Seeing faces before dreaming

[Lira]

I came to this web site looking for information to supplement the book on energy work I'd recently gotten. When I saw this dream forum, I thought perhaps someone could relate to an odd experience I have fairly often.

I've always been a vivid dreamer. For several years as a teenager I kept a dream journal. Even thirty years later I can flip through and recall bits of the dreams from the few sentences I'd written. I started recognizing lucid dreams in college. Although I don't actively pursue lucid dreaming, I will take advantage of it when I realize what's going on! Even non-lucid dreams will generally stick with me throughout an entire day.

One of the ways I put myself to sleep at night is something that's developed almost into entertainment. Basically, I just close my eyes and consciously start to watch the shadows twist into shapes, first in dark greys, then gradually into dark colors, then I start to see recognizable shapes and try to 'hold on' to those shapes (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't). It's at this stage that it gets odd...on many occasions, all of a sudden, a face will appear. Not just a generic face, but a very specific (unknown to me) person with very clear features. Generally when this begins to happen, and I can concentrate enough to hold onto it (yes, still me being conscious), I will get several faces in slow succession. On one occasion, I got a scene of a woman sitting in a car with the windows rolled down. She was reading a magazine. I just stayed watching her for a couple of minutes.

These episodes are markedly different from what I have experienced in lucid dreams -- in those, I can change a location, or fly, or invent things never seen, or even will myself to sit down and draw what I am seeing.

But these faces and the scene I mentioned. These are different. I cannot change them (except to open my eyes). I am conscious, but I am only an observer.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

[Beekeeper]

Yep, your experiences are well-known and discussed on this site.

Definitions from Adpedia;

Hypnagogic state
The state between being awake and falling asleep in which visual and auditory hallucinations may be experienced.

Hypnopompic state
This state is the transition from semiconsciousness to waking. For some people, this is a time of visual and auditory hallucinations.

Phasing links from ADpedia
http://forums.astraldynamics.com/viewtopic.php?t=7207
http://forums.astraldynamics.com/viewtopic.php?t=4325
http://forums.astraldynamics.com/vie...hp?f=7&t=10282

[ariesr]

Fascinating....I've experienced this during meditations as well.

[CFTraveler]

This shows you reach the liminal state fairly easy. Meditation is a good way to train to do this, so you've been training without knowing it.

[Lira]

I'm quite relieved that this is a common occurrence. When they first appeared, they were so vivid and close that they freaked me out just a bit!

It's comforting to know the different ways this manifests for others.

It is kind of funny I learned this on my own. I've had a lot of sleep problems in the past (I dream easily but do not have much or any deep sleep in any given night -- two sleep tests under the belt there), and I started trying different things that would calm me down and allow me to focus on getting back to sleep when I'd have insomnia. This is the one that stuck, especially as it was so different every time I did it. I tried lots of other things, like imagining writing the alphabet on a chalkboard, then wiping each letter away. That was just boring!