Relative Something

A discussion in my online community about lucid dreaming triggered a dream experience for me that occurred early Thursday morning. It has been a long, long time since I realized within a dream that I was dreaming.

In this instance, my memory of the beginning of the dream included a vision of what looked like the attic door of our old farmhouse. It had a padlock on it, but the latch was open. I approached the door and reached for the knob, and it opened! Inside, instead of the storage shelves I remember, the room was furnished like a 1950s living room with a television on spindle legs. I was able to step in and walk a short circle around the room, noticing a shiny black grand piano on my left as I turned toward the door again. As I passed it, I wondered if it would make a sound if I pressed the keys, so I stepped back to get in front of it, and as I reached for the keys, the piano had morphed into an organ. I noticed there were both yellow and white keys, and I pressed a couple in succession. It didn’t make a piano sound, but it produced tones I was able to hear, soft like an unplugged electric guitar.

1967 Aerial View, house and barns

In my lucid excitement over being in our old house, I wondered if I would be able to explore other rooms and go downstairs. Unfortunately, the sound of a siren (unknown whether actual or dreamt) changed the focus of the dream to a new scenario. I followed the new thread, which had nothing to do with the farmhouse anymore, and enjoyed a continued sense of lucidity throughout the rest of the dream.

Lucid dreaming allows for more controlled decisions within the situations that arise. There is a rewarding sense of superiority that arises in knowing you are dreaming while experiencing your dream.

The feeling I remember most from the whole dream was the big thrill of the moment I “saw” that I was in our old farmhouse, a dwelling that was demolished in 1969. I have a suspicion that it was that rush that triggered the slight transition to being able to sense that I was dreaming. It’s too bad I didn’t have a chance to revisit more of the house.

Of course, it being a dream, who knows what I would have discovered in the other rooms. The dreamed attic certainly didn’t bear any similarities to what it really looked like behind that door.

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