Trapped in the Game — A Dream

I had a real mindbender of a dream — It was an Inception-esque lucid dream...

I was in a game. An awesome game, where I was on, I think a team, where we would invade buildings and high-rise penthouse apartments and, I think (my memory is a bit hazy) steal things or try to find things. No doubt inspired by my youth of playing PC games.

So it combined almost all the classic elements of a cool dream; heights, the sensation of visceral gravity, competition, teamwork, problem-solving, jumping challenges, sneaking into places, and being in rich pseudo-luxury environments. My family members are recurring characters in my dreams (probably in yours as well) but I don’t remember them being in this one, so I think my team members were NPCs that my sleeping mind fetched out of my unconscious long-term memory of faces.

In the beginning of the dream, or at least what I remember as the beginning, I had done poorly in the game, I had scored badly and I needed to go into some kind of debt to continue playing.

Here’s the interesting part, it was a lucid dream, about a third of the time I lucid dream. In my lucid dreams, I do a reality check, I try to fly or levitate. Typically I will stand still, maybe on the edge of something and just will myself to rise up and fly. But in this one that didn’t work, I couldn’t levitate, I tried stepping off tables and ledges and I just fell, like in the real world. Not being able to fly gave me the sense that I was trapped in this game. Usually, I feel in control of my lucid dreams, but it would seem that I was less in control of this one. The comforting thing about even the scariest or weirdest of lucid dreams is that you always have an exit, you can always just will yourself to wake up. But, this one felt very real - I felt powerless in it! In this dream, I had encouragers, perhaps inspired by all the personal development podcasts I listen to, I had team members who would give me advice. I went to them and explained my state, I was trapped in the game and I didn’t have my usual powers of levitation, which was troubling. This was a mindbender for me because, I had the awareness of being dreaming, but I had to accept that which I could not change. That I was in the dream and had to abide by its rules.

I remember I had some heart-to-heart conversations with my encouragers. In my experience, dream characters make for bad conversation, they mostly just have a lot of nonsense to say. I don’t regard dreams as a source of unconscious wisdom. This dream was different though, I wish I could remember just what they told me but it gave me a real sense of stoic confidence to see my mission through.

At one point, a guy on my team and I had to scale a building, oddly the top of the building was covered with a bunch of junk, we had to wade through the junk which impeded our progress but I found a little ledge that I could run along, (which reminds of run and gun computer games) and I got into the building. There was a giant room with a very weird, illuminati-esque-looking piece of artwork protruding from the wall. Inside though we were caught by the resident, oddly an elderly black woman who seemed to know me and was happy to see me.

At the crescendo of the action, we invaded a high-rise building somewhere. We got into the penthouse apartment, and could not find the prize, whatever it was. The apartment was covered with green wallpaper. I started pulling down the green wallpaper and on the other side of it was a glass box, kind of like a glass room, I think there was a person in it operating some kind of machinery. This was what we had come here to get. The success was exhilarating!

I met back up with my teammates, we tallied our scores, and it turned out that even though I had performed well, my scores fell short, they were readjusted by some algorithm and it wasn’t good enough for me to advance or stay in the game. Disappointment. The last thing I remember was desperately negotiating with my team members to, I suppose, lend me more points to inflate my score so I could stay in the game.

What might this dream mean?

Who knows! Perhaps I feel like I’m underscoring for the performance I’m putting into life. Recently, I was writing about the gamification of lifestyle, so I’m probably thinking about life as a game.

Want to lucid dream?

I did an extensive podcast and article on this topic that you’ll want to check out. There are a couple of Nootropic supplements that help but mostly you need to habituate some reality testing techniques.

Veteran lucid dreamers advise that to lucid dream more you need to dream journal or at least remember your dreams but perhaps you’re thinking…

How the heck do you remember your dreams?

Typically, dreams are forgotten within a few minutes of having them. In the past, my lifehack for remembering dreams was to use the Miidio recorder app on my smartphone, I would grab my smartphone from my bedside and record a description of the dream, fall back asleep, and then listen back to it in the day. But, now I just wake my wife up next to me and tell her my dreams. Interestingly, telling someone your dreams when they are a very fresh memory seems to solidify them. There must be some mechanism in the mind for dream memory deterioration, so record your dreams somehow right after having them and you’ll enjoy livelier and more memorable nocturnal experiences.