I have been nursing a theory for some time, that finally gained a good amount of strength when I moved into my current living situation.
I've always wondered what was up with the lighting in my dreams. I didn't really think about it until I became interested in learning how to Lucid Dream. One of the techniques described for training oneself to become lucid, involves hitting a light switch every now and again. It is said that we are not able to control the lighting in our dreams, and therefore if we were to hit a switch, nothing would presumably happen. I never got into the habit of trying to alter the lighting in my dreams. Rarely are my dreams detailed or realistic enough to involve something so specific as a light switch. But I've certainly started noticing a pattern in the lighting of my dreams.
In the last two years, I've lived in a couple different apartments. The first was where I began to realize the patterns. The bedroom that I slept in was on the back side of the building. The windows were in a long row across one side of the room and despite being covered by curtains, let in a great deal of light. The owner of the building was paranoid of snoopers, or just didn't like darkness. Either way, he had surrounded the building in god-awfully bright flood lights that lit the building like day... all night long. Sometimes I would wrap shirts around my head. Sometimes I would put the pillow over my face. We even doubled up the curtains and hung blankets over the windows and the room was still so bright you could read from a page. This is where I started to notice that my dreams were always lit the same; always with an ambient glow. It became most obvious when, from time to time, I would sleep on the couch in the living room. This room was much darker and my dreams would be a little more emotion-heavy and not nearly so image-vibrant. I also felt like I was sleeping better out there. The darkness relaxed me in a way I didn't get when sleeping in even a mildly illuminated room.
After that apartment, we moved further away from the population density, into the basement apartment of a house. Despite having a large window that takes up nearly the entire wall of our bedroom, we haven't needed curtains because it's so dark up here at night. No porchlights, no floodlights, no streetlights. When it's overcast, I can see the silhouettes of the trees against a hazy sky, but other than that it's super dark here. I feel like I sleep better, heavier, deeper, and longer up here.
I think it's also valuable to mention that I've recently fallen into a new habit of waking up at 3 every morning when my cat walks across my face to be let outside. This allows me a brief reflection into my early-morning dreams, before I fall back asleep and am dreaming once more, as the sun begins to rise.
I've noticed a definite change in the lighting of my dreams, since we moved up here. When I remember dreams from very early in the morning, they're usually less structured, more emotional and totally dark (not in subject matter, but in lighting).
As the sun rises and the morning arrives, I find my dreams to be much more colorful and rich with imagery. There's no less emotional presence, but the subject matter tends to be more vibrant in these morning dreams.
My hypothesis is that the reason why the lighting cannot be affected within our dreams is because the lighting in our dreams is directly related to the light that is hitting our eyes as we're sleeping.
We are moving again in a few days, so I'll have a whole new lighting scheme to experiment with.
I would love to hear back from others about this theory. Does anyone else feel like this makes sense or do you experience your dreams completely differently?
Lighting in Dreams...
