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;>)