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More Vivid Dreaming During The COVID-19 Pandemic

I think concerns over the virus has combined with the stress of lock-down to present us with more ... ah ... odd dreams than usual. I know my insomnia has increased. It's not that I can't get to sleep but I wake up around 3-4 o'clock in the morning and rarely drop back off. When I do, that's when my vivid dreams can be remembered.
Last night was a doozy!
I was in Paris, going to meet my wife on the first deck of the Eiffel Tower. When I arrived, it wasn't my wife but my ex- (of over ten years ago) who insisted it was her who I was with and meeting. I got so angry and frustrated, denying her assertion, that I grabbed her by the ankles and threw her off! Somehow no one noticed and I hurried away, trying to think of a way to get back to England before the police discovered me.
Interesting since I've never been to Paris and only know what the deck looks like from movies.
 
I'm having very vivid dreams at the moment (and I'm rather glad its not just me!)

My father passed away on Thursday morning, on Wednesday night I dreamt of an old man walking into a forest and disappearing. I dont know it thats a sign from my father, or just another vivid Corona dream.
So sorry about your loss, Cherrybomb. :group:
 
Anything on this thread will seem like small beer after @Cherrybomb 's sad news, but I've been having long, convoluted dreams I wake up remembering parts of.

Last night, I was at a basketball game, in the crowd (it was packed), and the team in yellow and purple had some kind of complaint related to something in the newspaper. One of the team tied a kitchen knife to his foot and pointed to the offending article in the paper with it, but the blade poked through and bloodily injured the arm of the player holding up the paper. This made everyone even more pissed off.
 
My sympathies Cherrybomb. That did sound like a 'goodbye' dream. You may have more of them.

I have been sleeping at least 2 hours more a night now I am not commuting. I haven't really noticed more vivid dreams but this morning's was pretty good. It was another planet or a future Earth. An Ice Age had come and I was part of a bunch of young astronauts? soldiers? people who were surveying the landscape. We were staying in small undergroudn bunkers. (The bunker idea came from an article about a Cold War listening post that was in Current Archaeology this month.) Suddenly something unseen started attacking us (I wonder what that could relate to....?/sarcasm) and we were trying to get back to the home bunker. Which I successfully managed just before waking up...
 
Three lots last night.

First cycle: walking an uphill country road I though was somewhere in West Cheshire, out towards the Welsh border. Two thirds of the way up the hill and entering a town, I looked down and to my left and saw a kind of dish-shaped depression in the ground, like a natural ampitheatre about a hundred yards across, not horizontally level but sloping down to one side. It was lined, or tiled, or paved, in smooth attractive white stone and I felt compelled to descend into it and walk around it: something about the clean neatness of the paved area was attractive. I remember I was walking around the arena "widdershins", anti-clockwise - this was important somehow. I remember feeling dissappointed and depresssed when I saw an upright black litter bin - but this was surrounded by discarded waste, largely paper and cardboard. Thinking "this is why we cannot have nice things" and wondering why some people are born to be useless. The interesting thing - walking towards the littered area and simply not being able to see the litter any more as if the nearer I got the more out of focus things became. A little further on there was a second area where accumulated litter had gathered - but as I passed through it, it all dissappeared. I remember doping a circuit of the arena, and reflecting that on the return leg I'd be walking steeply uphill to get back onto the road. Thinking "this is where the work begins" I plodded uphill and got to the road again...

Then back into a job I used to do, and looking at a wall painted in institutional green - there for some sort of a lecture but knowing exactly where I was and feeling sad and broken-hearted that this was a part of my life that was over and I could never return to. Then dealing with the minutae of administration and paying bills: trying to leave the building to go to a supplier and get some stores in, but twenty or thirty people passing me on the way in so I was unable to leave. Oddly enough, many of them holding wine glasses!

Finally in a coffee-house I knew was in Norwich with a drink in front of me. The premises were clinical white with tables and chairs on various levels; very nicely lit with natural light from unseen windows. A person came in who I instantly recognised - The Girl (Miss S-and-six-dashes, S------) who I'd been painfully infatuated with at uni - she took a seat opposite me, but some distance away and on a higher level. We were aware of each other; no hostility or awkwardness or emotion of any sort, just covertly watching each other, each watching to see what the other would do; I was pleasantly surprised there were no strong emotions on my part and I was at ease, pretty much, with things .Nothing said, just observing. Put me in mind of two cats sizing each other up, as they do.
 
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So there you have it, a brief summation of most of the shit that came down for me in 87-88-89 and why I'm treading carefully in reconciling myself to it - serious emotional intensity, a lot of it went on... no wonder dreams are intense!

Thanks for sharing your story AgProv! Most of the veteran members know about my history with addiction. At one of my lowest points in my early 20s I started experiencing constant vivid dreams from all the tablets I was taking when I was trying to detox myself, needless to say the tablets just caused a perpetual state of illness and withdrawal. But the vivid dreams where horrible, looking back, I think they were so bad because I would wake up with such a lingering residual atmosphere like the dream atmosphere had leaked out if that makes any sense. And I don't enjoy dreaming anymore because of the bad memories I've attached to dreaming. The same goes for airports and coaches, I had so many experiences where I would travel somewhere trying to detox and taking nothing with me due to good intentions, and having terrible multiple acute withdrawal symptoms whilst traveling has given me a sort of phobia of travel. I can travel but I find it a horrible experience.
 
Yes, when the lines blur between dreaming and being awake and the borderline isn't so definite any more. As if the gatekeeper's bunked off round the back for a sly smoke and things that should be on one side are slipping through to the other. Disconcerting.
 
I'm having very vivid dreams at the moment (and I'm rather glad its not just me!)

My father passed away on Thursday morning, on Wednesday night I dreamt of an old man walking into a forest and disappearing. I dont know it thats a sign from my father, or just another vivid Corona dream.

My condolences on your father's passing, Cherrybomb. Sad news.
 
I'm having very vivid dreams at the moment (and I'm rather glad its not just me!)

My father passed away on Thursday morning, on Wednesday night I dreamt of an old man walking into a forest and disappearing. I dont know it thats a sign from my father, or just another vivid Corona dream.
Best thoughts and memories to you. And maybe best signs.
 
You know those dreams you have where you are naked? I had one last night where everyone else was naked.

A Political Figure was due to give a speech about how everyone should drive more and not use public transport and also on being more environmentally friendly. I was furious about this and went along planning to ask questions about what nonsensical cognitive dissonance this was. Apparently I wasn't the only one because when I walked in, pretty much everyone else was naked as a protest about this very nonsense! I was just contemplating whether to join in when the Political Figure arrived. Their face was quite a picture! Instead of hustling the Political Figure out, they hustled the naked crowd out.

Then I saw this related story on the BBC this morning.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53098950

Traffic has gradually increased since early April, as travel restrictions have eased and hundreds of thousands of people have returned to work.

The government is discouraging people from using public transport if it is avoidable, and has told passengers to wear masks, in an effort to limit the spread of coronavirus.
Mr Cousens said: "The message to avoid public transport is certainly resonating as, week by week, more people have ventured out in their cars."

Also a bit later on Morten Harket again. :D
 
But back to dreams.

The other night I visited Winchester. I knew it immediately: at the bottom of the hill looking up the main street past the intersection with Jewry Street up to where the military museums and imposing civic buildings are at the top.

And this was a lucid dream. I knew this instantly: the last time I visited Winchester was November 2019. I knew I'd gone to bed in Stockport. Therefore unless I'd been abducted nearly 300 miles across England and whoever abducted me had put some clothes on me, this was not waking life. Ergo, dream. And I reasoned that if this were a lucid dream, it was my bloody party and I could make things happen exactly as I wanted to. So I remembered a university peer of mine who I knew came from the Winchester area. I'd had an emotionally trying thing with her - more my doing than hers - so it occured to me to test something out in the lucid dream environment, in a safe place; I spoke her name and asked (asked, not demanded) if she might appear and we could talk. I was surprised how my mind was working and reasoning; I reasoned one of two things was happening. The most likely one was that all this was happening in my own mind, so therefore if S appeared she'd be a projection of my own mind, based on what I know or could deduce about her. Therefore it would be psychodrama, taking a bad situation from many years ago and seeking closure. The other possibility, the way-out one, was that the "Astral Plane" thing applied - that this was shared space everybody can access in their dreams. Therefore I might get the real thing, the actual person.

However... nothing happened even after putting a sincere and respectful request out, adding that I had no right to make a demand. I explored dream-Winchester for a while and enjoyed it, then sank into "normal" dreaming again and moved, as you do, to a new venue.

And in the non-lucid dream, guess what... S turned up. We talked, we came to some sort of an understanding - and I can't remember a bloody word of it. (She looked as I remember her from thirty years ago; wonder how I appeared to her). I had the strong feeling this was an independent entity of some sort and not a figment of my own dreaming mind - but woke up with a feeling of relief, possibly closure, as if something had been amicably agreed. So... psychodrama works?
 
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But back to dreams.

The other night I visited Winchester. I knew it immediately: at the bottom of the hill looking up the main street past the intersection with Jewry Street up to where the military museums and imposing civic buildings are at the top.

And this was a lucid dream. I knew this instantly: the last time I visited Winchester was November 2019. I knew I'd gone to bed in Stockport. Therefore unless I'd been abducted nearly 300 miles across England and whoever abducted me had put some clothes on me, this was not waking life. Ergo, dream. And I reasoned that if this were a lucid dream, it was my bloody party and I could make things happen exactly as I wanted to. So I remembered a university peer of mine who I knew came from the Winchester area. I'd had an emotionally trying thing with her - more my doing than hers - so it occured to me to test something out in the lucid dream environment, in a safe place; I spoke her name and asked (asked, not demanded) if she might appear and we could talk. I was surprised how my mind was working and reasoning; I reasoned one of two things was happening. The most likely one was that all this was happening in my own mind, so therefore if S appeared she'd be a projection of my own mind, based on what I know or could deduce about her. Therefore it would be psychodrama, taking a bad situation from many years ago and seeking closure. The other possibility, the way-out one, was that the "Astral Plane" thing applied - that this was shared space everybody can access in their dreams. Therefore I might get the real thing, the actual person.

However... nothing happened even after putting a sincere and respectful request out, adding that I had no right to make a demand. I explored dream-Winchester for a while and enjoyed it, then sank into "normal" dreaming again and moved, as you do, to a new venue.

And in the non-lucid dream, guess what... S turned up. We talked, we came to some sort of an understanding - and I can't remember a bloody word of it. (She looked as I remember her from thirty years ago; wonder how I appeared to her). I had the strong feeling this was an independent entity of some sort and not a figment of my own dreaming mind - but woke up with a feeling of relief, possibly closure, as if something had been amicably agreed. So... psychodrama works?

I can understand why dreams could gravitate to Winchester.
It has a very ethereal vibe about it.
The oldest pub in the country (allegedly), a huge selection of ghost stories and, just outside the city are several UFO and crop-circle hotspots.
 
I can understand why dreams could gravitate to Winchester.
It has a very ethereal vibe about it.
The oldest pub in the country (allegedly), a huge selection of ghost stories and, just outside the city are several UFO and crop-circle hotspots.
Britain's oldest cities maybe share this. Canterbury and Colchester both have histories that go back over two thousand years; and Winchester was England's capital city before London. I've had odd feelings of timelessness and the "other" in Chester and York just feels, well, weird. And of course I lived in Norwich for a few years!

Another set of dreams I had which I've never forgotten and which also involved lucidity and speculation about the "astral plane" were set in Norwich. I was walking around the market taking in Rampant Horse Street (yes, really), St Peter Mancroft, the Garnet Wolsey... aware of lucidity and wondering why everything around me was not fixed but "shimmering" in and out of focus and flickering like the animation in a "Roobarb and Custard" cartoon. Buildings couldn't maintain the same shape and colour for longer than a few seconds, as if they were confused as to what final form to take. For some reason, thought of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect in the Infinite Improbability Drive, with the sea remaining steady as a rock but all the buildings on Southend seafront washing up and down (remember the TV adaptation of h2g2?) Lots of people all going about their business, some looking aware, others sort of drifting aimlessly.

I also recall revisiting this Norwich in dreams on several occassions. I asked an old guy who seemed to be part of the landscape what was happening. He said "Lots of people. Lots of times. It all overlaps."

Thinking about this - the insight was of an "astral plane" where what I was seeing was a consensus reality - all the overlapping pictures of how thousands and thousands of people perceived Norwich. Like everybody's individual realities combining together, no two the same, to create a dream landscape. And I was getting to see it from a higher level, something I'd not normally be aware of as in normal circumstances I'd just see my own single reality... the old boy grinned at me and said "Now you're getting it, boy!"

Once I got that insight, never had that same dream again. Ah well.
 
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Britain's oldest cities maybe share this. Canterbury and Colchester both have histories that go back over two thousand years; and Winchester was England's capital city before London. I've had odd feelings of timelessness and the "other" in Chester and York just feels, well, weird. And of course I lived in Norwich for a few years!

Another set of dreams I had which I've never forgotten and which also involved lucidity and speculation about the "astral plane" were set in Norwich. I was walking around the market taking in Rampant Horse Street (yes, really), St Peter Mancroft, the Garnet Wolsey... aware of lucidity and wondering why everything around me was not fixed but "shimmering" in and out of focus and flickering like the animation in a "Roobarb and Custard" cartoon. Buildings couldn't maintain the same shape and colour for longer than a few seconds, as if they were confused as to what final form to take. for some reason thought of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect in the Infinite Improbability Drive, with the sea remaining steady as a rock but all the buildings on Southend seafront washing up and down (remember the TV adaptation of h2g2?) Lots of people all going about their business, some looking aware, others sort of drifting aimlessly.

I also recall revisiting this Norwich in dreams on several occassions. I asked an old guy who seemed to be part of the landscape what was happening. He said "Lots of people. Lots of times. It all overlaps."

Thinking about this - the insight was of an "astral plane" where what I was seeing was a consensus reality - all the overlapping pictures of how thousands and thousands of people perceived Norwich. Like everybody's individual realities combining together, no two the same, to create a dream landscape. And I was getting to see it from a higher level, something I'd not normally be aware of as in normal circumstances I'd just see my own single reality... the old boy grinned at me and said "Now you're getting it, boy!"

Once I got that insight, never had that same dream again. Ah well.
That is awesome.
 
I really like those lucid dreams where you can sort of 'sit inside' the dream and wonder at what's really going on that your brain is throwing up that image!

I had a lucid dream a while ago, that I was in a room furnished like a fifteenth century manor house. i remember walking around and hitting my hand against this wooden sideboard thing to check whether it felt sold. It did.

I've been dreaming a lot lately, but the dreams are vanishing on waking, or very shortly afterwards, despite being very vivid at the time. The only one which stuck was something about following My Chemical Romance on tour in a minivan...
 
I had a most thrilling dream myself last night. It was all about using unwieldy excel spread sheets. To get to my office, I had to go through an antique store, but I never had time to check out the antiques. I must have a very boring inner life these days!
 
I had a weird dream last night, but forgot most of it on waking. The bit I do remember is that I needed a bathroom. On going in to the first one I found, there was a bunch of lads in there, stirring pots like cauldrons. One of the pots contained something that looked like a big green brain, it was a solid lump of greenish material with brown bits in. Two of the boys started shouting at one another over the general hubub of the room and I was trying to look at them closely to see if they were identical twins, but couldn't seem to focus on them properly.

Woke up desperate for a wee though.
 
woke up in the middle of the night, needed to go to the toilet, got out of bed, went to the bathroom. Imagine my surprise when there was a woman in there, a total stranger, sitting on the toilet - nobody I'd ever seen or met before. Puzzled, I decided to be gallant, apologised, closed the door, and thought "let her finish. Then I can find out who she is and how she got in. But let the poor woman finish what she has to do first." as you do. Then woke up back in bed. I had to go and check the lav... nobody, but I expected that. What an odd thing to dream.
 
woke up in the middle of the night, needed to go to the toilet, got out of bed, went to the bathroom. Imagine my surprise when there was a woman in there, a total stranger, sitting on the toilet - nobody I'd ever seen or met before. Puzzled, I decided to be gallant, apologised, closed the door, and thought "let her finish. Then I can find out who she is and how she got in. But let the poor woman finish what she has to do first." as you do. Then woke up back in bed. I had to go and check the lav... nobody, but I expected that. What an odd thing to dream.
It may have been your subconscious inventing something to stop you using the loo in your dream. It's to prevent you wetting the bed.
 
If that was my animus stepping in then Gods, she was homely...
 
I've just woken from a dream that actually gave me advice.

I dreamed I was cleaning a tidal swimming pool, whilst bobbing about inside it. So I was wiping down the tiles along the side, whcih grew narrower and narrower as I went along, and the tide was coming in and sweeping in up the sides, carrying me with it (and, presumably, rathing negating my wiping down of the tiles). I got to a certain point and then said to my son, who was swimming alongside me 'right, that's it. I can't do any more, tell your dad that will have to do.'

It then transpired that, swimming in there with me, was the children's father. We've been divorced for twenty years, rarely see each other and, whilst there is no real animosity on my behalf, I'm not bothered if I never see him again. But I digress.

I got out of the pool and was staring at a basket of crisps that I'd left beside the pool. Big, mixed bags of Wotsits and Monster Munch from memory (but I spend my working life in a supermarket, so it's not suprising). Whiilst staring at the crisps I was remembering that I'd just told ex husband that I wanted him back, that I wanted to work on our relationship (this never happened IRL). I was slightly mortified and slightly angry with myself that I'd done this, and was focussing on the crisps to stop myself blushing with embarrassment.

And the advice? Well I'm meeting at the weekend with a recent ex partner, to help transport some furniture to my son's house. This man, whilst being lovely, kind and very sweet, would reconcile at the drop of a hat, and I had been thinking 'would it be so bad?'

And I know it would. He is incapable of the kind of relationship that I want. Reconciling would be dropping my standards and resigning myself to an existence that I don't want (I am currently very very happily single). I think the dream was trying to tell me that I would regret trying to rekindle our relationship, and not to do it. Why it had to tell me through the medium of crisps, I don't know...
 
I've just woken from a dream that actually gave me advice.

I dreamed I was cleaning a tidal swimming pool, whilst bobbing about inside it. So I was wiping down the tiles along the side, whcih grew narrower and narrower as I went along, and the tide was coming in and sweeping in up the sides, carrying me with it (and, presumably, rathing negating my wiping down of the tiles). I got to a certain point and then said to my son, who was swimming alongside me 'right, that's it. I can't do any more, tell your dad that will have to do.'

It then transpired that, swimming in there with me, was the children's father. We've been divorced for twenty years, rarely see each other and, whilst there is no real animosity on my behalf, I'm not bothered if I never see him again. But I digress.

I got out of the pool and was staring at a basket of crisps that I'd left beside the pool. Big, mixed bags of Wotsits and Monster Munch from memory (but I spend my working life in a supermarket, so it's not suprising). Whiilst staring at the crisps I was remembering that I'd just told ex husband that I wanted him back, that I wanted to work on our relationship (this never happened IRL). I was slightly mortified and slightly angry with myself that I'd done this, and was focussing on the crisps to stop myself blushing with embarrassment.

And the advice? Well I'm meeting at the weekend with a recent ex partner, to help transport some furniture to my son's house. This man, whilst being lovely, kind and very sweet, would reconcile at the drop of a hat, and I had been thinking 'would it be so bad?'

And I know it would. He is incapable of the kind of relationship that I want. Reconciling would be dropping my standards and resigning myself to an existence that I don't want (I am currently very very happily single). I think the dream was trying to tell me that I would regret trying to rekindle our relationship, and not to do it. Why it had to tell me through the medium of crisps, I don't know...

Ah now, I reckon your interpretation is spot-on.

When I read about the crisps in the basket I thought of those deep round supermarket stands set out between shelves to encourage shoppers to make extra purchases.
So if this were my dream and I worked in a supermarket I'd take the crisps as a reminder of work and how I have a routine and an income of my own. Symbolic, y'know.

The crisp displays might even be a warning about temptation, as they are carefully placed to encourage shoppers to buy things that aren't on their list and might even be bad for them. This scenario could also apply to relationships. *knowing look here*

This is how it'd look to me.
 
To be honest, Scargy, I think it's just that I spend a lot of my working life staring at crisps. My till is right opposite the confectionary and crisps aisle and more of my time that is reasonable is spent lining in crisps and restocking that section!

To reassure you, a rekindled relationship wouldn't be bad for me, as such. Although you are right, I am independant, own home and income etc. This chap isn't unkind or unpleasant and may, to others, look good for me.

He's just so bloody boring...
 
FWIW, here's how I'd parse it ...

"Boring" can work, but IMHO it won't work - or, more to the point, won't work well enough - for you and you know it. (I sensed this before seeing your follow-on comments, based on the apparent symbolism in the dream.)

The futile tile-wiping and swimming along with ex-husband and son was a metaphorical vision of the past as you see it.

The crisps were indicative of your current single life and the everyday routine(s) involved. It may be mundane, but it's a reliable reference point with which you're comfortable (hence your using it to calm yourself).

You were a passive player in the pool scenario with little control or chance of reaching a stopping point until / unless you declared an end to it. You'd exited the scenario by way of giving up.

I think your reflections while staring at the crisps were actually indirect references to the ex-partner rather than the ex-husband, or perhaps more accurately the category of persons to which they both belong.

The figure of the ex-husband was already in the scene, and for the sake of in-dream continuity you'd simply adopted him as a metaphor / surrogate for the ex-partner. This juxtaposition of two IRL persons was feasible because you weren't really addressing either man individually in terms of IRL identity, but rather the more general figure of "a man in my life."

You'd rather deal with the crisps (i.e., your current single life) on your own terms than to "get back in the pool" and be to some extent at the mercy of the waters you'd be re-entering.

The open issue is whether this preference is a result of fear (of commitment; of change) or committed belief.
 
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