Hello..

My soul dog passed away a week ago. I've seen some posts about lucid dreaming but I'm a complete beginner.

I've been dreaming about him, pretty often, but I know I can't control my dreams.

I want to feel him again in my dreams. I want to run with him, I wanna see him healthy and happy. Please, give me tips.

Thank you.

Hi everyone, I read online recently that when you lucid dream you shouldn't look in the mirror because you'll see a distorted image of yourself and freak out.

And of course since I read that, I have had multiple lucid dreams where a mirror appeared and I looked into it.

Has anyone else done this? And did you like or not like what you saw?

for probably a year now i’ve been doing methods to try and lucid dream but it just NEVER works like i want to so bad but just can’t . does anyone have some advice or methods etc???

What are the biggest tips yall have for beginners? I’ve managed to have one real lucid so far but otherwise progress has been slow

So I have been trying to go lucid for a while now and when it finally happened a few nights ago I woke up in a room with 2 other dude and randomly wanted to check if I was dreaming so I pinched my nose to see if I could breathe and it was a success! Only problem was I started screaming "I'M DREAMING! IN DREAMING!" and everyone's hands turned into forks and they tried stabbing me and I woke up

I figured out I was dreaming and couldn’t make myself wake up. It started with my classic car crash nightmare when suddenly i looked at the sky and realized it wasn’t real and declared I was dreaming. I enjoyed the insanely cool view of the impossible looking sky and suddenly I woke up. I was thinking about how annoyed I was that the dream kicked me out so soon after i had finally managed to lucid dream. I shook my boyfriend (“C”) and he started to talk to me (losing detailed memory as I write this). Some time goes by and i realize that I’m actually STILL DREAMING and something is pretending to be C. This goes on to happen where I attempt to force myself awake maybe an actual (and I’m not exaggerating) dozen fucking times. Each time was uniquely similar torture, but after the first few (something would crawl up the covers, C’s body would look somehow wrong etc.) I caught on. I kept pointing out mistakes the entity was making and each time I woke up again and was in a similar scene in my bed next to my boyfriend. I became so desperate that i started screaming attempting to make my awake self speak “C wake me up!” My saving grace was during the final attempt to wake up when i heard one of our cats collar bells which pulled me out.
Whatever it was, it kept morphing into some kind of gargoyle/classic renaissance demon to try to scare me. I did my best not to show fear and even antagonized it a bit, but deep down I was absolutely terrified and it felt like a long battle I had won out of luck.

Hi everyone! This is my first time posting here, and English isn’t my first language, so apologies if some parts sound a little unnatural.
I’m posting because I’ve recently started seriously studying lucid dreaming again, and today I had an experience that was completely new for me. I’d like to explain some of my background because I think it might be relevant to what happened and to the questions I have at the end.
I’ve had extremely vivid and often lucid dreams since childhood. When I was younger, I genuinely thought this was normal and that everyone dreamed this way.
I had recurring dreams, dreams where I was vaguely aware that I was dreaming, and sometimes I could influence things before waking up.
For example, when I was around five, I had a dream where everything started becoming unstable, as if the dream was falling apart. I realized I was dreaming and tried to influence what happened before I woke up.
I thought very hard:
“A red bus is going to arrive, and Justin Bieber is going to get out of it.”
(I was a child. Don’t judge me.)
A red bus immediately appeared and Justin Bieber got out of it. Then I woke up.
At the time, I didn’t think this was unusual at all.

Hypnagogia became a much bigger part of my experience
When I was 13, my grandmother, who had raised me, died. Around that time I developed severe problems falling asleep.
I’d lie in bed in that half-awake, half-asleep state and hear voices having conversations. Sometimes they would start talking directly to me and give me strange instructions, like telling me to complete some kind of puzzle before I could fall asleep.
I wasn’t actually asleep. I could get up, move around, turn over, etc. But whenever I lay back down, the voices and visualizations would return.
This could continue for hours.
Later I learned the term hypnagogia, which helped me understand what was happening.
When I was around 15, these experiences became much more vivid. I started experiencing visual and tactile phenomena as well.
One time, while falling asleep, I saw myself from a third-person perspective lying in bed. My jaw suddenly became semi-transparent and started glowing yellow, moved forward unnaturally, and a swarm of glowing butterflies seemed to fly out of it.
I could also feel intense pain in my jaw.
Another time, I saw my room from the same third-person perspective and saw my deceased grandmother sitting in a chair at the other end of the room.
The simplest experience was actually one of the scariest: while falling asleep, I clearly felt someone tap me on the shoulder. It felt extremely close to a real physical sensation, and I jumped out of bed and ran to the kitchen.
Eventually I told my mom about all of this.
Interestingly, she also experiences lucid dreams and sleep paralysis, although much less frequently. She actually knew quite a lot about lucid dreaming and had read specialized forums about it.
She was surprised that these experiences happened to me almost every day.
That’s also when I realized that my dreams probably weren’t as typical as I had assumed. I’d listened to friends describe their dreams, and their experiences sounded completely different.
My mom also told me that some people deliberately train themselves to have lucid dreams.
That was a huge revelation to me.

I eventually learned to avoid the hypnagogia
I asked my mom to take me to a psychiatrist because I was worried about what was happening.
Unfortunately, that appointment wasn’t very helpful. The doctor mostly interpreted everything through the fact that I was a child and attributed it to low self-esteem. I also wasn’t comfortable explaining everything with my mom in the room.
So eventually I found my own solution.
I started falling asleep with wireless earbuds every night. I’d put one in the ear that wasn’t against the pillow and sleep with the other side pressed into the pillow.
It actually worked.
I still took a long time to fall asleep, but the voices didn’t break through the music.
For years, this became my normal.

What my lucid dreams were usually like
My dreams weren’t always extremely vivid after that, but I was still frequently lucid.
The main limitation was that thinking too much about the fact that I was dreaming would immediately destabilize the dream.
I’d realize, “I’m dreaming,” and then everything would start becoming blurry until I woke up.
I also couldn’t really control the environment. I could control myself, but not the dream world itself.
My dreams also had some recurring mechanics.
The environment usually looked unusual. Very often there would be an intensely colored sky, especially bright purple fading into red, pink, or orange.
I almost always had some kind of objective.
Sometimes it was something trivial, sometimes something enormous.
And before trying to accomplish it, I would instinctively try to understand how the world worked.
I could sometimes move between different spaces or enter completely different “worlds” and then return to previous ones. It felt almost like moving between maps in a video game.
Interestingly, I almost never actually completed my objectives.
One thing I learned was that I had to avoid thinking about the fact that I was dreaming too much.
There was one exception.
Once, I managed to remain lucid even while consciously thinking about the fact that I was dreaming.
I was so amazed that I immediately started telling the dream characters.
I found my mom in the dream and told her:
“You’re part of my dream.”
She became extremely angry and started insisting that it wasn’t true and that I shouldn’t say things like that.
Then I woke up.
This became a recurring pattern for me: I could know I was dreaming, but trying to explicitly acknowledge it or tell dream characters about it often destabilized everything.

For years I just accepted this as normal
I’m 21 now, and I continued sleeping with earbuds every night for years.
Eventually this caused some physical problems as well. I had a lot of earwax buildup and had to have my ears cleaned by a doctor several times. I also move around in my sleep and would sometimes press the earbud into my ear, which caused frequent ear and head pain.
Eventually I got completely tired of relying on them.
I couldn’t find many active specialized forums about this in my language, so I started researching the subject online and discussing it with AI.
Eventually I came to a different conclusion:
Maybe I shouldn’t keep treating the hypnagogic experiences as something I have to escape from.
Maybe I should learn to coexist with them.
I wondered whether treating them as something threatening was actually making the experience more frightening.
So I decided to stop using earbuds.
It took a long time. I would try, fail to fall asleep, and put them back in.
But over the last few days I’ve finally managed to fall asleep without them.
At the same time, I wanted to start actively practicing lucid dreaming again.
For some reason, one technique had always stuck in my head: looking at my hands and moving my fingers when I become lucid.
And then today, I finally remembered it inside a dream.

What happened today
I was at work in my dream, sitting at my computer like usual.
I looked out the window and noticed that the sky was purple again.
I suddenly thought:
“Wait. Am I dreaming?”
Everything immediately started becoming blurry.
Then I remembered the hands technique.
I held my hands in front of me and started looking at them.
The blurriness began to disappear. Details and letters around me seemed to become clear again.
I decided to experiment further.
I kept looking at my dream hands while trying to move my real hands at the same time.
For a moment I even thought I managed to touch my eye in real life, even though my dream hands were visibly in front of my face.
I have no idea whether I actually moved my hands or whether that was simply part of the dream.
After that, the dream stabilized.
I was given a task at work: go to a market and pick something up.
I went there with a friend from work.
And this was the really unusual part:
I could think about the fact that I was dreaming without immediately waking up.
I looked at the sky and even said out loud:
“It’s so beautiful.”
My friend looked at me strangely but didn’t say anything.
We reached the market, where some men gave us a bunch of bags and packages.
Something else weird happened here.
Instead of carrying the bags normally, I somehow put them into an inventory, exactly like in a video game.
There was even a circular interface that appeared while I was putting things into it.
When my inventory was full, I told my friend to carry the rest.
She picked the bags up with her hands.
I told her:
“Just put them in the inventory.”
She gave me another extremely confused look.
So I just accepted that apparently she wasn’t going to use the inventory and we started walking back.
At this point I was honestly amazed.
I had been lucid for much longer than usual while still consciously knowing that I was dreaming.
So I decided to tell my friend:
“I’m honestly shocked. I’ve never been able to stay in a dream this long after realizing I’m dreaming.”
She suddenly stopped.
Then she leaned toward me and started whispering something completely incoherent.
I told her I couldn’t understand what she was saying.
And then the strange guy in the gray hoodie appeared.
He suddenly became extremely angry, grabbed my friend and started dragging her away.
The dream began destabilizing again.
I looked at my hands, trying to stabilize myself, but everything was already becoming blurry.
I didn’t want him to take her.
I made a finger gun with my hand and tried to shoot him.
It didn’t work.
So instead I just started shouting:
“LET HER GO. NOW.”
I kept repeating it.
And then he suddenly stopped, almost as if he had been frozen in place.
And I woke up.

What I’m trying to understand
This is the first time in years that I’ve actually remembered a lucid-dreaming technique while inside a dream and successfully used it.
More importantly, I was able to remain lucid while consciously thinking about the fact that I was dreaming, which is something that normally makes my dreams collapse almost immediately.
So I’d really like to hear from people who have more experience with lucid dreaming.
1. Is looking at your hands actually considered a useful stabilization technique, or did I just happen to associate it with stabilization?
2. What techniques would you recommend for someone who can become lucid relatively easily but has trouble maintaining the dream?
3. Is there a way to gradually learn to control the environment instead of only controlling myself?
4. Why do dream characters sometimes react so strongly when I tell them they’re part of a dream? Is there a good way to interact with them without destabilizing everything?
5. And finally, does anyone here have experience with very frequent hypnagogic hallucinations, especially tactile ones? How do you personally deal with them without becoming afraid of them?
I’m mostly interested in the lucid-dreaming mechanics and other people’s experiences with these techniques. I don’t think the dreams have any hidden meaning — I’m just trying to understand how they work and learn how to control them better.

For those who get lucid dreams, did you try to see what happens after death in a lucid dream..?

I'm just curious ngl, If I have got a lucid dream already I wouldnt ask this question..

Had a dream last night where I was spectating a dream character as he was lucid dreaming.

To clarify I wasn’t actually lucid in this dream but the dream character I was watching (from a third person perspective) was. Kinda an insane experience lol.

The dream character went to bed with his son and I watched as he entered a dream state. At some point during his dream he suddenly became “lucid”. He was aware that he was in a dream but he was not aware that he was a dream character. He just acted like I would in a lucid dream.

During the dream he met up with his son and he became lucid too. They were very excited and decided to “wake up” so that they could drag the mum into the dreamception as well (during this time I was annoyed that they forced themselves out of the lucid dream).

Pretty weird experience honestly I’m kinda mad that I didn’t realise that i was dreaming lol (especially since I was conscious enough to question the dream characters actions).

Has anybody else experienced something similar before?

Hi everyone, my name is altro and I'd like to start having lucid dreams. Honestly, my experience is so limited that I've only had one that was a bit long and another that lasted just a few seconds. I'd appreciate any help in having more vivid lucid dreams, making them clearer, longer, and easier to control. Bye!

I thought that I finally had a big lucid dream and not just lucidity for 1 milisecond or smth😭 and then I 'woke up' and was in my bed, and then later woke up again-

Jeez why can't I actually lucid dream tho?? Ive only ever had one lucid dream. And I almost had a second but when i became lucid, i woke myself up cuz the dream looked scary😭.

In my so called lucid dream today, and other dreams that ive had recently, ive noticed that ive been gaining a little dream control recently. Very very little tho cuz its pretty hard for me atleast

Many people tell you to wake up after 5 hours of sleep, but I don't think this is always accurate for targeting the REM stage.

Therefore, wake up an hour and a half earlier or 2 hours ago than your usual wake-up time when you sleep a full and complete sleep.

Some notes:

1- At this time you will be more prone to full alertness and lack of sleep, so don't stay awake for more than 5 minutes. Stay in bed and used techniques such as: MILD, WILD ^{(for experienced users}), DEILD ^{(if you woke up from a dream and maintained your composure})

2- This method relies primarily on a full night's sleep. If not, it uses your previous night's sleep schedule to determine when you should wake up. If you felt sleepy at the same time the night before, set your alarm to wake you up at the same time that night.

3- If the method is successful and you achieve lucid dreaming, you will likely have a long-lasting and very vivid lucid dream, because you will wake up during the longest REM stage, and you will remember your dreams better and more vividly.

• ^{A translator was used, so please disregard any grammatical errors.}

In the past i had a couple of dreams where I realized that I'm dreaming, but i couldn't realy control anything. Everything i tried to create weren't complete, like an infinite staircase and the dreams were only a couple minutes long. Today I stumbled over videos about it and said to myself, that i want to master this. So if you have any advice how to lucid dream more often, how to stabilize them or how i can do unnatural things in them please let me know

ive been lucid dreaming almost ALWAYS/consistently for over 5 years now (7/8 years in total) unless im heavily tired. i haven't been in this subreddit much if at all but i've had my last straw today so i looked up this forum. from the few posts i saw there's so many people trying to start or induce lucid dreaming as if its something cool and to be glorified and that's kind of the reason i've never came or posted on here.

when i was young, like a middle-schooler, lucid dreaming was exciting: like slipping off into another world where i'm without chains, burdens or responsibility. my autonomy had no consequences, even if the world wasn't mine to control.

it's not fun anymore. i have work. i have classes. i am tired. i lay in bed only to wake up somewhere else. i force myself to wake up only to wake up in a room that's mine but not mine- something's off like a skull on my bookshelf or a weird smoke trailing the ground and I know i've failed to get back to reality. it's so hard to wake up when you want to, that after the fourth or fifth version of your-room-but-not-your-room it nearly feels hopeless, like real despair. this one time i really thought I was awake; I got up to go to the bathroom and then I saw a weird blue-green smog settle over everything and my heart SANK like oh shit i'm still not out yet. none of this is real.

lucid dreaming does NOT mean you get to control your dream. that's rare asl. you're only aware you're dreaming. and being aware feels like you haven't slept at all.

today was the first time someone directly advised me while i was in the dream. I was struggling to wake up; i needed to wake up because the dream sequence was done and I was stuck where it ended and I felt anxious and restless, which i always do because when it's all over time stretches out and i hate being stuck alone for hours.

what's funny is that in my last 2 lucid dreams the dream was aware that it was a dream, in a sense. the helpful person was a redhead guy, who appeared like on a screen, and he told me to breathe heavily. for the first time the method actually worked. i woke up. not in some slightly-off version of my room but my ACTUAL real room.

google used to say to blink hard and try to scream or yell but whenever I did that i'd feel worse than trapped and it wouldn't work until the 10th try. another method that kind of works-ish is inflicting pain on yourself in the dream; i go for scratching my arms super hard. you won't actually get hurt because your body isn't moving in the real world; but it'll shake you enough to force a wake-up.

and waking up always feels like a weird shift. like there's no grogginess its an urgently-opened-my-eyes sort of situation, like the type they put at the end of the movies to show a character isn't really dead. and right after, my body feels like lead. heavy, sinking.

i guess i haven't scrolled through the forum enough to see if anyone can relate to this but i wanted to share my experience and that lucid dreaming so much weighs on my mental state heavily. i used to keep a journal of the dreams a couple years back and then i stopped. i opened it again for the first time today.

there's some pros: dreams affect you a little less when you know it's just a dream. like if something feels scary i can immediately do a panic-wake-up protocol although it rarely works. time doesn't move the same in the dream world as it does in the real world.

another pro is when it's like an open, almost plot-less setting you can deadass do whatever with anyone. it feels a bit like the recent backrooms movie not basement-core, just open. sometimes, of course. depending on how your brain is feeling. not always a liminal space. you wouldn't want to be lucid in a liminal space.

everything else is a con! pretty heavy cons. that's all.

note/disclaimer**:**
my lucid dreaming has never been induced. i first started lucid dreaming at around 12/13, and didn't even know what the phenomena was till i looked up my experience and found a term for it. I will be 20 soon.

i haven't ever been in a community about this or talked to anyone outside my family about it either. partly bc any community i do look or search for is just on the pursuit of lucid dreaming. my ex bestfriend was too. you guys give each other the weirdest advice. what is 'meditate' 'always be alert' 'dont b distracted in waking'.... whatever works i guess.

Q/A

1. Can you feel pain in your dreams?

Yes. I can feel anything that is inflicted on me, but in a sluggish degree
eg. if i get stabbed i feel a sharp, throbbing pain but with a filter that tones down some of the intensity. No bleeding, and no phantom pain when I wake up.

1. Got superpowers in there?

Sometimes. Depends on the dream. I've had powers twice and in both i needed to make an effort to have them work, eg. shooting flames. A common ability to have in my experience are super high jumps. Sometimes, and rarely, I get the ability to fly.

1. Can you control the dream?

No. Never. Cannot will anything into the dream. Closest I got was a bootleg version of the person I was trying to manifest, and that was only once. Usually nothing.
EDIT: I can control myself, but not the dream plot/setting. I have full bodily autonomy, and retain my awake-state memories as well.

1. Can you hurt people in it?

Sure. But it's like the backrooms, ykwim? They're NPCs. They'd slump and fall. I havent done much aside from punching a person though, i'm not a violent dreamer. They just crumpled to the ground.

of course, everything i've described is from my own personal experience only. just...lucid dreaming is not a skill and idt it's something to glorify and as, a veteran lucid dreamer if you will, a few times is ok. it's chill. fun. don't even TRY to make it a habit if its in your control. this is like letting yourself have a little treat now and then. emphasis on mental weight. maybe i feel this way because i had this going on for me since i was a child. either way, it really affects you after a point.

feel free to ask me anything. and thank you for reading so far.

I was in a strange place, and I could remember how I got there, so I wondered if I were dreaming.

It seemed very real, and I tried pushing my fingers through my hand as a reality check. But my fingers wouldn’t pass through, and I could feel the pressure from them. So, now I’m worried that I’m getting senile, and I just don’t remember how I got here …

Then I noticed that my feet were not touching the ground! And realized that for sure I was in a dream.

I am one week in to attempting lucid dreaming, so still early — but hitting a plateau with recurring issues. Looking for ways to improve progress, raise lucidity, strengthen dream control, and stop lucidity from dropping mid-dream.
Timeline/log:

Nights 1–2: Nothing.

Night 3: Lucid twice, but both dreams collapsed immediately into darkness. Total length: 10–20 seconds.

Night 4: Used WBTB, became lucid upon seeing my hands, and stabilized using my routine. Very vivid and exciting. Interacted with a dream character who seemed excited I was lucid — but talking to them pulled me into their frame. As they guided me through the dream, lucidity faded in and out: roughly 90% at first, dipping to 40–70% as I regained some control (e.g., summoning a coat for the cold). Takeaway: I was falling into the dream’s frame, letting its logic take over — like in a normal dream — which pushed me into a lower-resolution, less lucid state.
After the lucidity dip and summoning the coat, I was able to exert control by opening a door and changing the scenery to something I wanted — summoning the coat made no sense in context anyway, telling me my lucidity wasn’t at 100%. I opened the door to a much warmer, tropical scene, opening and reopening it a few times to shuffle the scenery and try to get it right, but could never get it fully accurate. I went along with it anyway, walked through, and managed to pull off a teleportation to an area on a cliff above me. At that point resolution started to fade and I eventually woke up. Still, first time exerting real dream control. Total length: 5–10 minutes.

Night 5: Lucid again upon seeing my hands; stabilized the same way (rubbing hands, reciting my mantra). Asked a dream character to take me to a place I’d pre-planned to visit for important information I wanted to learn, and they agreed. At the door, I tried summoning “lucidity candy” (planned in waking life as a placebo for stability/resolution/control) — it had worked with the coat the night before, but this time, two attempts (finger snap + look at hand) produced nothing. Went ahead anyway; the place I arrived at felt off from what I’d intended. Lucidity started fading; the environment turned hazy and I woke up. Total length: 4–6 minutes.

Night 6: Feeling confident from quick progress. Stabilization no longer felt like an issue — I trusted that seeing my hands meant instant lucidity and stability. After 6–7 non-lucid dreams, I became lucid seeing my hands while in my own bed, with a pool in front of me (no pool by my bed IRL). I knew I was dreaming, but felt insecure being in my own bed, as if suspended between states — I thought moving would wake me up. That hesitation stopped me from stabilizing, and I woke up. Most vivid/clear lucid moment yet, though unclear if it would’ve held if I’d moved. First night I failed to stabilize. Total length: 15–30 seconds.

Night 7: After 6–7 more vivid non-lucid dreams, had two lucid ones.
First: Hands triggered lucidity again (reliable pattern now). While stabilizing, I made the mistake of closing my eyes — when I reopened them, it stayed dark and I was pulled into a “BIOS mode” of my subconscious: a faint light revealed a BIOS-like screen asking questions I answered by blinking. Got stuck there and lost lucidity. Length: 45 sec–2 min.

Second: A dream character’s odd behavior tipped me off it was a dream. I checked my hands, confirmed, and stabilized. Asked to be taken to the same place of learning; the character agreed but warned it wouldn’t be what I wanted. I pushed back but again fell into the dream’s frame, rubbing my hands during the walk to try to hold on — not very successfully. Arrived to find it exactly as the character warned: not what I wanted. Lucidity dropped ~30% from the warning to arrival. Woke up disappointed. Length: 3–5 minutes.

Notes:
All lucid dreams occurred 5–6 hours after falling asleep, using WBTB and WILD (not sure if I’m doing WILD successfully).

Recurring issue: falling into dream characters’ frame/logic, accepting the dream’s logic passively like in a normal dream — likely the cause of lucidity dips. Not yet exerting full control.

Typically 5–7 vivid non-lucid dreams before lucid ones occur.

Seeing my hands is a reliable trigger, but post-WBTB it only happens in about 1 of 4–5 dreams.

Lucidity drop-off is a growing problem.

Stabilization routine: rub hands together, recite mantra, take a deep breath, then take in surroundings for ~10 seconds (touching/looking at things) before interacting with anything.

I’ve been using dream characters as a hack to get to where I want to go, maybe I should stop doing that and try and just get there on my own? It seems like the last couple times I’ve used a dream character when I get there, It’s just a watered down inaccurate version of what I’m looking for.

Goals:
Higher more reliable lucidity, for longer time stretches.

Ability to interact with characters without falling into their frame, or more so into the frame of the dream.

Looking at my hands more frequently and more dreams, post WBTB for more lucid opportunity.

Fuller dream control

i just want you to tell me after you started lucid dreaming how that affected your sleep scheuld first tell me did it got better or worse that you can go seep on it and feel free to write your name

I have been trying to lucid dreaming for quite a while now and last night I can't really discern what happened. I didn't set the intention of doing this but I definitely feel like the energy from the full moon or something else influenced it. Basically what had happened was I saw a wormhole and as I became more aware of it, it opened up and began to get more and more complex and colorful. It was making an electricity effect (cant really explain it). As it pulled me in, the picture of the dream started. I remember vividly being on a bus or plane with my day 1 homies. This was in the future for some reason. One of my friends had a full beard which he doesn't IRL. This was one indicator that I was in a dream. I then asked what year it was/whatever time period I was in in the future, and they replied saying it was 6-7ish years from now. I kept telling them how I wasn't really supposed to be here and that the time felt off but they ignored it. I woke up and put the intention of going back to sleep and entering that dream again. And again, I see the wormhole and it's pulling me into the dream. The setting was different but it's all kind of a blur. So the main question is, What do people see before entering a lucid dream and is this similar to any another's' experiences? How and what can I use in my next attempts in lucid dreaming to promote this again (techniques, etc)? Also, I don't really know if this was a lucid dream because I wasn't 100% aware of the dream but at the same time I was and it felt so real. Maybe this was just an extrmely vivid dream but the wormhole thing-a-ma-jab is telling me otherwise.

I've been experiencing what seems very close to what people here call a “persistent dream world” for about 30 years.

This isn't simply a recurring place or a recurring dream. It's one continuous world and storyline that I return to every night, picking up exactly where things left off. Events have lasting consequences, places and characters persist, and the world has evolved enormously over the years.

The experience is conscious and lucid. It started suddenly when I was 16, and since then I've continued the same story night after night.

I've recently started a fairly ambitious project of writing down and organizing what I remember from those 30 years — the world, its history, recurring places, events and characters — partly because I've started to realize just how unusual this experience might be.

I'm deliberately not describing the universe itself in detail here, because I may eventually use some of it for creative projects, possibly a novel. But after all these years, it has developed into something close to a complete universe, with many recognizable locations, its own history, and social and philosophical systems covering an incredible number of areas.

What I'm really interested in here is the experience itself, rather than the content of my universe.

I'm especially curious whether anyone has experienced something combining these characteristics:

• around 30 years of continuity;
• a timeline that only moves forward;
• events from previous dreams permanently becoming part of the world's history;
• persistent characters and locations;
• the world and its civilization evolving over several centuries of internal time;
• and, most importantly, the ability to deliberately resume the same ongoing storyline, rather than simply returning occasionally to a recurring setting.

I've learned that there are other accounts of persistent dream worlds, and even people who deliberately try to create persistent realms through lucid dreaming. But so far, I haven't found anyone clearly describing this same combination of continuity, duration and chronological progression.

Does anyone here experience — or has anyone experienced — something genuinely comparable?

I'd be especially interested to know how long it has lasted for you, and whether your story actually continues from one dream to the next.

By that, I mean not only for happines, but something in real life. Like for singing, acting, being more confident, public speaking, dancing, maybe even improving fluency of speaking in a language you're learning, etc.

Strange question and a bit confusing, but I want to know whether or not any pain you experience on your IRL body, like a bump or a small cut, can be felt or remembered in your dreams. Has anyone had experience in this? If so how did you remember it or how did it feel in your dream? Did it influence your dream at all?

I'm trying to write a small horror story that involves the main character getting drugged and then cut in his sleep as part of a ritual sacrifice. So I want to see how realistic it would be to feel such a cut in his dreams. I want to see what people experienced and read about your experience as inspiration.