What are dream characters?

 Often Lucid Dreamers affirm their experience of Lucid Dreaming within the dream by letting other dream characters know what they’re experiencing is a dream. The Lucid Dreamer may say things like “You know that this is a dream don’t you? That you are a dream character…”

​When we say things like this often there is a slight bias in favour of the supposedly real physical waking life. But why do we often assume that our physical reality is any more REAL than their existence? Or that in some way they also need to wake up the nature of their dream?  

When we talk to Dream Characters like this, how often do we actually honour the existence of all these beings that populate our dreams? And significantly how often do we reflect on the important work that they are doing?

On a slightly different note it can also happen that when people journey into the spirit worlds and inform people deceased people that they meet that they are in fact dead, a typical response might be something like “Ok I am dead but do I look dead to you? I’m pretty active and alive in my own world”.  

​Coming back to dream characters how do we even know what these beings really are? We may think they are just insignificant animated figures of our own personal psyche but perhaps there can be more too it than that…

A couple of days ago I had an illuminating lucid dream experience that really made me reflect upon this. I was in the midst and throws of quite an intense dream narrative with characters streaming around. They seemed almost like office workers who were seeking to meet a tight deadline, with one figure assuming a kind of managerial role. Suddenly intuitively some kind of message that the dream was seeking to communicate to me dawned in me and I said “Ah, everyone at some point wants to be King”.

At this point all the intensity and restlessness of the dream dissolved and to my surprise and amusement all the dream characters suddenly stopped and very warmheartedly began to congratulate each other. They embraced each other and patted each other on the back, agreeing that they had played their roles well in the dream narrative.

This was so interesting to me! as it was a very vivid expression of the feeling that once we get the lesson…. The feeling tone of the drama can dramatically change. It is actually very current neuroscience to suggest that our dreams are often seeking to help us process certain feelings, hang ups, challenges and emotions.
So, what happens when the purpose of a dream has been fulfilled? Perhaps we can see it like music where a strong dissonance that was seeking to help us evolve comes to a wonderful resolution. And we can all feel a sense of release and satisfaction.

Again the refrain, what really is a dream character? Sometimes saying that they’re ‘just’ dream characters can feel like it totally misses the point. Perhaps there are animated beings that the greater system of consciousness sends to help us evolve in our dreams. Perhaps they are sometimes animated aspects of our own psyche that deeply want to help us evolve. Perhaps they are sometimes independent beings that have walked into our dream space who have their own agenda. Helpful for us or not. I have had edgy characters show up to me sometimes who have made it very clear that they are not a part of me and that I had better
honour them by using their own name.

As ever we are simply explorers on the great sea of consciousness, and any answer to these types of questions about say the nature of Dream Characters is really only a provisional theory, that we ideally hold lightly until we grow and learn more.       

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