I have always had a lot of dreams throughout my life. Only during my heaviest cannabis smoking did I ever have a relaxed dreamlife.

Due to having many vivid dreams on a regular basis I've noticed quite a few interesting things about the world I visit when I dream. I'm mostly curious if anybody else has anything similar they've experienced.

I have dreams about being in fantastical worlds at times but most of them are in this world...Kinda. I often dream of my home town and of my own home as well as the properties of friends and family. I feel that these are actually those places.

However, the layouts of the houses are different than reality by a great amount. The layout of town is way different but I know when I'm in the different parts of town what parts they are.

The most bizarre thing is every time I dream of these places, they are exactly the same within the dream world. Every time I visit my old neighbors house it has a wooden picket fence around his backyard and an expansive open rolling hilled field behind it that simply aren't there. Every time I walk down the main drag of town there's a mini-mall full of awesome stores the likes of which this part of the world will never and has never seen.

It is uncanny how detailed this world is that I visit. I go through attics that don't really exist and fields that never were. I've gone on many adventures in an even larger town that's some 50 miles away from there and know it even better than I know the real one.

There's only one place in this dream world that isn't the same in that it doesn't seem to feel like any place I've ever known or been. A road behind my old house, that doesn't exist, leads to a T-section. Each way goes to a completely different world. One is an old ghost town that has the slightest sepia tone to it. One goes up a very, very large hill that opens to a beautiful cliffside high above forest treetops and other cliffs. The last goes down into a swamp that begins as the back woods behind the house but becomes something much different.

Another thing I've noticed when I have flying dreams is that I seem to be flexing a non-existant muscle in my abdomen. The more lucid I become the more I'm able to feel this muscle to flex to fly better. I've asked plenty of friends about this with none of them having had this experience and am very curious for a response on a more open format like this.

I also have had a few instances where I was another place. I suppose you could call the OBE's but they stand out in my experiences as intense. They normally happen as a normal lucid dream but then there's a moment of stillness and I feel as if my head is passing through a barrier. Once through it is 100% like being awake. My awareness goes in all directions, I hear cars a mile or so away, I feel the wind and the sun, and my mind is thrown for a loop because it is like being fully awake.

So being fully awake and all of a sudden somewhere else is pretty awesome on one hand and frightening on the other. I wasn't freaking out in this other side, just looking around in awe and moving around to feel myself and make sure everything was as it should be. As soon as I start thinking about what's going on around me though I start feeling that barrier slip back over the back of my head and as it hits my ears I'm back in lucid dream land then generally wake up from how intense it is.

So yeah, anybody else experience these sorts of things in their dreamlife?

I have had similar experiences in regards to the recognition of locations of waking reality appearing in dream states with a modification. It's quite compelling to know that these dreams are essentially the labyrinth of our own mind, and in turn we stand face to face with the capabilities of the mind.

Also, the barrier in which you speak of. I've had one very bizarre OBE that lasted shortly and I barely "floated" out of my conscious body/mind whatever. As I forced myself to dis-associate I experienced a dial-up/static sound vibrating throughout my head along with some pressure and I found myself sitting up out of my body. I wouldn't say I physically came out of my body but psychologically I did in some sort of fashion. It was quite frightening though, so I kind of let go and returned.

Finally, one more anecdote. This was a brief lucid dream. I was in a weird and bare bathroom in which I was staring into a mirror. I saw myself and became lucid, but as soon as that happened my whole experiential reality became very unstable. It shook like an earthquake and the fabrics of the room tore apart and I found myself in absolute darkness. I was conscious still and after a few moments I felt the intuition to open my actual eyes and was awake in bed.

I have much more lucid anecdotes but would rather not throw your post too off point from your inquiries. This stuffs just way to tangible and perceptually "real."

I'm not sure about the muscle in the abdomen part, I'll have to pay attention next time. But learning to fly around and alter your dream environment is definitely like flexing a muscle in some ways. The rest about the nature of the locations and lucidity etc is very common for me.