I had several dreams last night where I was anticipating something and was surprised by what actually happened.
Seems odd to me that if my brain is managing the dream; how the heck could I actually feel a sense of surprise?
© 2026 – SoulSequel
27 responses to “How is it possible to be surprised in a dream?”
I love dreaming. Funny thing, I had a vivid dream last night with Justin Trudeau and his wife. I was surprised they were visiting me and the Canadian family I was staying with (who I don’t even know who they were). A dream full of surprises. Are our dreams part of our wants? Yeah, I wouldn’t mind meeting the Trudeau’s.
A candy-colored clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper:
“Go to sleep, everything is alright”…
@Gina OK, that brings up another question, how can you imagine someone you have never met or seen? Where did the Canadian family image come from? Can it all just be attributed to imagination?
@spitfire3dc It must be our imagination. I was also in a house in Canada that I have no idea where it came from. A collection of real images I suppose, or the imagination.
@Gina
My personal thought is that dreams can be affected by outside agency. For really, they are just energy: and energy can affect energy. But so few people believe this, and fewer still actually bother to practice it. (But that also means fewer people have bothered setting up defenses against it too!)
But most dreams are just our imagination playing or subconscious doing housecleaning.
@griz
It’s all part of the alternate or infinite reality. Our “time” here is one in an infinite number of situations all happening within and around each other.
@Fletch
Reality-beyond-us is an interesting concept. Do you think our actions can (do?) affect the infinite reality and vice versa?
(Participation vs isolation).
@griz
If there are an infinite number of realities and possibilities, one affecting the others could be possible.
HOWEVER this may be where our unconscious is tapping into other realities. Dreams could be part it this. So could deja vu. (yes, I do understand the process behind deja vu, but why can’t this be part of it all?)
I am just starting to get into these ideas of different realms of what reality is or could be, but I cannot believe that WE are the end-all, be-all of what makes us US.
“US” is so beyond what we see and experience today. My DMT post was getting into this.
I find it interesting and possible.
@Fletch
Our being able to attach a scientific or medical explanation (excuse?) to something shouldn’t automatically mean that this is all that is there/at work. Too often we put something like deja vu away on the shelf just because there is a “scientific understanding”.
Yet what does science know about things beyond the purely physical?
My personal conviction is that any God would have to be the God of all realities/dimensions. Even if there is no unity between them in any other way, this would become the unifying factor: the spiritual “Grand Unification Theory”.
I once knew a Native Shaman who said that most often we have “ourselves” (our ego) dialed up to such a high volume that nothing else can be heard. Any messages that were from “not us” (things beyond us) have to wait until we are unconscious and the ego is quiet (or otherwise occupied in dream/meditation/prayer that is not just-about-us?).
@spitfire3dc
alternate reality
@luftballooneyegouge I don’t think I’ve had a deep purple dream. I’ll have to keep on the look out.
@spitfire3dc
You people probably dream Guess Who & Rush.
I have very odd dreams. All of my dreams seem to run as if by some script that I am not aware of. I am regularly surprised in my dreams. In most of my dreams I am able to control my actions, but I cannot control the outcomes. I would imagine that I should be able to control and know every aspect of the dreams that are constructed by my subconscious mind. But it seems, that part of my brain has other plans.
@mamajoy
One of the greatest unexplored mysteries is often . . . ourselves!
I find that few people seem interested in exploring more that just the obvious and well-lit aspects of their own personal kingdom. Perhaps fearing that some demon has been raised up in the dark corners that they cannot put down?
Few people seem interested in exploring the interplay of us controlling our feelings and urges, vs them controlling us.
that is really interesting. oh the deep recesses of our minds! i often have dreams with unexpected twists, like something is beyond my control…subconscious at play?
most of the time i understand even while it is happening, even if i cant control it, i kind of get Why things are going the way they are. but then last night i had a dream it was summer and i was visiting an old work site, walking around with an old coworker, and it was over run with random families having picnics. very toronto zoo green space :D and then suddenly david spade was standing on a make shift stage in nothing but briefs singing a camp song and i was approached by a rescued chicken who let me hold it.
so that took a surprising twist i cant even begin to explain
i hope tonight my dreams are back to normal, dreams about old houses with secret passageways and lofts full of vintage clothes, or painted skies, or weird transit stations with movie theatres for while you wait for your subway :D just if david spade could please never appear to me in that form again! (ghost of bad movies past?)
@BelleMadre this leads to another question. Would you be surprised if you met David Spade and he wasn’t at all like the character he has created and if so, would you think he was “acting” in this new behaviour?
At this point in his career, do you think he would even know which is an act and which isn’t?
But, back to the original point. people seem to be leading to this issue that this surprise thing comes out of our sub conscious. but is it really sub to our existing consciousness or is it a different consciousness…at least as far as our imaginations are concerned. Managing our breathing is one thing. Managing our imaginations may be something else entirely.
@spitfire3dc
i do think we have these created personas for actors in our minds, of course based on their characters, esp if they are often type cast. we get screen crushes, think we know something about who they are. are surprised when we learn about their true personalities. even the persona given to us in interviews and public forums i think is not really the person they Are. i think we all have an outer and inner life self.
our dreams are our minds working through things, things we might not even realize we are thinking or feeling. like a mirror. but one we have to filter. i like surprises in dreams, it is a break from the recurrences. (which i think are the unprocessed things my mind/heart still need to sort through.) (i believe i can flyyyyyyyyyyyyy lol)
@BelleMadre
I find it interested all of the books and “experts” who will come with claims of analyzing our dreams. When the best interpreter of your dreams . . . is you.
They can sound very impressive with “A boat means this . . . a candle means this . . . . “; and there may be a shared cultural “imagery language” there. (I tap into this as a photographer).
But it all goes sideways if say, you had significant event (good or bad) happen in a boat or with a candle! This would certainly over-write any “standard” imagery language.
And on the topic of “managing our imaginations”. A Shaman once insisted to me that if one managed their spirit (the seat of our imagination), we would not dream. Sleep time could be slashed by 50% or more, as “mental housekeeping” was not needed. He only slept a few hours each night, and somehow seemed to retain memory of everything that happened around him.
He would “go inside himself” numerous times during the day. We would joke that he had just nodded off. But over time I learned that “something” had caught his attention: whether something deep inside him, or something miles away from us — and he had essentially “excused himself” to go check it out and take care of any business there.
I still find the prospects of what he introduced me to, compelling! (But the hectic pace of what we consider “real life” work against explorations into this realm! Few people feel they can afford the time to meditate or blow to their ego to ask various species of trees their take on life!)
@BelleMadre
You might want to use that Spade to re-bury that memory of movies-past — and hope it doesn’t “zombie” on you later!
Actually, I find I rather enjoy bizarre dreams: the kind that break the cycle in being bizarre enough that you retain them and muse about them the next day!
Various Native philosophies hold that dreams can contain communication from outside of just ourselves — with one Shaman I knew asserting that if one took care of mind and spirit while awake, it wouldn’t have to wait to tend to itself when we were unconscious!
But as for surprise? I don’t know about you, but I used to have bad dreams as a kid where stuff would scare the bejeebers out of me. And not always associated with something I’d seen before. One night I really had to go to the bathroom, but some pesky beavers had ripped up all the floor-boards and I just saw the lattice of joists — which I had never seen before.
Not long after, I went with my dad to see a house being built and he wondered why I was so entranced/freaked out at seeing those bare joists!
@griz Yeah, I had bad dreams as a kid too. May have mentioned this before, I had a recurring nightmare seeing what looked like porridge filling the canyon of a downtown metropolis. Saw the exact same scene years later on September 1, 2011. Freaked me out.
Another recurring dream saw a commercial airliner flying overhead and just feeling dread. I woke every time wondering why I sensed dread. I thought airplane travel was fun and exciting so it always confused me.
@spitfire3dc
Yea, I loathed porridge as a kid too.
Anything that slimy and gloppy just had to be evil!
My dreams are usually about something I heard lately. It is on my subconscious mind and appears in dreams. Then there are dreams prompted by noises in the room. Going to sleep listening to Coast to Coast on the radio will bring dreams of Bigfoot, UFOs, Chubacabra, ghosts, and paranormal. This morning I dream of cats, cats, cats, and extra cats. Then Immortal Pirate transformed into a cat. I woke up and Immortal Pirate was snoring and “Meowing” between snores. Meowing like a cat!!! When we really woke up and got breakfast started, we had an extra cat to feed num-nums to. His name is Nate and he is the wayward brother to our other cats. No problem. Adding one more is just fine. My dream became reality. I was not surprised. However, Immortal Pirate had to wake up and stop meowing. He is not allowed to be an additional cat in this house. He could get a shoe thrown at his head.
It’s interesting that after talking about dreams in the past few days, I had a powerful one last night that kept me awake wondering about it to the point I had to get up and write about it. If it came from entirely within me, it would make me far more awesome than I should be giving myself credit for! I would maintain that parts of it are from “something beyond” . . . as they were powerful to the point where words utterly fail.
It was like a well-written drama about how our resolving personal blocks within ourselves has “splash-over” effect to positively help people and even strangers around us — and our remaining blocked by them has similar dampening effect on many around us. Rather than the typical hodge-podge of weird twists and disassociation, everything linked and flowed together perfectly like an award-winning play.
It was about a group of people who walked through life as agents of helping others become all they could be, becoming exactly what they needed at that moment, speaking wisdom that they took and made their own . . . and then essentially disappearing from sight. It was about spiritual awakening, and being an agent of it.
And also touched on the ripple-effect of someone exercising choice to remain blocked.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a dream that was such a prolonged, cohesive message that I just had to get up and write it down.
@griz Reminded me of the movie The Adjustment Bureau with Matt Damon.
@spitfire3dc
I saw it just the other day and remember having quite the commentary on it. But the site glitched and ate it! I’ll have to watch the movie again to re-create my response.
But I liked it. It showed good attempt to understand the “mystery of life”. Which I see as akin to trying to grasp the mystery of God.
There was one quote at the end, in the gist of ‘you will never know the use of free will until you fight for it’.
In spiritual sight however, the “fight” is for ego and feelings to control things beyond us. I would assert the true “fight” is to exercise control over our own ego and feelings.
Which many spiritual paths insist comes only in a surrender, not a fight: in willingly setting aside the ego to consider the paradigm beyond just self. It is only then that the “tamed” ego can find its proper exercise.
It’s less a “fight”, than a willingness to put down something of perceived value, to gain something even more valuable.