Thread: Is it normal to be remembering a dream as a thought in nonLD?

Originally Posted by zxechoo09

I had a dream last night where I was back at primary school and the building changed. I remembered in this dream that I remembered them doing construction on this bit of the building. I was completely lost inside this building and it looked exactly like the thought from before.

I woke up and somehow remembered that this thought of construction in my dream I had was a dream I had 1 or 2 years ago during high school. Are you supposed to occasionally have consecutive/linked dreams over a couple of years? And am I supposed to in nonLDs be seeing previous dreams as thoughts?

I get those type of dreams all of time where I'm in school and the building and interior is changed

I've had similar experiences, with odd dream echoes popping up every now and then, but I've never seen a discussion on the topic, much less a definition.

Any one else ever notice this happen to them?

I have had this happen to me several times, but the original dream was never written down. I always wonder if it is just deja vu or if I really did have a similar dream.

It's rare for me, but I have occasionally had a dream days or weeks later that takes on the form of a sequel, continuing a plot from a previous dream. Sometimes I'll remember previous dreams during a dream. I even had two related dreams last night, where in the second one, I thought I was beginning my day and remembered the first one I had earlier and came up with a retroactive guess as to where the first one came from (though that explanation turned out not being applicable in waking life), based on what I experienced in the second (which I failed to realize was itself a dream due to being non-lucid).

I can't remember any instances in which a previous dream showed up in the form of a non-dream thought for me, though, if that's what you mean.

Originally Posted by OneMoreDreamer

I have had this happen to me several times, but the original dream was never written down. I always wonder if it is just deja vu or if I really did have a similar dream.

When I was young, I also had frequent feelings of having had a particular dream before but never had a way to confirm it (I only knew it wasn't among the dreams I had actually recorded). This used to happen so often it would just mystify me. I haven't had a feeling of having had a particular dream before in a really long time, though I sometimes have dreams in which I feel like some action or plot has repeated multiple times, but never with any clear idea of how many.

So there are others who have experienced it.

Can we draw any conclusions about dream memory with this knowledge? It partly seems to me that when we are in a dream we have better access to memories of other dreams. If this statement is true can we infer that our minds store dream memories more effectively than our waking brain realizes? Or is it just chance? Or, is it easier to access because we can connect the feeling of being in a dream to other experiences with the same feeling? Lots to think about.

It's hard to say because dreams are really good at inventing very convincing, yet completely made-up false memories, and if you don't already have a record or waking-life memory of the whole thing, it's probably impossible to be sure of how accurate the memory is. False memories of my waking life are a pretty familiar theme in my dreams, even throwing me off course in lucid dreams on occasion. It's also not uncommon for me to not always wake up cleanly from a dream and accidentally try to recall and journal the dream while I'm still in a half-dream state. This often causes me to “recall” all kinds of weird stuff that, when I finally wake up fully, I suspect never actually happened in the dream.

So, while we might indeed be able to remember other dreams better in a dream, it could also just be that our minds are very good at creating the illusion that we remember them better by making up and filling in details on the fly. If we've consciously forgotten what the original details actually were, there's no way to know the difference.

I actually had a dream goal that is related to this; I would spawn my dream journal and read it to see if my subconscious recalled more than I wrote. Didn't complete the goal yet though.

Originally Posted by RebelSeven

Can we draw any conclusions about dream memory with this knowledge? It partly seems to me that when we are in a dream we have better access to memories of other dreams. If this statement is true can we infer that our minds store dream memories more effectively than our waking brain realizes? Or is it just chance? Or, is it easier to access because we can connect the feeling of being in a dream to other experiences with the same feeling? Lots to think about.

There is probably no such thing as dream memory; there is only memory.

If your memory in the dream was an actual memory -- and it certainly could have been -- and not a false memory, what was likely happening was that you had already successfully stored that bit of dream in your long-term memory, and your unconscious merely added it to your current dream because it made a good fit with the given dream scene. Also, you had to have remembered this dream in waking-life, or else you would not have been able to note that it was something you actually dreamed about before; so you did indeed have access to it through your normal memory processes: remembering during the dream (especially if you were not lucid) that you dreamed something before is an extremely unreliable conclusion, because false memories can easily be added to your dream in order to flesh it out, and these created memories can seem just as real as any other memory during the dream (even when you are lucid).

So: I'm pretty sure that there really is no separate bank of dream memories that is tapped only by our dreaming mind or DC self.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that, yes, it is probably quite normal to "be remembering a dream as a thought in nonLD." Part of the formula for creating a realistic world in a NLD is creating the presence of memories in your DC self; if your DC You thinks it cannot remember anything during a NLD, then the dream's created reality is reduced. So, whether pulling actually memories or creating false ones, your unconscious is going to give you something you can rationally accept as a memory during the NLD (and this is why learning to remember to remember during a dream, to seek actual access to your memory and render the stuff you were given as "dream," is very important).

Yup. Happens veeeery often.

I don't think anyone would deny that memories and dreams have an interesting relationship. There is a difference between waking memory and dreaming memory. If there were not a difference we would remember every dream just as vividly as a memory of what happened the day before, and not something quickly (or in some cases instantaneously) forgotten upon waking. It just doesn't seem to be given the same treatment as waking life experiences, even if the mechanism of memory is the same.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Also, you had to have remembered this dream in waking-life, or else you would not have been able to note that it was something you actually dreamed about before; so you did indeed have access to it through your normal memory processes

Why must I have? There is no inherent reason that we could not remember something while dreaming that we had been unable to recall in waking life. Such as when you can't remember a dream right when you wake up, but later in the day something subtle will happen that will bring a flash of the dream back to your mind and you can suddenly recall the entire dream. I understand that waking mind doesn't give in to false memory as easily as the dreaming mind, and that therefore suddenly recalling something in a dream is much less reliable, but is there a reason a similar process can't happen as the waking dream memory?

Sure, there is absolutely no way to prove to myself that an unrecorded dream, recalled in a subsequent dream, is anything BUT false memory and the first dream never really occurred to begin with, especially since false memories have been so consumingly believable in the past. The only difference I've seemed to find is that I still believe the memory after I've woken up. Though, I should mention, I have several instances of recalling a recorded proveable dream while in another dream and the "feeling" was the same. (Though the act of recording the dream definitely reinforces the dream memory with waking life memory, so it's not exactly a fair comparison for our purposes)

So: I'm pretty sure that there really is no separate bank of dream memories that is tapped only by our dreaming mind or DC self.

Yeah, I wouldn't disagree with this. It doesn't seem right that a part of memory would be totally inaccessible to either the sleeping or waking mind. What I really am curious about is whether it's easier or more natural for the sleeping mind to recall other sleeping mind memories than it is for the waking mind to (and of course whether there is any way of exploring this possibility).

and this is why learning to remember to remember during a dream, to seek actual access to your memory and render the stuff you were given as "dream," is very important.

You can say that again, but no amount of practice or skill in this endeavour can ever make ones claims more reliable to outside perspectives.

Originally Posted by Zaephr

I actually had a dream goal that is related to this; I would spawn my dream journal and read it to see if my subconscious recalled more than I wrote. Didn't complete the goal yet though.

Now THAT sounds like a fun goal, I think I'm going to add it to my list

Like what you've had to say. In my case I don't remember the dreams within dreams but in waking life I get what you've referred to as "dream echoes" which hit pretty hard and for a second I almost freeze because I remember past dreams in their entirety. If others have that too I'd love to know. Sometimes on certain days I just have like multiple echoes.