Dream 579

'Remembering a Dream Within a Dream'

Dream date: 8 March 2016

This is Day 9 of my Dream Incubation Experiment. You can read the details and methodology of my latest Dream Incubation Experiment by clicking HERE.

Scene 1: An Interior (An Office) - Time Unknown
I was in an office, sitting in front of a big desk, with a female dream character. I am not sure who the female was, but in the dream we were both candidates in competition for the same job. Lord Alan Sugar was the 'boss' - much like his role in The Apprentice and was going to choose between us. We were trying to convince him that each of us was more suitable for the job (I am not sure what the job was). The female and I then started to do some kind of task - I am not sure what it was, but it involved supermarket shelves and groceries/food products/makeup, all of which were on the shelves, low down close to the floor. The female and I were bending/crouching down, either stacking the shelves, or taking items from the shelves (I cannot recall what we were doing, but we were on the floor). Lord Sugar was judging our performance. He then said: 'Who can drive?' and I said I could not, but my female rival said that she could, so she got the job. 

I then had a very strange dream experience which I will try my best to explain. A while ago - between 1 - 3 weeks ago (I think it was prior to my Dream Incubation Experiment) I had a dream which I remembered in full when I woke up from it. I remembered a particular scene because it made me think about what happened when I woke up - and I found it amusing. I then forgot this scene before writing up the dream in my Dream Journal on this Blog. When I was writing up the dream, I commented that I had initially recalled more of the action, but had subsequently forgotten some of the dream, stating that if something triggered me to recall more of the dream later, I would update the Dream Journal entry accordingly. I have since forgotten exactly which dream this was, as I often have dreams where I recall much more of the dream upon waking than I do when writing it up, and then state this in the report. 

In this current dream (Dream 579) at the point Lord Sugar mentioned the ability to drive, I recalled the forgotten dream scene. I did not see it replay - I just remembered it, like a normal memory coming back. I was also aware that it was a memory of the forgotten dream scene and I specifically thought: 'I need to update my Dream Journal now I have remembered the forgotten dream'. It also seemed odd to me that I had forgotten it in the first instance, because on reflection, it was a very interesting scene. I am disappointed that remembering a forgotten dream scene in another later dream - and being aware it was a dream scene which I needed to record on my Blog - did not trigger me to become lucid. Perhaps this experience can be considered a pre-lucid or semi-lucid dream? While in this current dream, remembering and thinking about the forgotten dream scene, I also remembered my real-life waking thoughts about the dream scene. The forgotten dream scene was as follows:

I was driving a car around a city, which had tall buildings. It may have been London. It was daylight. I was a confident and competent driver. I am not sure if I had taken driving lessons or not, but I did not have a licence. I was surprised I was able to drive and decided that since it was 'easy' and I was very good at it, I should book a driving test so that I could get my driving licence. I wondered how I managed to be so good at driving. I told my Mum that I was going to apply for my driving licence. She questioned how I was able to drive, and I reassured her that I could. I felt liberated and pleased with myself.

My waking thoughts and emotions had been that this was a very amusing dream scene to have experienced, given I have never ever had a single driving lesson and am not planning to. I have dyscalculia, which is mathematical dyslexia. The most common symptoms of dyscalculia are listed below. I have marked the ones which I particularly struggle with in red:

• Difficulty reading analogue clocks
• Difficulty stating which of two numbers is larger
• Inability to comprehend financial planning or budgeting, sometimes even at a basic level -  for example, estimating the cost of the items in a shopping basket or balancing a chequebook
• Difficulty with multiplication-tables, subtraction-tables, addition tables, division tables, mental arithmetic etc
• Difficulty with conceptualizing time and judging the passing of time - may be chronically late or early
• Problems with differentiating between left and right
• Inability to visualize mentally/perform visuospatial tasks
• Difficulty reading musical notation
• Difficulty with choreographed dance steps
• Difficulty working backwards in time, (i.e. what time to leave if needing to be somewhere at 'X' time)
• Difficulty comprehending things relating to occurrences in different time zones
• Difficulty navigating or mentally 'turning' the map to face the current direction rather than the common North=Top usage/Inability to mentally visualise how an object would look when turned
• Having particular difficulty mentally estimating the measurement of an object or distance (i.e. whether something is 3 or 6 meters away)
• Inability to grasp and remember mathematical concepts, rules, formulae, and sequences
• Inability to concentrate on mentally intensive tasks/attention-span problems (depends - I can concentrate on mentally challenging tasks as long as they fall within my skill-set or knowledge - I cannot focus for long on material which is 'new' to me
• Mistaken recollection of names/poor name/face retrieval - may substitute names beginning with same letter
• Problems with motor skills/coordination

So, you can see I have problems with most of the main symptoms, although some to a greater extent than others. In particular, generally anything mathematical will cause me issues; spatial awareness; visuospatial tasks; and time perception seem to be the most troublesome - and to an extent, all of these abilities are required for driving. My dyscalculia was not discovered until I was 16 years old (despite the fact I was an A* student who was only failing at Maths, this was not investigated by my useless teachers until I started studying Psychology, and my Psychology teacher became aware that although I was her top student, my grasp of basic statistics was far below expected - prompting her to question why this was so). By the time my dyscalculia was identified, I had tried to avoid ever studying/undertaking anything which involved Maths, or relied on other people to help me out, so I feel it hasn't affected my education, although it does affect my day-to-day life to varying extents. I am too hestitant to learn to drive as a result of these issues. When I had the initial dream scene (subsequently forgotten and then 're-remembered') I thought it was funny that I had been such a good and natural driver in my dream and had decided to finally take a test - the feel of driving in the dream was really pleasurable and liberating. I also recalled that although I have never taken a lesson or wanted to try driving in my waking-life, I have managed to smash up 2 cars belonging to friends - one of which was a 'write-off'. I add that my illegal driving experiences were not by my choice - I had been encouraged - compelled to let my respective friends 'teach' me how to drive even though I objected out of anxiety (and on one occasion was quite high and in no fit state to drive, licence or not).

Scene 2: An Interior (Computer Generated) - Time Unknown
I was then looking at an interior scene which was computer-generated. I am not sure if I was watching it on a screen, as this dream scene took up my entire field of vision. I was aware that it was a computer-generated image though, because I could see various characters from The Sims and thought: 'Those are Sims'. Every time I looked at a particular Sim, it's lower jaw would unhinge and become larger, until it fell off the face (it almost seemed to unwind or unpeel, like orange skin), leaving only half of the face, with an exposed skull where the skin had torn away - blood was also pour out (see images below, illustrating exactly how this looked). I thought this was disgusting, but I was aware that I was looking at computer graphics, not a 'real person' (i.e. a dream character who was 'real' to me within the dream). I thought: 'This must be a computer glitch'. This scene kept continuing, but I did not want to keep seeing it as it was quite unappealing to watch.

I woke up from the dream.

TIME: 02:00 - 09:00 hours (I woke up from this dream)

LUCIDITY: PRE-LUCID/SEMI-LUCID (remembering a dream within a dream - this should have triggered lucidity)

SPECIAL NOTES: NONE OF NOTE

Dream Information:

• None of note

Dreamsigns:

• Another female and I were competing to impress Lord Sugar so that we could get a job
• The 'memory' of my forgotten dream scene and reference to my Dream Journal
• The Sims characters and glitches

Recurrent Dream Themes:

• Cars/driving

Potential Day/Dream Residue:

• Donald Trump, Republican Presidential candidate is subject of saturation coverage in the media - he hosts the US version of The Apprentice
• A short while before this dream, in the middle of a game of 'Fuck, Marry, Kill', DL mentioned Lord Sugar, but I said that he wasn't a good option for my round because I actually find him quite attractive for an older man
• I had been watching Mortal Kombat X gameplay videos on Youtube - and in particular Cassie Cage's fatality ('Selfie') where she uses a truncheon/cosh to remove her opponent's lower jaw, before taking a 'selfie' with the corpse to upload onto a social media site (see relevant images below, which basically show exactly how I experienced this in the dream - except it happened to Sims characters rather than Mortal Kombat characters). I also watched some gameplay glitches for Mortal Kombat X and Sims 3

Waking Thoughts & Emotions:
I found this dream to be fascinating because I have never (in recollection) experienced the phenomenon of remembering a forgotten dream scene within a later dream and being aware that it was a forgotten dream scene, in addition to also remembering my actual real-life waking thoughts about the initial forgotten scene. This was a very powerful experience in what was otherwise quite a boring dream.