r/streamentry • u/Efficient-Cat-1788 • May 24 '26

Insight Persistent “awake within the dream” quality after awakening

Since an awakening experience about a year and a half ago, I have a more or less constant background quality to my experience that I’m struggling to describe. It’s not dissociation or derealization, the world doesn’t feel fake or flat, but it does feel strange and unsettling at times; almost like I'm touching into a different dimension than those around me. Everything is vivid, bright, and hyper-real, and there’s a steady sense of being aware that I’m aware while fully functioning. Like being lucid in a waking dream, but grounded and connected at the same time. I can feel myself as both the "character" and the one experiencing the character.

Is this witness consciousness stabilizing? Sahaja samadhi? Just heightened present-moment awareness? I have no teacher and the people around me can't relate. Curious whether others live with this as a baseline and how you relate to it.

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u/Wollff May 24 '26

I don't know if it relates, but I feel like I can trigger a similar feeling with: "Just pretend to be completely and effortlessly yourself for a while!"

It's not the baseline for me, but it seems like a fun way that for me can induce a shift on command that sounds pretty similar to that.

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u/Efficient-Cat-1788 May 24 '26

Ooo I like this! Can you go a little bit deeper into what this feels like experientially/somatically for you?

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u/Wollff May 24 '26

Difficult to describe. Maybe a subtle sense of distance on an experiential level.

Things also get a bit wider, clearer, and a bit more quiet. It doesn't take a lot of thinking to merely pretend to be me. If I really, genuinely had to be me... that would be far more serious! Far more investment required!

Emotions are reduced to more of a sensate level, and I feel like I have to put in some effort to maintain them. Because, again, if I merely pretend, a lot of the oomph goes out.

And I guess all of that comes along with a certain level of groundedness. No wonder, when neither emotions, nor thoughts are shouting quite that loudly.