For as long as I can remember I have always been a very active dreamer. As a child I would have dreams nearly every night, and the highlight of my morning was always excitedly telling my parents about the adventures I had the night before in my dreams. I would tell them of the lands I had traveled to, the people that were there, the role I had played, and every single detail I could remember of what had happened.
In my head, it was as easy recalling a dream as if it were a movie I had seen the night before; I could visualize everything from the dream from who a person was to what color shirt they were wearing and whether or not their shoe was untied. I never suspected this was unusual and figured everyone dreamed this way, and for a while my parents simply thought I was making up a tall tale like most children do for attention.
It was not until I began to have night terrors that my parents realized I was no ordinary dreamer. I would tell them in vivid detail while sobbing about what had happened and would stay up for hours after a nightmare. It was then that they started asking me how I dreamed, not necessarily what I had dreamed about.
I told them about how I could think clearly in my dreams and how I often knew that I was in a dream. I told them how I could clearly use all five of my senses in my dream, and how it was as if I were in a movie given the vivid detail of all that I saw. I then told them how I could sometimes control what happened in my dreams and could change the setting of a dream or the course of action the dream was taking just by thinking and desiring it to be different.
I can only imagine how odd this must have sounded to a parent coming from a mere six-year-old, but after consulting with some family friends who have studied lucid dreamers, they encouraged me to continue trying to control my dreams and to end nightmares before they turn into night terrors.
I then began to really focus on using my head in my dreams, and have gotten to the point that I can change anything I want in a dream, and can simply tell myself to wake up if I ever become uncomfortable in a dream. I was so thankful when the movie Inception came out because it finally gave me a reference to direct people to when trying to explain how I dream, just of course without being the whole secret government agent saving the world thing (even though that would totally be awesome and I volunteer to become one if that ever becomes a thing).
Like in Inception, I am fully aware of the fact that I am dreaming when I am in a dream, and like an architect, I can often set up my dreams to something I want to dream about simply by thinking about it as I'm falling asleep. I can hear and see everything that is going on in my dreams, feel what happens to me, and vaguely smell and taste things in my dreams. I can communicate with and recall people in my dreams, and I can even dream within a dream, which is just as confusing as it sounds. Sometimes I can even see myself in a dream, which is a very surreal experience.
Sometimes when I wake up it's as if I had never fallen asleep because of how hard my brain works as I sleep as a result of being so active during the dream and deep sleep states. With that said, I sometimes just let dreams happen as is, and don't take any measures to try to control them and simply dream as anyone else would, and sometimes I do run into dreams that I simply cannot control.
I honestly love being a lucid dreamer and sharing my dreams with others, often baffling them in the process. Throughout my journey of learning more about how I dream, I have had the privilege of learning how others dream as well, which has furthered my interest into learning more about this phenomenon. I encourage you to share your experiences, stories, and dreams with myself and others through this article, because as we all know, sometimes dreams can be a vivid as reality.
