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Dreams

I would just like to recommend a book of interest to people on this thread: The Mind at Night, by Andrea Rock. This is one of those ever-useful popularizations which summarize the current state of research in a field for the benefit of those of us who have to limit our purchasing of scientific journals to the one or two directly relevant to our lives. :)

In this case, the topic is sleep and dream research. Many of the topics discussed here have been addressed by science and, though final answers are where they always are in science (holding the door for the next question!), the various disciplines have discovered some fascinating, revealing, and thought-provoking things, even answering some questions that have been discussed on this thread.
 
When I dream about flying it begins as soaring, but as I become aware that it's a dream, I start having to take running starts to be able to take off into the air. Soon, the flying is merely hovering, and then I am completely grounded. Each time as I am scrambling to keep the ability to fly, I search intently for a body of water. Apparently, the law in my dreaming is that being over water charges flying ability.

I do dream about reading often enough. I can never hold onto more than snippets into waking. Recently I've read a book of poetry, a menu, and a list of songs on the back of an album.

Earlier today I had my first dream that I can recall in which I've felt physical pain. In the past, I have been shot, stabbed, blowtorched, and needled with no feeling at all. Today, a series of explosive charges went off at my back for an extended time and crumpled me to my knees.
 
Thank goodness there are some other feeble flyers out there ! I sort of drift about aimlessly looking for open doors or windows as someone removes all the handles when I'm not looking.
Having re-read that it seems rather pathetic, must try harder tonight.

I can read, but the only reading material I ever come across seems to be Tabloid newspapers with nonsense headlines and no dates so the lottery numbers are useless !
 
Drowning vs Flying & Falling dreams

I have never, ever had a flying dream where I am the one doing the actual flapping of wings or soaring or whatever. I have only flown in my dreams in a jet plane on one or two occasions and during both occasions the plane I was in was in extreme danger of crashing...one dream had me somehow within the burned out shell of the jet that had exploded, my feet hung down through the bottom of the plane and I was actually the one giving it power by running down the runway and somehow holding the shell of the plane up with my arms. (almost like the Flinstones cars, you know, foot powered?) Anyhow, the feeling of horror that I felt in each dream was quite intense. A sense of impending doom in each dream as well. That is as close to "flying" as I have ever come.

On the other hand, I have had drowning dreams quite often. Moreso when I was younger. They were terrible. I always remember being at the bottom of a pool looking up at the "skin" of the water and holding my breath. I know that my lungs will burst at any minute as the pain of holding my breath is too much. I struggle to reach the top of the water but to no avail. The urge to breathe is too strong and I finally inhale deeply expecting the searing pain of water to tear into my lungs...but, nothing. The water is like air in my lungs to my relief and I force myself to inhale it again to prove it. yes...it is like air. My fear and confusion melt away and I wake up.


I Have also experienced several falling dreams, two of which stick out clearly in my mind.
One was with my climbing a neverending stairway that led high up from the ground and into the clouds. The stairway had no bannisters with which to clutch as I climbed tenatively up the steps, my heart pounding in my chest. I get higher and higher until my fear of heights (which is a real fear of mine) overwhelms me and I literally throw myself off of the steps and plummet to the earth below, waking just before I hit the ground. In my dream I am so absolutely afraid of falling from this height that I throw myself off instead just to get it over with. Strange.
The other has me standing on top of a tree stump. a simple tree stump maybe 7 inches off the ground in height. I become frightened of the "intense height" and try and steady myself on the stump. I finally slip and fall a seemingly endless fall to the rocky ground beneath me and as always, wake just before impact.
These dreams have always stuck with me.

~Kim~
 
I dreamt of flying frequently as a child but these dreams seem to have disappated since I've grown up (LOL). I could take off, hover and land at will. Though I had great difficulty trying to fly higher than tree tops, often knocking into upper most branches and then waking up, disappointed.

I have been remembering over the past week or so a recurring 'nightmare' I used to experience as much as the flying ones and it was always of being drawn to enter a strange room, but that a feeling of evil emanated from the room and I used to fight to wake myself up before I went in as I had the feeling once in there, I wouldn't be able to get out. These made me extremely uncomfortable as a child and I likened them to the little girl being drawn into the TV by evil spirits in Poltergeist. I had one of these dreams a couple of weeks ago, and actually felt brave enough to enter the room to see what was in there, and I was ready to fight if required. I woke up before I went in - strange.
 
recurring dream

I had a recurring dream that bothered me for about 6 months in about 1997 i think it was.
Anyway in this dream i would feel semiconcious and be aware of a presence at the bottom of the stairs, it was as if i was aware of myself in
bed but could also see out of the other things eyes. It would start to slowly climb the stairs and a feeling of terror would rise inside me until i awoke in a sweat. Each time i had this dream the thing would get closer to the top of the stairs before i awoke. I knew this was a dream and eventualy my curiosity got the better of me so one night when the dream had started i readied myself and let the thing climb to the top of the stairs slowly, then i decided to get out of bed in the dream and go see what had been scaring the s*** out of me for months. As i stepped outside the bedroom door it darted into the other bedroom at the top of the stairs wich has its door parellel to mine wich meant i couldnt see into the room until i got to the door. No matter i HAD to see what this was so i walked down the hall (after switching the light on may i add) and to the open door i braced myself and looked in. There was the thing staring back at me it was a mirror image of myself :shock: i woke up and i've never had the dream again it freaked me out and i still dont understand it. Anybody else have anything similar happen?
 
Hi this is my 1st post so please be gentle with me! :roll:
when i was a child from my earliest memories of dreaming till about the age of 5 I used to have a reoccuring dream EVERY night! I would be in a very large very old looking house (like the typical spooky style) with every member of my family that i knew and each time we walked through a door in the house one member of my family would be sucked up to the top of the doorway (like a magnet pulling them up) and would then be "fried" to death and i mean electrically not flamed. this would continue with every member of my family one at a time through each door until there was only me left in a room with one more door to go! at this point i would wake screaming, sweating and really struggling to breathe! My nan remembers me having these dreams every night too because it was her that would come and settle me back to bed. At this young age i dont think i knew anything about electricity and certainly had not seen anything on the tv as i lived with my grandparents who would only allow the tv to be on for cbbc1 after school for and hour and the 6 o clock news!!! :?

On the flying dreams note, i had those too but when i was at secondary school, i would dream i was flying around the sportshall half way between floor and ceiling and everyone below would be watching me, (it was as if i was showing off to them) i remember it feeling fantastic though and used to go to bed at night hoping for this dream!

Another one i would like to add is more recent it still happens now quite frequently, it only happens if i lie on my back or stomach to go to sleep i dream i am walking, running or something like that and i fall, and i wake up because i literally do fall! its strange, i fell as though i have just dropped or been thrown back onto my bed from about 3 feet above it and sometimes it hurts when i land!!! the only way i can avoid this is if my partner lies with his leg over me as if he is "holding me down"

Hmm missing loo dreams... I have often woke my partner up sleepwalking and about to pee down the stairs or up the bedroom wall!!!!!! i know u should never wake a sleepwalker but oh well he is still alive! he never knows anything about it!

sorry for such a long post i just felt i had loads to say on the dreams subject. :oops:
 
god dreams are wierd,
when i was little i had this dream that my dad got me a pet butterfly & i killed it, i was riddled with guilt for years & years after that,
wierd stupid dreams messing with my head!

I've had flying dreams where i have suddenly left the ground for no reason and i'm desperately trying not to plummet down onto a rocky landscape miles below

Toilet dreams- yes when i was little my Parents woke my up as i was trying to widdle into the pedal bin in the kitchen LOL
 
god dreams are wierd,
when i was little i had this dream that my dad got me a pet butterfly & i killed it, i was riddled with guilt for years & years after that,
wierd stupid dreams messing with my head!


To this day, I'll occasionally have a dream where there's a pet fish/mermaid/whatever that needs fresh water but is growing at an alarming rate. I'm always terrified that they'll die before I can get the tea cup/kitchen sink/bathtub filled with enough water.

Freakin' hate those dreams.
 
Last night semed to bring a shallow series of sleeps and a sequence of dreams which were only very loosely connected.

The first was set in the gloomy downstairs floor of a Portuguese villa at dawn. My mother (well some imposter version with big hair) was waking me up for an important duty. I believed at first it was to do with refuse-collection but it turned out that we all had to stand at the door and wave a lettuce and a gift at local inspectors or lose the right to park our cars. We did this vigorously for a short while and came back inside, content that our compliance had been noted. o_O

In a later fragment, a squid had been appointed our parish priest. Tongues wagged but others preached tolerance. Soon we were queuing up to taste the water in his tank. :huh:

The longest and most vivid sequence involved a devoted and dying dog. She insisted in climbing the stairs one last time, during which her colour changed to exactly match the dusty lilac of the stair-carpet. At the top of stairs, she collapsed and we made some diplomatic reference to her passing - presuming she could understand plain English all too well. Hearing this evasive talk made her turn suddenly sarcastic and her mouth turned into a grotesque mask, like the frown of Greek tragedy. She copied our words in a tone of sneering contempt before dying. We agreed that she had done this to make parting easier! :eek:
 
. . . the gloomy downstairs floor of a Portuguese villa at dawn.
This is lyrical !

What a marvelously, amusingly, fantastic set of dreams ! Geez, how I love dreams ! Thank you for posting yours, JamesWhitehead.
 
A real worry-wart of a dream session this morning. I was trying to concoct a video by sequencing a series of photos (can't even remember of what, now) and various technical issues kept bothering me. I had Classic FM playing on the clock-radio, and bizarrely this got involved in the dream too. It seemed my 'video' attempts had somehow corrupted the Sleep function on the radio, so that it didn't turn off as it should after one hour...

Now even if I'd been really working on the computer, there should be no way it could affect the clock-radio. (They're in different rooms for a start!) I didn't want to switch the power to the radio off, because then I would have to reset the time afterwards. But in the dream I was sure the radio had been playing for well over an hour. I was greatly relieved when the radio did finally switch itself off.

But no doubt I'll pay later for the disturbed sleep, and start nodding off when I shouldn't... :(
 
I had a really vivid dream recently and when I woke up I thought, what an amazing dream! I wrote it down and it went as follows (it probably doesn't capture how enjoyable and surprising it felt) :

I was walking through a very unfamiliar part of north Edinburgh, and at one stage got lost and had to ask for directions from a school teacher. She was very friendly. I was looking for Walker Street. I walked some of the way behind an American skater girl with a very short skirt. I came to a place I had never been to before and was amazed to see a giant statue on a hilltop. The statue was maybe of a Norse god. It was like something from a sci-fi movie, thousands of feet tall. The weather was nice. At the bottom of the hill was an electric car to take visitors to the top. The driver was very friendly but told me I would need to produce my birth certificate if I wanted to go up. I had to jump through the window as he drove off, and I was stuck half in, half out, until I managed to get inside while he drove. At the visitor centre at the top, I was given a fridge to put on my back - it contained a lot of crisps, sweets, cakes and some fruit. Suddenly there was a massive thunderstorm and dark clouds obscured the view up to the statue. A massive bolt of lightning struck the ground nearby and seemed to start a fire. The storm was over after a few minutes but I was very wet. I went into a cafe to dry off, and met some more friendly people. I decided it was stupid to walk around with a fridge on my back so I took it off. There were a lot of fridges around so others had obviously thought the same. I ate the several bits of cake and left the fridge standing against a wall. I thought it was a shame that I didn’t really get to see the statue. The dream ends with me overhearing a conversation between two Australians, a male and a female. They have just met but they are asking each other about the sexual preferences quite explicitly. The dialogue was like something form a movie. I woke up as this conversation was ongoing with a total recollection of the dream.
 
Question for all: do you believe the content of dreams is all generated by the dreamer's own mind, or that outside entities can influence dream content?
An illustrative hypothetical: if you didn't know such a thing as a platypus existed (never heard of it, seen a photo, etc) could there still be a platypus in your dream? If the answer's yes, would that mean it was imported into your mind by whatever entity or psychic tide?
Just would like to get opinions on this...
 
I lean toward the ancient Greek version of dreams myself: they are either false, made up in your head, or true, that is, linked to some fact outside of yourself that you wouldn't have normal means of knowing about. For the Greeks, dreams came to you through a gate of ivory, which gave you false dreams, or through a gate of horn, which gave you true dreams.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_of_horn_and_ivory

Most dreams I have just seem to be unencumbered with any reality or logic outside my irrational mind, but every once in awhile I recall something that links up to something that hasn't happened yet, or I hadn't learned of yet. I have no clue what would cause that, but it's never felt like anyone outside myself planted an image or idea in my head. I believe that experience is more common than people realize.
 
I used to dream about other times in history and there were things that I didn't consciously know and had to look up.
I also have dreamt about people I hadn't met yet but knew as soon as I met them.
 
IbisNibs, & Iris-thanks for responding! I asked bc I believe my dreams are like a movie projected from my mind but some outside entity or entities will sometimes take over directorship of the dream, re-cast actors, change the plot, even use characters & places culled from my own mental "files", etc. The movie "Inception" is kinda based along these lines, but I felt this way before I ever saw the movie.
Mainly bc people like close family members or longtime friends sometimes appeared in my dreams acting totally "out of character". Made me start to wonder what's up with that.
I've never had any precognitive dreams; in fact i've dreamed of foreign words or names of places that turned out to be utterly NOT real- just nonsensical...at least on this wordly plane.
 
IbisNibs, & Iris-thanks for responding! I asked bc I believe my dreams are like a movie projected from my mind but some outside entity or entities will sometimes take over directorship of the dream, re-cast actors, change the plot, even use characters & places culled from my own mental "files", etc.

Especially during my intensive lucid dreaming period some years ago, I would sometimes flip back and forth between being the actor-on-stage-in-the-dream-story and the director-watching-and-managing-the-dream. The director mode was usually triggered by something that didn't seem right about the dream setting, characters or plot. In director mode I've even frozen the action (so to speak) and examined / edited the characters before returning to actor mode and letting the action continue, at which point I shift back into first-person actor mode.


Mainly bc people like close family members or longtime friends sometimes appeared in my dreams acting totally "out of character". Made me start to wonder what's up with that.

This is one of the sorts of things that might throw me into director mode and motivate me to make adjustments (or simply bail out of the dream entirely).

It can work both ways - i.e., you can either 'see' a known figure who isn't acting like the real world version or you can encounter a dream figure who seems to obviously be a known / real figure in disguise.

If there's a single overarching motif or strategy the human mind employs it's metaphor - i.e., taking X to be a stand-in representation of Y. This is the fundamental basis for a sort of free association capability that allows for invention of dream objects and characters re-designated or assembled from the entire identity or aspects of 'real world' entities.

Some such metaphorical transpositions are 'total' in the sense the whole object or person in the dream stands in for a whole object or person in 'real life.' This is similar to theatrical casting in the sense person X is acting out the role of person Y. Other such transpositions involve 'partial' correlations in the sense that (e.g.) a dream object or person may be a composite of features or actions drawn from multiple 'real world' analogues.

A few weeks ago I had an intense dream in which my father appeared in the guise of a younger slimmer man than I'd ever known my father to be. He was definitely 'Dad' to me, but the role was being played by a probably 'synthetic' actor who didn't resemble my historical father at all.


I've never had any precognitive dreams; in fact i've dreamed of foreign words or names of places that turned out to be utterly NOT real- just nonsensical...at least on this wordly plane.

This has happened to me, too. I reported one such incident in this 2013 thread:

Lexicon From Dreams
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/lexicon-from-dreams.51601/#post-1296187

If you found that the mystery word had some significance or triggered some reaction in you (as happened to me in the dream incident reported in the Lexicon thread) I suspect it's yet another example of the mind operating metaphorically. There's a thing or action or feeling to which you need to refer, but an artificial label is tagged onto it within the dream.
 
Especially during my intensive lucid dreaming period some years ago, I would sometimes flip back and forth between being the actor-on-stage-in-the-dream-story and the director-watching-and-managing-the-dream. The director mode was usually triggered by something that didn't seem right about the dream setting, characters or plot. In director mode I've even frozen the action (so to speak) and examined / edited the characters before returning to actor mode and letting the action continue, at which point I shift back into first-person actor mode.
That is some awesomely lucid dreaming. I've been able to control what I did &/or said, including calling out other characters on their falseness, but never been able to take over directorship. (&, of course, what I really want to do is direct!)
 
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