I love me some dreams and I doubt it's much of a secret as I talk about them pretty frequently.
I dream lucidly, however unlike some people who just have a natural knack for it, I have to work pretty hard in order to keep the ability healthy. If I shift from the routine, my recall slips a bit. Nothing I can't ever pick back up, but it's a night and day difference of remembering 3-4 dreams a night vs maybe remembering pieces of what I dreamed. It's kinda like staying in shape, if you use the ability it'll stay fresh, if you don't it won't and the longer you don't the harder it gets to get back into shape. If anyone would like info, tips, things to read on the like, PM me. I can talk about this sorta thing for days.
While i don't believe that dreams can be used to predict the future (I haven't ever experienced anything that would make me think otherwise) dreams can absolutely be used to understand yourself (something that's much more difficult than people make it out to be). I tend to think of my brain as a highly advanced computer. While a computer will only sit in the corner collecting dust if you don't use it, the things that it can create and do are really awesome if you take the time to learn certain processes.
Probably one of the most defining moments of my life happened in a dream. In it, I learned that I loved who I am.
Now to start the story I'll need to back track a bit. I am a tattooed man but when I dream I never dream that I have tattoos. It's actually a trick I use to figure out if I'm dreaming or not.
This dream was different and it's the only one like it I've ever had. Due warning, it's -really- disturbing but I can promise it'll make sense by the end of it.
[SPOILI]So I dream of walking into the main entrance of the Local VA hospital in my region with a friend of mine. The friend wasn't anyone in specific but the dream represented the character as having a sense of familiar that dreams often do. So the both of us walk into the facility, check in at the front desk. I tell the clerk that I have an appointment and she directs me and my nameless buddy over to the yonder elevator at one end of the atrium. I make my way over, the elevator opens up and seems to be holding 3 other people inside it. We enter and press the button designated by the clerk.
Instead of operating as an elevator normally would, it decides to go down. However just the floor moves and leaves the rest of the elevator, walls and all, behind. This naturally freaks out everyone on the elevator because at this time we're moving on a platform with no walls suspended above a rather deep elevator shaft. This is about where the conventional aspects of the dream end and the dream takes the turn for the weird.
The elevator shaft is a wide one. Wider than any functional elevator could support. While the platform was standard sized, the shaft seemed to be about 20 square feet by 20 square feet. As we decended, the shaft was lit by a dim red strobe sort of effect that bathed the shaft in an eerie light. The walls of the shaft were covered in blood and globed bits of remains that were so real they still turn my stomach a bit to think about. Along the wall, open doors were littered around the shaft that seemed to lead to long hallways of distorted hospital like settings. At the ends of those hallways were individuals doing things to terrible things to patients of which I won't go into. I can see these things happen, I can hear them happen, I can smell them happen.
Needless to say, everyone on the elevator platform is horrified. While we continue to decend, I'm doing everything I can to try and calm everyone down so no one is accidently knocked from the platform. The people start to get a hold of themselves until the situation gets worse.
A click rings out in the shaft and several dozen or so of these complex mechanical servo arms spider out from the base of the platform. The arms surround us and I can see on the end of each arm is a single tattooing machine vibrating away. The arms begin to descend towards us and panic begins to overwhelm the party. At this point I'm doing everything I can to try and keep these people calm. I tell them it'll be alright, that it'll can't kill them and that the process will only sting, that they have to keep calm and it will be over soon enough.
The servo arms finally descend upon us and I watch these things scribble the words "NEVER DONE" In jagged letters again and again and again over my already tattooed body. I can feel the needles as they run against my skin and I can hear the voices of the rest of the party scream as it goes along. Still, I continue to call out to them and tell them it will be alright. The Servo arms work their way up to the base of my neck and begin to press against my face. Unlike the rest of my body, they press much harder this time. So much so that they physically dig into my skin and begin to flay me alive.
I feel this demonic, evil machine pull my face off and as I'm laying there bleeding I can hear the rest of the party direct every ounce of hate, pain, malice, and contempt from the whole situation direct their fury at me. They blame me for their place here, that it's my fault for telling them it was going to be okay. That I lied to them. That I failed them. I know none of these things are true, but it really hits me hard how quickly those people turned to blame and cast fingers. It's here that the first part of the dream fades out to the cries of the now faceless party.
Then everything changes. The elevator opens back up at the top of the shaft and I'm standing in the darkened remains of a very twisted version of the building I had walked into. Under my arm was the friend I had entered the building with, terrified but with me and unharmed. I had a sense about me that was different. Empowered somehow. I dunno if I was armed, or had superpowers or what, but something changed the whole situation that made me 'bigger' than anything that was there in the dream.
We stepped out of the elevator back into the main atrium of the building that had been corrupted in a similar fashion as the shaft. We walk past the main desk and I see this demonic, blood drenched corruption of a nurse crawl on all all fours over the desk slowly like a spider. She tells me "Blame not the regents of this place for what we have done. We're only doing our job."
I glare her down so much that she backs away and offers me the door to leave the building. I take my friend and make my way towards the exit.
I hear the nurse shuffle behind me as she pulls a dagger from somewhere and throw it at me. I know it's coming, but I don't make any attempt to dodge it. I wake before it hits me.
Or at least I think I do. I wake up to one of those 80's horror movie style dreams where I wake up to the evil things face right in front of mine as it screams at me, WHICH THEN wakes me up really really.[/SPOILI]
Now despite how crazy fucked up the dream was, this really bugged me for a few hours as I tried to figure out what the hell my mind was on in those hours of sleep. I hadn't had anything that even resembled a nightmare in ages, and the nature of the dream was just so incredibly different. To date I've never had anything that hit me as being that realistic and still to this day I can remember intricate details of the dream, what people were wearing, how the rooms were set up, what color the walls were, the texture of those walls and the like.
I thought really hard on the whole progression for about an hour before I left my room. At that point this realization hit me in the face like a wet blanket.
My mind just created the most physically grotesque situation it could psychologically muster, and then told me I was bigger than it.
The realization was incredibly empowering. That dream was probably what got me so into dreaming, lucidity and the interpretation there of.
