About Dreams

In most of my dreams I am doing quite some nonsense but always I obviously can't be bothered. So I ride horses on a farm or solve criminal cases that involve toner cartridges.

But sometimes things are different.

Once in my life I could draw my own dream
Once in my life and more than 15 years ago. I managed to stay for a while perfectly in the middle of conscious and subconscious, exactly half-way between sleep and awake. I could hear the outside world, but early in the morning it was very silent. In this state I was able to create my own dream as realistic as the world is now that I am writing. But I am not going to answer the question, what came to my mind ;-) .
A loud noise my father made while working in the court then pulled me out of state and as hard as I tried I could not get back.

Levitation, why not?
When I was a kid I had several dreams in which I was levitating. I remember myself flying over houses and gardens. The special thing was that it required a certain state of mind, a special kind of focusing to levitate and a slightly different one to move same time. Over the time it became harder and harder to keep this state and after a while of undisturbed levitation I started going down, could get grip on my mind and was was going up a bit again but always I was finally back on the ground. Still wanting to fly I was making only making it a very little into the air before I was waking up.
Interestingly I was reading exact the same thing about a boy that starts levitating in the book "Mr. Vertigo" from Paul Auster.

I died 2 times in dreams
At 2 occasions I died in dreams. The first time, it was a 100% realistic real time simulation of the Eschede ICE train disaster. I could see how the waggons in front of me were disintegrating and flying into pieces, it was coming closer and closer, my last thought was "Damn, this is it".

Second time I was scuba diving and obviously the valve of my oxygen tank had not been properly opened. I first I notice that something is wrong, when I feel I getting very tired because of too high CO2 concentration. But as I am too far under water I can't just emerge so I am trying to open the valve more by trying to reach it behind my back. But it is too late, I am too tired. My last thought was something like "Crap".
Every time I woke up the second I died with my pulse quite increased. Obviously even dreams are not able to simulate death.
"Damn, it was just a dream" was always my first thought.
But it made me confident that I have no major fear of death. I am pretty sure, once my next death comes unexpected to me, my last words will be just something like "Uhoh, Shit, Crap, or this is it".

Sometimes I recognize I am dreaming.
At a few occasions I notice that I am dreaming. I notice because some dreams are like TV-Series repetitions. In these dreams I have characteristics I have not in this world. In this moments I sometimes realize "Hey, I am dreaming!".

When I told this story to a roundabout 20 year old guy from Finland in a hostel in Sofia, he was not too surprised at all but smiled at me and said: "And it even gets better. Because if you realize you are dreaming you can modify them."

So I at least twice modified my dreams
I was able to modify my dream first time already on the very same travel. While I was in Tirina, staying sharing a cheap room with a really weird guy from Japan (always be suspicious when a guy from Japan is travelling alone) I awoke early in the morning just to fell asleep once more into a very light sleep.
I woke up in the same room, but a very good friend of mine with a bunch of kids were sitting round my bed.
"?? What are you doing here" I asked.
"We came to visit you and show you something" they said. "Get up and follow us."
"Why not" I think.
As we are walking through the door we soon enter some forest with big old green oak trees. My friends and the kids vanish, when the first time I become suspicious.
"Am I dreaming?" I start question myself. Suddenly walking through a forest that suddenly appeared in front of the door of my apartment in central Tirane obviously doesn't bring enough light into the situation so I march around for while. My friend along with group of kids has long disappeared, when suddenly I come up with a bright idea.
"What do you never have in dreams?" I ask myself.
"That's easy" I think. "Pain!"
So I think, when I don't have pain, I can be pretty sure that I am dreaming.
As I just swing myself in this moment with a kind of rope or liana Tarzan like from one tree to next, I land a bit unluckily and through my right knee flashes a distinct pain.
"Damn, I was almost sure that I am dreaming."
But finally I come to the conclusion that I am dreaming.
"So" I think "when this is a dream I can change it" and snip with my right fingers.
At this moment a white board that I was standing in front disappears and becomes black for second or two before it starts getting replaced with pictures of persons.
At this moment I am standing in meadow as I start to levitate a meter high and move slowly forward. As I snap my fingers I start changing the different objects that appear on the meadow. All the time, they fade quickly out and get black before they are replaced with something random.
This is the time I wake up.

The second occasion, I just remember a few things.
Obviously I had found out that I am dreaming a longer time before and I remember that I had a hell of a fun. Unfortunately my conscious lacks the most of the dream. This time the setup was little different as with every snap of finger, not single objects but the whole picture became black before it was replaced with a new random scenery.
As my sleep obviously became lighter I just remember the last scene.
This time after short time of clear black I was standing on a beautiful day with sun and clear blue sky at the base of a Alp like mountain.
"Ok" I thought standing in front of an almost vertical stone wall "when I am dreaming I don't need to climb up this mountain."
"In this case it will be enough that I touch the rock with a finger to push myself up"
So I touched the rock with my index finger, and in fact I slowly I started moving upwards.
"Wait a second", then came in my mind "if I am dreaming I don't need to touch the rock at all!" And truly, sooner done as said, I started levitating parallel up the mountain wall.
I remember that I came towards the top of the mountain where the terrain started levelling and I was floating a little up and down looking under a big rock before I was waking up.

Dreams can be stacked
Sometimes when I notice that I am dreaming, I wake up just to find that I am still dreaming. At one occasion, when I woke up the third time and still dreaming I got little worried that I got stuck in a loop.