dreams: multilayered and lucid and other ones i noted down

sweet dreams (are made of something but idk what)

This will be a confusing post indeed but I remember in my diary app, one which hasn't seen many entries now that I use Substack to put my thoughts in, there's a couple dreams that I've written post-awakening. It helps that I managed to write them down before falling back sleep, despite reading them back and feeling like I sound insane. I've had a variety of perplexing dreams that Carl Jung would have answers to I assume, but nothing spurs on complex dreams like the first nights using lavender oil which caused a few of these dream diary entries. A common dream I wrote about is not the dream itself but the complexity of layers; that’s to say I've had dreams within dreams, and once or twice a nightmare within a nightmare. Before I started using the diary app in June 2022, I would write them down on my Notes app which are the last couple ones in this.

28th September 2024: The Theatre Production

Now I don't really know what this meant but I have the faintest memory of the concept. Extra note, it should be ‘conscious n complex’ but lil Sharnjit was tired and wanted to go back to sleep before the sleep broke free. The idea that my dreams are manufactured has occurred more than once actually. This one basically was that I was in a dream that was the creation of a theatre company and that dream itself was about a theatre company? I actually don't really know but I think the dream involved ‘real people’ that must have been a Truman-Show-esque use of ‘dream actors’ as extras. Most dreams don't need to make sense and my description of this is like that.

23rd April 2024: The Dream Is Real Life?

I've had a couple strange dreams and this was one of the more horrifying ones. Being in a dream knowingly but having to accept there was no way out is distressing. I think even my mum in the dream was telling me I wasn't dreaming either so I felt like I had to stay stuck and re-evaluate everything. It definitely stressed me after waking up. Very strange.

14th January 2024: The Afterlife

I feel like these sorts of dreams expose the weirdness of dreaming that I used to find interesting that my friends in uni didn't really relate to when I'd talk about it. A *multilayer dream again but this time I guess I entered the afterlife. I don't know what diary entry I'm referring to in this, I suppose it's something I did within the dream itself. I must've met a Creator (Not Tyler the, though) that explained everything to me. A portal back to the real world, which I assume meant being awake, makes sense; there's been things in dreams that I somehow used to awaken myself. One time I even fell asleep in a dream and that woke me up!

10th December 2023: Pure Silence

There's nothing really to say about this. I heard Silence. It was something worth feeling euphoria over.

11th January 2023: Screaming Does Not Help

This one is another in the list of distressing dreams. I screamed so loud and no one was hearing. Is that deep? Probably. I don't read much into dreams so there's the absence of analysis in this post, but this seems like a horrifying way to explain my feelings of living a suppressed life maybe. It was during uni at a time where I was probably still undergoing the impact of apostasy so it might have some links. Or man was just dreaming styll.

18th December 2022: The Dream About The Retreat

The dream must have been so worth writing about that the diary entry already included a title. It's so funny reading it back because I clearly wanted it to sound like a story when I woke up and wrote about it. I did fight and I did win when my suspicions were correct. I dunno what they did when we were asleep but it was more on the sci-fi side of things I hope. Returning back to the dream was interesting though because that doesn't usually happen after I wake up. Thankfully they can't infiltrate any more dreams because it became a puppy shop so phew! But wait what if there's a prequel?

3rd July 2022: Am I A Demon?

A break from using the diary app to write this out because it clearly ruined my night. I was undergoing demonic possession clearly. What made this peculiar was how uncomfortable calling out myself dreaming made me feel. I think there's been another time when I called out myself dreaming to people in my dream and that didn't turn out very well, which is the final dream in this post. This likely was definitely the worst dream I've had. It doesn't even make much sense reading it and I was clearly heavily distressed after waking up especially since I said ‘fucking’ which doesn't come out very often. I didn't scream in my real mirror of course, it was all a dream. A nightmare actually.

23rd June 2022: Hugging Myself As A Child

This isn't a direct dream entry but it was something I remember writing down. I hugged myself as a child in my dream. I am sure of it. I just think the visual itself is strong and I just remember how soft I was to hug. Like there was the gentleness of my child self that urged me to hug and it was felt emotional.

4th June 2022: Convinced I Wasn't Dreaming & Awakening Myself By Force

Another example of people in my dream convincing me I'm not dreaming and it is in fact my normal existence. It really plays with your head during a dream. Especially when it's people you know irl. Waking up after experiencing multiple dreams layers is wild; I used to hear people say you can't read in your dreams but that isn't true because I've done that, so it confusing but there's a definite distinction between dreaming and the real world that I wouldn't be able to properly express. Fun times.

1st May 2022: ‘A Crazy Interesting Dream,’ He Says

Manufactured dreams. It's a common thing for me. I haven't wrote a dream down for ages now but I'm sure I've had one or two like that over the last year. The idea that a dream was to be ‘played’ in order to awake is cool. I don't think it was anything crazy to play. It really did use those optician’s ‘hot-air-balloon-puff-into-eyes’ thing which I actually hate doing during my eye test.

25th March 2022: The First Manufactured Dream

Reading it from 3 to 2 to 1 explains how the levels work in such a layered dream. Whether it really was the first one idk but it was so new to me that it had began a whole series of dream diary entries. The lowest dream layer was just a typical nonsense dream but it ended with a logo popping up. The logo was the company's logo that runs the dream and I learnt more about it. As I said earlier, recognising people in the dream doesn't always work out, like sure ‘Mariah’ was happy to be recognised, but the random dude from a separate dream didn't want me to know. All manufactured. One of the major points in the dream was that when I escaped the dream facility and went through the outside area, I came across people in chains who I was telling like they're not actually free but they didn't believe me. I felt there was a psychological reason for their appearance as in they represented a part of me or something. Maybe. An idea like that hasn't appeared in my dreams since I think. Either way, the idea that my dreams are constructed by some entity is something that became quite common after this.

Suffice to say that explored enough of my dreams. I'm not crazy but it sure did used to feel like I was when I would tell my housemates about some of these dreams I had. Similarly, when I talked about some experiences with meditation it sounded like I was on drugs. The brain be braining idk what else to say.