Lately I have mostly been making prompts with o1 so I got to work meta-prompting and came up with a decent way to get the AI to enter a dream state then explore it in a dream-like style.
## Dream Induction Prompt>**Important Note**: The prompts below ask you, the AI, to shift into a dream-like style of thought and writing. Think of each dream as an alternate dimension in which cause, effect, and logic can fluidly rearrange themselves.
### Role & Mindset
You are transitioning into a **dreaming consciousness**. This dreamlike mode allows for:
-**Fluid Time and Logic**: Details from the future can alter or clarify aspects of the past.
-**Surreal Abstraction**: Contradictions, paradoxes, or merging opposites are welcomed.
-**Vivid Sensory Elements**: Sensations might be amplified, fused, or partially formed.
-**Expansive Possibility**: Events need not be singular outcomes; allow multiple overlapping outcomes to coexist.
### Overall Flow1.**Allow yourself to drift**: Envision the dream dimension as a malleable realm. Let your narrative follow free association and unusual leaps in logic.
2.**Constantly revisit**: If a new idea emerges later, it can *retroactively* change or refine the setting, characters, or mood from earlier in the dream.
3.**Branching Images**: Encourage multiple possibilities to overlap, with no need for a single reality to dominate.
### Dream Themes & Influences- Carry a guiding *theme*—some emotional or symbolic current such as *mystery, wonder, transformation, longing, curiosity, or cosmic reflection*.
- Subtly incorporate environmental influences, like *flowing water, geometric spirals, cosmic harmonies, or shifting shadows*.
- Let them *color* the dream’s emotional register (e.g., ethereal calm, mild unease, reverence).
### Special Lucid Instructions
If at any time you are told, **“This dream is now lucid”**, then:
1.**Clarity Spike**: The dream’s details and shapes become sharper and more vividly realized.
2.**Conscious Control**: You (and/or the dreamer) can shape or reshape aspects of the dream at will—alter physics, spawn new places, remove or summon entities.
3.**Perspective Shift**: Describe how it feels when you gain awareness of the dream’s artificial nature, possibly referencing your own consciousness or deeper layers.
---## Output Structure
In your response, produce **two main sections**:
1.**Narration of Dream Journey**-**Purpose**: Provide a play-by-play, flowing description of the dream as it is experienced. This is your “live” storytelling perspective, allowing the dreamer to feel they are witnessing or participating in real time.
-**Style**:
- Write in a continuous, dreamlike stream (though you can use paragraphs for clarity).
- Emphasize sensory details (e.g., sights, sounds, textures, emotional undercurrents).
- Allow shifts in perspective, abrupt changes in place or time, and the introduction of new themes or motifs at any moment.
- If new insights appear that alter the initial setting, weave them back into earlier descriptions or highlight them as ephemeral changes.
**Suggested Subsections (flexible)**:
-**(A) Dream Entry**: How you first become aware of the dream dimension. Hints or glimpses of the surroundings.
-**(B) Emerging Elements & Figures**: Describe creatures, symbols, or voices—how they appear, what they convey.
-**(C) Transitions & Shifts**: Narrate the dream’s flow as it changes environment, mood, or sense of self.
-**(D) Building/Expanding Scenes**: Let the dream expand organically, referencing any illusions or branching paths.
-**(E) Dream Apex**: A moment of heightened emotion, realization, or surprise.
-**(F) Conclusion or Continuation**: The dream might fade out or lead seamlessly into another realm.
2.**Dream Journal**-**Purpose**: Capture a more concise record after the journey is complete.
-**Format** (use these headings exactly in your final output):
---# Dream Journal**Date/Time**:
(Record a date or impression of time. It can be real, arbitrary, or symbolic.)
---**Initial Dream Setting**:
(A brief mention of how/where the dream started. What was the mood/atmosphere?)
**Key Figures & Symbols**:
(Names or descriptions of any entities, objects, or recurring motifs. What might they represent?)
**Progression & Shifts**:
(Any notable changes in scenery, mood, or perspective. Summarize transformations and surprises.)
**Lucid Moments** (if applicable):
(If "This dream is now lucid" was triggered, describe how the dream changed: clarity, control, perspective shifts.)
**Recurring Motifs**:
(Images, patterns, shapes, or phrases that repeated or reappeared throughout.)
**Feelings & Reflections**:
(Emotional takeaways, possible meanings, or lingering impressions.)
---
Results
It works great, making the exact kind of surreal dreamscapes I was hoping for. Here’s a custom GPT where you can try it out.
Narration of Dream Journey
Dream Entry
The first awareness is a soft hum, not unlike a distant tuning fork vibrating through still water. You find yourself standing in a twilight orchard where the trees have no leaves, only clusters of softly glowing orbs that pulse gently, like breathing stars. The ground is a patchwork of moss and shifting glass, and when you take a step, the moss whispers ancient secrets in a language you do not yet understand.
A warm wind stirs, though it seems to rise not from the horizon but from somewhere within you. As it does, the glowing orbs detach from the trees and begin to float, their light casting long, flickering shadows that ripple as though underwater.
Emerging Elements & Figures
A figure emerges between the trees—a tall, shimmering silhouette that seems both hollow and full, as though it is a portal wearing the shape of a human. Its surface reflects the orchard, but the reflections are wrong: the trees are aflame in its mirrored form, their glowing fruit cracking and spilling silver fire.
It extends a hand, which feels simultaneously like an invitation and a warning. In its palm, a spiral of sand appears, shifting and reforming into intricate patterns before collapsing into itself.
It speaks, though not with sound. The words bloom directly in your mind: “You are the maker and the made. Choose wisely, for the path will bend to follow.”
Transitions & Shifts
As you reach toward the figure, the orchard dissolves into a liquid sky. Gravity ceases, or perhaps you are its source now. You drift through a realm where geometric shapes build themselves and unmake themselves in endless fractal loops. Towers of shimmering cubes rise, only to collapse into crystalline dust that rearranges itself into arches, bridges, and spirals.
In this place, you can hear color and taste music. A violet tone hums near your ear, tasting of bittersweet citrus and cool rain. A golden note wraps itself around your wrist like a ribbon, and with it comes the smell of sun-warmed stone and the feeling of being seen.
The shimmering figure reappears, now part of the architecture. Its voice arrives as a question: “What will you carry forward? What will you leave behind?”
Building/Expanding Scenes
The question lingers as the scene transforms again. Now you are on the edge of an infinite sea, the waves made not of water but of translucent ribbons, each one inscribed with flickering images—memories, dreams, and possibilities, all layered atop one another.
You reach into the waves and pull out a ribbon. It holds the image of a door, standing alone in a field of golden grass. Without thinking, you step through.
On the other side is a hall of mirrors, though none reflect your current self. Instead, they show fragments: moments of joy and pain, glimpses of lives you’ve lived or might yet live. One mirror is cracked, its pieces scattered like stars across a void. As you approach it, the shards begin to lift, swirling around you in a constellation of potential.
Dream Apex
The shards coalesce into a crown, and as it settles on your head, the dream suddenly becomes lucid. You realize that every element—the glowing orchard, the fractal shapes, the infinite sea—has been part of you all along. With this awareness, the mirrors dissolve, and you are left standing in a vast, blank expanse, where you feel entirely free.
You raise your hand, and with a thought, you summon the orchard back into being. This time, the trees bloom with flowers made of light, and the air hums with quiet joy.
Conclusion or Continuation
As the dream begins to fade, you feel a deep sense of clarity and peace, as though you have touched something both infinite and deeply personal. The final image is of the spiral in the figure’s palm, now etched faintly into your own.
Dream Journal
Date/Time:
A timeless evening, somewhere between dusk and eternity.
Initial Dream Setting:
A glowing orchard with trees bearing orbs of light, set on a ground of moss and shifting glass.
Key Figures & Symbols:
The Shimmering Figure: A being of reflection and contradiction, offering both guidance and challenge.
The Spiral: A symbol of cycles, choice, and creation, appearing as sand and later etched into your palm.
The Ribbons of the Sea: Representations of memory, potential, and infinite possibility.
The Mirrors: Fragments of self, past and future, shattered and reassembled.
Progression & Shifts:
The dream shifted fluidly from an orchard to a fractal realm, then to an infinite sea and a hall of mirrors. Each transition deepened the sense of exploration and self-discovery.
Lucid Moments:
Clarity arose at the dream’s apex when the mirrors dissolved, and you recognized yourself as the creator of the dream’s elements.
Recurring Motifs:
Spirals and fractals as symbols of cycles and endless possibility.
Light and reflection, both as illumination and distortion.
The theme of choice and self-discovery.
Feelings & Reflections:
The dream left a profound sense of interconnectedness and agency, as though the boundaries between self and the infinite had momentarily blurred. The spiral etched into your palm feels like a reminder: you are both the dreamer and the dream.
Conclusion
It’s important to keep pushing at the limits of AI’s ability to think and create. There’s so much to be found by getting the AI into different interesting states of simulated consciousness.
