Jen Sonstein Maidenberg

Have you figured it out yet? You aren’t always you in a dream. In fact, there’s a possibility you were never You in a dream; not the You that you identify as and with in waking life.

This may sound like some mind-bending philosophical thought experiment, and I suppose it’s also that, but I intend it here as a question for you to be working with as you explore your nightly dreams.

Why do you assume you are You inside a dream? Why do you insist upon bringing into your dream experiences your waking life identity, autobiographical details, stories, contexts, judgments, opinions, analyses, etc.? Can we really truly be an explorer in and of our dreams if we are constantly trying to make sense of dream experience as if it was a continuation of our waking life identity and storyline?

It’s not your fault you automatically assume you are you in a dream. There are certainly neural mechanisms and physiology involved. But it’s my belief we can evolve beyond the neural mechanisms and our physiology if we are intentional and if we use our dreams as a means for self-exploration (by which I mean recording your dreams and actively engaging in an ongoing personal inquiry about your tendencies and behaviors inside your dreams.) It’s also my belief that doing so is to our benefit. It can allow us to expand beyond the limitations of identifying with our waking life beliefs and stories.

(Are those waking life beliefs and stories even yours, anyway?)

Entering into a dream character that isn’t you is a kind of active empathy. It feels so real that if you allow yourself to drop into it, the resulting experience might penetrate you enough for you internalize it as if it happened to you; thus causing a change in you in your waking life.

It’s challenging and deep inner work, yes, but it’s available to everyone, no matter where they are in their own spiritual journey or personal development. Unlike some other practices that enable us to explore other realms of experience and ways of perceiving reality (ie. psychedelics), dreams are available to everyone, independent of class, race, religion, age, gender, and intellectual capacity on a nightly basis. Everyone dreams. Certainly, we sometimes go through phases or cycles in which our dreams are difficult for us to remember (“dream droughts”), but we are still dreaming (save for a those with serious traumatic brain injuries or neurological defects.)

I’ve written before about what begins to occur when you become willing to question your assumed identity, stories, beliefs, and perspectives inside of dreams, and it’s a topic I continue to explore and write about as my own dreams and dreamwork offer me new insights. I’m writing about it again today because I’ve been intrigued by how I’ve been acting differently in some of my own dreams lately, in particular during encounters with people and other living creatures. I’ve been paying closer attention to how they look, examining their faces more closely, asking them questions about themselves or about the interaction we have found ourselves in. I’ve been doing the same with places inside my dreams: engaging more with my dream senses — looking around the room, for instance, and taking note of the decor or touching objects and taking them in longer — instead of dropping into a dream with some kind of “knowing” or certainty that I am where my waking life mind believes I am based on associations.

For example, in a recent dream, I found myself in a wholly unfamiliar setting. I noticed my dream mind trying to make sense of where and when I was, but the answer my mind was coming to didn’t compute. Is this someone’s home in New Jersey (where I live now?) No. Is this a friend or family member’s home? No. This decor does not fit with any known 2025 suburban United States aesthetic. Is this my life? Maybe I am watching a home movie? Where and when am I? 

Most people don’t get any farther than this in a dream. They become so reactive to their confusion that they make up stories about where or when they are, rather than explore their dream senses or engage with the dream characters.

In this recent dream, I didn’t allow my confusion to overwhelm me. I focused more closely on the wall in front of me, took in a wooden plaque with some writing, noticed the sliding glass door and the landscape beyond it. I determined I “must be in Florida; this seems like the 70s in Florida. Perhaps I am in my uncle’s house.” This paying of attention to my senses and my surroundings almost instantly regressed me into feeling as if I was a small girl, as I would have been in this type of house in the 70s, instead of my adult self. As the dream narrative continued, I felt less and less like my 50-year-old self and more like a 5-year-old girl. This is one example of what can happen when you learn through dreamwork how to respond not to the mind’s stories so quickly and instead engage with your environment.

I don’t know that my second attempt at deducing where and when I was in the dream was any more accurate than my first — was I really in 1970s Florida in my Uncle’s house? –but it completely shifted my experience inside the dream. 

This change in my dream perspective affected the dream’s unfolding. Just like in life, dream characters respond to how we behave towards them. In this dream, as I realized I was a child, I was treated like a child by the other characters in the room. Again, I’m not asserting that I landed on the “accurate” understanding of where, when, or who I was in this dream, but even shifting into the child’s point-of-view and emotional state was a valuable exercise that offered me many insights upon waking.

In addition to the above example, I am finding that in general some of my dreams are longer lately as a result of my slowing down my dream mind. I am allowed more time to connect with dream characters as a result, as well. I am having richer sensual experiences in dreams with taste, touch, and sound as I lean into seeking those out rather than getting caught up in the dream mind’s story and missing what’s right there in front of me. 

To be clear: I am not talking about becoming lucid in a dream, which inevitably leads to a person bringing their waking life habits, beliefs, and tendencies into the dream and trying to control the action or the narrative. I am talking about changing my entire way of being, both in the dream and in waking life, so that I become someone (in both realms) who allows life to unfold more slowly before determining what is happening or making assumptions. The idea is to experience the world around me, rather than turn it into what I already believe it to be.

Do you know what I mean?

We often automatically believe dream characters are people we know from waking life, or that dream places are places we recognize from waking life. We quickly write a dream report in the morning naming our dream companion as “my dad,” or “my wife,” or “my dog.” Or we identify a dream location as “my childhood home (sorta)” or “Chicago.”

Just as quickly, we think we are Ourselves in any given dream. And then we’re confused by our surroundings. Or dream events don’t make sense. We can react too quickly as a result, leaving a scene, lashing out at others, feeling hurt or exposed.

What if you simply aren’t You in the dream, but your mind is so used to your Youness — not to mention the linearity of time and the physicality of space — that it convinces you that you are?

As I spend more time with my dreams while awake, revisiting them and questioning what I think I know in the dream, I am changing that habit.

Or rather … my perception of the external input around me is changing as a result of my slowing down.

I am now meeting people and events in both waking life and dreams with more curiosity and interest. I am taking them in more, rather than quickly sizing them up. I am sensing them or feeling them or noticing them. I would go even as far as saying that sometimes, I am simply experiencing them. When I do experience them, I am realizing maybe they aren’t who or what I thought they were. 

I believe this is one purpose of our dreams: to teach us how to meet whatever is there in the moment as if it’s new. Or, at least, as if it’s not more of the same from waking life. 

When we do, our encounters with people and our environment deepens. When we do, we get to experience so much more. We get to choose. We get to know people for who they are now. We begin to remember who we were before all our stories, beliefs, and assumptions began driving our decisions and behaviors.

What would it be like for you to stop repeating the same old stories with the same old people? 

What would it be like for you to experience life from someone else’s perspective or vantage? What would it be like to try on a completely new life?

It’s possible in dreams. But it requires learning better how to not constantly bring your waking life identity and stories into the dream. Dreamwork is one way of learning how.