Dream content changing over time to become more lifelike, due to LD practice?

[FryingMan]

I was thinking today that my dreams tend to be on the whole more "lifelike" and less "wild/wacky/bizarre" than they were when I started LD practice and recalling my dreams. I'm wondering if this is a result of my self-awareness and daily mindfulness (trying to "catch every dream" by staying vigilant for dream-like signs or qualities, evaluating the "who? what? where?" of my environment/state all throughout the day). In the beginning of my LD practice I seemed to have much more strange dreams, impossible beings & unrealistic locations, now my dreams are mostly just interacting with people in more-or-less realistic environments. (Which makes it a bit harder to notice the dream state if everything is "waking-like"!) My recall has been below my average for a while now, perhaps this is one explanation: my stranger dreams tend to b e in early in the night, becoming more life-like towards morning. And later morning dreams are easier to remember than the earlier ones.... Has anyone else who's been in LD training approaching a year or more noticed a consistent shift in dreaming content over their practice? Or, like recall being variable, does dream content just ebb and flow between the bizarre and the realistic and back again over time?

[MasterMind]

This is what I noticed in the beginning too! My only theory is that before when our awareness wasn't very directed, it was like trying to watch 10 TV channels at the same time, but with practise it gets a little more focused. Also when my mind is stressed out, like alot of tasks that needs to be done or just having worrying thoughts, then my dreams become bizarre and weird. But if I handle these tasks or simply meditate to cleanse my stressed mind, my dreams become more stable and lifelike.

[Queen Zukin]

This is why I love having a 5 year old dream journal on this site. I was looking through my older entries and I noticed that the way I dreamed was different...but that was because I was younger. My dreams are just as bizarre as when I first started recording them five years ago, they are just bizarre in a different way. But, if it were really the case that dreams become "normalized" the longer you practice journaling them, then my dreams should mirror reality by now...and very clearly they don't . My guess is that you're just going through a phase of "less wacky" dreams. They craziness always comes back.

[FryingMan]

My guess is that you're just going through a phase of "less wacky" dreams. They craziness always comes back. Bingo....I've had some real humdingers recently: wild and wacky just like in "the good old days." Evil valleys with millions of purple tendrils, white-robe-clad superbeings forcing me to play Mary Had a Little Lamb on the clarinet, people on spaceships who are holographic projections, creepy vampire babies, etc.