Exploring the Dream Space

I actually bought my first round of parts for the portal gun, but I haven't actually started work on it yet... also, I haven't scanned any of the plans or receipts for a good comprehensive first post on it. But I also have had some interesting dreams the past couple nights, and I kinda wanted to share some of it.

Actually, for a couple nights now, I've had dreams where I have inexplicably changed gender at some point, that is always fun. There is also the continuing epic quality of the dreams. Which I really think might just be a product of my brain stringing together a whole bunch of different dreams. Its kinda like going through a whole day with a lot of different activities and then telling the story of the entire day, even if the activities are unrelated. Its happened a couple times, but after a false awakening, I may recount a previous dream to a character in a new dream space. It's probably an effect of my ability to lucid dream. Like passive lucid dreaming or something.

Really interesting/disconcerting thing I discovered last night. You can feel pain in dreams. I don't know why I find this to be so weird. The dream space is capable of emulating other sensory experiences: sight, sound, taste, pleasure. I don't know if the dream space can create heat or cold though... those are probably tied too closely to the most primitive parts of the brain. Anyway, I felt pain, it felt real. I can point right to the part of my hand that was ripped open by my fingers when I clenched my fist too tight.

Its actually a really interesting cascade of dream sequences. In the first state, I was in conflict with someone. This conflict led to a false awakening in which I had subconsciously clenched my fists during the previous state when I was "unconscious". Then at a later point, there must have been another false awakening because the skin was unbroken, but I was aware of the previous dream space.

I've probably mentioned it before, but I don't really think its the same as a dream within a dream. I've never gone to sleep in a hotel room, had an adventure on a snowy mountain and then woken up in the same hotel. I don't think it is possible to be in multiple dream spaces at once. I think it is possible to create a dream space similar to a previous one, but when you're out, you're out. Of course, in Inception, the different layers are actually different people's dream spaces. So I guess that actually kind of explains that.

I've got a lot of empirical theories from personal experiences, but I actually don't know much about dream psychology... I assume it would best fit as a branch of psychology. My mom said that I should just audit a class in the spring since I only have 9 units planned and it is very probably my last semester ever in any kind of educational setting, so I should make the most of it. Talking about dreams just now made me think of psychology, but I don't think any of he classes would be that specific. Maybe linguistics, math(number theory) or some kind of art or possibly even music. It feels really weird to be out of time like this... I suppose I could take 2 if I really wanted to.