Are my dreams being manipulated by an external source, outside of myself?

[Caboose128]

I've had this thought about a lot of my dreams. Please tell me what you think. I'm sorry I made this way too long but it's basically my life story of dreaming and weird occurrences. Now Idk about you guys, but I always thought dreams were just personal and a manifestation of your subconscious. For me it seems like I'm actually visiting a real place and interacting with real beings, trying to help me on my journey. I've gotten hypnotized by dream characters before. I got beaten with a club once in one of my dreams, I think to make my brain more lucid and aware of it's dreaming. When I got scared the girl who had the club said "you know your just making this harder on yourself". I've had a couple dream recently that I've had before years ago, even realizing inside of the dream "wait a second, I've had this happen to me before! whats going on?" Once I realized this the dream characters changed what they were doing, like they were waiting for me to realize this or something. In one dream I was taken to this hospital and told to flex my arm for a quick second. When I did this I saw they were shooting me up with something. They had me do it again (probably so I'd be more focused on my flexing than the needle). After this was done they told me, "Okay, now this is called the Sticker Press" or something like that, and my awareness was immediately transfixed onto this sticker on the wall. I thought I was this sticker! It was one of the weirdest experiences in my life, but eventually I realized no I'm still in that dream and I was able to escape that sticker, getting propelled down this long hallway and shown rapid visualizations faster than I've ever seen before. Okay another strange thing I should mention: Around 8 years ago or so I recall having a dream where I was just watching this movie. The movie was about some girl who had to wait to be with the guy she loved for a bunch of years. It was a real life documentary of her time spent alone and waiting. I don't recall where the guy was or why they had to be apart, but I didn't think anything of it at the time and quickly forgot about it, never to think about it again. HOWEVER, at the end of that hospital dream I just mentioned, I get lead outside to meet my family again after my crazy night, this white van pulls up and out comes the girl from the movie, who I immediately recognize from that movie I saw in a dream 8 years ago! In waking life I can barely even make out her features, dont know her name or anything, it's almost like only my subconscious or some deeper part of me knows her. I realized when meeting her in that strange hospital dream that the movie I watched 8 years ago was about her waiting for me and she made a movie about it! Amazing stuff..although I never see her in dreams anymore and I'm just left to constantly think and wonder about this experience and what it could mean! I don't see how these people could be manipulating my dreams so much, and they're always the people closest to me like family and close friends. Strange though they never reveal anything. Also, for those still reading, I've had one very very surreal experience in waking life once. Granted, I smoked some pot before this happened buts that besides the point. It was hours before any of this ever occurred and I've smoked approx 300x before and this has never happened. But that night I go to bed just like usual, however, after being in my bed for like 30 minutes my mom comes in the room. I notice I can barely move my body, yet my mind is completely awake and aware. At that time in my life I've only experienced sleep paralysis one time so I wasn't very accustomed to what was happening. I told my mom about how I could barely move my body, and she keeps asking me if she should call an ambulance. No no I keep saying. But for some reason she ended up calling them and in about 20 minutes the paramedics were there. At this point I couldn't move my body at all, but I was still completely up and aware in my mind, and still aware of my environment as well. All I could see was the blackness of my eyelids. The paramedics had to drag me off my bed, right at the moment my body lost complete control. They started to talk about me. "So this here is Eric Joseph, 20 years old etc". The weird part is they mentioned stuff that I've never told anyone outside of my therapist before! How could they have gotten this information? But yeah so they dragged me off the bed and put into this stretcher like thing, except this one had harnesses and straps and I was very snugly secured. Then, for the next 5 minutes or so I get the sensation that I'm being taken on this ride, I feel the "stretcher" that I was on speed up when my mind would get more relaxed and sleeply, and slow down whenever I'd get more anxious. Eventually I felt like I was being taking up this huge incline, like the ones on rollercoasters right before a big drop. I think that once I get to the top some climax of some sort will take place, like I'd find myself being hurling towards the Earth and I'd find out that my whole life was a dream. Instead, right when I got to the top I felt two metal clampers come down and pinch my fingers! It was very acute pain, and shot my awareness right back into the present moment, however for some reason I never opened my eyes...Upon reflection I believe this was because my body was falling asleep and they had to jolt my body awake with certain stimuli. They also did this an hour later with my sense of smell, as I recall trying to breathe in once and this incredibly harsh sensation filled my nostrils making it impossible to inhale, just once and just for a second, kinda like in order to just shock me back to life. Right before I left the hospital (I was there all night), this girl with white hair comes in and claps her hand twice. At this I immediately recognize that I'm fine and I can get up and walk around, almost like they somehow trained me to respond to this certain stimulus! Crazy, I know. This happened about 6 months ago, and ever since then I've been having multiple LD's or APs (whatever you want to call them) a night, where I had little to none before! This doesn't sound like a naturally occurring thing to me, rather like I'm being guided by an external source on some path. I ask my parents about the things I experienced that night but they just shrug it off. I tell them about the stretcher ride that corresponded to my mental condition: "Oh, that was just when they took you down the stairs"...well we only have one flight of stairs in my house! Couldn't of taken that long! Or about going up that sharp incline and having the metal things clamped down on my fingers "Oh that was probably just when they were physically putting you into the ambulance" Hmmm...I know that the door to enter an ambulance is only a couple feet off the ground...so that's improbable. They always blamed this whole night on "weed hallucinations" Once dream characters in my dream were teaching me how to hallucinate and willingly change my dream environment, something I could previously never figure out how to do. Even when I'd be flying around in my dreams, I'm usually able to do it at first but every single time I'll just lose steam (or lucidity I guess) and not be able to maintain flight after a while. So as I was straining my eyes to alter something, one character altered something for me! I saw his hand turn giant and he added a guy on a bike in my point of view. Upon reflection I just don't understand this. How can I teach myself something that I don't know? This has happened before multiple times, such as once I was arguing with my brother, and he told me that Astral Projection is what I'm really doing. He said I don't understand what I'm actually doing and that lucid dreaming is what they used to call it. I always thought this was the same thing so it leads me to believe I'm actually talking to real people in my dreams! So back to the point at hand. After the character showed me how to hallucinate, I was able to change things on my own, like my the ground wavy and such. Then later I had the most deliberate change of environment I've ever accomplished. I was walking down some stairs and said to myself that past these stairs will be that part of the Indiana Jones ride from disneyland that has the giant boulder and we'll just go under it like in the ride. Lo and behold it appeared, except after dodging it once I must have lost control of the hallucination and the boulder just kept rushing on by and killed a boat load of people. I got scared by this, but eventually snapped out of it and even heard an external voice say (he mistook his hallucination for reality) So that's all crazy in it's own right, but now I'll get to the really insane stuff. Later on in the dream I was walking in a hotel with a big group of people. I look on the wall to find a note. It says "Something crazy is about to go down, signed Emily and Allie (two people I know)". So I didn't think about this much and got led into a room with about 15 chairs all in a circle. I sat in one of them and conversed with these people for a while. I felt my chair morph into this machine like thing that had me strapped in. I was told I was about to receive a moment of "complete mental clarity". I felt the machine tilting backwards so it was bending my back, almost to the point where I thought it would snap in half! I also felt this acute pressure on my eyes, like someone was pushing their fingers slowly into them, although it wasn't as painful as it sounds. At first I was scared and thought it would hurt but I thought about how it wasn't real, thus getting me more lucid, until it would continue to bend and press more and I'd get scared again and afraid of the physical sensations I was feeling. Disappointingly I got too nervous and bolted out of this machine and locked myself in a closet . When I woke up I could still feel that same pressure on my eyes! Idk about you guys but I can't see how I could be the only one involved here, just me and my subconscious. I feel like my dreams are being manipulated or something. I always thought, ever since I took shrooms, that something "strange" was happening in my life, outside of my control. My parents and therapists would attribute these to "coincidences" that happen to everyone, I'm just looking too much into them. Now I'm starting to realize just how right I was. Well I've made this long enough, sorry for such a long post but I've been meaning to ask you guys this for a while and decided to make one large question instead of a bunch of tiny ones, since they basically all revolve around the same question. What the hell do you guys think is going on??