Lucid dreaming: "being aware you are dreaming while dreaming."
This topic is one I experimented with in depth for a long period of time. I kept a daily dream journal, recognized my dream signs, and achieved a state while dreaming where I could mold the dreamworld however I saw fit. Since then I slowly fell out of the lucid dreaming habit but would like to think I maintain an above average amount of control over my dreams resulting in a very small amount of unpleasant ones. Last night was the first time I have felt completely out of control in my dreams in a very long time.
The first dream began in an asian country's airport where I apparently was trying to smuggle something with two other men. While the details are a bit hazey now, I do recall that the item was simply a sleeping bag. When something went wrong, I tried to salvage the situation but the other two men lost their shit and gave away our plan. I was grabbed by three airport officers instantly and the dream blacked out.
When I awoke, I was in a cell with no windows, doors or any other opening other than a small metal toilet in one corner. The walls were white tile and I looked around while laying on my back. The dimensions of the cell looked about 7x8 but the catch was the cell was only about 4 ft tall resulting in a constant state of crouching, even while on my knees. I spent days in this cell without food or even a single contact from my detainers or any idea how long I would be there. I felt the true meaning of losing hope and immediately the dream ended.
The next dream would best be described as a mixture between the Columbine shootings and a large scale invasion... While this sounds ridiculous on paper, in the dreamworld the vivid details of the situation suck you more into the moment, forfeiting the logical side of the brain for a fight or flight response. I was in a large building, seemingly a college campus, where hundreds of students were taken at gunpoint out to different parts of the "campus". Somehow I got word minutes before and grabbed a hammer to slide into my waist before taken hostage. When assembled in a small group, I felt the strange, eerie "6th sense" of death approaching. The men taking us hostage began acting different and all leaving and reentering the room as if discussing different things outside of our earshot. I leaned one direction to show several people sitting next to me my concealed hammer and motioned towards the single guard in the room.
In an instant, I launched to my feet and dug the sharp end into the neck of the guard as many times as I could before he fell to his knees. Somehow I knew one of the others had knowledge of the campus so I followed him quickly into a bathroom. Once again, the bathroom was all white tile and the only thing decorating the walls were small mirrors where I could see myself holding the bloody hammer. From here the escape was through a maze of white tile tunnels seemingly getting smaller and smaller in diameter until I finally awoke for real...
The dreams signs are the obvious white tile rooms, low ceilings, and lack of windows.
The Themes are the claustrophobic feelings, the feeling of being chased, the survival response
What does this mean? In psychology, studies have shown that over 70% of dreams involve being chased, feelings of inadequacy, or falling. Maybe it was just my time to have these vivid negative dreams...
Or maybe there is something/someone/somewhere constricting me in my life that needs to be cut loose. Or endured.
In the end who knows. I'll think more on this later today.
-Faceless