Dreams To Real To Forget

Last night I had a dream that I was with my Grandmother again in her kitchen waiting for my hot bowl of oatmeal that she used to make me often. It seemed so real, her standing there talking to me as if the past 22 years hadn't existed. I didn't pay attention to how old I was in the dream, but it felt like I was 10 years old again and there she was.

When I woke up, it took a few seconds for me to realize that it was just a dream and that my Grandmother had died 22 years ago. I could still smell her perfume. There was more to the dream, we had a conversation that was really bizarre, but I only remember bits and peices so it wouldn't make sense to repeat it.

This dream was bittersweet, its like I got to be with her again, yet waking up and her not being there was like losing her all over again.

Do you ever have dreams that seem to real to forget? If so, please share. I'm really interested in knowing if others have had similar experiences and what they are about.

Thanks for reading,

MJ

This will sound weird but since we're on the subjet....


A few mornings ago I woke up when my bf went to walk y son to kindergarden, that was around 8am. At 8h45am they were back because ice didn't let them walk to there, so my son and I went back to bed. 10am. I wake-up, realize what happened was just a dream, and cried...
What happened: 8h45am went back to bed. Started dreaming from that point, where I dreamt we went back to bed, then stuff happened. My bf stayed home with us, and while my son was asleep, we made love with such passion. It was amazing how I felt in love.
Etc. It felt SO real, nothing weird, everything smelled like it does, etc.
Just to realize.... IT DID NOT HAPPEN! My bf had actually done to work a 8h45am.
It felt like shit.

It happened to me too when I was much younger, about 7 or 8 years old. I went to bed in the late evening as usual, and made this dreams I was waking up, going to school. Nothing was weird either, just had a normal day. So in the *real* morning when I woke-up, I was SO mixed up and felt so tired (hey what, just had a long "day there" lol) that my mom didn't send me. It was ackward.

This happens to me alot. I understand how you felt.

I certainly have. I lucid dream quite often. Some may not know lucid dreaming is realizing you are dreaming while you are dreaming. It's incredible fun. When you know you are dreaming you remember alot more and you can do WHATEVER you want. I mean the limit is your imagination. I have done everything from commanding the starship Enterprise to being a powerful scribe in ancient egypt. It's better than the movies and the sights and sounds are so real it can leave you breathless sometimes. Like you mentioned above when you said the smell of your grandmothers perfume lingered with you. Lucid dreaming is kind of like the Star Trek Holodeck, nothing is real and can't really hurt you, but your brain doesn't realize this.

The brain is an amazingly complex recording device. Wether we think so or not it remembers even the most mundane subtle details of our past. I love lucid dreaming about when I was child and I can tell my mom stuff that even she forgot about back to when I was 3 or 4. There is nothing mystical about this at all, however if the subject of the dream touched you deeply, like your grandmother, it will be extremely moving and will awaken old emotions.

That's my 2 cents.

I believe there is a difference with lucid dreaming and what MJ and myself experienced.

I do, enjoy lucid dreaming tho. Being able to make my dream go where I want, take the forms I wish it to, and *realize* I am doing it is awesome, I do it a lot.

But unlike lucid dreams, the two I mentionned up there were far from being lucid as,
1- i did not control anything, it just happened like that
2- i was NOT realizing i was dreaming (and her either the way i understands it)
especially since when i woke-up THEN i realized it did not happend and made me feel so bad

Yes, I definitely didn't know I was dreaming when it was happening, otherwise, I would have told her so many things that I didn't get a chance to when I was 10.

MJ

Ah I see just what you mean Elka. Sorry I went off on a tangent on the whole lucid dream thing.

my 2 cents is that lucid dreaming is a figment of your imagination.

I have lots of times had dreams like the OP talks about though, (ones that are 100% real, sounds smells etc.) The only ones that come to mind are recurring dreams I had as a youngster where I died. They were so real that to this day I honestly feel like I know what it feels like to die in the various ways I experienced through the dream.

I think this (and the "lucid dreaming", is really just a function of having a vivid of an imagination though. Nothing paranormal involved.

I never thought paranormal was happening when I did it either. But I won't agree that it's still uncontrolled. For the simple reason that some of my dreams, I make them since I am very young, maybe 8 years old, and I can *choose* to 'continue it whenever I want. Sometimes when I am about to go to bed, I tell my bf, 'oh tonight I will go back there see what is happening' and I do. At 1st I do not control it, it just brings me back there, but if I realize things are not turning how I want them to, I can wake-up, go get a glass of water, think of what I want and then go "fix" my dream.
But to each his/her own tho. We might just all experience it differently I guess



haha no problem, it was interesting you bring it out, anything dream realted is nice to talk about!!!!

That is so sad Dianne. To be a kid and dream of dying not just once but multiple times is scary to think about. Especially, if they seem real at the time. Do you still have those dreams? Just curious.

I too, don't feel nothing paranormal happened with my dream. I just found it amazing how real the details can be and how great my memory is...like it was her voice, her smell, her movements all just how I remember. 22 years is a long time and to still remember those little details enough to where it makes a dream seem so real, is incredible to me.

MJ

Probably like me you are one of those people with a really good sensory apparatus (some have better senses of smell, touch etc. than others), and a really vivid imagination. I know my sister claims to have never dreamt in colour even, yet I can't imagine a dream in black and white.

Smell is also known to be a major stimulus for recalling memories, so it's not unusual if you are having such an evocative dream about a past event, that smell should play so strong a part in it.

As for the dying dreams, it used to drive the docs crazy because as at that time the common wisdom was that one *never* dies in a dream, but always wakes up just in time since a person "can't conceive of their own death." Just goes to show you what a lot of rot and speculation most Psychiatry really is, and how changeable from year to year.

Since the electroshock sessions and the past-life alien-birth regression therapy, I no longer have those dreams.

Just a slight twitch when any one mentions "the war."

I often have dreams where I see my father (who died in 1990) in a setting that is obviously in the present day. We'll be here at my house, where I have only lived for six months, or my daughters will be present and are their present ages, and it's as though I think nothing of it, conversing with him, until I wake up and go, "Huh?"

Interestingly, I never dream of my mother, who died in 1988.

P2

One of the most memorable dreams I've ever had was a few years ago. I dreamed I was an astronaut working on a space station. There was some kind of buoy thing about a hundred yards from the station that I was doing repairs on. The buoy wasn't connected to the station, butI was connected to it by a tether. While I was working a stray piece of debri went sailing past and severed my tether. My suit had no propulsion system so my only hope was to push off from the buoy and aim for the hatch and hope my aim was true so I didn't go sailing off into space and certain doom. I concentrated for a few moments and then pushed off. I woke up just as I caught a handhold on the hatch door. What made the dream so memorable was that the sensation of weightlessness was perfectly convincing (not to mention that it was just a pretty damn cool setting for a dream).

The fact that something occurs in the realm of the imagination or does not invalidate the experience.

We agree on one point there. There's nothing paranormal about it. Humans have been dreaming and having profound experiences through imagination since the dawn of time. It is perfectly normal.

MJ, I hope you had a wonderful visit with your grandmother. Realize too that you have not lost her again... not so long as her memory lives on. Now that you have experienced it once... go to bed with the firm intention of doing it again. It might not happen the first night... it may not happen for days or weeks, but you will experience being with her again if you hold firm to that intention.

Write down as much as you can remember of what you and your grandmother talked about in the dream. There is a message there for you.

-Ghoti

Oh yes, I've had those dreams, but usually the person that is alive and well IRL, has died in my dreams. I always wake up feeling really awful, and have a hard time falling back asleep, but it would be rude to call somebody at 3 am just to make sure they are alive! Sometimes I have dreams where I am in great danger where somebody is chasing me or trying to kill me, which I suppose you could call a nightmare. I always wake up from those feeling scared, like it was really happening. It really is amazing how real these dreams can be and how real the feelings are when you wake up.

I didn't know that, but I've had dreams about me dying since I was a kid and they are very vivid.

They're always the same. Blunt force trauma to the back of the head with a metal object (yes, I watch lots of CSI, but that accurately describes what it feels like). In my dream, I do not see *me*, rather I am *me* if that makes any sense at all, so the feelings and sensations are very real to me while I'm experiencing them. I can't tell if somebody hits me or something falls on me, just the blow, the fall and then everything starts slowly getting progressively darker. I wake up frazzled and agitated right before it gets totally dark. It's been a recurring dream all my life, for as long as I can remember.

I have a friend who believes in past lives and is totally convinced that's how I died in a past life hehe

Leilany

Dying dreams:

I dreamed my girls and I were in the way of this huge brush fire. We had to run, but they were only about 2 and 4 (and just a few years older at the time of the dream), and the little one couldn't run, and the older one wouldn't run and leave us, and I couldn't run fast enough carrying the little one, so we turned to face the fire and die together. And I did my last job as a mother, which was being with them and helping them face death and dying. There was a rightness about that. I woke up before the fire got us.

Some years earlier, I dreamed my husband and I were together in some kind of elevator shafty kind of place, and the clock was ticking down and we had only three minutes to live. It was so tragic! There we were, getting the fullest we could out of those remaining minutes, being together, loving, living while we could, etc. The clock was ticking down down down and it was all so sad. With about 20 seconds left to go, I said, "woops, this has been a mistake, you are supposed to die, but not me, oh dear so sad too bad and bye." And I left. hahahaha

coco

I'd like to take up the subject of lucid dreaming so I've started this thread.

My sense of smell is very sensative unfortunately. I can smell an old lady drowned in perfume a mile away. Seriously, I can't breath if I'm next to one. That's just an example but its like that with alot of smells, that's why i'm so fond of Vanilla scented anything...because its a nice, gentle sweet smell...if this makes any sense.

Anyways, its good to see i'm not alone in this. Very interesting stories....some far exceed what I would imagine people would or could dream about. Makes me want to do some research, for some odd reason I find this all extremely fascinating.

MJ

My dreams are always real at least when I remember them. I haven't remembered them for quite a while. Dunno what changed. Wish I still remembered them. I know I still dream because I remember waking up and thinking about the dream I had. I just can't remember what the dream was.

When I was younger I would actually become confused because I remembered doing things I hadn't done. Occasionally, homework . Heh even the first dream I remember felt real and included color small, touch, etc, but was in a less real setting. I was in a cave except it was warm and there was some light. I remember walking over to a crack in the wall that light was coming out of and hearing and feeling my heart beat. Some old man was standing next to me and tells me I've been given my heart. Heh I had a psychologist once tell me this was a womb dream but I think he was full of it . As I got older my dreams took on more realistic details like physics and people that acted like themselves in real life. I did still dream of doing slightly impossible things (like flying) but always with some premise as to why it worked. Still with complete detail and almost none of the dream shifting some people talk about.

I'm not sure about the connection with having really good senses. My sense of touch seems to be slightly above average. we did those pin prick tests in elementary school and while I couldn't tell when it was two pins close together any better than others, nobody ever managed to make it light enough that I didn't know I'd been touched and I always knew when they were going to because I could feel the heat coming off of their hands. My eyesight sucks . Had glasses for a while but they weren't worth it. My hearing isn't particularly sensitive but I can hear higher frequencies than most. My sense of taste is average. My sense of smell is average or below.

Personally I think there might be a connection with how hard I sleep. I'm pretty much impossible to wake up. If you do something really bad like dump water on me then usually I'll wake up. but even then you'll probably just put me on autopilot, something like sleepwalking. That's usually what happens one someone manages to force me awake. I'll get up, act reasonably normal if sleepy, and then go back to sleep. When I wake up later I have no idea I was ever up unless they tell me. I've never managed to remember anything from that sort of state. I got mono my freshman year of college and slept a lot. Since then I not only sleep hard but I can sleep anywhere at any time for any length of time. That's also about when I stopped remembering my dreams.

I have had way too many vivid dreams to go into all of them here. I dream every night and remember most of them. I hear, touch, taste and smell everything that is going on in them. Sometimes it is about loved ones that have died, places I have lived, vacations, lovers, friends. I never seem to dream about "out there" things. It's like I am living through my dreams, if that makes any sense at all. What I hate is when I am about to wake up and whomever I am dreaming about fades away and I start to cry. What a wonderful way to start your day, lol.

The one thing that was horrible for my poor parents was that I had massively horrific nightmares from about five years old until ten. I do not remember what they were about, but I would wake up screaming nightly. I am happy that I don't have those kinds of dreams anymore. And for some reason they started and stopped abruptly.

When I was about 12 I had a recurring dream that I was runing down a viaduct and there were people shooting at me, the harder I ran the closer they got. I would see a sign saying dead end then would wake up. Finally one night while having the same dream, I somehow realized it was a dream and tried to take it to the end. I had past the dead end point and came to a wall and found that they were shooting at someone else who lay there with a black mask and a gun in each hand. The dream apparently wasn't about me at all, I was just stuck in the middle of someone elses nightmare.