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Hmmm. Interesting range of experiences here.
For the record, I was well into my teens before I learned that NOT everyone has very vivid dreams in which they can smell, taste, feel, etc, as I and some other folks here do. Almost all of mine tend to be deeply immersed, and no, I have NEVER been able to tell myself in the dream that I'm dreaming! I've tried. I am extremely resistant to hypnosis and so the self-help recordings for lucid dreams and the like don't work for me.
I do also sometimes have third-person dreams, where I'm in the dream as a character -- typically a character I've been writing about. I am aware that I both "am" the character and am also outside them, like being third-person-omniescent, and in those I can sometimes either predict the outcomes or direct them a little; those typically I don't feel "involved" in, more like I'm watching or writing it as it goes. But yeah, the worst ones are the ones which are nightmares that I'm fully immersed in with no way out. And yes, I've also had the "false waking" dreams -- most recently a few nights ago in a really horrible nightmare (posted elsewhere under "What Scared You?"). Rarely those, thank goodness. (Anyone else recall the great fake-waking scene in "An American Werewolf in London"?)
I've only rarely had precognitive dreams; the whole thing runs in my family but has always scared me a bit, and since I couldn't figure out how to fine-tune it I simply shut it off. I admire you, RedPiggy, for keeping it open, whatever it is. (I'm not going to speculate; I just know it's real, and can be useful or horrible.) My Gypsy great-grandma (yes, I did actually have one) was said to have dreamed things that came true frequently, as well as interpreting them for others. I think interpreting others' dreams is ill-advised unless you know the person really well; the so-called "Dream Dictionaries" are nothing but objects of scorn to me. We DON'T all have the same symbols, or the same unconscious or subconscious (sorry, any Jungians here). That said, I do agree with what several of you have posted here about dream reflecting fears, hopes, obsessions...sure. But what any given thing in a dream means is very subjective to the dreamer!
Since I joined here, and started writing like crazy again, I've been having very, very vivid dreams after a long dry spell of either not having, or not recalling them. Curse and blessing both! I could do without, for instance, the nightmare which freaked me out this morning, about my ex wanting to sleep with me again...and then I noticed the little bugs wedged beneath the skin, junebugs, parasites, picked up from their unclean bed. Yeeeeessssh. *shudders* (And NO, I don't do meth, and NO, I haven't seen "Bug" because I knew it would scare me!)
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