learned about OBE's as a kid and frequently would attempt to achieve them. I'd never really had any success at them but did from time to time have what I now know to be Lucid dreams. I don't really know how many I have had but I'm guessing around 20 or 30 in my lifetime. I'd shared this with a pagan mentor of sorts that I had at the time and she told me that the two things are very related and suggested I just keep going for the lucid dreams instead of the OBE's. Well when this happened last night I wasn't attempting anything besides sleep. Before the dream I mentioned here there was in fact something else though. It was before I got up to pee I had woken up after having something kind of like what I had heard an OBE was. I had spun around in my bed and a few other things it seemed. It is physically impossible for me to do that in the bed I sleep in so it tells me it was actually a dream or something. As is often the case in these "close ones" I jumped out of bed, peed, and then the Lucid dream came after I went back to bed.

Very good, sorry to have misunderstood your original message. I think being open minded is great. And I think the forgotten name may well be significant in some way, and I wish you that it will come back to you. For OBEs some people believe that they are a kind of lucid dream, and others think they are a separate phenomenon. Personally, I would really like to experience one, never have to my knowledge, but they sound cool. If you started having lucid dreams without trying, people call that being a "natural lucid dreamer" on this forum, and there are a few of those around here. All the best!

Well, can't say it was without trying it is just that I was trying for something different. I guess now about half the time they come without trying and half the time they come when I am trying. Also about 50% of the time that I try I am successful. I think that is actually a fairly good rate. I wouldn't consider myself an expert by any means. I'm really a beginner and haven't delved nearly as deep into the theories and practices that are talked about on here. I think now with the experience I've had that I would have to agree that OBE's are a type of Lucid dream. Actually according to that mentor it was actually the opposite.

So one question here, should I copy paste my story to your dream journal stuff? Also for the LD count on my profile, would that be the number I've had here or total? I think I could reliably claim 15 of them, that would be the low end of the amount that I think. I can only completely record one other besides the one I mentioned here.

What you put in dream journal or not is entirely up to you, and same for LD count. :) People handle those differently. Some people keep a dream journal that is separate from the DreamViews dream journal, and only post those dreams here that they want to share. Others like me use the DV dream journal for all dream entries. As for LD count, people count them differently: I personally do not have a clue how many LDs I had twenty years ago, I just know how many I had when I returned to the hobby: 5 in 2013, so I have been struggling with getting back to this. Some people just give a rate not a count, so i could say "1 per month" for example. I know some people count every LD and others count just ones that they want to count. I bet for some people the number is exact and for others approximate. The main purpose of LD count is really to tell others about yourself.