Dreams, Dreaming, etc.

Hi everyone, I made a community specifically for lucid dreaming. If you’re able to control some aspects of your world in the dream state you are welcome. https://discuss.online/c/lucid_dreamers If you’re able just to recall dreams and you experience them unaware that is a dream just stick to this community instead.

Those nebulas are called Pillars of Creation, picture taken by JWST.

Last night, I had not one but two dreams in a row that I swear I had already had years ago.

1: I was starring in a Criss Angel film as Criss Angel himself and doing some act high up in the air. I resemble Criss Angel zero percent, nor can I achieve his mannerisms.

2: I was lost in a vast auditorium setting while a show was going on. I had gotten up to do something, and when I went to find my seat again, I lost my way and kept walking around aimlessly.

Sometimes during a car ride when I'm in the passenger seat, tired, and there's no conversation going on, I close my eyes and let my thoughts wander.
I also tend to focus on sounds, things I feel and also whether I can recognize where we are approximately by the car's movement and the lighting through my closed eyes. It's kind of a habit I've taken with me from experimenting with some meditation that I still do when just relaxing for a bit.

Occasionally, I drift off to imaging some stuff, like continuing a conversation or a scene of a story I just thought about, taking a walk somewhere or other simple things like that.
I'm still aware of everything else around me, just that my focus is more on my imagination process. Usually I also ponder when to open my eyes again to check whether my location estimation is correct.

Just recently, I was imagining a conversation between two people, one advising the other on some matter they had a discussion about. I kinda slipped more into the role of the "teacher", while still also thinking about how the "student" would react.
The scene was sort of visible, yet not like a true dream.
At the same time, I noticed a shadow passing over us (the car), and thought to myself "oh, so we just passed the bridge", while continuing the internal conversation.
A bit later, after some turns, I wanted to confirm if my guess about our location was correct and opened my eyes in the middle of the conversation.

My guess was correct, and I tried to remember what I just thought of, as it seemed like I was at the verge of falling asleep. All details I just had in my mind a moment before were gone. All I could remember was that one person explained something to another, and that just barely.
Any content of the conversation I just held has vanished, no idea about the topic, what relationship the people had, how old they were or what they looked like.

That's the usual thing that happens, though I rarely remember anything at all other than it was kinda fun and that I'd like to continue, but can't.

A "deeper" kind of daydreaming

I enter my son's room because I heard talking, meaning he isn't going to sleep.

When I go in, I find his cousin there, who won't stop laughing. I grab his arm and ask him why he is there, and I realise there is no way he could be there. I angrily yank his arm and demand he tells me how he is here, why he is here, but he just keeps laughing.

I hear ragged breathing from my son, like he is struggling to breathe or being choked, and I turn back to see his head and shoulders covered in a dark shadow. I let go of his cousin and rush towards my son, and the shadow leaps onto my face making the world completely dark.

I wake up breathing quickly.

Part 1: I was with friends discussing a book that we all enjoyed. Then I was in a house, and I realised that the book was connected to the house. A deep tunnel was being dug, to find something. We were going to find the tunnel. I walked into the other room to light the fire. I picked up the piece of coal to put in the fireplace. It was shaped like the head of an animal. It appeared to be possessed by some malevolent spirit. People were worried about the spirit, but I was antagonistic, and went hunting to find it. Then I can remember entering a large concrete building. A big hairy creature was standing at an opening, trying to fix some clockwork mechanism with chains. He complained that I had made things difficult for him, the chains weren't aligning. He then finally got a large weight attached to a chain to an opening, and let it go, and it started dragging the chains as it slid out.

Part 2: I went outside, and saw the chains had started to pull a surface of lead out. I was on top of a long concrete slope, but now the surface was covered in lead. It was like fast flowing liquid metal, except it was solid. I could walk on it, but every second it was changing, appearing to be a river of metal. I enjoyed running down the slope, and up the sides of the walls as the metal flowed over them. I reached the bottom, and was with 2 people: my brother and our close friend. We followed a river until we came to a dam made of terraced stone blocks. It was quite well made, and obviously for people to enjoy walking beside. But we had noticed that the river had been flowing towards the dam, and from the pool at the bottom, small trickles were running up the hill to the top of the dam. My friend commented that 'if you found water that behaved that way, wouldn't you build something to try to stop it?' And it seemed this new fancy stone dam was built on top of an ancient structure.

Part 3: We continued walking and at the top of the dam we were in a forest. I split off from the group and noticed in the trees, there were hanging bunches of raspberries. I ate one, and it was delicious. I yelled to the others to try them too, and then noticed that all sorts of different delicious looking berries were hanging down, some even looked and tasted like gummy worms. And then I found the book on the ground, that I mentioned earlier. Things seemed very bad. I ran back over to my friend, who was then acting crazy, and was trying to eat a plastic bag. He tried to brush me off when I tried to get him to stop. I grabbed him by his head and I could see his eyes didn't look right. I told him "I love you bro, I wouldn't be telling you to do this if it wasn't deadly serious. You have to snap out of it. trust me!" And he seemed to understand, and took the plastic out of his mouth.

Part 4: Then we walked out of the forest and found ourselves in a room, like a small cafe with windows where we could see the street. Me and my brother were there, and our friend was seated at a table, with a collection of odd things arranged in a specific way. Things like, stones, leaves, half a walnut shell. And there was a woman, she had black hair. She said "and now the last part. A close friend makes 2 brothers realise they have betrayed each other." and the friend moved two objects on the table into different positions. "it's done." he said. And then I realised, that this has all happened before. We had been manipulated again into completing their ritual.

Final part:

I started to cry and panic a bit, and I yelled at the two of them: "We have been trying to escape but they keep bringing us back here!" The woman told my brother and my friend, "It's not a good idea to look at the sky." But I knew what was there, and I told the other 2 they should look and see for themselves. Outside the world had changed, there was different technology, strange vehicles, and people dressed very differently. Covering most of the sky above us, there was a huge eye, surrounded by dark brown fur. It was watching the world, while everyone tried to avoid it's gaze. And as I looked out the window, moving just enough to glimpse the edge of the eye, I knew I didn't want it to see me.

So, I've been writing down my dreams for quite a while.
I usually write short notes on a piece of paper right after waking up (provided I remember the dream well enough) and then write it in a book some later time so I can focus more on getting all the descriptive details in.
For each dream I also write down a title at the beginning so I have a sort of table of contents. I'm mostly able to remember what dream it is by looking at the title as it's something that stood out in that dream or because it's the general theme of the dream.
A few days ago, I wanted to look up one of my dreams to confirm something. I found it right away as the first entry, confirmed what I wanted to and then looked through the other titles for nostalgia's sake.
That's when I noticed one title simply saying "Nightmare" on page 111. Nothing else. I was kinda amused, wondering what kind of nightmare it had been for me to only write down this one word. I was like "Oh let's take a look at that, I wonder what kind of horror that was. Some emotional terror? Some jumpscares?"
When I got to the entry, I only read the first sentence and immediately recalled the whole dream. My first reaction was to look away from the booklet, closing it and exclaiming "Oh fuck no. Why...". It wasn't any emotionally painful dream or jumpscares but rather the kind of silent dread that something is very much not right and that I'm in grave danger, then people acting weird and getting threatening.
I was kinda amused after accidentally remembering it, though I was actually somewhat frightened then, or at least more alert, like after watching a horror movie.
It didn't help that I did that just before going to bed and I was kinda laughing at and cursing myself for naively checking the entry simply titled "Nightmare", probably to avoid myself casually remembering it.
Or maybe I was like "Hey I bet I can make myself remember this some time because I'll be too curious to find out what this obscure title means."

What’s yours? I have two short ones that just seem to repeat all night.

In the first, I’m a child and a bee flies into my hair, exploding into a thick goo. I run around my parents bed, screaming until it goes away, and another bee flies into my hair.

In the second, I’m a ghost on Davy Jones’ ship. Everything is green like the ghost pirate in SpongeBob, and set up like an old Donkey Kong game. I have to balance on beams and jump over barrels and past pirates trying to cut me in half. I’ve never “won” the game unfortunately.

ETA: I’ve been having these dreams for 20+ years