BS: Dreams that Stayed With You

Subject: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 11:33 AM

Most dreams are fleeting, forgotten soon after your eyes open, but now and then a dream gets stuck in long term memory. What dreams have stayed in your head for decades?

Some of mine...

A modern city in ruins, plants growing everywhere. A jetplane flying overhead, and as it flies, it leaves a succession of half a dozen perfect circular rainbows.

The interior of a huge building made entirely of translucent green glass, including a bathroom and a great room with long glass tables, chairs, couches.

A grave mound in the woods, quaking and cracking, and after a moment of fear and horror, opening to reveal a cat and her nursing kittens.

Leaping hopelessly into a deep lake to escape a pursuing invisible menace, and unexpectedly being borne across to the other side by invisible hands wrapped around my ankles.

An ascending long whistle; as the pitch rises, I also rise and float away until the pitch descends and I am gently deposited on the ground (had variations on this theme many times through childhood).

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 11:44 AM

I used to have terrible dreams about being on bridges that collapsed under me. Then one night I fell all the way down and said to myself, 'I will just swim when I get in the water.' That was the last bridge nightmare.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Paul Burke
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 11:48 AM

Finding my brother drowned in a stream... we often used to play there, and there were absolutely no clues that it was a dream.

Cooking and eating the Boy when he was about 15 months old. I remember saying "It's all right, we've done it before..."

Some others that might cause the Cat to be taken down as obscene.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: PoppaGator
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 11:48 AM

I rarely remember my dreams; I used to think I wasn't dreaming at all, but I've read that everyone dreams every night, it's just a question of how much one is able to remember.

A number of years ago, I seemed to have a series of dreams all in the same weird setting. Not so much a "recurring dream" as a "recurring context" in which varous different dream scenarios would take place. As noted above, I rarely remember my dreams, and when I have any memory of a dream at all, it an be quite vague and fleeting, but I had the strong impression for a while that I was living an alternative life, night after night, in a different world than this one. I never had serious doubts about which of the two "worlds" was the real one, but it was disconcerting, to say the least, that such a thought would ever even occur to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Becca72
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 12:03 PM

I had a recurring dream for years as a child that sounds silly now, but was actually terrifying at the time.

I was being chased through downtown Portland, ME by.....Grape Ape (yes, the Hannah Barbarra cartoon). My parents were on opposite ends of the city and I was running to find them to 'save me' from the ape. I would run up to my mother and she would say "I'm too busy..go find your father". I would run run run across the city and find my father and he would say "I'm too busy..go find your mother" and so on until eventually I would end up in a public toilet, cowering in a stall..I look up and over the top of the door peering down at me is Grape Ape..as he reached for me I would wake up.

This started around the time my parents were separating so there's no real challenge in finding the meaning of that one.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: jacqui.c
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 12:25 PM

The dreams I remember were from childhood, round about 8/9 years old.

One was myself as something infinitesimally small being overshadowed by something infinitesimally large, with the feeling that I could be crushed by that object.

The other was climbing a flight of wide stairs in our local train station, except that I never seemed to reach the top of these stairs.

I think, after those, I blocked remembering dreams.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: kendall
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 12:43 PM

Becca, reading that just breaks my heart. I had no idea what was going on with you.

My dream happened when I was a small boy. One night I dreamed I was in a sinking ship, and I woke the whole family yelling "Come on boys, she's going under." I know I was under 9 because we moved from that house when I was 9.
Of course, it became a family joke.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 12:50 PM

These are really wonderful.

My favorites seem to take place in environments of rich, baroqie architecture with glowing weoods turned into elegant buildings.

My never-forgotten childhood dream, in 4th grade, involved an aligator who was a threat, but whom I cleverly distracted by giving him my brown paper lunchbag with the peanut butter sandwich in it. Instead of eating me alive, he chomped down on the bag, which went all mushy and oozed out between his teeth (he was in a stream), while I escaped unharmed.

I have no idea why, of all my sometimes very vivid dreams of childhood, this one has stuck in memory, while the rest have evanesced into the vague impressions of unneeded memories.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Becca72
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 12:53 PM

In fairness, Dad, I never told anyone about my dream so you couldn't have known it was happening.

I had a dream just a few months ago that some little creature, much like the thing in the movie Cat's Eye (based on the Stephen King book), was in my apartment trying to kill my cats. I woke up frantic and actually jumped out of bed to try to find them before it could...then realized I had been dreaming.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: wysiwyg
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 01:18 PM

A nightmare with a silver lining.

In the dream, I have just committed an unspeakable act of major proportions, and I'm on the run-- mortified, more than half mad, and unable to recall just what I have done. I only know that my life as I know it is over, and that I have much to face. I have no idea what to do next, and I'm just wandering. I somehow take action to link up with some angel-people and turn myself over to them. They're so nice to me that I first think they must not know what I have done, but they break the news to me of what I have done (incredibly compassionately), and absorb my reaction. They agree I will have much to face, but focus on how strongly I have trusted my autopilot (to get myself to them) and how excellent that autopilot is. They've just given me acid to help me remember the act for myself, and assure me that they are going to help me. (The dream ends there.)

The dream was so strong that I seem never able to forget that lesson. I'm very grateful to have learned it in the dream instead of having acted out the dreamed actions in order to arrive at it....

This dream was years before our culture had learned about anything like school shootings, federal building bombings, or twin towers terrorism..... understand, I was very young and sheltered; Hitler and Hiroshima were my only models of mass cruelty at the time I dreamed it.

Each time I have heard of these later events in the news, one of my first thoughts has been gratitude for that dream. Because that dream showed me that we are all capable of thinking of the "unthinkable" (or dreaming it), but we also are capable of learning our lessons without acting out every angry thought that bubbles up.

I can look back on many, MANY times when that autopilot has carried me through terrible (recognized or unrecognized) challenges. And the model of compassion in the face of grim reality, shown to me by the angel-people, has remained with me, as well.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 01:44 PM

Amazing what the unconscious mind is doing while we are sleeping. I feel that remembering dreams is like catching the night shift at work, doing the jobs that are magically done in the morning, usually with no trace of the workers - like the cobbler and the elves that made his shoes at night.

Another, this one more recent...

There's a tall maple that shades our deck. The branches have stretched, in the dream, so that they sprawl out over the deck rails, and they are heavy with huge and diverse fruit, none of the fruit are recognizable as ones I know, but they are definitely edible and ripe, in all the colours one associates with tree fruit, plum purples, pear yellows and roseate and apple green and delicate orange. I reach to touch one; it is smooth and cool and a delicious scent of pear-orange-apple comes from it. As I pluck it, the dream ends.

An old one, when I was living in the city...

It is recognizeably my neighbourhood, in my city, at night, but the pavement is broken and cracked; grass and weeds grow through it. There is no electricity, just dim lamps and candles showing through windows here and there. I am hurrying through the dark streets with a message for someone clutched in my hand, and when I see anyone walking, I slip into the shadows between houses and wait until they pass...

Ack! We interrupt this dreamcast to report that Tommy has just brought in a huge bullfrog - alive and hopping! BRB...

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Becca72
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 02:14 PM

Good boy, Tommy! LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: RangerSteve
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 02:54 PM

My most memorable dreams are what I call "weird architecture" dreams, always bought on by prescription medications. The first was produced by nitrous oxide from a visit to the dentist. I was lost in a huge city, all the buildings were of a style I believe is called "Beau Arts" (first time in my life I've ever used that in a sentence), and the buildings were huge, 50 stories tall and covering entire city blocks. There was no way out of the city, no signs, nothing. This dream seemed to go on for at least 8 hours.

Another time, I dreamed that I was working for a glass company that in real life I had left about a year earlier. My boss took me to a large mansion 3 or 4 stories tall, something like 100 rooms. He told me to replace all the windows by the end of the day. Then he took me into a circular room that was entirely made of stained glass, including the ceiling. He told me I had to dismantle it and put it back together. I woke up in a cold sweat, not because of the nature of the job, but because I didn't work there and didn't know how to break it to the boss.

Another, bought on by nicotine patches, had me driving my patrol car through a neighborhood of victorian houses, each having a feature that didn't belong, such as thatched roofs or onion domes. The street was paved in colored flagstones. I took a map out of the glove compartment to see where I was, realized I was about 50 miles from where I was supposed to be and had 5 minutes to get there. Again, I woke up in a cold sweat, worried about what was going to happen to me.

Seems to me that legal drugs are not much different than illegal ones.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: frogprince
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 03:02 PM

The mother of all nightmares, 40 years ago; the scenes, as they progressed: 1. Riding a cross-country bus, and seeing a woman passenger suddenly start chewing on another passenger 2. Attending the funeral of an infant. A number of the congregation get up in mid service, walk up and surround the coffin, and start devouring the body. 3. Riding a city bus, trying to flee from whatever was going on, watching wholesale cannibalism from the bus windows, with the mobs we were driving through reaching up to claw at the bus windows with bloody fingers. Woke up miserable and soaked in sweat.

A much different dream, 27 or 28 years ago: I was sitting beside a small stream, in virtually pitch-darkness, watching an incredible number of fireflies. That much was a very literal replay of an actual nice evening, in Arkansas, a few years before. Then, in the dream, a large shimmering translucent bubble drifted toward me from a distance. Just before touching me, it burst, quite naturally and silently...except that, as if released by the bubble, a soft, gentle voice said "We love you.

I've never had real nightmares again since the latter dream.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 03:31 PM

Wandering around, newly re-employed, by the first library I worked in professionally. Only it's a lot bigger (even though in the same building), and the Children's Room is now downstairs from the basement.

Wildly disproportionate sizes of things around me: near things are very small, as if they were far away and distant things are huge. (I have this sometimes even now when I change eyeglass prescriptions. It's related to my messed up depth perception.)

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 03:47 PM

These are truly wonderful tales; I appreciate the chance to read them. I love the "night-shift" metaphor! To me, this thread reveals how deep the dynamics of, and capacity to create, poetry go in all our kind, not just the few who let it leak into their day-lives.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Acorn4
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 05:04 PM

Don't know what some of you people are on but can I have some, please!

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 05:45 PM

Frog escaped, hid, couldn't be found. Tommy no help, just watches with apparent deep interest. Hour later, spot frog. Catch him, shoots outta my hand like a watermelon seed, heads for the bathroom. Tommy no help. Frog under fixed piece of furniture. Borrow butterfly net from neighbour. Finally catch and release frog! Tommy absolutely no help!

Back to dreamland...

I am on the lush shore of a small tropical lake. It is smooth as glass. I step in, it is warm, and I walk out until I'm over my head. I am walking on the bottom, underwater, but I am breathing as if it is air. Everything is green, there are no fish, but moonsnails are floating everywhere.

Another...

This is a house I know, in the dream, I will live in. It has a long triple window over the kitchen sink; stained glass barn swallows are incorporated into the glass. The kitchen is long and woody. There are two wooden steps up from the kitchen into an old fashioned dim-lit parlour. The floor is dark wide planks, scuffed and worn, partly covered with worn oriental rugs. There is a transparent old woman sitting in a chair, staring at me.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 06:12 PM

I have 'pattern' dreams...mostly coping with problems. Some are about old houses with decaying rooms, and ALWAYS nasty plumbing and complex bathroom/toilet setups. Others are cars and parking and forgetting where the car is.

But the ones which are most common are being back in college and losing track of what classes I'm in and trying to rush around at the end of the semester wondering how to make up work. It usually involves getting lost and not even recognizing the rooms and the teachers. Brrrrrr...

Also a common theme is "Getaway" dreams...music and eating, but with LOTS of strange organization problems and weather and location confusion. (like, reality, you know)

The good ones have commonly been flying dreams. I can soar and levitate and see things. One was at a beach, with big waves and sunlight, where I zoomed out over the ocean and back, the envy of all those 'ants' below!

Sometimes I am 'learning' to fly, and needing to concentrate in a certain way to 'bobble' in the air like one does in a swimming pool, knees drawn up and barely able to float. Other times, I can 'swim' the air at will, above trees and with good control.

I have had a few weird dreams about people that were so 'real', I almost called them to check on them...not recently though.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 06:33 PM

I'm strange in that I can have consecutive dreams - I'll dream of one scenario one night and in consecutive nights, the dream will continue more or less where it finished previously. Sometimes I'll go back to a dream I had months before and continue it as if it were never interrupted.   They usually involve me performing some athletic or heroic feat that I could never imagine doing in my waking life, and occasionally I have superpowers. Quite often there's a lot of cooking involved and I've been known to dream smells too.

The dream that's stayed with me most vividly though - for other reasons - I was being chased through my in-laws' bungalow, which was filled with giant steel daisies. I was weaving in and out of the daisy stems, running towards the front door and the lighted hall and I was watching myself from above. There was a chiming bell that wouldn't stop and I could smell fresh cut grass and vanilla.

It's stayed with me because of where I had it - in the cardiac care ward of my local hospital. I was suffering from cardiac arrhythmia and had been experiencing chest pains. I wandered down to the hospital where they admitted me to the ward for 24 hours. I was wired up to a monitor geared to sound an alarm when my heart rate dropped below 50. The alarm sounded so often that earlier in the evening the techs had lowered the limit to 30. It was this alarm sounding that I could hear in my dream and I woke to see four nurses standing over me with the adrenalin needle unsheathed and ready. I remember saying as they took a collective short sharp intake of breath, that I was being chased. I didn't feel any pain, I wasn't breathless, it was just like I'd dozed off and woken normally.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 06:36 PM

When around ten yrs old I had a recurring dream of being with friends at a cliff edge picnicking..I rolled over the edge...couldn't stop myself....and as I hit the sea...I hit the floor.. I had fallen out of bed each time.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 06:54 PM

There are a great many dreams that I can bring into memory at will but there is one from a few years ago that leaves me bemused.

I am in a place with four or five other people and I know that when "they" come, I will be killed, no way out of it. The only option I have is to off myself.

To the side is an upright tunnel, made of rubber-like material. I circle it, reluctant to do what I must do. But finally I step up to the level and taking a deep breath I step into the tunnel and whoooosh!. I know that I will be dead but I don't have any idea of what will happen next.

It is dark and then I pop out at the other end, finding myself on a dusty country lane on a hot day. There is sparse grass along the roadway and off in the distance are rolling hills. I start down the slope.

Then alongside the road sitting on a wooden bench is an old man watching me. I look at him as I pass by and he says conversationally, You can still go back, you know.

I shake my head wordlessly, deciding that there would be no point.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: kendall
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 07:19 PM

Why would a small boy dream of being in a sinking ship? Past life memory?

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: frogprince
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 07:59 PM

Another from the distant past: sitting in a bathtub with Ursala Andress. I think I had just seen "What's New, Pussycat".

A couple of years or so ago, I got down by our antique round oak kitchen table to pick up something, and realized that one of the four feet of the table has been replaced with one that isn't an exact match. Later (perhaps a few weeks after) I thought about it again, and took another look. I think I blinked a little when I found all the feet to be identical. Then the little light bulb clicked on: my notice of the discrepancy was a little scrap of dream, so simple, vivid and naturalistic that it registered as an actual memory.+

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 08:07 PM

KEndall:

Ayeh, sounds purdy likely to be the right reason, in my view.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Peace
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 08:27 PM

Annette Funicello.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Peace
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 08:38 PM

Here's why!

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Jeri
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 09:35 PM

I generally don't remember dreams. Not unless they're extremely remarkable and I wake up during them.

The first dream I remember was a nightmare. There was a dinosaur on the front lawn, and I was terrified it was going to stick its head through my second floor bedroom window and eat me.

Then there was the alien zombie cat nightmare. I can't remember that much except instead of fur, they had spikey things like a bush has, only glass. I don't know what would have happened if they'd caught up with us, but they walked around in a zombie cat fashion and uttered 'meow' at appropriate intervals. They walked, I ran away. At one point, after my family had hidden successfully, they were all gone. We went outside and our pet cat Boots came up to us, sprouted glass spikes and uttered 'meow'. We were all up on the propane tank when I woke up.
...and then I heard 'meow', and freaked out temporarily before realizing the cat probably just wanted to go out.

Later, I was into lucid dreaming. Some guys were chasing me. I was going down a beautiful river somewhere in the wilderness and I thought, 'The book says if I'm running from something I'm scared of, I should turn around and face it. I don't really feel scared though, so the hell with it.' I happily continued on down the river. This has pretty much been how my life has gone-- meandering down a river, not going anywhere in particular but enjoying the journey.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 09:49 PM

Yeah. Annette. Her and Jimmy Dodd. He died of an overdose.

"In 1955, the 12-year-old was discovered by Walt Disney as she performed as the Swan Queen in Swan Lake at a dance recital in Burbank, California. On the basis of this appearance, Disney cast her as one of the original "Mouseketeers". She was the last to be selected, and the only one picked by Walt Disney. She soon proved to be very popular. By the end of the first season of Mickey Mouse Club, she was receiving 6,000 letters a month, according to her Disney Legends biography."

---

....What a vision of fine and fancy stuff she and Jimmy and Doreen and the rest made. A dream, indeed. Tinkerbells, beach blankets, the endless starry hopefulness of un-scarred youth in Smallville.

Oddly enough, I never forgave Disney for his celluloid saccharine bubble. Probably wrongly (being young and hot-headed at the time) I blamed him for adulterating the hearts of America with dopey substitute realities and cellulose barf.

But I was so much older, then. I'm younger than that, now.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 11:26 PM

I remember a great many dreams. Here's one that was quite interesting, because I died in it...


I found myself being held prisoner in this dream by a couple of criminals who were taking my somewhere in a pickup truck. One was driving, I was in the passenger seat, the other guy was in the back seat holding a gun on me.

It seemed to me that these guys intended to kill me....for what, I didn't know...but I was intent on escaping before they did so.

They pulled off the road into a field near a barn, and as the truck slowed down I threw open the passenger door and made a run for it. They both jumped out of the truck and started firing shots as I was running away...and I suddenly felt a shock as a bullet struck my back. I found myself falling...

Then I could actually see myself falling, as if I were a disembodied presence up and to the rear of my body, and I saw my body sprawled lifeless on the ground. I realized that my body was "dead", but I definitely wasn't. I was a spirit, and I could fly or hover as I desired.

I turned around to take a look at the scumbags who had just murdered me, and for some reason they could see me at that moment, and they knew I was a "ghost", and they became terrified.

Realizing that they could do nothing to me now, I took delight in chasing these guys all over the place and scaring the hell out of them. They didn't try shooting at me, they just kept running in a panic. It was a delicious feeling of freedom and power that I had at that moment.

And that was the extent of the dream. It confirmed something for me that I have always expected which is: you don't really die when you "die". You just depart the body.

But why those guys could see me when I was a spirit...that I don't know. People, as far as I know, usually cannot see spirits at all. Dogs or cats, however, seem to see them without difficulty.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: katlaughing
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 11:46 PM

If it was on Halloween, it might be that they could see you because they feared retribution...something I just read said that was what folks believed could happen on that night...anyone they'd wronged could come back and punish them!

I have one which is infrequent but always the same. It is not very distinct..hard to describe but something about a beautiful, unusual, quirky house we are looking at, I think to buy. I really love it and am intrigued by it, but not sure of it. Then I am beside the wall of a house, not sure if it is the same one...could be, the path is closed in by lots of vegetation and there is an exotic type woman, leaning out of a window, I think, who I am SURE should NOT know my Rog, but she is warning me about something about him...it's been awhile since I've dreamt this, but I am sure she represented some kind of danger to him...mostly in separating him from me. Curiously, I don't think I've had this since heart surgery.

Kendall, that's the way I'd take it. Have you ever done any past life regressions? It can be quite interesting and enlightening, imo.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Jun 08 - 11:52 PM

I've also dreamt about being on a sinking ship, and I've been scared of deep water all my life. I think there are past life connections in regards to that fear.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: CarolC
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 12:40 AM

I have recurring theme dreams that involve houses and other dwellings.

The first dream I remember was from when I was around 4 or 5 years old. There was a crowd of people and we were standing on the ground while some of us were being loaded in to a large truck with wooden slats on the sides (like a livestock truck). This truck looked like it was made in the late 1930s or early 1940s. All of the clothing and hair on the people looked like it was from the 1940s. My mother (not my actual mother in the waking state, but in the dream, this person was my mother) was one of the people being loaded into the truck. I was very bewildered and couldn't understand why she would be getting into that truck and leaving me. It was very distressing. Upon looking back and remembering the dream, however, it is clear to me that she didn't really have any choice. People were being loaded into the truck whether they wanted to be or not. The last thing I remember from that dream is watching my mother waving to me as the truck drives away.

Probably my favorite one to remember was standing somewhere and looking up at the sky, and seeing an enormous planet that took up about half the sky, hovering not too far above the earth. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 12:47 AM

Wow. The first one has pretty well got to be a past life scene, Carol.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Janie
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 12:53 AM

I rarely remember dreams, and the dreams I remember rarely stay with me. The very few that do stick have proven rich in insight on further analysis/interpretation.

When I was a child and and World War II was still fresh on people's minds and many war movies were produced and shown on television, I would have recurrent nightmares of Nazis invading the neighborhood and my futile efforts to simultaneously hide and warn my family and neighbors.

Mom and Dad finally figured out I aught not be exposed to war movies.

To this day, I am as likely as not to have nighmares after watching war movies.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: CarolC
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 01:05 AM

I definitely think the first one I described was a past life dream. I really don't know how I could have possibly known that such a scenario could ever take place, anywhere, for any reason at the age I was when I had the dream.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 01:17 AM

I think dreams may serve multiple purposes. Partly, as I understand it, they are a by-product of the brain sorting memories, and possibly discarding detail, or extraneous data, which no doubt influences the bizarre juxtapositions we see in dreams. But I also think they are sometimes a window into what is going on in our lives. The images in our dreams are composed of images we already have stored somewhere in memory; however strange, there's nothing in a dream which isn't already in our brain.

Tarot cards appear, uncannily at times, to work because in essence, the multiple symbols on each card automate cold reading for the reader. A superstition around Tarot is that you should not try to read your own cards. I think there is a little bit of reason there, because you will certainly be best at cold reading yourself.

Some dreams, IMO, act as a Tarot deck, and are all the more powerful because the symbols dreams contain are all our own - on some level we understand their personal significance. So when something significant is happening in our lives, even if we are not yet consciously aware of it, we may read the symbols contained in a remembered dream and come to a conclusion that subsequently proves true. I don't think the dream itself is prophetic, or that the unconscious mind communicates directly through dream imagery, but that information is already there, and we choose which dream images will suit our meaning. This can be very beneficial sometimes, I believe - it has been for me.

Here is someone else's dream, that maybe illustrates the above. This woman's young teenage daughter became ill, and after a couple days, the mother took her to a doctor, who diagnosed a common flu. The daughter became more ill. The mother took her to the emergency clinic at the hospital, and again the diagnosis was flu. The daughter had a collection of symptoms which should have been seen, but weren't. Her belly was distended and hard, her eyes were sunken and dark underneath, her breath was dreadful. But the mother was very trusting of doctors.

That night the mother dreamed that she woke, and on the bed was a mummified leg. In horror she ran through her house, finding desiccated body parts in every room, and the scent of carrion was everywhere.

When she really woke, she took her daughter back to the hospital, and refused to leave. By then, the daughter's symptoms were very obvious - she had a ruptured appendix and was dying of peritonitis and dehydration. A very good surgeon saved the girl, and the mother credits the dream to God's warning. I think she saw and on some level understood her daughter's symptoms, and plucked the dream images to remember which were in agreement with her knowledge.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: CarolC
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 01:28 AM

I definitely have dreams that tell me things I need to know. Sometimes I have dreams that tell me things my son needs to know (and he confirms this for me after I tell him the dream). But many of my dreams are not that kind, and I can definitely tell the difference. Of course, I tend to think that when someone has a dream about another incarnation, it's probably because they need to know whatever it is they're remembering in the dream.

I should also say at this point that I was not exposed to any WWII movies when I was as young as 4 or 5 years old. The first time I ever saw any war movies was when I was about 7 years old, and those were not serious movies, but more lighthearted ones and comedies. I think the first serious war movie I ever saw was when I was 9 or 10, or possibly older.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 02:46 AM

Try this for size...Chorus is 'Dreams they'll let you down, they'll let you down, but they'll never leave you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQgntvK9pN0&feature=related

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 03:30 AM

Amos says: I have no idea why, of all my sometimes very vivid dreams of childhood, this one has stuck in memory

Easy answer: It was about peanut butter that stuck to you.

My only persistent and memorable dream was while I was in high school, and had a recurring one in which I had fallen down and couldn't get up because my knees wouldn't work. (They made a TV commercial about it a few years ago?)

Explanation is quite simple: During track season workouts were quarter mile sprints separated by jogging for a cumulative 6 to 10 miles per day, and during cross country season the workouts pushed toward 20+ miles per day, both seasons 6 days a week.

My knees hurt (although not seriously), especially when I slept and didn't keep them moving.

It took nearly a year after I graduated and quit track for this particular dream to disappear completely. While there were minor variants to the "surrounding circumstances" in the dreams, I don't recall any in which there was anything threatening - just the "personal failure" implication. And I always woke up with a stiff - - - knee.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: semi-submersible
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 04:49 AM

Talking and laughing with my husband about having held his funeral, filling him in on news from the months since, all the while feeling combined relief that [in this dream] his supposed death had been all a mistake, and worry about how to straighten out this mistake since we'd told everyone he'd died.
Then of course I had to wake up...


Previous posters:
"dreams about people that were so 'real', I almost called them to check on them"
"a little scrap of dream, so simple, vivid and naturalistic that it registered as an actual memory"

In my teens or early twenties I became interested in accessing the "wisdom of dreams," and by practicing bedtime affirmations (e.g. "Tonight I will dream, and when I wake I will remember my dreams") and keeping pencil and paper beside me, I managed after some months to start carrying memories of dreams through into waking.

I found them interesting, and puzzling, though the "inspirations" I accessed didn't seem helpful. A fascinating plan or invention seen in a dream doesn't necessarily work in the physical world, I found. Worse yet were the normal-seeming dream-memories that had no basis in fact. I recalled that a relative had died... that my brother had told me such-and-such... that a certain event was (or was not) happening this Saturday...

In the end I decided it wasn't worth the confusion. There's a reason most of our dreams are kept behind a memory barrier: it's simpler to keep track of the real world this way. I stopped the affirmations, and gradually ceased remembering dreams (unless I'm wakened suddenly from them). I figure if my subconscious ever needs to get a message through to me, it has my address.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: topical tom
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 05:48 AM

When I was much younger I used to have a recurring dream. I would be standing in a country field and a pickup truck would come by and catch me up on its running board as it went by.I would then plunge over a cliff on the truck and fall but I would wake up before landing.
   As a career I taught school for 34 years and in that time I was almost never late for class, yet I would dream of being late for class and never being able to find it. I would imagine the students wreaking havoc as they waited for me to arrive.This dream occurred many times but only after I had retired.I would wake up and think "Thank God, I have no classes any more!"
   One of my worst nightmares was thinking someone was coming into my house while I was sleeping. I could hear him climbing up the stairs but I was powerless to move.Then I would sense a shadowy figure standing in the doorway to my bedroom. At that point, thoroughly terrified, I would wake up.
   I used to dream of driving a car before I ever owned one and I would awake greatly disappointed.Disappointment also ensued when I would dream that I could fly as a bird.
   Well, I've rambled on much too long. I wish sweet dreams to all.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: RangerSteve
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 07:30 AM

I have dreams where I'm trying to use a telephone, it's always a pay phone; I keep dropping the coins while I'm trying to put them in the coin slot. Then my finger keeps slippin out of the dial - it's always a dial phone, although I haven't had one of those in decades. I also can't walk across large open areas, such as gymnasiums or open fields. I keep falling down. I can't walk up stairs without falling down, either.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 09:01 AM

I don't so much have recurring dreams as recurring cream SETTINGS. In many dreams, I end up in a particular place that doesn't exist with the feeling of Oh, so THAT's where this is!

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: semi-submersible
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 03:30 PM

What a wonderful dream!
Recurring cream,
Cream that's setting...
Look forward to getting
Yoghurt and cheese
And puddings, please!

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 06:30 PM

Speaking of houses and buildings, I have had frequent dreams of a certain large apartment houss. At this point I have lived in just about every one of the apartments- something I don't realize until close to the end of the dream.

That particular dream building seems fairly easily interpreted as being facets of oneself.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 06:59 PM

Several years ago I dreamed that I was wearing a white robe and had a guard on each side of me. There was a door in front of me, and I knew that when I went through the door I would be hanged by the neck until dead.

I just stood there, didn't go through the door, just sort of hung around with the guards.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: ClaireBear
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 07:56 PM

I have episodic, recurring theme dreams as well, Liz.

In such one series of dreams spread out over several mights, I had my first interview, second interview, and first day on the job as a waitress in a restaurant (something I have never done in real life).

I often return to the scene of a dream I last had weeks or even months before.

As a child, I lived (as I do now again) on a long, one-lane, dead-end canyon road in the summer-dry Santa Cruz Mountains of central California. Of course, I spent several months of every year terrified of fire (I.m now reliving that, too). During that time, I often dreamed that an automobile passed me, up the road into our canyon, dripping little gobbets of fire from its tailpipe. I would race along behind the car, trying to keep up with the impossible task of putting the fires out. I haven't started having this dream again, but it wouldn't surprise me.

As a child, I also often dreamt of being in a darkened room full of incredibly beautiful, lit-from-within, multicolored gems of various shapes and sizes that were floating,twirling and whizzing by my face, their sharp faceted edges mking it plain how lethal they could be. It was always captivating and utterly terrifying. I have no idea where that image might have come from.

Claire

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 08:50 PM

When I was five or six years old, "The Roy Rogers Show" was a staple of Saturday morning TV. One night I dreamed that Pat Brady, Roy's Jeep driving sidekick on the program, was driving his Jeep down a dirt road when he came upon an old woman sitting at a spinning wheel. As he talked with her, her eyes and mouth transformed themselves into triangles, then squares, then back to triangles again. It would be funny now, but it was terrifying for a kid.

Much later, when I was still married to my first wife, we both overslept by about fifteen minutes because we were both dreaming that the sound of our new alarm clock was the sound of an alien spaceship. I wouldn't go so far as to say we were having the same dream, but we both incorporated the alarm's sound into our dreams and both interpreted it as the sound of a spaceship.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Janie
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 10:00 PM

For several weeks after I first learned to dive, I had vivid, nightly dreams of diving - the leap, the sensation of weightless soaring and then the smooth swoop down into the water.

We used to occasionally ride the horses down into a pond up in the hills behind the house. It was just deep enough that they dropped their haunches and basically hopped across the pond on their hind legs, in long, smooth leaps that left us feeling weightless from the top of the arc through the smooth descent. I'd often dream about that for a few days afterward.

Somewhere along about age 11, I had a terrible crush on "Little Joe Cartwright", along with nearly every other 11 year old girl in America. It was at the same age I was becoming horse-crazy. I often dreamed that Little Joe would ride up to the front porch on his pretty little pinto, dismount, and offer the horse to me to take for a gallop.

That one ain't hard to interpret;>)

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: GUEST,LTS pretending to work
Date: 26 Jun 08 - 07:19 AM

"I figure if my subconscious ever needs to get a message through to me, it has my address" - I like that... mine doesn't even seem to know what country I'm in.

Last night I dreamt I went to Las Vegas, got married in a typical Vegas 'quickie drive-thru' ceremony, to a blonde guy 16 years my junior and 14 inches taller than me.... just so I could proof-read his new book about the Nevada desert.   The judge who married us was called Murray but I can't remember the name of the lanky streak of wossname that I married!

I think I've reached that 'certain age'....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 26 Jun 08 - 10:41 AM

Last night I dreamt I went to Las Vegas, got married in a typical Vegas 'quickie drive-thru' ceremony, to a blonde guy 16 years my junior and 14 inches taller than me.... just so I could proof-read his new book about the Nevada desert.   

Some people will do just about anything for a good proof-reading job, I suppose... :D


A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: GUEST,dianavan
Date: 26 Jun 08 - 02:12 PM

I used to dream (quite often) about a wolf wearing a three-piece suit. What was really scary was that my brother had the same dream. Now that my brother and I live thousands of miles away from each other, the dream has stopped.

My newest re-curring dream is about a place built of large granite blocks. Its a street front with little shops. I go through a door on the street, up the stairs to the place where I live. My home looks humble from the street but once inside, it opens into a vast space with many rooms and elegant furnishings.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Janie
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 01:42 AM

As hope waned that conventional radiation or chemotherapy might put my sister into remission, or at least slow down the rapid spread of metastatic breast cancer, I had a brief but extremely vivid dream. I saw a small car, identical to mine, wrecked in the median of a freeway. I didn't see the wreck itself occur, but saw the driver's door spring open from the force of the single car wreck, and a body fly out, bounce once, and then lie on the ground, as limp as a rag doll, and clearly dead. In the dream, I was trying to force myself to approach, but was nearly paralyzed by fear. Just before I was close enough to clearly see who it might be, I awoke, feeling very disturbed, and had difficulty shaking the dream off. I assumed the dream represented my fear of my sister dying.

Over the next few weeks, I had several vivid flashbacks of the dream - sometimes while fully awake, and sometimes in that early morning period when you are not fully asleep, but not fully awake, and dreams have a hallucinogenic quality to them.

I decided to process the dream through light trance work with the therapist with whom I was working, Kit. With her guidance and support, I was finally able to approach the body, and see it was not a body at all. It was a life-sized Raggedy Ann doll, except the the face was featureless muslin, with no eyes, nose or mouth stitched on. Kit suggested I ask the rag doll if it had something to say to me. No answer. I was bumfuzzled, and for a little while, so was Kit. Then she suggested the rag doll might be a mask, and suggested I ask anyone who might be behind the rag doll to come from behind the mask and speak.
I remember that when my sister stepped out from behind the rag doll, I burst into tears, still believing the dream was primarily about my fears for her.

My sister began to speak with calm intensity. In essence, she told me that she needed me to face my fear of my own death, and to quit trying to hide behind her, it was too much of a burden.

That insight changed the way I related to my sister and allowed me to be much more present and supportive of her during her last few months of life.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: GUEST,ana
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 04:36 AM

QK - never been religious, and use to enjoy a normal guilt free omnivore diet.

Dream arrived with me; I was with two 'beings' - one seemed quite insubstantial and cloudlike, the other was more present and seemed to have the role of a helper to the first. I was invited to eat, and feeling quite daunted by their presence tried to be compliant. The helper was directed to a corpse nearby, and I realised then that it was the body of the first being. The helper cut a slither of meat and morsel of liver which I was then offered. I was being very respectful and didn't think it appropriate to refuse. I took the liver thinking maybe I could pretend it was pate. It was putrid however, and the taste meant I have not touched red meat or pate since (some 15 years).

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Lyrical Lady
Date: 28 Jun 08 - 12:27 AM

For as long as I can remember,I've dreamed about Bears. Whom ever I happen to be involved with at the time, morphs into a bear and chases me. I run and run until I get away. After having such dreams the relationships have always ended.   I figure it's a built in security system. I also have dreams about there being "another" room in the house that I haven't discovered yet and when I finally find it, I wake up, so I've never seen what it looks like.
B

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Ebbie
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 12:10 AM

Last night I dreamt that I overheard Teddy Kennedy (yes, that Kennedy) proudly tell someone that he had lost 165 pounds. "The size of another man".

! Why? Why?

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Janie
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 12:24 AM

Ohmygawd, Ebbie!

Not that dream!

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Alice
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 12:33 AM

I have a recurring dream that is a very common dream/nightmare that people have. Recently I shared with my son that I've had this dream for years, and he said, "MOM! I have that nightmare, too!"

It is final exam week. I'm in college, and suddenly realize there is a class I'm enrolled in that I have not gone to all semester. It is too late to drop out of the class and I have not done anything for the class or even shown up all semester, hence will FAIL! Horrors!

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Alice
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 12:41 AM

One of my earliest memories is a recurring dream I had when I was a toddler. I know I was aged 2 to 4 because of the house we lived in at the time. Don't know if this was a dream or an image I saw in my mind.

When I woke up in the morning, before I opened my eyes, I would have a smell and taste along with the image of a woman's oval, pale face, Asian features (this was before I was 5, we didn't have tv, I'd never seen an Asian person before).
As I saw this woman's face looking at me, it would slowly age from a young woman to an old face, very wrinkled. Then I'd open my eyes, scared, and tasting and smelling the odd taste and smell. I was too young to explain this to anyone. It scared me.

Alice

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Ebbie
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 01:04 AM

That's interesting, Alice. I too had dreams when I was little that included images that I had never seen. Being Amish, I had never seen anyone dance, for instance, but I once watched a large group of danceers glide about. And there was music, the equivalent of a big band. That too I had never experienced.

On a different note I remember the time I tried to float down our winding driveway because I "had done it before". I couldn't get both legs off the ground at the same time. Oh, the frustration!

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 05:35 PM

I've always been able to drive in my dreams, even before I was old enough to learn.... and I have this reccurring dream of driving down a long straight road, that has mountains at the end, but is in an arrid desert area. There are odd stunted bushes off the road, the road is tarmac and dead straight, and I'm driving right down the middle, in an open topped car with no idea of my destination or where I've come from.

I've never reached those mountains yet.

As for the consecutive one that I'm in at the moment, (I dreamt I went to Las Vegas, got married in a typical Vegas 'quickie drive-thru' ceremony, to a blonde guy 16 years my junior and 14 inches taller than me.... The judge who married us was called Murray but I can't remember the name of the lanky streak of wossname that I married!) - I want to say his name is Amanda, but that's a stupid name for a bloke.

Oh well.... hopefully tonight it will progress... or finish.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: ClaireBear
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 06:14 PM

Maybe it's Armando.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 06:42 PM

Sounds like you're a reincarnated Californian, Liz. Not to imply a gold-digger, but maybe a dancer or dam-builder! :D



A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 05:38 AM

A recycled Californicator? Oo-er missus!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 11:57 AM

This thread is one of the most interesting we have had in a long time, because it ahows the goings-on just on the other side of the great boundary between the soul and the commonly-held universe of spacetime.

On this side, we all know the trials and dramas that go on. But just over that usually impenetrable divider, there is an amazing richness of stories, magic, wild vistas, impossible beasts, powers beyond limit, unheard of architectures and mythic acts, happening every day. It is almost absurd that we get to see into it so rarely!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 04:26 PM

I agree, Amos. I'm glad I started it (preens briefly, notices how raggedy feathers are getting, desists...).

There are so many common themes in our dreams, as well - floating or flying, houses, architecture, monsters and landscapes, the dead and the dying.

And myths! Long ago, in real life, I had a Loathesome Lover. I've long since forgiven him and recognized why he was loathesome, and admitted his incipient good qualities and my own foolish youth, but at the time he was a trauma that took a good deal of getting over. Well, several years after we parted, he wrote me a perfectly friendly letter from the other side of the continent that was a combined apology for previous jerkishness and a hopeful description of his own attempts to become a responsible person. I was pleased for him. Several weeks later, he was killed in an accident.

Well! For months I had dreams about him, in all of which he was demanding my attention in increasingly freakish and sometimes frightening ways, and in all of which I refused in great anxiety to acknowledge him, speak to him, or even look at him.

One night I dreamed I was in the great room of a huge stone castle or hall. A long wood table stood at one end, heaped with dishes of food, baskets of breads, rich looking platters and casseroles and tureens, bottles of wine, candles galore, and glorious decorative groupings of flowers and vegetables. Around the table sat a couple dozen women, all of whom I knew to be my friends, although none of them resembled any of my real life friends. The atmosphere was warm and pleasant, and I sat down to join the feast and the pleasant conversation. After a time, one woman turned to me and said, "Do you know G____ is buried in this building?"

I rose from the table, remembering that in some churches, tombs are indeed under the floor, and sure enough, there were slabs on the floor at the end away from the table with names and dates on them. Shortly I found G____'s stone. I returned to the table, grabbed a string of garlic fists from a centrepiece, and with grim determination began twisting off cloves and stuffing them down in the cracks around the stone slab. But then I looked up, and there sat G____, at his ease on a stone pedestal and smirking. "I only want to talk to you." he said. And I replied, "But I don't want to talk to you!"

And with that, he disappeared with a flash and a bang, which woke me. Since then, I have only seen him as a rare background extra; a field worker, a sailor on a ship, a man in a crowd, and he catches my eye, smiles then turns back to his labours.

Now that's a dream that's as vivid as the night it was dreamed, twenty-seven years ago.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 06:00 PM

Aw, Bee, that is awesome!! What a fine tale, a rich dream, and I think, a heroic act on your part to stick to your guns and not be bamboozled just because he was shmoozing you spiritually instead of in meat-space!! :D Awesome, and well told!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 06:21 PM

Why, thank you, Amos. I've noticed through my life that my personal unconscious has little finesse, but advances with a clue-club right off the bat. There's little difficulty in interpretation.

That man, and my real and dream interactions with him, were the closest I've ever come to believing there is something other than meat-space. He was a thorough ne'er-do-well, a genius, and a lost soul if there ever was such a thing. He fascinated (and repelled at the same time) everyone who ever met him, and he looked (and sometimes acted) like Rasputin. The resemblance was frequently remarked on.

Woah... colourful tapestry of our juicy youth, eh?

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: GUEST,LTS pretending to work
Date: 01 Jul 08 - 08:51 AM

Mmmmmmm juicy youth..... mmmmmmmm


I had the 'being chased around the house' dream again last night... quite disturbing as the last time I had it, I was in hospital. Maybe this has been triggered by news of a possible significant health issue that's getting explored this week.

Maybe it was just a coincidence... who knows?

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee
Date: 01 Jul 08 - 09:39 AM

Liz TS, I have 'being chased' dreams whenever I'm very anxious or distressed, so you may be right. The first of those I remember was when I was in hospital with pneumonia and kidney infection at the age of four. I dreamed a giant toothy chipmunk with a crazed grin on its face was chasing me through the hospital wards and halls, and every door I opened to try to run through had a brick wall behind it. Woke in hysterics, and a kind nurse had to cuddle me back to sleep.

Those chipmunks, you can't trust 'em!

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 01 Jul 08 - 02:05 PM

Like squirrels... I hate them with their bushy tails and pointy teeth.....


LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 01 Jul 08 - 04:52 PM

Hell, think of the nightmares the poor squirrels have!! Bunches of flat-assed bipeds towering over them, throwing rocks, fire-sticks, and screaming raucously...gaaaaah!! It would wake you out of the deepest hibernation!! Furless glaring white faces and pink mouths with huge teeth in them, galloping toward you. ANd those dogs!!! BEstial carnivorous dopes on ropes!!! Ods acorns, what misery!



A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Jul 08 - 05:02 PM

The genisis dream.

The ice age dream

the nuclear dream




frogprince, you may have merely moved into a parellel time line.

The longer you live the more you might notice the "errors"
;>)

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Jul 08 - 08:57 PM

"...it ahows the goings-on just on the other side of the great boundary between the soul and the commonly-held universe of spacetime.


ummm...sure. I thought it just showed what funny patterns our neurons fire in when we are not monitoring them conciously and old memories get mixed with daily concerns.

Ah, well...I guess that accepting that 2nd hand soul from that used soul dealer in Hoboken condemned me to a life of vanilla spacetime.

    I wonder if LSD would help?

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee
Date: 01 Jul 08 - 09:07 PM

"I wonder if LSD would help? "

Depends on what you mean by 'help'.

And similar results can be had by drinking Lime Ricky and eating cheese sandwiches shortly before hitting the pillow.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 01 Jul 08 - 10:22 PM

Yeah, Bill, we all know what a devout materialist you are!! :D

The day you can explain how neurons come up with the kind of poetry that appears in these dreams, my hat I eat shall!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Joe_F
Date: 02 Jul 08 - 09:40 PM

3 June 2008:

I wanted to die, so I committed a murder, and my head was chopped off. But I was annoyed to wake the next morning still alive. A woman passed by my bed, and I said, Hey, my head is still on. She explained that a woman named Tippy had stood in for me -- but she was still alive too.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Janie
Date: 02 Jul 08 - 11:57 PM

I have an infrequently recurring dream that incorporates being caught in a spider's web, either in my human form or as an insect, and also struggling to emerge from either a chrysalis or cicada shell. The way these elements are juxtaposed varies, and the dream always involves terror, helplessness, and wonder.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Janie
Date: 03 Jul 08 - 12:06 AM

Bee,

I meant to say earlier that I thought your June 25 (just after 1:00 am) description of what goes on with dreaming was most elegant.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Jul 08 - 11:03 AM

"The day you can explain how neurons come up with the kind of poetry that appears in these dreams, my hat I eat shall!"

Why Amos...I can 'explain' it as easily as you can explain what a soul is and how something immaterial can create poetry. ☺

If fact, I can explain it easier...recognizing that you can just shrug and dismiss any explanation as not consistent with your ...what's the word? Preconceptions? Wishes? Experiences?...

How do you write poetry or songs or stories when awake? How does Catspaw write Reg Boys stories?...or Little Hawk 'channel' Shane & Chongo? They take stuff they know from memory, add in stuff that never was - as people do when writing fiction, assemble it in ways known to stir our emotional responses in various ways..(oh, MANY various ways!) and present it contexts that are likely to elicit a reaction.

The only way dreams are different is that conscious control is missing. We still have the same memories and conceptual frameworks of how 'what was' can be reassembled and combined with 'what might be', much as imaginative fiction is written. (and this, combined with help from drugs, is how "Xanadu" was written. Would that Coleridge had not been interrupted before his memory of the dream faded.

   Those neurons that hold our concious memories, and which we access every day to remember our route to work, and how to make toast, and how to make a barred F...are always there. They just write 'different' poetry when we fall asleep after having a bad day at work and in the commute, or having burned the toast, or are working on a tune where a barred F just doesn't work.....and thousands of other items from our complex waking hours that get stirred about in those fuzzy hours when our brains are processing semi-randomly.

I could expand on this, but *shrug*... you either accept the basic idea or, as I suspect, you do not.
One of the most interesting parts of being human is our ability to 'believe' stuff that has little evidence to support it. The very same proclivity that allows us to take religion or Astrology seriously also allows us to presume that certain mental 'experiences' support reincarnation, precognition and a host of other ideas and superstitions in general....and to pick & choose among them and 'believe' in different sets of them than your neighbors do!

So...there, I have explained it. That hat you wear to the Getaway is pretty nice, so I won't even ask you to eat IT. I'll provide a small, cheap hat this October.....you need ketchup or anything?

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Jul 08 - 11:06 AM

Oh...and when I went into a trance and channeled William of Occam about all this, he approved of my effort...*grin*

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 03 Jul 08 - 11:26 AM

SIgh. UNfortunately sir, the deal requires an acceptable explanation. This thread may not be the place for this bit of banter, but your explanation "is as clear as mud but it covers de groun'". There are fundamental mechanistic assumptions built into your proposition and they are a self-proposgating loop. "The neurons that hold our conscious memories"..oh, really? How do they do that? "They take stuff they know from memory, add in stuff that never was - " But now you're talking about LH and Spaw. Are you saying these stalwart creative geniuses are...neurons? That all we know and love about these Puckish generators of high-value codswallop is just a bunch of wet switches flickering on and off? Are you saying, further, that not only the data in memories, vocabulary, and concepts but even the very act of perception, the instant of understanding, the flash of laughter--these are just reassemblages of microscopic bio-electronic blips? The absurdity of this qualitative contradiction escapes you, apparently.

No sir, your explanation does not explain, and no hat eat I shall for such.

A
A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Jul 08 - 12:17 PM

"are you saying...?"

yup...I am saying such.

"The absurdity of this qualitative contradiction escapes you, apparently."

yup..not a bit absurd.

Old Occam likes my "fundamental mechanistic assumptions" and, aren't your NON-mechanistic assumptions a "a self-propogating loop."?

" "The neurons that hold our conscious memories"..oh, really? How do they do that?""

I am not the one to ask 'how'...experts on brain chemistry are working on that ... but the model is a whole bunch easier to explain than speculative concepts about 'souls'.

But, as I said, we humans are able to 'choose'...somehow... to not like certain explanations and just gravitate to others. Kinda weird, huh?

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee
Date: 03 Jul 08 - 12:32 PM

Thank you, Janie.

Amos, everyone really is an artist, and by extension a poet and a musician. Whether we have the tools, or know how to use the tools, or are even given the opportunity to have or use the tools which are necessary to show other people our art, or poetry or music is another thing entirely.

I was lucky enough to be given carte blanche in organizing a visual art program for preschool children, a program I ran for five uninterrupted years. Now children learn initial drawing skills through the ordinary process of physical and neural development. They begin with random marks; progress as large motor skills improve to long curved up and down from-the-shoulder scribbled lines; then with more fine motor skills draw in addition from the wrist, making circular scribblings.

Every child does this. And one day, in a random tangle of circular markings, the child sees an image every child has impressed on their brain from birth: a face. I've witnessed this eureka moment hundreds of times. It is a young child's great discovery, and they may spend days or weeks just drawing single awkward circles, and if you ask them what it is, those most articulate will identify it as 'mommy'.

The following development is just as predictable, and just as wonderful. They put marks on the face, indicating features. Soon, they add multiple lines off the edge of the circle, indicating limbs, hair, ears. This is the moment in which some adult or older child comes along and says "Oh, you've drawn the sun!" The child hasn't, of course, even thought about the sun - s/he's still trying to draw an important human being. And here is the beginning of art: the child does not stop trying to draw a human figure; soon s/he will be adding a closed object=torso, differentiating legs from arms, refining features and indicating hair. But the idea implanted from without, that the sun can be represented by a drawing of a round face with external marks, which in no way resembles the real sun, barring generic round-ness, is the beginning of understanding the concepts of representational art, and of symbols.

That sun will persist in childrens' art for years, even many adults with little formal or self-directed training will include it if asked to draw a picture.

Whether the sun-drawing child grows up to be a visual artist largely depends on subsequent events. Do their paintings land on the fridge or in the recycle box, are they handed colouring books whose drawings are ego-flatteningly 'better' than their own, are they encouraged by the presence of materials and the praise of others, are they given the opportunity to learn techniques, do they find they love physical games, or music, or reading better than drawing and painting? It's a fact that virtually anyone who wants to can be taught to draw.

My experience leads me to believe that it is within the potential of every human to be an artist or a poet; all of us have within our minds an enormous assemblage of personal and shared symbolic images and connections. In our recollections of our dreams, we realise a little of that potential, become representational artists and evocative poets. We interpret our 'art' as we have learned to, as the child has learned to see the sun along with its mother's face.

I think remembered dreams can be marvellous, powerful, evocative demonstrations of our natural human ability to use symbols to describe self-chosen reality. A Tarot of the brain, informed by self-knowledge and decorated beautifully by the artist within.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Jul 08 - 12:08 PM

Ok, don't take MY word for it...


...and while I have your attention

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee
Date: 07 Jul 08 - 12:17 PM

hee-hee Bill!

Though the Carlin one is more ghosty than dreamy related. I'd start a ghost thread, but some people are really attached to their ghosts, and we'd end up arguing about religion, and certain people would be all distressed/insulted/angry again....AVOID! AVOID!

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 Jul 08 - 01:56 PM

My wife is really interested in interpretation of dreams. For years, whe has tried to get me to remember and recount my dreams, so she can figure out what makes me tick. After six years of marriage, she has given up.
We've decided my dreams are just action movie scripts, and have no hidden meaning.

Maybe I watch too much TV???

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: katlaughing
Date: 07 Jul 08 - 02:44 PM

I had a very interesting, puzzling one this morning. Don't know if there is any significance to it or not.

I was looking inside a house, from the front step. It was a very small house and our son or daughter had just moved out of it. Whichever it was had moved across the street to a bigger house. I made a joke about how we should get my brother to buy the little house or at least move into it so he could be happier. (In real life it would not make him happier, unless it were a huge mansion.) I was being sort of sarcastic in the dream about it as we all know it wouldn't work out.

Anyway, at some point Roger and I were out doors and a big elk walked right past me. It apparently was a pet because it let me run my hand along its back just before it collapsed onto its side. Rog and someone else told me to hurry and clear its airway (well, I was talking to him the other night about my having been trained as an EMT & theoretically able to do a tracheotomy on him using scissors and a barrel from a pen!) Anyway, I threw myself to the ground, up against the elk, reached around its head, opened its jaws and stuck my fingers way down its throat to check for any obstructions. I didn't feel any, but what was odd was there was no opening. It was almost as though there was no throat. It didn't seem weird, just curious. Then I woke up.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 07 Jul 08 - 04:52 PM

THose are hilarious, Bill. Neither one addresses the point in any suibstantive way, but a fine laugh.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Jul 08 - 05:42 PM

substantive? gee, Amos, I thought NON-substantive was the idea...*grin*

(I like to laugh, and often some of the best points are made thru humor)

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 07 Jul 08 - 07:59 PM

Bill:

I just hope against hope that, should the occasion ever arise (which I hope it will not), that you have enough presence of wit not to become, yourself, a ghost. This can be usually prevented by making sure you have completed your major communications, resolved any old enmities, and foregone any undue attachments to particular things or locations, or any clinging to specific others for good or ill reasons.

But if through some unpredicted turn of fate you do find yourself compelled to hang around pondering and acting out and so on, after your merely mortal shell has moved on, feel free to come down and enjoy the surf and sun here in San Diego until you feel rested and ready to tackle some other mission.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Jul 08 - 11:20 PM

"...be usually prevented by.."

ummm..enquiring mind wants to know how many chances I get.

(If I had enough money, I'd endow a fund to hire some Hollywood effects artists to monitor my life and, if I pass on before you do, create a simulacrum of myself which would sneak into your bedroom late at night and whisper in your ear..."Damn, Amos, you were right!"

Since some of the most pleasant weather I ever encountered was in San Diego when I was young, that is a fine offer...even to a disembodied spirit. I think I'd rather do it BEFORE I go, however, given my suspicions about metaphysical realms. Remember, my greatest regret is that, if *I* am right, I don't get to say "I told you so!"

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 04:03 AM

So Joe - try this one out on your wife on my account...

Last night, I dreamt I was walking down a busy London street holding a biscuit (cookie) tin, full of my usual snack - mixed nuts, seeds and cranberries. Whilst walking, I accidentally knocked into a man in a long raincoat, cutting his coat and hurting his knee with my biscuit tin. The man was the UK actor Peter Bowles - an actor I am familiar with (Google 'To the Manor Born') but have no interest in, either career-wise or romantically. His coat was torn and his knee bruised and I was horrified at hitting him, but he just smiled and said sorry.

Then I woke up. Any interpretation would be appreciated because none of those subjects are covered in that context in any of my usual dream diaries!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: SINSULL
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 08:27 AM

Obviously, Liz, you hate your mother.

Sometimes, dreams are just dreams - bits and pieces of experiences thrown together in a pot.

My dreams have themes - travelling and lost or missing the bus, scarves,veils and shawls are elements in most of my dreams. I have dreams that continue next week. The best was that all my female relatives were pregnant. It is the day before Easter and we are shopping for candy in a very elegant store.

All of them go into labor at once and 30+ little Sullivans are born setting a record for the hospital's Maternity Ward.

One sister-in-law has triplets, a pair of twins and a single - not sextuplets. All the babies are healthy but one.

A few weeks later I dreamed it was the babies' first birthday. I couldn't remember all their names and couldn't afford birthday presents. Periodically I visit them at their various homes and have strange interactions - one about apple picking and a bar-b-que.

The last time I saw them, they were about 6. I had travelled to Tibet and brought them back little trinkets which made them very happy. The one baby is severely retarded and has a large birthnmark on her face.

The trip to Tibet is vivid - it is an island with an amusement park.

I used to keep a dream book. Probably should start again. I can find events in my everyday life which provide the fodder for the dreams. I had read about three sisters who all were born on the same day - different years and then gave birth on the same day - a hospital record.

One of a famouse set of sextuplets has a larged birthmark.

Somethimes, I will see something - a near miss car accisdent or a skunk or a snake and know that I will dream about it soon.

Sorry for the ramble. Haven't had my second cup of coffee.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 10:37 AM

Liz:

I love SINS' remark, sometimes a dream is just a dream. Yours, however, shows that you are highly efficient at beating the bejaysus out of things that have no importance to you whatsoever.   

A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: GUEST,Joe
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 10:44 AM

I quite regularly have dreams of doing specific tasks that I have been doing at work, mainly boring, repetitive tasks, which I seem to dream about all night. I awake feeling totally unrefreshed and not at all ready for a day's work.

I also used to dream a lot about plane crashes, something possibly linked with living very near RAF Brize Norton and their tendency to fly planes all night long. The strange thing was I always saw a plane in the sky and wanted, almost willed it to crash, which it usually would.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 12:53 PM

People who believe dreams have predictive power are reinforced in their delusion by things like this.

I worry about Snowball getting hit by a car. He's not altogether a tame kitty, except with me, and I know he wanders a bit when occasionally I can't catch him for the night (by day he lays about the house and deck eating and sleeping). Last night I dreamed he was hit by a car and was mewing pitifully in his final agonies on the roadside - awful dream! This morning coming back from grocery shopping, someone's poor kitty was laying dead on the side of the road near my home, just where I pictured the dying Snowball.

Aha! My dream predicted that! Wrong cat, but the gist is true!

I know, of course, that there is a small feral colony nearby - probably Snowball's origin, and possibly where he goes when I can't find him, and likely the home of today's unfortunate victim.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 01:09 PM

...so...last night I had a dream. *grin*... My wife & I had driven 'downtown' somewhere, to pick up my father from work (he died 33 years ago!). I parked on a side street, and then for some reason I crawled into the back seat while she sat in the driver's seat. I was sorta laying sideways like I was tired, when a cheerful young woman came across the street and up to my window, which was half-way down.

She reached into her purse and pulled out a $5 bill and handed it to me thru the window, saying "Here, you look tired...Jesus wants you to have this...it will improve your day!"....and off she went.

Then I woke up.

Now THAT ranks up there with the most incongruous dreams I have ever had. Analyze away!@

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 01:11 PM

I don't think dreams are predictive per se; I think they are a construct for putting some recognisable garb on a premonition.

Materialists, of course,will tell you that such premonitions are merely extrapolations from scraps of data, and not prescient at all, and it is true that often the way dreams scramble their data and their imaginary bits that there's no hard ground for rebutting such an interpretation, but I think its a dodgy explanation myself.

Larry Dossey (among other wirters) has some observations on the capabilities of the non-local awareness function of the human "mind", or spirit -- let's leave the structural argument aside for the mo -- which are most interesting.

Some of his books.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 01:38 PM

I lean more to the school of thought that says dreams are your body's way of unravelling your unconscious mind in order to make sense of recent happenings and store them away in suitable memory slots for future reference.

I can work out that the tin of seeds and nuts are my sustenance, that they're connected with a health issue I have at the moment, but why the hell should I cut the knee of a famous actor with them is beyond me!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: CarolC
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 02:35 PM

Some of my dreams are absolutely predictive. Some of them have predicted things that I had no possible way of anticipating. I pay attention to those kinds of dreams. They have a powerful emotional content that nags at me until I do something about it, and the feeling goes away after the issue is addressed. Several times they predicted something that would happen to my son if he continued along a particular path (which I was unaware of prior to having the dream), and each time, when I told him about the dream, he knew exactly what they referred to in his life, and in each case, he took corrective action and averted a big problem.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: SINSULL
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 02:47 PM

Bill,
that sounds more lke a ride home after imbibing too much. The smiling lady was a Temperance promoter. Did she have a tambourine?

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 03:01 PM

Amos, I can't read Dossey's books right now and have to guess from a tiny amount of information that he takes a somewhat Jungian approach to dreams and a version of collective consciousness, and combines that with a nod to god, with which views you somewhat agree. Bill D is more pragmatic/materialist, and likely thinks any perceived predictive power of dreams comes down to selective interpretation.

I could hazard a germ of truth in both views, but likely not the essential ingredient either of you favour. I suspect we share, more than most people like to think, the same neural processes as all other animals. We all evolved together, our basic drives are the same. Our ability to think and dream is as physical as anything else about us. We are of the world in the most literal sense, and our bodies and brains, on some level, can't help but naturally know it. I think most of the time we humans function pretty much the same as a deer, or a rabbit - we coast on our mammal layer, and depend on our reptile hindbrain to keep us out of trouble.

Only in our efforts to communicate with others (and talk to ourselves) do we rise to the pinnacle of a mammalian ability. Like all such extreme specializations, while making us phenomenally successful in our niche (there's billions of us), there are probable drawbacks. I think one of these might be a diminished integration in our brains, so that we may perceive messages as coming from without, or as 'other', that are actually signals from within, which any other mammal might smoothly recognize as 'self' and act upon without any feeling of disconnection.

I think we interpret this disconnection in various ways, one of which is to devise explanations for it which are either non-physical, like gods or collective consciousness, or materialistic, where we explain it with references to symbols or memories or deduction.

I think that collective consciousness is real, but not as usually imagined, as some great amorphous spiritual cloud of being, but much more simply in the similar evolved structure of each individual human brain. It is within, and not shared except as we share any other biological attribute.

Or I may be talking entirely through my hat.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 03:26 PM

No tamborine, SINSULL... they COLLECT $$$$...

Bee.. I think you just wrote a post for me..*smile* Couldn't have said it better myself.

You may borrow one of MY hats if you'd like to continue.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 03:42 PM

I could use a good hat, Bill. I've currently lost my favourite and the other has a chunk chewed out of the brim (not by me, I hastily add).

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 03:56 PM

I have a recurring dream where I am walking around an area where I used to live, and I'm amazed to see that an old cinema, that closed over nearly 50 years ago, has re-opened; and not only that, but it looks exactly like it did all those years ago - and it showing movies from that period; initially, I'm very excited about this, but then I get very logical and start to doubt the wisdom of such a venture, fearing that they won't get an audience. I guess this dream is to do with a longing for the past.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: CarolC
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 04:08 PM

I think it's necessary to make some very large assumptions in order to maintain that other animals besides humans don't have any kind of connection to a larger spiritual entity beyond themselves. Nobody's really in a position to know something like that.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 04:25 PM

Bee:

I don't think you are talking through your hat. I do believe that you are talking through your brain (or possibly, Bill's), which is a perfectly normal thing to do. Just as talking on a phone is perfectly normal, even a wireless or cellular phone.

That does not mean, as I have often said, that the phone is the source of your communications.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: frogprince
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 04:45 PM

I also believe that dreams consist of content that "has gotten into your head", however strangely it may express itself when freed from the voluntary control processes. One thing I've found is that a dream can show you what's really in your "heart", before you've really sorted out a situation rationally.

I had been dating a young woman for a few months. She was under 4 ft tall, and wasn't "stacked", but I hadn't really thought about any clinical implications of that. She then told me that, by accident of birth, she had never fully developed sexually; she could make love, but never have children. I had no more than fallen asleep that night when I had just a few moments of dream; she came to me, nude, and I took her in my arms. It wasn't an "erotic" dream as such, but it was a happy one; I awoke immediately, and knew in that moment that I had no problem accepting her as she was.

The relationship ended for other reasons, but she is one of those I remember sometimes, and hope that life has been good for her.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Ebbie
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 05:16 PM

"I parked on a side street, and then for some reason I crawled into the back seat while she sat in the driver's seat." Bill D

lol Are n't dreams amazing. I love 'em..

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: frogprince
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 06:24 PM

The young lady was under five feet tall; four-foot-eight.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 07:52 PM

Good to know, frogprince: I was wonderin' whether yer screen name was reflecting some kind of reality, like, y'know, you really are a frog prince! and the four foot tall GF was worried about being too tall. ;-)

Coincidentally, my brother's first serious girlfriend had a similar condition, and had been fed HGH from an early age. She was still stuck in a kind of medically enforced pre-puberty, physically, at eighteen.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Ebbie
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 10:40 PM

I too am glad for the clarification, Dean. While I was out walking my dog I cogitated on just how tall "under" 4 feet was and decided, Hey, that's short...

Do you know Michael Smith's song about the Princess and the frog? :)

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Jul 08 - 01:02 PM

Woke up with a slight headache this morning. Decided to lie down a little bit more, dreamed I had called in, and was therefore massively late to work!

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: heric
Date: 09 Jul 08 - 04:25 PM

I had a very, very upsetting dream last night that Rush Limbaugh was grooming me like a dog oh my god this is true and I can't bring myself to discuss it further. Yecch.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Jul 08 - 08:31 PM

ye gods, heric. Nightmares are something else again...

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Jul 08 - 08:35 PM

Last night I dreamt that a musician friend shot and killed himself. I wasn't there at the moment but I *saw* him telling two guys what he was going to do and that they were to watch for something, some kind of fleeting development, in the process. I woke up thinking about it and haven't been able to shake it today. It was as if he were doing it in order to establish some kind of idata. I kept wanting to say, But you won't be here to be told about it!

But I wasn't even there.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Bee
Date: 09 Jul 08 - 10:17 PM

Good Lord, heric! I've had nightmares, but I don't think I could top that.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 07:00 AM

Well if we're going to get into nightmares, something that never fails to wake me in a cold sweat, heart racing and panic overwhelming me....

I ask myself 'what will I feel like when I'm dead?' Now that's a question that absolutely no-one can answer but it will get me into a screaming blind panic every single time. It's been happening ever since I was 9, when my brother was killed by a drunken driver. I wondered then how he felt then applied it to myself. Result - instant meltdown.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Dreams that Stayed With You
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Jul 08 - 09:31 AM

Aw, Liz. That's sad. Tell that little 9-year-old kid within you that it's something you/she has been feeling every night.

Reminds me of what the tour guide used to say in the depths of the Luray Caverns (yes, Luray, where Bobert lives): Now I'm going to turn off the lights so you can see what real darkness is. And if it scares you, just close your eyes.