Pranked by a dream character, crazy meta-nightmare

[Osaid]

I had a very cool nightmare today. From a structural standpoint, it's up there with that one time I had a lucid dream while inside of another dream.

The characters involved are a group of popular animators i've seen on Youtube (so I guess this is how my subconscious decides to represent the dream), and they are all friends, and they were just bantering and fooling around with eachother, working on animations, like those simple cartoony ones you see on Youtube all the time. For some reason, I am present to witness this conversation with them as a dream character, I am also part of their friend group.

One of them made a joke about how one of them is actually sadistic, and how he actually tortures people while they're sleeping. An animated funny video plays of this guy fucking with some guy while hes sleeping and the animator being like "you're dying wake up you're dying."

The animators seem to be aware that they are in a dream and conversing in a dream, and they are just making fun of their friend and how their friend could potentially torture any of them while they are dreaming. So the dream characters are kind of self aware. (dark humor)

Now, that "joke" starts happening to me! It's not a joke anymore! I start feeling invisible hands all over my body fondling me and the animator's voice saying "wake up you're dying im killing you in real life wake up" and so I panic and do my best to actually wake myself up, and so I do, and the nightmare ends. It felt like a genuine threat to my life and my real body, though.

Talk about a mindfuck, a meta fucking nightmare, holy shit. The dream character played a fucking prank on me which translated into the waking state. It was a real prank. What the hell lmao.

You might be thinking that this is a weird plot, and "why are there are animators?"

And yes, I agree. It doesn't matter that they are animators. But that's just how dreams are. The actual structure of the "prank" being pulled on me is all that really matters. Basically, the dream character started fondling my body (which I could feel, kind of like a cross between sleep paralysis and the dream state) and started threatening me saying that I need to wake up because he is killing me and torturing my real body.

Of course, nothing was there when I woke up, so I got pranked by a dream character. Such is life.

Hope this made some semblance of sense, it was actually hard to articulate because of the nonsensical nature of dreams.

Edited August 12, 2023 by Osaid

[Osaid]

7 minutes ago, Lila9 said:

Wow that's crazy and genius. I like this kind of untypical dreams. 

I know haha. Sometimes the dreams get VERY creative. They really stretch the boundaries of what you assume they are capable of, as you can see.

As for the other lucid dream I was talking about at the beginning but didn't bother to elaborate on:

I had a dream once, where I fell asleep in the dream, and then started lucid dreaming while inside of this dream, but this lucid dream I was experiencing was STILL nested inside the context of the "previous" dream, where I was NOT lucid.

Then, I woke up again, but I was still inside of the "previous" dream that I fell asleep in, and this made me stop lucid dreaming, but I was STILL inside of a dream. It basically tricked me into thinking that I actually woke up and WASN'T dreaming, but in actuality I only woke up back into the previous dream.

And then, inevitably, I woke up AGAIN to actual reality, and then I realized, "ohhh, that was a dream as well."

So, to reiterate, I fell asleep in the dream, and then started lucid dreaming while in the new dream which was inside that dream. Then, when I woke up inside the dream, I stopped lucid dreaming. And then, I woke up again to actual reality.

So, I "woke up" twice, one was into the initial non-lucid dream, and another was into the waking state.

Basically, in this dream, my lucidity depends entirely on this idea of "I fell asleep", but this idea is connected to the events of the "previous" dream where I am NOT lucid. So, the dream is capable of achieving lucidity by imagining itself to fall asleep, and it is capable of removing that lucidity by imagining that wakes up. But, all of this happens in one dream.

My lucid dream depended on this idea that "I am having this lucid dream because I fell asleep", BUT, this thought is referring to me falling asleep inside of the non-lucid dream, so now this lucid dream is connected to the non-lucid dream.

I will also clarify, I had no recollection of the "previous" non-lucid dream DURING the lucid dream, it only appeared when I "woke up" again into the initial non-lucid dream. So yes, experientially, it was a 100% legit lucid dream.

So it was like, a lucid dream but also not a lucid dream at the same time.

Hope that made a little bit of sense hahaha

[Sigrun]

That sounds really awesome! I freaking love dreams, they can get so interesting and mind-fucky. I especially love the ones where consciousness takes on a different shape, it's tricky to explain but here's one example of that which I just had recently:

I was having some regular action-type dream, in some cyber-obstacle course with ice witches, bears and what-not, and I fell down and died, at which point the dream seemingly instantaneously transitioned into me being in a pure, white void, with no sense of ever having been anyone, I had no body and no memories, I was just this mind with a vague sense of self, and I sensed other souls just like me present.

This pure white void was like a completely empty canvas, on which you could imagine literally anything you could onto and it would open a portal into that dream for you to experience, or you could pick one of the realities imagined by any of the other souls which were popping into existence at a fast rate, I went with the latter option and started going through several different imagined dreams, where I would get a "birds-eye-view" preview of before deciding if I want to go in and experience it fully, thus temporarily losing connection with the white void.

I don't remember how many dreams I got a preview of, all I know it was quite a lot, at least a dozen. It started with very basic dreams, almost like children book stories for 3-5 year olds, then 5-8, 8-12, etc until I was in a meta-dream that was getting progressively more complex all the while self-narrating, going more and more meta, until I lost the plot so to speak, and I bailed out, back into the white void. This time some soul got the idea to imagine a nightmare dream that would spread and infest into the minds of other souls, I felt that all dreams were of the same value, so there was no real good or bad, but I had no interest in experiencing nightmare dreams at that point, so I started to imagine one that had a password that only souls that aren't interested in nightmarish dreams at the moment could think of, and suddenly I was in the familiar "3-d" dream, with a body, in a room, with some nice, cute girl that I cuddled with until I woke up

I left out most of the details since the structure takes quite long enough to type hehe

Edited August 12, 2023 by Sigrun

[Osaid]

18 minutes ago, Sigrun said:

cute girl that I cuddled with until I woke up

Oh man, I've had multiple dreams where I developed an entire crush on a dream character and then I felt withdrawals when I woke up lmao. Stupid brain.

[Sigrun]

6 minutes ago, Osaid said:

Oh man, I've had multiple dreams where I developed an entire crush on a dream character and then I felt withdrawals when I woke up lmao. Stupid brain.

Oh yeah I've had those quite a few times haha

One time I actually felt love for one, after waking up I spent at least an hour in bed just basking in the bitter-sweet afterglow of being grateful to experience such a powerful beautiful feeling while at the same time feeling sad I was no longer with her

[Osaid]

10 hours ago, Lila9 said:

Have you intentionally practiced lucid dreaming before?

No, but I guess the mechanism is somewhat similar, in that it is caused by an awkward or unique sleeping routine.

All of this was probably brought on by my poor sleep. I've been having trouble sleeping lately. When your sleep quality is disturbed, you tend to get very odd and vivid dreams.

Back when I was in junior high, my sleep schedule was so awkward and bad that I would get sleep paralysis with an 80% success rate if I kept following that schedule.

Edited August 13, 2023 by Osaid

[Osaid]

6 hours ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

I think the weirdest one was where I was stuck in a loop of becoming lucid and waking up just to realize that I'm still in a dream again and again and again. It actually felt like I was stuck in this loop for 12 hours. I was just sitting at the dinner table with my mother, but I suddenly feel like something is off. I look around and I realize that I'm in a dream! When I look back at my mother her eyes turned pitch black and she's just staring at me with this cold expression. It scares the shit out of me and I wake up in my bed. I get up, brush my teeth, and go down to see my mother cooking in the kitchen. But... something still feels off... I'm still in a dream! My mothers head suddenly turns towards me and she's staring at me with the same black eyes and cold expression again. I wake up in a car with my friends. I'm like "What the fuck was that?". I look out the window and I'm like: "Am I still dreaming?", I count my fingers and yes! I'm still fucking dreaming! I look up and all my friends are looking at me with the same eyes!

And this kept going on and on and on and on. I would wake up in different places with different people, realize that I'm still dreaming and when they all turned their heads towards me looking at me with their black eyes, I'd wake up and repeat the loop once more for what felt like 12 actual real world hours to me.

Oh fuck, now that you mention it, this exact same thing always used to happen to me with my mom as a character as well. I wouldn't get any friends or other people, just her and me.

I believe it is called a "false awakening", which is when you think you wake up but you are still dreaming.

But yeah, I would keep getting tricked into thinking I was awake, and then the realization would creep in "oh fuck I'm still in a nightmare aren't I", and then my mom would transform into some monster or something, and then the cycle would repeat.

It wasn't too long though, maybe about 3 or 5 cycles of it until I finally forced myself awake.
 

6 hours ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

Yeah lucid dreams are not always under your control. I've been attacked and even killed multiple times.

When I was really young, I had a lucid dream, and there was some monster in there that kept telling me "you're never leaving this dream, you're trapped here forever", and then the rest of the dream was just me trying desperately to wake up, lmao.

Unrelated, but I also had this weird reoccuring dream that would pop up from time to time, but it doesn't happen anymore (perhaps I've dealt with it subconsciously or something). But, it basically involved me being chased by a bunch of bees and having to avoid bees in general. Like, I would always be in some area where it's literally ALL covered in bees, and I have to meticulously watch where I'm stepping or else I would step on one and they would get angry. So yeah, reoccuring bee-related dreams. Odd.

Edited August 13, 2023 by Osaid

[Sincerity]

That's so interesting! Lucky You.  I'd love to experience more meta shit even if it's frightening. Bring it on, Consciousness!

Dreams are fucking awesome. Two weeks ago I had my first lucid one and it was metal.

Edited August 13, 2023 by Sincerity

[Osaid]

3 minutes ago, Sincerity said:

I'd love to experience more meta shit even if it's frightening. Bring it on, Consciousness!

This was one of the few experiences where it was frightening but also cool enough to balance out the fear if that makes any sense. Dunno, kind of like being on a rollercoaster I guess. Might be an acquired taste, cause I love analyzing dream metaphysics, or metaphysics in general.

[Sincerity]

Just now, Osaid said:

This was one of the few experiences where it was frightening but also cool enough to balance out the fear if that makes any sense.

Yup, I get that. Kinda like with a psychedelic trip.

1 minute ago, Osaid said:

Might be an acquired taste, cause I love analyzing dream metaphysics, or metaphysics in general.

Probably an acquired taste yeah. I love it too. ?

[LastThursday]

Many years ago, I remember staying over at a work colleague's place after a heavy night. I woke up on the sofa bleary eyed, and the guy pokes his head through the door to check if I was awake. I said "morning" in a croaky voice. I then suddenly woke up again (for real), and at that exact moment, the guy pokes his head through the door again. Luckily I didn't wake up a third time.

[Osaid]

Oh yeah, not to mention, fucking hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations, as they're called. These are hallucinations that happen as you're drifting into sleep OR as you are waking up, respectively. 

I recently had one where I woke up SUPER sleepy, and I looked at the door to my room and there was this ghoulish growling noise coming from the other side of it, KIND of like sleep paralysis, but the weird difference here is that, my visual focus was continuing to perceive this door BEFORE I woke up and also AFTER I woke up, so in terms of continuity, it was perfect. So, it literally felt like I woke up, heard noises from outside my door, then the noises vanished, that's it. There wasn't like, a second "waking up", there was just a boost of wakefulness where I could move and think clearly again, that's it.

So, to reiterate, because of the continuity of the visual stimuli, it was basically impossible to tell the difference between when I was asleep and hallucinating and when I actually woke up, but I assume that some part of my brain was still dreaming, hence the hallucination, but my visual stimuli was not dreaming, as it was accurately displaying my room.

On a side note, I've always wondered how the visual stimuli during sleep paralysis is created. How am I perceiving my room? Are my eyes actually physically open? Were my eyes physically open throughout the hypnopompic hallucination as well?

Edited August 14, 2023 by Osaid