That's exactly right but as with most posts this one has gotten off track a bit. Waking up inside your dream is a surreal experience and after a while you tend to develop a latent knowledge when you dream that you are aware that you are in a dream. Where it tends to get interesting is when you actively seize control of the dream reality and change it to what you want it to be.

Oh No, just at the point where it starts to get good.

@Surfpirate So I don't feel I'm missing out on the enjoyment, I just do whatever I want the following day. It's worth the long prison sentences.

@Jnei Boy Scout Rule #1 - Don't Get Caught.

Sometimes you can find answers in your dreams, I would often dream solutions to technical problems on the job site. After a while my foreman would ask me if I had dreamed up a solution to whatever snag we were trying to fix that seemed impossible.

@Surfpirate You're fortunate. I don't have good dreams and seldom remember the ones l have. After a hospital stay in the 90's, l was perscribed a sleeping aid, and had the most vived and terrific dreams of my life.

@Sticks48 I've had horrific dreams but the good outweighs the bad and it isn't like I have any choice in the matter. I go to sleep and I am teleported some place else.

@Surfpirate Sleep is something l don't do well anymore. It really sucks. ☺

I have to wonder what other active ingredients are in those patches because anything I have read about dreaming says that nicotine is a blocker of dreams.

@Surfpirate
Good question.. next thing you know, nicotine patches will be the newest street drug known to mess with your mind LOL!

@Sharlee although you have to like the side effects of quitting smoking and exploring your dream state.

@Surfpirate All depends on the dream.. I admit to some rather entertaining scenarios!

My personal sense is that sometimes the subconscious mind is trying to reach us through our dreams as if our higher brain functions are trying to alert our waking mind of issues we need to address.

@Surfpirate
I've got mixed feelings, but don't spend too much time mulling over dreams anymore. I used to, and never found a way for them to fit into my life. Now, on those very rare occasions I remember a dream, I just write it down and leave it at that.

Dreaming is normal but many people do not remember their dreams, there are books on the topic that suggest ways to remember your dreams, some times people block out the memory of their dreams after they have had nightmares in childhood so they don't remember any of their dreams when they wake up, good or bad.

Any de ja vu moments happen regarding that dream yet?

@Surfpirate no. It would be something I would see in the .news, I have had two other dreams the showed things yet to happen in a clear way

@btroje By that do you mean you have had 3 dreams of things to come in the future and 2 of them already have come to pass?
I've had many dreams that later on have happened, right down to the point where I am listening to people talk and I know what they will say before it comes out of their mouths because I recall the dream of it happening, sometimes are clearer than others and most of them don't seem to be earth shattering or world changing except that they are usually important to me.

@Surfpirate yes but I don't monitor my dreams expecting them to portend the future

@btroje Me either but there are times when it suddenly hits me out of the blue 'Oh, I remember this, so and so is going to say this next and the other guy will do this because he wants me to do something else' but I won't go along because I know how it will end.

Sounds like you got an answer but not the one you were hoping for. Was the hooded woman a malevolent force or threatening?

@Surfpirate Neither. Very matter-of-fact. I was just so shocked at not getting an answer that I couldn't handle it and it took me right out of the dream. It was a while before I could get back to lucid dreaming again.

@ThinkKate I had something similar happen when I was young, I was in a flying dream and knew it was a dream but I came to an old barn and a young girl was chained inside as a sacrifice to black blob of a creature that lived in a brass cauldron suspended on chains from the wooden beams of the barn. Since I was in control of the dream I moved to set the young girl free but she didn't want to leave because she had been chosen as the sacrifice and it would save her friends and family in her town from the black blob creature. I could see the red eyes of the blob creature peering at me out of the cauldron and as I was trying to think of a way to solve this dream problem the blob creature took control of the dream and moved me under the cauldron from where I had been standing by the young girl and now I couldn't move. The black blob spilled out of the cauldron above me and landed on my shoulders, so I tried to take back control of the dream from the blob thing but it resisted and the dream became a battle of wills, it finally sank it's 3 clawed talons into my shoulders to keep me from escaping and this was so painful that I immediately woke from my sleep. It took me a long time to go back to lucid dreaming after that experience and I can still feel the points where the yellow talons sank into my shoulders as I recall this dream to you. I would have been in kindergarten so about 5 years old.

@Surfpirate Wow! My memory of my dreams is not nearly as good as yours, but I'm sure I'd remember one like that! Thanks for sharing. Not many monsters or demons in my dreams; i seem to prefer action- adventure; When I used to work 14 - 18 hours a day I would dream about work (probably what gave me high blood pressure and nearly caused me to have a stroke) but that pretty much stopped when I retired. My dreams are more fun now.

@Surfpirate this sounds very similar to how I control my dreams. I even try to explain it to others like I am rewinding a movie like you did. Sometimes I will rewind it over and over to see many different outcomes. I have noticed that my dreams seem to more nightmarish if I'm really hot when I sleep or if the blanket is wrapped to tight around me. Lucid dreaming is great and I'm so glad I can do it.

@McWalsoft I think of it as a whole other part of my life that I would miss out on if my body was inactive for 1/3 of it and I couldn't enter dream state.

Do you ever get recurring dreams that pick up where you left off the night before? I do this sometimes and depending upon the dream I find it very exhausting. I'm a master builder and back in the mid-90's I had a dream that went on for weeks where I was managing the build of a domed stadium in Vancouver, then I would wake up and go to my projects building custom homes on a golf course. By the time I got the retractable roof on and working properly I was exhausted mentally.

@Surfpirate I can't remember any where the narrative picked up the next day, but I have seen venues from the previous night, or even previous week or month, and recognize them. You sound like you need to start dreaming about vacation venues. I can see where having to relive a work scenario when you sleep can be exhausting.

That's interesting because some people I have talked to in the past felt that nicotine and alcohol dulled their dreams and made lucid dreaming more difficult.

@Surfpirate I did not have dreams like this while smoking so perhaps all the other poisons dull that?? So far they are not nightmares but just weird really really vivid dreams.