So I’ll make this as brief as possible and add detail if needed. I’m a natural lucid dreamer and have been since childhood. Over the years I’ve identified several kinds of dreams I have, the most common of which (probably 80-90% of them) are dreams where I am in a strange body and a strange land with strange events happening. The circumstances are always vastly different, and I always have to find out what’s going on, because I do not have any knowledge of the places I go or the things happening.
Each place is extremely detailed and for all purposes seems as realistic as the waking world. I have even been back to some places more than once at later points in that place’s time, and noticed time-specific changes like people I met the first time being older, or having had kids, or such. I grew into lucidity as a child in these dreams. At first I didn’t know I was dreaming, then I did, then I altered them, but I was never able to alter them past what seemed like normal physical limitations for that world. I also noticed that the bodies I inhabited were more like vessels of real creatures I “possessed.” If I listened to them, I could hear their thoughts, feelings, and sometimes them begging me not to possess them.
Sometimes they seemed happy I was there or they expected me. Other times it seemed like I was scaring them. I learned quickly that I didn’t need to pick up context clues from the world, but I could mine information (forcibly or otherwise) from these bodies I inhabited, and figure out where I was or what was happening. I’ve done many things in these worlds, from living my stolen body’s normal life, to participating in alien wars, or even sleeping in as the creature I was, essentially wasting a whole dream by sleeping it away. I’ve done anything I can think of, but to me these dreams seem like real places with real events I’m really affecting.
So… what is this? Is it some kind of vivid imagination thing? Am I astrally travelling? Being given visions? Am I secretly some kind of body-hopping horror in another dimension? I’m not even sure where to begin with this, and I could use some help.