When we dream in our sleep, we experience events, feelings and thoughts just as we do in waking life. In a first-person dream, we engage in these events from the perspective of our own senses, perceiving them in the same manner as we would when awake—seeing through our eyes, hearing through our ears, touching with our hands, thinking with our minds. The decisions our dream minds make seem to control the behavior of our dream bodies, just as our real minds do in waking life. First-person dreams can be very vivid; and more to the point, they can be very realistic. When having one, we might actually think the events are really happening. (Hence the powerful emotional effect of night terrors, causing us to bolt awake with heart pounding and a scream in our throat.) Our dream bodies, which are mere images concocted out of what we believe ourselves to be, respond to the thoughts, motives and will of our dream minds, which are also concocted out of what we believe ourselves to be. But it all can feel very real.
Of course, once we awaken, the events dissolve into memories and often disappear altogether. We realize we made the whole thing up.
Most of my dreams at this stage of my life are lucid dreams, to one degree or another. They run the gamut from my simply recognizing I’m dreaming to my taking over the events of the dream entirely, running it the way I want it to go, like a director on a movie set. Seldom do I simply have a dream. Rarely do I just let the dream events run their course, naïvely experiencing them without my conscious self offering some kind of input or insight. And almost never do I fall for the delusion that the dream is somehow “real.” I know I am not the image in my dream, even if it is playing out in first person. I exist outside of that body, which is merely an avatar, a representation, of my waking and True mind.
Certain things in dreams alert me to the fact I’m dreaming. The standard stuff doesn’t work for me anymore: turning on lights, seeing my hands, reading numbers and fine print, flying. I do that all the time. I can even see my face in a dream mirror. I take all of this for granted. As a result, my mind has had to invent other signals, other indications of being in the dream state.
Something out of place always works.
is it possible to dream from another point of view other than your own? that i’m aware or know of i’ve only ever dreamed seeing through my own eyes.
Sometimes I dream in the third person, so that I’m watching myself act in the dream. I don’t think I’ve ever been another dream character, though. Maybe I’ll work on that.
I’ve never dreamed outside my own pov – that I know of. it could be interesting I suppose.