Dreams Feeling Unreal Upon Awakening

I would like to explore something I find interesting. Namely, the way dreams seem so unreal when you wake up. I don't really understand this. I've always been a regular lucid dreamer. And I find dreams seeming unreal particularly interesting when it comes to lucid dreaming. So, I become aware that I am dreaming. And generally my conscious mind starts functioning in a way that's not much different than if I were awake. And I can really try to think about, and take in the implications, of what's going on. Wow, I am in a dream right now. And I am aware of it. And I can do literally anything that I want. And whatever it is that I do, it will seem exactly like it were real, I will perceive it as if totally real.

And I'll have that experience. Of doing whatever I do, and having it seem totally real while I'm doing it. But then I wake up. And when I wake up, it doesn't seem real anymore. And I don't mean that rationally it seems like nonsense or unrealistic. I mean, it doesn't feel like a real experience, or a real memory. I can think about experiences from the previous day, and they seem real. But then I think about what I did in my lucid dream, and it doesn't feel that way at all. I can remember the experience, I can remember really thinking about and focusing on how real it seemed. And it did seem real. But now that I'm awake, it doesn't feel that way at all.

Why is this? What I'm talking about is a feeling, more than a rationalization. First of all, I think this is something interesting for science to explore. I'm sure there's some things happening in the brain that are responsible for this(as a matter of speaking, ignoring my stance that correlation is not necessarily causation when it comes to brain activity and mental activity). It would be interesting, and probably illuminating, to discover what is going on in the brain that correlates to the 'feeling' of something being real or not. What causes what was perceived as an actual experience to no longer feel like an actual experience upon awakening. I do wonder if you could just train your mind to view your dreams a certain way while in them, you could make it seem like a real experience/memory after awaking. Now, something else interesting I want to try, that may perhaps yield interesting results. When in a lucid dream, try to remember events from my real life. Do those feel real while in a dream? Does your 'real life' feel unreal while dreaming, in the same way dreams feel unreal while awake?

a reply to: TheJourney

It's a feeling of weightlessness, The burden of gravity is lifted and that's how it becomes noticable.

a reply to: TheJourney

I think the way we remember is tied to feeling through conscious focus.. Thoughts you have while sitting down can be forgotten when you stand up and start walking into the other room. Waking and dreaming are in different "areas." You have literally projected your consciousness into another "world."

"Everything that's out of focus is a dream." Are lyrics from a band that existed only a few years.

I could maybe explain better from another angle. I have dream memories that are there when I am dreaming, and every time I dream I can now remember all my other dreams again. "Reality" is sort of what is "near" your level of consciousness. As soon as I am dreaming even if I don't realize I am dreaming I still know every time that I can fly. I did it so many times it's an easy to access dream memory.

It's one of the problems with astral projection as well. Even though it's more real and has more senses and way higher consciousness than being awake in a body, once you come back to your body your memory starts going away..

The trick is knowing your memory isn't going anywhere.. It's your focus.. Your dream memories are all there.. You just have to be in the right state of mind to get back to them.

That is very interesting and i to wonder about that? I am going to try and consciously remember a memory from my day and experience the feelings I have well lucid dreaming. I have been a lucid dreamer most of my life, and the freedom I have in this state is to me an actual responsibility. I do very much wake up many times believing this state is a very real part of my existence. The experiences I have sometimes I have definitely not experienced before in my life yet the experiences I have researched from my dreams scientifically make sense. I have many theories and this is a very good question?

a reply to: TheJourney

Hmmm...I guess I'm a weirdo but my dreams seem real and my actual life "unreal" upon wakening. I actually get a weird pulling panicked feeling upon wakening like this is the wrong place for me.

originally posted by: polarboarder1
That is very interesting and i to wonder about that? I am going to try and consciously remember a memory from my day and experience the feelings I have well lucid dreaming. I have been a lucid dreamer most of my life, and the freedom I have in this state is to me an actual responsibility. I do very much wake up many times believing this state is a very real part of my existence. The experiences I have sometimes I have definitely not experienced before in my life yet the experiences I have researched from my dreams scientifically make sense. I have many theories and this is a very good question?

Yea, I kind if left my views on dreaming out of the OP, though they can be derived from the questions I pose at the end. I think dreams have a greater reality to them than we think. I won't speculate right now as to its exact nature, but I feel that they certainly have a greater reality to them then normally thought, in one way or another. And yet, when I'm awake, it's so intangible. Though the actual experience itself is incredibly tangible. I think perhaps if you just really fine-tune your focus in the dream, you may perhaps be able to train your mind to have the memory of the dream seem more tangible. And yes, I'm interested to try to remember my 'real life' while in a lucid dream. If it has the same intangible feel to it as a dream does while awake, I would say that is evidence for dreams just somehow being essentially an alternate reality. Where we are somehow connected to both, but while in one the other essentially loses its reality.

a reply to: TheJourney

I think we agree on that.

I lucid dream a lot. And sometimes I can remember my body life. But it's insanely hard to do it. 2 days ago I remembered what day it was and when I had to wake up, and what I had to do that day, while I was asleep, but it was like something very far away and unreal..

it's not hard because Im asleep. my thoughts focusing in the dream are super fast and clear, and I can remember everything in the dream, and remember how the land is laid out (I dream the same landscapes, a lot of the time).. But remembering my name and (it used to be back in the day) is that project due tomorrow?? was sooo hard, but I could do it. Ofteb it would make my consciousness focus back into my body and I would be awake..

Thus leading to my theory whatever you focus on your consciousness is more real in..

That reaching for the memory that is far away is connecting to that "other place."

The word "reality" is a funny one for me.
The idea "it's all in your head" is a funny inside joke. Get it? Inside joke haha lol anyways.



Next time you guys get lucid try to remember your name, and then where is your body sleeping? And What day is it? And who else is in the house? And what am I wearing? What did I eat at dinner? Things you should mostly be able to remember. It's odd how far away that all seems.

a reply to: TheJourney

I believe that I've had lucid dreams at times. I also know that I've had dreams where I'm involved in any situation that can be imagined. So I must legitimate wonder, ego about it aside, whether a seemingly lucid dream is nothing more than an ordinary dream that sticks in my memory because it is rather more unique than most.

I can't say that I've spent any time pondering the issue, but I don't know of any way to prove that a lucid dream is anything different than a normal dream. From another angle, how is so-called lucid dreaming any different than "day dreaming" where you imagine being actively aware? (I assume that is a common phenomena for most folk beside myself.)

a reply to: Aliensun

I've just discontinued a strong pain killer after an operation, and in doing so insomnia became an issue so I researched the chemistry of sleeping, Tryptophan helps create serotonin, which in turn creates melatonin in/from/or processed/metabolized by our pineal gland, melatonin helps us feel sleepy, once asleep and we are in a melatonin induced REM sleep, the pineal gland excretes '___', '___' on its own is a very powerful hallucinogen, and it can wear off really quickly, it is only released when we are sleeping, and requires a certain amount of darkness, our sympathetic nervous system doesn't allow it to be released in waking states, so day dreaming is more cognitive. Because hallucinating isn't conducive to survival, it is posited that schizophrenia, and other dissociative disorders might be linked to output of '___' in waking states, it hinges on darkness, once light is removed it seems to function, this might be why when we have a nightmare and wake up we are still in the nightmare for a few seconds, but if you wake up in day light, it seems you are immediately out of the dream state, and even have a hard time remembering the experience, you have become disconnected from the dissociative state, the '___' has worn off.

I have no certainty that what I'm saying is true, just that I've noticed taking Tryptophan has caused me to have 2-3 lucid REM experiences a night.

Try making your room pitch black and you might be able to wake and hold the '___' experience a little longer, I don't know, I've never considered that until writing it now.

a reply to: KnightLight

i thought i was the only one. i can only access certain memories while dreaming, namely the ones that my "dream me" had experienced then filed away in my "dream me"s memory. almost like deja vu to you too? ever find yourself in the real world only for your "dream memory" to smack you in the face with the realization that you have stood in this exact same spot, talking to this exact same person, in the same exact conversation, with even the exact same objects on a table in the background?

originally posted by: Aliensun
a reply to: TheJourney

I believe that I've had lucid dreams at times. I also know that I've had dreams where I'm involved in any situation that can be imagined. So I must legitimate wonder, ego about it aside, whether a seemingly lucid dream is nothing more than an ordinary dream that sticks in my memory because it is rather more unique than most.

I can't say that I've spent any time pondering the issue, but I don't know of any way to prove that a lucid dream is anything different than a normal dream. From another angle, how is so-called lucid dreaming any different than "day dreaming" where you imagine being actively aware? (I assume that is a common phenomena for most folk beside myself.)

Lucid dreams are definitely different from normal dreams. Lucid dreaming is where you know that you are dreaming while you are dreaming. So I'll be in a dream, and then I'll realize that I'm dreaming. And when that happens, my conscious mind kicks in, and I can think about whatever I want. And I'm aware there I can do anything that I want, since I'm in a dream. And so I can consciously think about anything I would like to do, and then make the decision to do it. Or I can contemplate what seems like it would be the best way to control my dream, make things appear that I want to appear, and experiment with it. Which of course all of this is different from normal dreams.