Are we more linked with everything when we dream?, page 1

In highschool I used to sleep with my music on a low volume. Sometimes while dreaming I would try to turn the volume down, turn the music off, or even unplug it but the music would keep playing. It kinda freaked me out until I woke up and realised why the music wouldn't stop.

Massive off topic tangent: More recently I had a series of lucid dreams:

The first was very short, I was walking down stairs into a dark basement when I suddenly realised that I was dreaming. The lights turned on in the basement and went extremely, blindingly bright and shocked me awake.

The second was longer and had a detailed plot, most of which I don't remember. I do remember that I was living in a run-down apartment building in a slum, my neighbours were crack-heads and were constantly stealing my stuff, and there was a restaurant in the ground floor of the building next door and one of my friends worked there. At one point I was walking down the street from my apartment building when suddenly I was no longer wearing any pants. Confused, I turned back to my apartment building. I looked into the window of the restaurant and saw my friend serving coffee, she saw me as well and waved, apparently not noticing my lack of pants (this is a common thing in my dreams actually). When I entered the apartment building I saw my pants lying on the floor like right beside the door on the ground floor. As I put them on, I realised the absurdity of the situation and concluded I must be dreaming. I stepped outside again, looking around in amazement at the cityscape. The street I lived on was incredibly detailed but was like no place I had ever been to. Buildings in the distance seemed detailed enough in my peripherals, but when I focused on them they appeared blurry and uninteresting. I remember wondering if they were blurry because I was used to having poor vision, or because my subconscious couldn't quite keep up with the level of detail my conscious mind was demanding. Then I blacked out, struggled to stay in the dream but that only made me fall further from it, and woke up.

After waking up I told myself that if I ever became aware of the dream again, I would try doing something physics defying like flying, and sure enough the next time I became aware I did it...

In the third dream I used the principle of a dream within a dream from Inception, though completely by accident. In the initial dream I was in a strange house that I supposed was my house because my dad and step mom were there. My room was odd in that there was a window to the living-room...but anyway, skipping to the good part, I shut the blinds on my living-room window and went to sleep within the dream.

I found myself walking down a long industrial-looking corridor, pipes running overhead and the like. I was with a group of friends (though I don't recognize any of the people from real life) having usual dream conversations; jokes that were hilarious then but hardly make sense in the real world. This part is quite silly, but this is exactly what happened; I walked past a pikachu, paused, and looked back. The pikachu was wearing a pikachu hat. So I walked up to it, pulled the hat off, and laughingly told my friends that the pikachu was wearing a pikachu hat. Their faces came into focus, and I saw that they were shifting and changing, turning into characters from Pokemon. Bizarre. And just a disclaimer, I haven't watched Pokemon for about 8 years.

While my friends faces were morphing I became aware of the dream, so I told them "Guys...this is a dream. You aren't real" and they gave me a puzzled look. They vanished as I suddenly started accelerating down the corridor, my vision blurring from the speed I was gaining. I was approaching the wall at ludicrous speed, and right before impact I was shocked awake...into the first dream.

Lying in my strange room once again, I opened my blinds to the living room and saw my parents watching TV. Then I decided I wanted to try to go back to that dream, so I closed the blinds and went back to sleep. It worked. I was in a warehouse now, with similar architecture to the corridor from before. I found that I was able to fly with only a thought, but couldn't control my speed and had no idea how to stop. But whenever I was about to crash into anything, I would simply think about phasing through it and it worked... up until I accidentally accelerated upward too fast and hit my head on the ceiling, shocking myself awake (into the real world) through both layers of the dream.

It was exhilarating. I definitely recommend trying it, but it is not something you can force yourself to experience. The key, I think, is to pay close attention to details. If you suspect you may be dreaming, focus on something like a clock; they never behave like they're supposed to. Once you become aware, it may take a couple attempts to remain in the dream while in control.