Post Your Puzzling Dreams Here

[macrosblack]

Ok, this is a brave idea and i shall start it with my most recent - out of the norm, where did all that come from type dream etc...you can laugh, you can judge but i feel being open and honest is a unique quality we humans are often afraid of displaying....

For many months now i have taken to writing down my dreams - theres no neatness when your jotting down at 3.55 am. But upon relfection later that day you surprise yourself by how much content you placed on paper as opposed to what your memory recalls. It quite an addictive hobby which i am finding more and more fascinating.

Last night i told myself that i would awaken refreshed at 5am. I fell asleep repeating this and found that i did indeed come around at 5am - i reached for my phone to check the time. It had just turned 5am. I felt more alert than normal but looked again at my phone and gave in to the prospect of another hours sleep even though "must not oversleep for work crept to mind.

I then had a vivid dream.....

I found i was upon a marble slope, greek/roman pillars held higher platforms above as i stood on this decline. A middleaged women walked towards me and began insulting others behind me. These guys near me all fled and i decided to follow. They all stood in a strange lift - made out of the stone and marble. I joined them to escape this women. This lift discended and i followed these guys out. We where now back in time at some point near the earths beginning. Think marshes, foul smells etc. I sat with these people and we had a long discussion about time! (yes its a wierd one) I eventually left them going upwards in the lift. When i exited leading to the marble slope i saw a man waiting. He called me by my name and began explaining what had just happened to me.

This normal looking man told me that those people where not from here...the colour tone of thier skin often gave them away...in the wrong time zone . They travelled here to explore earth. Their method of travel involved fooling time to move quickly and this often led to meddling with the natural progress of earth. This man before me whom i acepted as almost a close friend? told me the women who scoldered them was their leader and was not happy. They had messed up!

He smiled and found their activities amusing which to me meant no harm had been caused. I asked him if they where us from the future?!? He told me they where not us. But he did mention that they where from 2086 in earths timeline and had "dropped back" into the now.

Before waking up this friendly man went on to explain that fooling time to trevel in thier case requires a dupicate of their body - so when time manipulation effects them they transplant or merge with a fresh body?!?!

This way they dont age or become effected by time distortion...

He told me this was thier magnum which in my mind as he spoke meant collection of hosts. - yes a wierd dream

I woke up and it was near 6am and all i could think was - magum! Thats a ice cream or a gun! What the hell! Thats the last time i order a dominos for supper


Is anyone else brave enough to here share a wierd dream with fear of riddicule.

sweet dreams everyone and i endorse keeping a journal near your bed.

 

[Iris]

macrosblack, that was a really interesting dream, it sounded almost like an episode of Dr. Who. Mine's not so interesting as yours and I think some on here already think I'm a bit odd but as they don't know me well here goes.
Some years ago I dreamt I was in a crowd of angry white robed men gathered about a stage. There was a bearded man seated on it and everyone, myself included was yelling " Kill the Hittite." Then a voice in my head said" You did the wrong thing" and I woke up.
Now I had never heard of the Hittites and had to look them up and I have no idea why the man was being condemned. It just seemed a strange type of dream to have had.

 

[Recycled1]

I don't quite know how to post this without sounding a complete nut case!

I'm pretty sure that, years ago, someone posted a contribution on the FT about sharing dreams with their pet cat.
The contributor posted something about dreaming she was "chasing mice in the gutter!"

Isis177 -it's almost as if you too had someone else's dream!

 

[ormus]

Hi microsblack,
Interesting and unusual dream. I enjoy reading about things like this.
I've noticed how I usually have quite detailed and odd dreams after I've woken up and then gone back to sleep and other people I've spoken to about it, have said the same thing.
It will be interesting to know if other people on the forum have experienced this, or not, and what sort of dreams they have had.
Good thread!

 

[PeniG]

Your dream recall is better once you've been awake and asleep again because you didn't wake all the way up. You got into stage one sleep (drowsiness), descended quickly into REM sleep, and then woke up properly because your body was primed. You haven't had time to lose it. Because recall is better the dream itself seems more vivid. Writing them down at once also helps you form memories that would otherwise dissipate. Your waking mind tends to erase the more bizarre details unless encouraged.

We used to talk about dreams at breakfast. The Greatest Hit Ever dream in my family was my mom's about going shopping in Des Moines, not being able to find anything, and then getting stuck in a snowdrift. So she took the car out of the trunk of her tricycle and drove home!

 

[macrosblack]

Hey guys just to say- a big thanks for the replies.

I kinda thought - aww bugger - after posting my dream.

dont know if this is the same for others but my most vivid dreams are around 4am-6am. Im glad the summer months are around as it makes easier writing in my journal at that such times in the morning.

 

[macrosblack]

macrosblack, that was a really interesting dream, it sounded almost like an episode of Dr. Who. Mine's not so interesting as yours and I think some on here already think I'm a bit odd but as they don't know me well here goes.
Some years ago I dreamt I was in a crowd of angry white robed men gathered about a stage. There was a bearded man seated on it and everyone, myself included was yelling " Kill the Hittite." Then a voice in my head said" You did the wrong thing" and I woke up.
Now I had never heard of the Hittites and had to look them up and I have no idea why the man was being condemned. It just seemed a strange type of dream to have had.

Your not odd but an open spirit in my opinion. Many thanks for your interesting dream. I suppose these dreams have meanings that are unique to ourselves. But its also good to share them as it releases some of the energy of holding onto summit that is bugging you.

Your entries here are most welcome by me.

 

[macrosblack]

Hi microsblack,
Interesting and unusual dream. I enjoy reading about things like this.
I've noticed how I usually have quite detailed and odd dreams after I've woken up and then gone back to sleep and other people I've spoken to about it, have said the same thing.
It will be interesting to know if other people on the forum have experienced this, or not, and what sort of dreams they have had.
Good thread!

I agree, and thanks for your support friend.

 

[macrosblack]

Your dream recall is better once you've been awake and asleep again because you didn't wake all the way up. You got into stage one sleep (drowsiness), descended quickly into REM sleep, and then woke up properly because your body was primed. You haven't had time to lose it. Because recall is better the dream itself seems more vivid. Writing them down at once also helps you form memories that would otherwise dissipate. Your waking mind tends to erase the more bizarre details unless encouraged.

We used to talk about dreams at breakfast. The Greatest Hit Ever dream in my family was my mom's about going shopping in Des Moines, not being able to find anything, and then getting stuck in a snowdrift. So she took the car out of the trunk of her tricycle and drove home!

Your correct about dream recall just after waking. There have been times when reflecting on past entries how my entries trigger more of a clearer memory of the dream. On some occasions i get a brief a wow factor where summit i hadnt cosidered hits me like a ton of bricks.

Taking notes clears away the fog and helps you understand dreams ina far more rich way.

 

[macrosblack]

I don't quite know how to post this without sounding a complete nut case!

I'm pretty sure that, years ago, someone posted a contribution on the FT about sharing dreams with their pet cat.
The contributor posted something about dreaming she was "chasing mice in the gutter!"

Isis177 -it's almost as if you too had someone else's dream!

Were the same at the end of the day and ecperience weird and often amazing dreams so dont be bothered by negative opinions.

 

[macrosblack]

Heres another dream that was unique and also seemed very real too. After taking notes on this one i couldnt believe i had been dreaming.

Time: between 3am and 4am fell into deep sleep

Awoke: 6.37am

Dream: was stood in a busy market place and moved to its perimeter as I kinda realised - what am i doing here! Smelt food and walked to a burger van and found an irregular que of people lining up.(odd caravan) I decided to back off and try and take in this place. Couldnt recognise anything so decided to join the que and order some food so i could ask where i was. When my turn came i ordered <cant remember> and asked for directions. Was given a useless reply and walked away. The man was irish. Dawned on me that i was in Ireland. Noticed that the food i ordered had no taste even though it smelt delicious. There was a pub on a corner right next to the food van. Passes by would speak to me as if they knew me with offers of a free drink.

<now it gets alittle strange>

My parents yorkshire terrier from when i was a child runs up to me and I feel support - no longer alone. He greets me. Then an Irish man approaches me and talks about the place im in - going on about how great it is. He kinda knows i am lost and offers to help me with this. The dog follows him so i do too. He points out many buildings with brief history <not logged> We end up along a normal road, the sun is very bright here but not hot like summer.

There are no cars. The road, the walkways look brand new. Walkways are slightly higer than the road - a dip which is layed with brown slabs and royal blue patterned slabs each side of this cobbled road. houses, cottages lie up each side.

The dog now runs off as i am led to a large cottage by this man <his name is surprising to me>

I then have tea and some biscuit, scone with him and his wife. They are strangley very excited by my visit. At first i still cannot taste anything but when he asks me what i think of his wifes cooking I get flavour - to which he smiles as if knowing my previous premise.

I get a tour of the cottage. I am still puzzled by how welcomeing they are to me a stranger. We end up in a room with train sets on display and a model village in the centre that looks like this strange town.

I remark by how nice these trains look (still wondering where the hell i am) and his wife rushes over to me, hugs me, kisses my cheek. She seems so happy to have met me?!?

The man then tells me to look at the village layout, the trains i do this and wonder why. He seems to know my next question and answers - LOOK AT THE TRAINS

I now leave the cottage with them waving to me whilst i think strangely of trains

As i walk off along these sparkling clean walkways I see a train station.

I then wake up - no slow slumber back into this reality but a calm opening of eyes staring at the cieling.....

I then scribbled all i could into my journal - often starting with the end of the dream and then a mish mash of other bits.


I feel this was an astral event and not a normal dream but who knows?

 

[Impybat]

Hi macrosblack,

Wow, those are some very interesting dreams! I also find that my most vivid dreams occur between 4 and 6am, especially after I wake up and fall back asleep. But the strangest ones I have ever experienced were the ones I had when I was on the nicotine patch. They were far more vivid, intense and surreal than other dreams I'd had in the past.

There was one in particular where I dreamed I was walking along a wooded path near a friend's house. In reality, this path leads to a school, but in the dream, it led to what I can only describe as "Monopoly Land". It was a bright, warm, sunny day, and there was a pavilion with elderly people seated outside enjoying the weather. I can remember this one gentleman who was wearing a light colored linen suit smiling and nodding at me as I walked by. I looked down, and noticed that the ground was painted to look like an enormous Monopoly board.

I kept a dream journal around this time. Maybe I should dig it out and see what other weirdness is there.

 

[macrosblack]

Hi macrosblack,

Wow, those are some very interesting dreams! I also find that my most vivid dreams occur between 4 and 6am, especially after I wake up and fall back asleep. But the strangest ones I have ever experienced were the ones I had when I was on the nicotine patch. They were far more vivid, intense and surreal than other dreams I'd had in the past.

There was one in particular where I dreamed I was walking along a wooded path near a friend's house. In reality, this path leads to a school, but in the dream, it led to what I can only describe as "Monopoly Land". It was a bright, warm, sunny day, and there was a pavilion with elderly people seated outside enjoying the weather. I can remember this one gentleman who was wearing a light colored linen suit smiling and nodding at me as I walked by. I looked down, and noticed that the ground was painted to look like an enormous Monopoly board.

I kept a dream journal around this time. Maybe I should dig it out and see what other weirdness is there.

Hey, I find my dream journey quite an interesting read when i leave it for a long while. It seems that time doesnt forget the memories kept locked away in dreams.

That was an interesting read impybat. I am beginning to think that we often marry into the realms of others when we have vivid dreams. Our perception and reality merges with theirs and this leads to a mis mash of realities. (where they know exactly why we are there in their realm) The body is switched off in sleep - the mind can become free of its human limitations.

Keep up the good work impybat and by that i mean just dream...(and then be brave to post it here

Peace.

 

[Impybat]

Hi macrosblack,

Thanks for your reply. I wonder if it is true that we marry into the dream realms of others as you said. That would explain the sheer absurdity and nonsense that I sometimes experience--beyond the usual bizarreness of dreams. There have been a few random times where I felt the dream just didn't apply to me!

Another small point I wanted to bring up was that I have always had terrific dream recall, but then a couple of years ago, I abruptly stopped remembering them. Whether this was the result of stress or something else, I do not know. I was upset about it, actually. Then recently, and just as abruptly, I began remembering them in vivid detail again! Weird subconscious.

I searched for the dream journal, but all I have found so far are some old writing examples. Those are just as weird, though! I will keep on looking.

 

[Impybat]

Oops! I posted and completely forgot to include one more dream I remembered from the nicotine patch period. I was with a group of friends and we were at a mall. This mall exists in real life, but as happens in dreamland, certain details were altered. As were were headed to the entrance, a large bee began following us, buzzing around me in particular. I swatted it away and tried to get to the doors quickly. In my waking life, I have no fear of bees, but this bee was threatening. We made our way inside the mall and the bee of course followed us in. Nobody else seemed to notice or be bothered by the bee. It would swoop and dive around my head and disappear, so I was preoccupied with looking around to see where it went. Then the bee went away, and that's the last I remembered.

 

[gcd_889ff9c65a25]

The most vivid dream I had recently was quite odd.
I don't drive in real life, but in the dream I had gone on holiday to a coastal town and had driven there. At the beginning of the dream I was sat in the car in a carpark, on the opposite side of the road to a harbour or marina.
There was no fence around the carpark and it seemed to be little more than some crumbling tarmac, covered in weeds.

I was sorting out the contents of the car, (suitcases, picnic box and the usual detritus that seems to accumulate in cars), when the doors shut and the car started to roll backwards with me in it. With an unstoppable inevitability it rolled out of the carpark and across the road.
I could do nothing to stop it; the car wouldn't start, the brakes didn't work. It rolled aross the road and in to the water of the harbour.
It started to sink, but oddly the car remained horizontal throughout. This is the most vivid part of the dream, I can remember the heavy, leaden feel of the car sinking. Inside, I could see the grey/green water rising past the windows, with streams of fine, foamy bubbles moving up them. Bizarrely, the inside of the car seemed water-tight, but I rememer thinking "I'd better stop shouting, I don't want to use up all the air!".
The sense of huge amounts of water all around me was very strong.

This is, I think, where I woke up. I don't remember now what time of day or night it was.

 

[linesmachine]

Interesting dream. I was particularly fascinated by the fact you were driving but you don't drive (when awake atleast!).

The scene where you are in the car and it sinks is similar to several dreams I have had myself. The concept of being trapped inside a sinking car is a real Hollywood classic that I think has sneaked into my own subconscious, as is so often the root of dream scenarios.

 

[rasputin]

A few nights back I went through a succession of weirdish dreams.

The only one I can remember is this one;

I was at a swimming pool with my mum. There was a tomato plant growing in the swimming pool. My mum (who doesn't like tomatoes) went to pick one (there was a sort of platform into the pool. She fell into the water with all her clothes on (my mum is in her 70s). She then got out and we didn't know what to do as we were quite far from home and she had no change of clothes. That was the end of the dream.

 

[marion]

I have a couple of odd ones recently.
Last night's was short- I was in a smallish untended garden when I found a huge toad(s?)- it was siamese twins, with two heads and two bodies, two sets of front limbs but shared a pair of back limbs, they were joined at the rump so they faced in opposite directions. I got the feeling it was 'special' in some way.

Last week:
I was walking up a steep hill through a succession of cul de sacs joined by footpaths, houses were 1970's or 60's private houses with neat gardens full of vivid coloured flowers, the sun was high and bright.
I sort of 'knew' the hill was maybe something like an iron age hillfort in the past but people had forgotten.
About halfway up the hill I came to a lane that was much older than the cul de sacs, it was deep and had hedges. I turned right along it, it sloped uphill that way. Just as I was walking up it a large silver coach pulled up in a layby and the driver got out and started walking up the lane in front of me. I realised then that it was dark and I was walking up a lane behind a strange man and decided to turn back to the modern houses which would have streetlighting and be safer. as I walked along I looked left through the tree/hedge at the landscape below (I was halfway up a hill) and the land was silver white and black as if it was covered in snow and moonlit. It was stunningly beautiful. I thought then, 'ah this is a dream, this isn't possible, it was summer just now' and woke up.

 

[_Lizard23_]

Last night : I was in a graveyard in New Orleans. I was a young man. It took me a while to work out I was dead. There were other dead people there, we all looked like skeletons, no flesh at all.

They explained to me that we could use the flesh of the recently deceased for a few hours to clothe ourselves and walk among the living and enjoy corporeal pleasures. It was all quite organised, they knew where recent burials had been and assigned me a corpse, but I got lost and arrived too late and someone from 'another gang' had got there and already 'used' the body.

I went back to my friends, who now all had flesh, and asked what would happen if I spent the night as a skeleton and they said it would be fine, just it gets very cold and you start to really miss the 'gold spark' inside. One of them had also not managed to get to his cadaver in time but had found a dead cat and managed to assume the skin of that. It was stretched tight over his skeleton but he was pleased - at least he could eat, they all seemed obsessed with eating, and they promised to bring him food because he couldn't go into town looking that way.

I wandered off and briefly entertained some (living) children who had come into the graveyard for thrills by moving things - they couldn't see me at all - but they ran away.

I did start to feel cold and a bit of a loser, so when I saw two squirrels playing I decided to catch one, kill it and use its body, which I did, but instead of finding myself just thinly clothed in squirrel skin I was immediately transported to some alternate plane where animated carved black wooden elephants the size of dogs herded me towards a building by a river. A woman there explained it was a kind of courtroom and that it would probably be ok, she had killed something herself, once, but that I was probably going to end up wishing I'd just spent the night cold and lonely as a skeleton.
[THE END]

What I find peculiar about this one is that I do sometimes have this sort of very vivid, coherently plot-driven, almost cinematic dream, whereas usually my dreams involve my actual self and people and places I know in some nonsensical jumble of everyday events mixed with utter bizarreness, but this was like watching an episode of the Twilight Zone (clumsy moral ending and all!)

 

[Peripart]

Last week:
I was walking up a steep hill through a succession of cul de sacs joined by footpaths, houses were 1970's or 60's private houses with neat gardens full of vivid coloured flowers...

I've had one or more dreams where I've walked through just such a place. Mine is almost certainly based on a series of roads not a mile from where I'm typing though, as with all dreams, most of the important details are completely different.

It's odd, though, that your description tallies so closely with my own. Reading that sentence of yours, I could suddenly remember driving and then, frustrated at all the twists and turns and dead ends, walking up this hill through the houses - like in your dream, there were paths that connected the various cul-de-sacs. Sadly, I can't remember how the dream ended. Most of mine just sort of peter out or end when I realise that I'm only dreaming.

One common factor with my odder dreams is that I'm in a place that I know well and can put a name to (Lichfield, Loughborough, wherever), but the dream-town is always quite unlike the real one. It's as if a place has been ripped up, and another built on the basic geographical features that remain. In my dreams, for instance, Lichfield has far more narrow, cobbled streets and quaint shops than the real one, and I'm not even sure that dream-Lichfield even has a cathedral (which, if you've ever been there, is quite a landmark), but even so, in my dream, there's never any doubt as to where I am.

Sorry - like a dream, this post is going nowhere, and I find myself now wondering how I got here, and whether it's time to wake up...

 

[Barb1212]

These dreams are great, its always good to see other people have the same thing happening, I also have more vivid dreams when I've woken up and gone back to sleep, but unfortunatly I don't keep a dream journal and most of them dissappear somewhere in my memory banks :? I have one that I remember, which occured after a pre-bed snack of medium strength cheddar

I was at a camp in the jungle somewhere where the site was set out in wooden huts with walkways connecting them, and the camp leader was Rolf Harris. We were having general adventures, river walking and abseiling the kind of thing you would expect to do in a camp like that, and that night we were going to get a story from Rolf, round the campfire. He starts talking and we hear this big growl from the trees, and see a massive (and I mean huge) white wolf with bright pink eyes, heading straight for us. Rolf jumped up with a branch from the fire and waved it at this wolf till it went away. I woke up as he was waving the branch around, and I remember having that split second where am I? moment, closely followed with no more cheese before bedtime.

I have heard that different kinds of cheese can make you have different themed dreams, but have absolutely nothing (apart from the above dream) to back it up.



Has anyone else had cheese-dreams?

Sorry I've gone on a bit of a tangent

 

[macrosblack]

Great contributions people! Kepp them coming.

Last friday night Saturday Morning i had a spider dream. I was with somestranger who in the dream i kinda knew. We where in this house and the fire place looked lovely. I went over to give it a closer look and there was a pale looking spider. I turned to respond tho this "friend" and found that the spider had bit my right hand. I spun around in fright and found i had somehow killed this spider and found a small lump on my hand. It looked like a skin shaped screw head. I then went into the kitchen and got covered in white web. I then woke up but didnt note this down. I put this down to the beers I`d had earlier

In recent years Ive had dreams of visitng a theatre and going to my seat. All rows of seats are layed behind each other on a very steep and hign slope. I get so far down this slope and then fear of falling and heights kicks in. I stand holding onto a seat wondering why the hell they make these places so steep

A variant of this dreams is where i find myself on a balcony (very high up) with the same situation of steeply stacked seating arrangments.

 

[decipheringscars]

My dreams are usually pretty vivid but chaotic, and make no sense once I wake up. They also normally are very concerned with spatial relationships and architecture. I would love to one day figure out why that is. Sometimes I'll dream about particular buildings, often ones where I've spent a lot of time in my past (e.g., the church I grew up in features a lot), but the building will be altered in some way and the dream will sometimes involve secret passages that, in the dream, I always knew about and used (rather than discovering them in the dream). Other dreams just have a strong sense of how the physical space is laid out, but it's nowhere I've been in real life.

I also almost never see people's faces in my dreams, but rather just know who they are. Sometimes upon waking my memory pastes their face back onto the dream, if I happen to remember the dream well enough.

I do have a theory that dreaming is the process of our brains defragging. Just as when you defrag your hard drive, and the computer takes all the temporary files and organizes them, putting together stuff that belongs together (i.e., incorporating changes you made into files that were already there), writing a log of where everything is, and freeing up blocks of memory - as I understand it, anyway. I think when we dream we're sort of watching that process happening in our brains, where they're incorporating the day's events into our long-term memory, throwing out irrelevant bits, and, maybe, logging where the memories are stored (i.e., forming neural pathways to the information) thus consolidating memories that go together and, maybe in a metaphoric sense, freeing up space in our short-term memory for the next day's experiences. I know that sleeping is important for memory.

Anyway, even in my chaotic dreams, I sometimes recognize bits from the day, even in disguised or jumbled form. This is such a quotidian occurrence I can't think of specific examples. They would be fairly incoherent, anyway.

It's the dreams I do remember that are most significant, but then again sometimes I'll have a fairly coherent dream and I can't for the life of me figure out where they came from. I'll post a couple examples of each in a bit...

 

[decipheringscars]

I've had a couple of memorable dreams that resolved something for me, or at least identified something.

The first dream I had a few weeks after I was mugged, at gunpoint, while in my car (upon arriving home in the wee hours). I went immediately to a nearby police station, and they clearly didn't care. (The detective just said to me, "So, when ya gonna move?") Later, when I was with my then-roommate visiting her family back in another state, I had this dream.

In the dream, I was with a bunch of friends, and it was dark outside, and we arrived in my neighborhood (a bunch of apartment buildings) by car, parked (on a different street from where I was mugged IRL), and were heading to my building. We noticed a kid, late teens or early 20s (both younger and a different ethnicity than my mugger) acting strangely in a lawn across the street, apparently playing with a stick. As we went toward my building, though, he started to follow us, and instead of a stick (or a gun) he had a knife. I was in the lead; when we got to the building, since I was worried about his getting into the building, I went in, shut the door on my friends, and headed down a hallway that didn't exist in my building IRL. One of my friends (possibly supposed to be my roommate) did have a key, though, and opened the door. The kid with the knife then forced them all to take him up to our apartment - not sure whether he was just going to steal stuff or hurt anybody. So, from where I was, and from a payphone that also didn't exist IRL, I phoned the police.

I woke up at least twice from this dream, tried to stay awake, but was unable to, and the dream continued. When I was on the phone with the police, the fascinating thing was I could hear myself talking to them, and conducting one side of a conversation, but there was no voice coming back to me through the phone. Then I woke up (the dream actually faded out), and stayed awake, and realized that the dream was telling me that despite the post-traumatic stress I was experiencing from being mugged, what was bothering me most was the police's lack of concern. I assume all the details in the dream were changed so much because the real event would've been too traumatic to re-live at that point, even in a dream, so I probably wouldn't have stayed asleep through it to get to its resolution.


The second "resolution-type" dream I recall happened just last summer. We all have probably had the recurring dreams of being back in school, finding out you have a class you've never gone to all semester but have to take the final exam... I've had lots of those. A similar dream I also have had, which I suspect others sometimes have too, is that I have to go back to high school for a year. Sometimes it's just me; sometimes it's my whole class. Last summer, I went to a class reunion, and this past fall I entered a PhD program. So in late summer, I had the return-to-high-school dream again. In this variant, it was my whole graduating class that had to go back. We were standing in the lobby with the principal, and suddenly I stomped my foot and yelled, "But, I'm in a PhD program, and [pointing] he's already got a PhD, and..." and before I could point out everyone's various degrees, careers, and families, I woke up, and haven't had anything like the return-to-high-school dream again!

 

[macrosblack]

I love the idea that the brain is defragging. That would explain those random wierd episodes we have ring side seats to in dream time. Could nigthmares be "bad sectors" within our harddrive? Overall, an interesting theory indeed.

What about those Deja Vu episodes where for a flash of a second your mind goes alittle numb and you remember for a split second of time that you dreamt this or that. Anyone come across that before?

My most recent was flipping a trip switch in our office to get the lighting working again. As i chatted with my colleague i went for the switch and before touching it had one of these deja vu moments. For a fraction of a second I switched off from normality and remembered doing this before. I instantly recalled my present activites from a past dream and then it was gone.

Back to reality secretly questioning what i had just experienced.

 

[Iris]

decipheringscars you mention secret passages in your dream. I often used to dream of a house with secret passages which I would always explore. At one stage I would dream of the house so often that in the dream I would think
"Here I am again" and worry whether I had paid the rates.
I wonder if the passages represent parts of our thoughts that are not on the surface in everyday life.

 

[decipheringscars]

And now, for something completely different.

Well, not completely different, but these two dreams don't relate to anything I can figure out, as the last two apparently did (one resolving a RL experience and the other resolving a recurring dream).

The first needs a little background. I was raised in a Pentecostal church, which is somewhere between Evangelical and Fundamentalist. Folks like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were revered enough; in my mind, they are represented as middle-aged or older men in boring suits. I am now Episcopalian, on the liberal side (I don't believe in hell, or a literal Satan, demons, or angels, e.g.).

So I had a dream, completely out of nowhere (nothing I had been thinking about). I wasn't in the dream, but rather saw it unfold as if from the corner of the room. It was a very quick dream. The room was dusky - some natural light was coming in through a window, but it was a rather dreary room, which looked a lot like the waiting room of a doctor's office. There were middle-aged men in boring suits, which my mind instantly identified as the "Baptist-preacher" type, sitting and reading magazines or something. The door opened, and in came Jesus! (Don't ask how I knew, my dream just told me it was Jesus.) He was very upbeat, a sparkle in his eye, even, and declared, "OK, I'm coming to take you to heaven now - looks like you're the only ones going." The men stirred, gathered up their belongings really matter-of-factly, without registering any surprised that the number of the "saved" should include only them. Jesus, barely able to keep it in, laughed and said, "Just kidding; everyone else is already there." (It was clear to me in the dream that "everyone" literally meant everyone, too.) I woke up laughing. What a funny dream, but also one that kinda fits my theology! So in one sense, of course I know where it came from - my past beliefs (as a child who didn't know there were other beliefs to be had) and my present beliefs; but I have no idea why I dreamed the dream at all, let alone that particular morning - I wasn't thinking about anything remotely connected to any of that. Just an amusing gift of my subconscious, I suppose.

The second one is even stranger. In this dream, my parents, two siblings, and I were the ages we were IRL, and decided to go, as a family, back in time to visit ourselves at a previous time, when my siblings and I were kids. Apparently the earlier versions of my parents knew about the visit, but didn't want the earlier versions of us kids to know, because they thought it was potentially too freaky for them. So we went into the house, which wasn't actually the house I grew up in, but it was supposed to be the one we lived in till I was 4. Our earlier family was hosting (the earlier version) of a family we were friends with who had 4 kids, in this birth order: C, T, B, and M. We went into a room where all the kids of both families were sitting on the floor around a coffee table eating pizza. I sat down with them, next to the eldest of the friends (C), who apparently was aware that we were visitors from the future. As we were chatting, I noticed that the birth order of his siblings was wrong - he was still oldest, but B was next followed by T and then M. I remarked on this to him, and, as the dream faded away and I slowly awoke, he said to me (something like this), "Well, of course! Did you really think you were really visiting your family in the past? Every moment in time is a discrete event; do you remember, in your childhood, yourselves from the future coming to visit?" And I was awake. (That quote from him is only the gist of what he said, but I distinctly recall his using the phrase "distinct event.")

My dreams are almost never the coherent stories that these four are!

 

[decipheringscars]

decipheringscars you mention secret passages in your dream. I often used to dream of a house with secret passages which I would always explore. At one stage I would dream of the house so often that in the dream I would think
"Here I am again" and worry whether I had paid the rates.
I wonder if the passages represent parts of our thoughts that are not on the surface in everyday life.

That's a fascinating idea. I've often wondered, too, if the architectural focus of my dreams in any way reflects something about my thoughts.

I too will often find myself back in the same (real or fictional) location, not quite a recurring dream, but dreams in recurring places. Often, those dreams involve passages that involve climbing - that has to mean something, but I have no idea what.

Sometimes it's nature, too - the farm I grew up on (which turns out to have a clearing or building in the woods that didn't actually exist), a mountain or hill, or just some landscape with a path, road, or trail leading from some place to some other place, usually with some emphasis on the journey and/or the people I'm traveling with and/or people I encounter going in the opposite direction.

 

[adamantius410]

Is anyone else brave enough to here share a wierd dream with fear of riddicule.

sweet dreams everyone and i endorse keeping a journal near your bed.

Last night I dreamt a re-run of the aftermath of my mother's death, specifically the breakdown of her home, settling her estate, disposing of her various personal effects, the will, etc., except for one major difference:

The person who had died was apparently the reigning King of Norway, and he had been the father of my brother-in-law (who is in reality a digital graphic artist from Haiti, now living in Brooklyn, New York). My sister, as the incoming Queen of Norway, was being quite irritating, interrupting any casual reference to Lou in conversation with the correction, "You mean His Majesty..."

I attribute this mostly to a small dose of melatonin each night at bedtime...