So, here's the thing.

Up until now, the overwhelming majority of my dreams have been horrible nightmares. Good or bad, most of my dreams are totally indistinguishable from reality while i am dreaming, but sometimes in that strange space between dreaming and waking, I can know that I was dreaming and choose to lucidly change the dream and drop back into it. It's also worth pointing out that all normal sensation is present in my dreams, including the capacity for intense pain. If I were to consciously "pinch myself", I'm certain that I would feel it. I've experienced death repeatedly, sometimes several times in one night. I've witnessed the horrific deaths of everyone I love. The unifying theme is that I have no power, no control, and no one will ever help me. I am alone.


But lately, something has been very different.

The overall content is the same. Usually terrifying, horrific, bizarre. Circumstances that would never be particularly likely in reality.

But when the dream reaches a climax, lately I've become prescient within the dream. I can see the outcomes of a sequence of events, with each dominant decision I make ending with a different outcome, leaving me free to choose which outcome I believe is the correct one.

I live through (or die through) every outcome side by side, like fractals or like being continuously aware of your many selves of the many worlds theory. The first time it happened I was attacked by a friend. In one outcome I was killed. In the other two, I overcame him and killed him. The worst of them was actually snapping his neck under my foot while he begged for mercy, knowing he was trying to deceive me.

Last night in several of the dreams I had, I again received three options at the critical moment, which boiled down to
1) Give up, and die.
2) Call for help, and someone will save you.
3) Save yourself.

To demonstrate that these options were available at the critical moment, and believable, I had circumstantial evidence that someone would help me if I asked, but also that I would be able to save myself.

The first dream I had was a dream version of the house where I live. There were Velociraptors. They had chased my cat into a tree outside my window, and I was afraid to rescue my cat. A relative in victorian safari garb with an over-under shotgun blew one of them away so I could retrieve my cat. Later, they got inside the house. I don't know how, but the front door was open. I was worried about the cat again but I had bigger fish to fry; There were two raptors in the front room. In one, they caught me unawares and obviously I died. In the second outcome, I had grabbed a baseball bat and held them off long enough for my aunt to come in with the gun. In the third, I grabbed my sling-blade and neatly dispatched both intruders with only a scratch or two.

I remember only the vaguest of details from the next two dreams; they blended elements from road trips I've had with the bizarre, and involved my father, sister, and stepmother in the first place, and in the second, imagine living in the world of Super Mario Galaxy if it were also the setting for Dead Space. Yeah, makes no sense at all. Probably because I was with Mitso in this one. Either way I get the sense that the multiple outcomes thing happened there, but I only remember one outcome each, the one where I accept help and go exploring.

The last one involves one of the alien worlds in the previous dream, but much richer and more expansive. I'm on a roadtrip with my mom, at a campground of some kind. There's an alien plant, that looks like a bromeliad or similar, very large. I examine it and it's home to a nest of hpyer-aggressive, extremely mobile viper-like snakes. One of them latches onto my arm and I wrestle it down the length of my arm, to my palm, where it locks around one of the bones in my hand. It's pumping incredible amounts of venom into me, and I can feel it burning into my bloodstream. I have two choices now: Do more of what isn't working, and die. Find some way to pry it off, and call out for help. I go into a cabin nearby, find a kitchen utensil (it was a spoon for some reason) and pry the thing off. My heart skips a beat, painfully. It hurts like hell. The places where the venom wound up on my skin as the fangs scratched down my arm are blistering. I have the snake managed, though, and I call for help. And as I do so, I realize I have another set of choices. Rest, and give in before help arrives. Stay conscious, active but calm, and help will arrive. Or, I'm tougher than this thing, and I think I can neutralize the venom if I concentrate. I tried the third one, and I transmuted the venom into something more drug-like, but not deadly; Help arrives, I toss the snake elsewhere, and the paramedic checks me out and decides that I'm miraculously fine.

That last outcome might not seem like anything major, but for someone who's invariably lost, scared, alone, or powerless in his subconscious mind's nightly sojourns.... This feels like an amazing breakthrough. It's like my subconscious is finally getting the message about all of the positive, affirmative inner work I've been doing, and it's challenging me.

It's like it's asking, " Are you sure? This is very different from what we're used to; what exactly are you asking for?"

Anyone have any thoughts on this weirdness?