Thread: Persistent Worlds?

Whether you're a total novice or some reality-being demideity, I'm curious if any of you have any settings within your dreams which are more or less permanent: you visit there often, things you do there in one dream will still be there in the next, there's some kind of plotline that the setting follow and each of your dreams there picks up where the plot arc last left off, dream characters may make a home there, or the place may simply come up in dream conversation often or be stuck in the back of your mind. It could be a room, a building, a town, a city, or a planet, and there could be one of them or several of them or none at all. This could be someplace where you visit while nonlucid or lucid. Did you make it yourself or did it simply appear to you?

If you do have these persistent worlds, do you place any special importance on them or are they just anomalous recurring dream images to you? Do they seem more familiar than a random dream location ought to be, or once again do they mean nothing to you? Do you have ideas as to why this place might be a regular part of your nocturnal journeys? Do they have a name and a history?


While I don't have much luck with persistent dream environments, I am rather fascinated with what might cause a person to regularly manifest the same place in their dreams from night to night, especially since we are led to believe that dreams are completely random series of firing neurons, which ought to negate the possibility of recurring dream places.

I have a recurring dream about my old elementary and high school. I'm always doing different things while I'm there, though. Only a handful of the dreams have been lucid - most are non-lucid, which I don't quite understand since that school is a major dreamsign of mine. You'd think as soon as I entered the school, I'd be lucid, but nope.

I had to switch schools in my junior year of high school, after growing up in the school I mentioned above. So I think the preoccupation about that school in my dreams is a longing for closure - even though it's been over 9 years since I stepped foot in it. I dunno.

I've been thinking about this quite a lot recently, actually. And there are a few settings that just seem to keep coming back, but as for the answer to why, I am not sure of.

The most common settings in my dreams are my Grandmother's home, an old house I used to live in, my aunt's home, Elementary and both my high schools. Sometimes I'd simply return to a place that I'd remember from a previously similar dream.

All three homes seem to hold a mystery beyond its exterior, that and the fact that I also used to live with my grandmother is the only special importance I can place upon them. Except life at my grandmother's was frankly beyond hell. And school is simply a place I love, even if crowds make me feel a bit uneasy.

Maybe having repetitive settings holds a meaning--I think I heard it somewhere, anyway. It had something to do with unfinished business of some sort.

I keep having recurring civil war era dreams where I am behind the scenes. I can sense the tension as I am at a family's home, but away from the war. I tend not to feel comfortable in these, but I do sense the hospitality.

In my first few lucid dreams I would always be standing underneath a streetlight at night time near my house when I'd realize that I was dreaming. Now, whenever I am at my streetlight I become instantly lucid. It is the only place that reoccurs in my dreams and it is the only place that I will definately go lucid at.

I know a few people that have either persistent worlds or dreams that continue over several months.

These are very vivid and interesting dreams. But they don't seem to be true lucids.

A friend of mine has a dream home set in the tropics where she goes and hangs out and decorates it. It seems likes its a great restoring place for her, so she's not too interested in messing with it with lucidity.

Mine are always totally random. Even when I dream of real locations they tend to be different. They even change in the same dream. Could walk around a corner stop and go back and the stuff behind me has changed.

The only dreams I seem to recall of late are re-occuring ones.

One I am in Amsterdam, looking for somewhere to buy some green from, without much luck. In amserdam, yeah right! I have only been there once around 5 yrs ago.

This is the most frequent: I am in a holiday resort, hot and sunny. Often it is an all inclusive where you can eat and drink as much as you want, there is always a swimming pool in the dream and often a fight of some sort.