Sleeping (in the dream)
Unawareness — the dream noting something you have been refusing to see.
Sleeping inside a dream is the dictionary's image of unawareness. The dream is doubling its own structure to make a point: you are dreaming inside a dream because there is something in waking life you have been refusing to notice clearly.
Waking up inside the dream — and finding yourself still dreaming — is the dictionary's image of a partial awareness that has not yet fully arrived. The body usually completes the wake-up shortly after. On rising, the question to ask is: what have I been pretending not to see?
Where you often see it. Falling asleep inside the dream. Watching yourself sleep. The dream uses sleeping-in-the-dream for unawareness — the dream noting something you have been refusing to see.
What it is not. Sleeping-in-the-dream is not the same as dream-within-a-dream. The dictionary reads them as different motions of attention.
Related in the dictionary. Read sleep-in-dream with darkness, silence, and the inverse scene of waking up inside the dream.