The Reality of the Unreal
October 25th, 2006 by Erin Pavlina
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I know what it feels like to shapeshift into an animal. I know what it feels like to be pierced with a spear, pinned to a stone wall, and left to bleed to death. I know what it feels like to shoot lasers out of my hands. I know how it feels to fly an F-16. And I know what it feels like to kiss Ben Affleck very passionately. Yet, I never actually experienced any of these things. Or did I?
All of the above are experiences that have happened to me while dreaming. You might automatically sort those experiences into the “unreal” category or the “never happened” category, but I might argue differently. I was there. And the feelings I had while experiencing those events felt very real to me. You only need to be pierced by a spear in the gut one time to never want to experience it again. The pain I felt in that dream was the worst pain I’ve ever felt while awake or dreaming, including childbirth.
Have you ever flown or fallen from a great height in a dream? I certainly have and I know what it feels like. I’ve never gone sky diving in real life or sprouted wings and taken flight, yet I feel certain that I know what it would feel like because I’ve done it in my dreams.
What about emotions? Have you ever felt an intense emotion in a dream that stayed with you for hours after you woke up? I have. I’ve felt murderous rage, unrelenting sadness, and giddy excitement. The emotions were real even though technically the experiences that caused them were not.
Can you categorize experiences you have in dreams as real or are they always unreal? Can I tell people that being pierced in the gut with a spear hurts really really badly, or have I never had that experience? Can I tell people that shape shifting into a rabbit or growing angel wings out of your back hurts a lot more than you would think, or did I never have those experiences either? Can I tell people that staking a vampire is exhilerating, or that teleporting is actually quite disorienting, or that walking through walls feels like walking through pudding?
Some people will say that things that happen in dreams are not real; only things that happen to your corporeal body are real.
When I had my wisdom teeth extracted I was unconscious for the entire procedure. So have I actually experienced what it’s like to have my wisdom teeth out even though I can’t remember a darn thing? My consciousness was not present when my teeth were pulled, but it was present when I got speared through the gut in my dream. So which one is real? I was not present when my appendix was removed so I can’t tell you if it tickled or hurt. Did I experience an appendectomy?
See, I believe that consciousness is the key to reality. If my consciousness is not present at an event, even if my body is, then I can’t really say I’ve experienced it. But if I take my consciousness with me to a dream world or an astral realm and have experiences there, they become part of my reality. I react to them. I act on them. I can wake up crying from a dream and feel sad because my consciousness experienced something sad. And even though someone might tell me not to feel sad because it didn’t really happen, I can’t just throw out the experience like when a judge tells the jury to disregard what they just heard. Impossible!
This is why I find value in directing and controlling my consciousness. In the past when I had a nightmare I would often wake up right as the knife was coming for my heart. I would lay panting in bed, glad that it “wasn’t real.” But my pounding heart and fast breathing would suggest otherwise. Once I learned lucid dreaming, however, I decided that there was no way I was going to let a nightmare get the best of me. So I trained myself to wake up before the knife plunged into my heart, then I would come up with a plan, and go back to the dream. Invariably it would pick up where it left off. When the knife came down I would either morph into steel, or block it with my superior Kung Fu, or simply go incorporeal and let the knife pass through me without harm. That’s empowering, people.
When you do that in your dreams you end up with the habit in your waking life as well. You realize you can direct the course of your “dream” er, I mean life. Are you living a lucid life? Or are you at the mercy of the “Dream Master” who will send you whatever dream you need to experience for growth?
If you’re a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan, you might remember one of my favorite episodes called “The Inner Light.” In this episode, Captain Picard’s consciousness gets inserted into the life of a man from another civilization. For a time, he tries to “wake up” but he can’t. Literally years pass for him, even though his body is lying on the bridge of the Enterprise the entire few hours of the experience. When he finally gets back to his real life he has had the experience of living as that other man for a few decades. He doesn’t just forget that. He doesn’t just brush it off as a dream. It changed him, affected him. It became part of his experience, his reality. He even recalled how to play the flute-like instrument he learned how to play during his experience.
What your consciousness experiences affects you, so shouldn’t you direct that consciousness where you want it to go? Are you being pushed along the currents of the river of life, or are you in a canoe with your oar in the water, paddling hard in the direction you want to go?
If your life isn’t going the way you want, wake up, make a plan, and then get back in there and affect the outcome so it goes your way. Don’t let that knife plunge into your heart. Unless … of course … that’s the experience you want to have. 
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October 25th, 2006 at 5:16 am
I quite enjoyed this post and I thank you for sharing it. I too thought the “Star Trek” episode you referenced was one of their best. I also am beginning to realize how important your perception and consciousness can affect your life. As for me, I am something of a procrastinator, however, and while I do understand and agree with making a plan and taking control of my life, I also realize that something is holding me back. I am not conscious of what this is, only the effects.
Have you had such an experience with hesitation? If so, I implore you to share your story. Thank you once again for the excellent post!
October 25th, 2006 at 5:57 am
Erin,
As I read your post, I was reminded of your husband Steve’s experiences with polyphasic sleep. His idea that stuck with me was that it was not the act of staying awake that was difficult, but rather filling the hours with “a life that is worth living” (my interpretation of his idea).
Your last paragraph … “If life isn’t going the way you want, wake up, make a plan, and then get back in there and affect the outcome so it goes your way.” … could relate to either lucid dreaming or polyphasic sleep. Either way, you need a life that is “more conscious” and less “asleep” or passive.
For my own part, I was intrigued enough to take a long hard look at polyphasic sleep but I’ve held off while I figure out how I’m going to make “a life worth living”.
Like alot of other people, I know that if I don’t have some good motivation, the likelihood is that the extra hours provided by polyphasic sleeping would be used up by … sleeping!
(Or worse … mindless zoning in front of the television.)
Thanks for a great post and keep up the good work! (Please pass along the same sentiments to Steve!)
Thanks,
Dave
October 25th, 2006 at 6:51 am
Interesting post. It seems to me that since just envisioning doing something has been shown to produce similar results to actually doing it that dreams must do the same as well. However I think it’s certainly still possible that flying in your dreams might be different than flying while awake. I guess the only way to tell would be to experience something in your dreams and then experience it awake. Hopefully not getting stabbed in the gut though
I know I’ve read somewhere that under hypnosis people can remember what was said by the Dr’s and Nurses while under anesthesia so I wouldn’t be too quick to discount that as part of your experience just because you can’t consciously remember it. Personally I think that my consciousness is bigger than just what my ego can bring up out of my memory.
Your point on being able create your life the way you want in the same way you can create your dreams the way you want is a very interesting one. It makes me want to investigate lucid dreaming. Thanks!
October 25th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Erin, i love this post.
Really, the way you say we should wake up from our lives, make a plan
and than go back to living it, well it’s so true. Every day I feel the parameters that I’ve set up for my reality, my life, and it drives me nuts.
Wish I could press Pause and rearrange the Properties, but that really takes time. Actually, it takes more thoughts than time. (IS thought faster than time?)
Yesterday I watched The Secret. Can’t wait to watch it with someone so
we can talk about it, but no one arround me speaks fluent English.
I was familiar with the Law on some level - from my own experience since childhood , and from reading one article after another on the Net, plus all the inspirational audio programms that are pointing at the very same thing. But still, I found out some new things, wich I plan on applying, as soon as my fear of letting anything in my thought passes.
Hopefully tomorrow it will be less unthinkable to me. (disambiguation)
To get back to this post, just like Lael says it, it makes me want to become a lucid dreamer even more. If not for the sake of another reality, than at least to practice fixing my Properties… ;))
October 25th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
I’m wondering what effect our forgotten dreams have on us? I’ve started keeping a notepad by my bed so I can write down my dreams. I find if I don’t, sometimes I’ll forget them.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
Hi Erin,
Awesome post! You really make us all think! Thank you.
How accurate are your dreams to real life? Let me put it this way….
If in your dream you are typing away at a keyboard and you stop and look down at the keys, can I assume that each key you see is exactly where you expect it to be? Is this because you know what the keyboards looks like in “real” life? What if on the other hand you have a dream that you are going to learn how to fly a 747 jumbo jet. You are sitting at the controls, and let’ say for a moment that you weren’t goint to ‘will’ the plane into the air. If a pilot in your dream taught you how to fly the plane, could you fly a real plane after a week, month or a year of training in your dreams? Would you not be under the assumption that each button, switch and knob is exactly where it actually is on the real plane? if you’ve never seen the cockpit of a 747 in “real” life , how can this experience you are getting at night be accurate? So..
1) Are your lucid dreams accurate only to the degree that you are aware of the specific details in “real” life (keys on a keyboard vs controls on an airplane)?
2) if the answer to number 1 is yes, then does this reduce the quality of the ‘experience’ of the lucid dream?
Where I am going with this is.. the experiences you shared in your bolg today were physical pain or emotions that you felt in your dreams. Some of those experiences cannot be reproduced in “real” life unless you want to be arrested by Ben Aflecks security guard. So I am looking at it from a logical perspective, if you can only manifest in your dream what you already know (or believe) to be accurate (keys on a keyboard), then how do you know that your feelings when kissing Ben, is what it would really feel like? Would you not be simply making up the kiss feeling similarily as you made up the placement of the airplane controls?
I am just suggesting that perhaps whatever you think you feel or have experienced may not be correct. You would be assuming you can get on to a real 747 and tell the captain how to fly the plane. So while the experiences are wonderful (I’d love to fly around and shoot lasers out of my hands) they may not be anywhere near the real thing. So if our purpose in life is to learn through experiences, should we use our dream experiences as lessons learned if their model may not be accruate?
Thanks again, Erin. Keep posting I love how YOUR thoughts are helping me create MY reality! It’s simply great!
October 25th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
Rob: Wonderful questions! Here are my answers. I don’t think if I flew a 747 in a dream that I could fly one in real life. The controls would not be the same. However, I believe it’s possible, but not probable, that you can experience something accurately in a dream that you have not experienced in real life if conditions were such that you were receiving the information telepathically or from a past life or tapping into the time stream or accessing the mind of someone else, through remote viewing, etc. So in other words, I think there are ways to accurately do something in a dream you haven’t experienced while awake but it takes a skill set not normal to most people.
For the most part, what I feel and experience in a dream is mostly emotional and yeah, physical pain. I will try to think if I’ve ever done something in a dream that was more technical and then was able to do it in real life. If I think of anything like that, I’ll let you know.
Ben Affleck might have bad breath in real life, but for my intents and purposes, he was a damn fine kisser, and if the opportunity to compare real vs. dream were to ever present itself, I’d have to check it out and report back. You know, take one for the team in the name of research right?
October 26th, 2006 at 7:20 am
“You know, take one for the team in the name of research right?
”
You are too funny!
October 26th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
“All matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. We are all one consciousness experiencing it’s self subjectively. Life is but a dream, and we are an imagination of ourselves.”
I think it’s great that all of you are exploring the power of lucid dreaming. I didn’t see much on what I felt was the main thing Erin was trying to express. The fact that “real life” isn’t quite as solid as it seems. That we are the writers of our own story, life, Tao, ect…We are the creators of this dream world that is our life. We can change our life through altering our perception. For example think back to something bad in your life and find another way of looking at it. See it as a good thing. Then try to see problems that occur each day in a new light, see them as a test or challenge to over come.
Great post Erin,
Eric
October 27th, 2006 at 1:29 am
As a friend of a person with MPD/DID I often had to challenge my the concept of reality. People with this disorder have a world inside their mind where identites are when they are not outside (in control of the body). It´s like a persistent lucid dream that feels absolutely real, and it also has effects on the experiences with the world that we all share. So when an identity breaks her leg on the inside, she will also be unable to walk with that leg on the outside, although there is nothing wrong with the outside body. And like lucid dreams this inside world can also be manipulated by identities with enough training.
If you are interested in this topic you should read “Set this house in order” by Matt Ruff. A great book that is both serious and funny, and you learn a lot about MPD/DID just by reading a story.
October 30th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Interesting post and newspaper article
Out of Body Experiences and the Brain
http://csn.livejournal.com/656858.html?view=2616282#t2616282
In one woman, for example, a zap to a brain region called the angular gyrus resulted in a sensation that she was hanging from the ceiling, looking down at her body. In another woman, electrical current delivered to the angular gyrus produced an uncanny feeling that someone was behind her, intent on interfering with her actions.
On a personal note, I do believe dreaming while with it’s occasional benefits takes one away from living life and seeing impact of one’s being. Unreal is just that, inspite of the experience, that is also why the exhilration on a computer game is not same as the real experience, but is a consolation for those who have only the unreal.
Amit C
December 26th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
[...] Erin Pavlina talks about lucid dreaming on her blogs quite a lot. She says the following quote from her entry Reality of the Unreal: [...]