This topic features in my book Answers In The Dark: Grief, Sleep and How Dreams Can Help You Heal.
In 2010, the movie Inception (Warner Bros), starring Leonardo DiCaprio, told the story of Dom Cobb – a fugitive who could infiltrate dreams in order to discover secrets.
The film covered a number of different concepts, including the idea of a dream within a dream – if you’ve ever “woken up” from a dream, then realised you were still dreaming, then really woke up, you’ll know what I mean.
Another idea in the film is that two people can appear in each other’s dream at the same time – but can this happen?
The short answer is yes. It is possible for two people to have the same dream on the same night and for two people to appear in each others dream. I have known many people who have had the same dream as someone else without any forward planning or conversations about dreams – two work colleagues, a mother and daughter, best friends and partners can all share this experience.
Others “plan” the experience but I would encourage you to make sure you feel safe with your dream partner, by planning the event and having mutual agreement on the arrangements.
Inception is about espionage – the spies don’t have the dreamer’s consent; they infiltrate his mind so he is influenced by the characters that appear in his dreams. They achieved this using a hypothetical piece of equipment called a PASIV machine and, for this reason, this is not (yet) possible. Having said that, science is advancing all the time so if someone out there wanted to invent such a device, who knows if that might one day be possible.
You are not usually lucid (aware that you’re dreaming) at the time so probably won’t know you have shared a dream with someone unless or until you discuss it when you next see them (i.e when you’re awake). In the movie, the dreamers were lucid and therefore in control of their actions.
Remember your dreams can be useful to you without you telling them where to go. You can enjoy your dream experiences without controlling them and reap the rewards of their messages – leaving the Mutual Dreaming to the movies.
Delphi is the author of Answers In The Dark: Grief, Sleep and How Dreams Can Help You Heal, out now on Amazon and Hive. The Dreams Maven™ is part of the Helping You Sparkle™ portfolio. You might also like Monday Mojo™.
The 4 am Mystery: That’s an actual thing by the way. Even before a global health crisis people found themselves awake in the middle of the night. Answers In The Darkaims to join the dots between sleep, dreams and our mental health, specifically how grief shows up, even if no one has died.
It explores some of the Big Myths of sleep, offers a Sleep Cycle Repair Kit and tips on how to decode your own dreams. Out now on Amazon and Hive.
#1 Best Seller on Amazon for its category.
© Delphi Ellis All rights reserved.
The Dreams Maven ™ 
Hi! My husband & I were reading your artiscle & we have found ourselves (on more than one occasion) actually “mutually dreaming”. As in, we are in the SAME dream (unplanned) and once we had to ” fight” our way our of a “lucid” type of dream & were both physically moving in our sleep to be able to wake ourselves up. This is becoming a strange enough that we are looking for research on this just now. Yet your article says to “leave it to the movieies”. We are writing things down now. Please let us know if you have any more research or any further information that could be of assistance. Thank you
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Hi thanks for sharing. I am currently writing a book, as soon as it’s published I will let you know. When I said leave it to the movies, the article means let your dreams guide you without consciously influencing them too much (it’s also a reference to Inception, the movie, where in that case controlling dreams from the inside goes horribly wrong for the wife). Dreams can be useful as Lucid and Charlie Morley has done a lot of work on this, but I encourage people not to steer them too much – that way you get the maximum benefit of understanding what’s really going on in your subconscious mind. Thanks again for sharing, what an awesome experience! Do keep me updated on your experiences if you choose to pursue it. D.
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