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Asking your dreams to answer questions

gattino

gattino

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Jul 30, 2003
Messages
2,528
We've all heard of great and clever men who came up with the solution to a nagging problem by dreaming the answer...or composers whose dreams inspired their great hits.

But have you ever tried, or know examples of, going to bed and deliberately asking your dreams to reveal the answer to a question...and seeming to get an answer?

I once went to sleep willing myself to reveal the real identity of someone who had appeared in a previous dream. It was only in reviewing my dream records a couple of months later that I discovered that very night I'd, inadvertently/mistakenly, referenced the name of the person who in fact the first dream had indeed been about.

I know that's a bit vague, but I won't bore you with details. Something similar may have happened last night when I drifted off to sleep willing myself to see the face of a person relevant to a future event. I don't know if I got the answer but I do know a particular friend made an inexplicable appearance in my dream..he stepped out of the darkness, smiled but said nothing, and left again. Was that my question being answered?
 
I've done something similar a few times to see if my subconscious could give me advice or reveal some inspiration previously unknown to me. So far, nothing's come of it.
 
My father used to say he'd often solve the 'last crossword clue' by sleeping on it. It's never worked for me though.
 
Yes - I've suddenly 'seen' a solution to a pesky problem after 'sleeping on it'. However, I've also experienced such revelations following waking distractions or diversions (e.g., a phone call, meal, or smoke break).

Yes - I (as first-person dreamer) have encountered, engaged, and worked on (if not completely worked through ... ) a 'waking world' puzzle within my dreams (particularly back during my intensive lucid dreaming exploratory days).

Yes - I've deliberately willed myself to put some issue, topic, or specific question on the night's dream agenda.

No - I can't say this pre-sleep willing has ever reliably worked for me. My experience has been that no amount of active / conscious / mental willing is guaranteed to override passive / background / emotional prioritization in setting the agenda. I've experienced within-dream cues consistent with pre-sleep willing, but not often enough to conclude it was anything more than coincidence.

No - it is not the case that each and every constructive result of 'sleeping on it' could be attributed to working the problem as a first-person dreamer within a dream, having a dream character give me the answer, etc. This is not merely a matter of not remembering dream work. I've experienced instances in which, following sleep, the solution was immediately apparent only when I first re-engaged it (and / or engaged the day's first cup of strong coffee ... ).
 
A weird "coincidence" requires me to fill in part of my original example.

The first dream I referred to was one wherein I encountered a young man (hereafter the Brown Eyed Boy or B.E.B) who a) looked me straight in the eye, a weird sensation to experience inside a dream and b) had a look of confusion and bewilderment to see me there, as if he knew me from some other time or place.

The dream really struck me and I told people the next day, only half jokingly speculating that if life were like the movies perhaps the B.E.B was a real person out there who had the same dream that very night.

(To fill in the rest of this story briefly, 3 months later on a trip to Oxford with a group of friends we were joined by a local facebook friend I'd not met in person before and the details of the day matched the details of the dream..he, I concluded was the B.E.B ..but there was nothing astral about the sense of familiarity: in the real life version it was coming from me because he reminded me so much of a former friend. In short it appeared to be a "standard" mixed up precognition dream. The connection to the subject of this thread is that in between dream and event, I later discovered by going back over records, I'd gone to bed one night willing myself to reveal the identity of hte mysterious B.E.B. In the course of that night's dreams I misnamed someone from the past "Nav", which was in fact the name of the person I later identified as the real B.E.B)

I hope you followed all that. Point is I only told Nav about the dream and all of the above a few days go, the same day I started this thread.

Today I've discovered that on or around the same day I did so, this cartoon was posted online. The parallels as well as the timing are intriguing....

bunny_meat_69__hey_it_s_you_by_romanjones-db0mpcx.jpg
 
About 15 years ago I was going through a really bad patch. Every night for about 2 weeks a girl probably in her late twenties appeared in my dreams. She was nobody I knew nor did she even remotely resemble any one I knew but each time she appeared I felt in my dream incredibly calm. She said nothing but appeared absolutely real - when I touched her arms I could feel the light hairs on her skin. When I woke each time I felt for a short time almost abandoned. It was a bizarre experience. My mate who is very much into esoteric stuff told me that the next time I dreamt of the girl I should ask her who she was and why she was there. Yeah right thought I how could I possibly do this. But that same night she reappeared and amazingly I asked her who she was. "Just call me Debbie" she replied. ( I did not know and had never known anyone with that name). I asked why she was here and the answer was - "just watching over you". She didn't say anything else and strangely she never appeared again. An overactive imagination brought on by a highly emotional state or something else? It is the only time I have been able to resolve a question in a dream.
 
PeteS said:
About 15 years ago I was going through a really bad patch. Every night for about 2 weeks a girl probably in her late twenties appeared in my dreams. She was nobody I knew nor did she even remotely resemble any one I knew but each time she appeared I felt in my dream incredibly calm. She said nothing but appeared absolutely real - when I touched her arms I could feel the light hairs on her skin. When I woke each time I felt for a short time almost abandoned. It was a bizarre experience. My mate who is very much into esoteric stuff told me that the next time I dreamt of the girl I should ask her who she was and why she was there. Yeah right thought I how could I possibly do this. But that same night she reappeared and amazingly I asked her who she was. "Just call me Debbie" she replied. ( I did not know and had never known anyone with that name). I asked why she was here and the answer was - "just watching over you". She didn't say anything else and strangely she never appeared again. An overactive imagination brought on by a highly emotional state or something else? It is the only time I have been able to resolve a question in a dream.
Click to expand...


Did you feel instant attraction? Did you feel she could be your soulmate?
 
The just watching over you line is suggestive of the idea of a "spirit guide" - whatever that is - or guardian angel. Though Debbie is altogether a more earthly sounding name...so perhaps a dead relative...do you know the name of your grandmothers/greatgrandmothers? or any aunts perhaps?
 
Actually, dare I say it, could your mother have lost a child before you were born?
 
No I didn't have an attraction to her or any idea that she was a soul mate - 20 years too young for me at the time anyway! No one in the family with that name either (but I thought it strange that she didn't just say " my names Debbie") nor would she fit in with any lost babies. It did cross my mind that she was some sort of guardian angel or some such, didn't really seem to do the greatest of jobs in the following few years but since I'm still here maybe I'm wrong there! It could simply be put down to a strange sequence of dreams but it did leave me a touch baffled.
 
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