What Are Dreams, Anyway?

[tribunalofmercy]

I wanna know what you Think, lol, and I'll tell you why it's on my mind today.... Someone recently shared in chat room that dreams are no more than our Thoughts…I’m open enough to consider that, but I cannot yet reconcile it, and I want to share. Honestly, I wonder if ‘dreams’ are not as individual as Truth itself? (no matter what Jung might have said, lol)




As a child I was frightened of many things – darkness, dreams, unseen things (that turned out to be energy in things)….I did not Like the dream world, but then, I lived in Fear before I was first awakened.




The thing I remember Most about my dreams is that prior to this past year, except for a time right after I was first awakened 27 years ago, I did not have ‘interactive’ dreams. What I mean is, I remembered a Lot of dreams, but I have no memories of interactions or conversations with People in dreams. I did not often dream about people at All, nor did I dream about animals; if I had people in my dreams the experience was more like watching them play out some sort of scene, but neither they nor I conversed; I remained Separate. Thus I found it difficult to believe those who said they cannot tell the difference between the dream world and This one, as I certainly could tell!
  (I dreamed in a bubble, all the time)



Between 1987-2014, most of my remembered dreams have been ‘teaching’ dreams, experienced symbolically and obvious to me as to their higher meaning. Often these would involve a Path of some sort, different types of roads I was to traverse during my sleep…I would recognize the significance of my path but would allow it to play out, each time. I do not know if I could have turned any of these into what people now call Lucid Dreams, only because I never tried to change anything; I felt I was in each dream to learn something and therefore let the Dream lead.



It is human nature to base our understanding of things on our own experiences, and I have been no different; infrequently but periodically after my first awakening at 22 a dream would involve Someone Else whom I interpreted to be Jesus, just not always appearing as the same Person! (Seriously; more like Morgan Freeman in the tv show Joan of Arcadia, you know?)



I would know because he would make eye contact with me at some point, which I did not experience in my dreams otherwise. Perhaps he would be there to Tell me something, or show me something, or just Be there radiating unconditional love…I just ‘knew’ then, each time, that it was Jesus, because who else could make me feel That kind of loved?



Awakening for the second time in May of 2014 opened me up, Literally from that first night on, to the most incredible experiences I have ever had…I didn’t know dreams could be so Real. Sounds. Smells. The feeling of my feet stepping in puddles of water in dreams where it was raining! All kinds of things I had Never experienced before…and, of course, Complete interactions with People and Animals. For the First Time now, I See what others rave about, lol. Meeting people in dreams, remembering names, dates, phone numbers, addresses….in some of them – really.    Other dreams with seeming other purposes, but, does ANY of this relate to you?



Do you feel dreams are just ‘thoughts’ that we should let pass on, and not think about? Or are they More? (yes, I know what I believe. Haha)

[gruntal]

Last year I received some dream interpretations from one who knew all. I was amazed at what I was told although I admit it was very seldom I had a dream worth asking about. None of these dreams seemed to be intrinsically alien so I normally assumed them to be just a reflection of my life.

It was rather like telling a 5 year old kid what you did at the office and inviting them to draw a picture of it. So not surprisingly my dreams were mostly what a 5 year would see and experience.

Knowing what I know now I wonder - even in my waking moments - what people and adventures I am re-living. It is not so much a fatalistic resignation as it is an impression or prejudice I already have and carry around with me. If that is true then life is less of an adventure and more of a chore.

How much meaning can it be to sweep the floor and wash the dishes ? What do you learn by doing that? Do you even think about it when you are doing it?

My dreams seldom if ever betray me. If I do not challenge life then my slumber time is going to be about as uneventful. I think there might be a connection there ....but I am not sure if I want to or are able to pursue it.


Myopia must work on many levels.

[tribunalofmercy]

Idk, George - the few dreams you have shared in chat, about past stuff, was so Interesting to me! (I'm not pouting or anything, lol, but I don't have any dreams of past and so that's all Fascinating)

Sometimes I think we're all children when it comes to understand the Universe, you know? Maybe someone can explain it better to Both of us, lol.

[donq]

Hmm…these two men explained about (psychological) dreams so well:

Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things: some parts are presented with appalling vividness, with details worked up with the elaborate finish of jewellery, while others one gallops through, as it were, without noticing them at all, as, for instance, through space and time. Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in dreams, what utterly incomprehensible things happen to it! Mr brother died five years ago, for instance. I sometimes dream of him; he takes part in my affairs, we are very much interested, and yet all through my dream I quite know and remember that my brother is dead and buried. How is it that I am not surprised that, though he is dead, he is here beside me and working with me? Why is it that my reason fully accepts it?
-from Dostoyevsky’s The Dream of a Ridiculous Man



-from "A French Nurse's Dream" Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams.

Anyway, it seems there are still another kind of dream, precognitive dreams etc. Though I haven’t had those kinds of dreams myself, but I have had many experienced about precognitive awareness when I’m awake. So I could not say that there’s no such thing as precognitive dream. It’s just beyond my understanding. Maybe it’s because of my spiritual practice has to focus only something in my awareness?

[tribunalofmercy]

No matter what I believe today, there is the opportunity to learn Differently by tomorrow, lol. There are times when it has Bothered me, how Much about me changed in the past year, though not all (some things I Wish would change faster!)....dreams are no exception. And what else would You think, if you had not known otherwise, and all of your life things had been One way, then suddenly Everything was different?

It's been fun, and all that, to actually Talk to people in dreams for a change (the difference between that and the Other dream I talked about, besides ghosts, was that someone strange was still There, when I woke up). All the sensations that now carry over; I mean, Really - for example, I wake up from a dream where I have Just been having a lovely conversation with someone about the finer points and uses of poly molybdenum......once I wake, however, I have to go look that Up, because I have no conscious Idea what that is!! (no, I slept through lots of Every subject at school. Everything I know is intuitive)

So the dream world is still Amazing to me, at this point. Again there is this little voice in my head - ace's voice, you know, "What would ace say?" - "there are various levels of awareness in the subconscious...."etc - and I'm sure it must be So, but somehow we are never prepared for what we Find Out, are we? I know it's not often been what I was Expecting.

Do lots of you dream vividly? Do you think it is All just random, symbolic thoughts or even symbolic teachings - more "lessons", even when we sleep?

I'm sorry, Monty; once before you had linked Jung's Red Book for me but it was in Thai and I could not get another translation, sigh. I do not truly need one now, as I could go get things from amazon but I am Afraid to read, still, somehow, because reading actual Information (non-fiction) tends to make me manic in my thinking.

[donq]

Mary Anne,
You said:
I'm sorry, Monty; once before you had linked Jung's Red Book for me but it was in Thai and I could not get another translation, sigh. I do not truly need one now, as I could go get things from amazon but I am Afraid to read, still, somehow, because reading actual Information (non-fiction) tends to make me manic in my thinking.

How come was it in Thai? hahaha. It was in German and English.
I uploaded it from my pdf file, so I did know. :-)

I’m agree about no reading, at some point. I kind of like Korzybski’s best known dictum, "The map is not the territory." Besides, I was taught in my spiritual practice that, “it’s dangerous to know before you really know; knowing beforehand might be harmful in spiritual practice.”
Why? Because we might project and are looking forward to only the sign we have known by someone telling us, and missing the real sign of us and for us.

Oops! This is just to say that I don’t know much about dream. So don’t know what to talk/share about it. hahaha.

[tribunalofmercy]

haha...see, that's just going to Annoy me because I had the file sitting on my computer until about 2 weeks ago, because I had hopes of Testing myself with it when I learned the language but I have Just gotten started (Transparent Language online) and would take Forever, I'm sure, so I deleted Red Book from my files to save space. And I can Read enough German to have known that, so what in the World did I see? Urgh.

Perhaps Jung/Universe was trying to Tell me I wasn't ready to read the book? lol

[donq]

Dear Mary Anne,

I've just found another pdf file which is a lot lighter, only 31 MB (the old file was about 149 MB) so I uploaded both of them on my google drive. You can download them anytime (or even only read online) as there's no limited time (expiration) like the uploaded site I used to use.
[Hmm….as for big file, 149 MB, it seems that you cannot read online (its preview). For downloading only. Sorry]

As for the old file (149 MB), it's in four colors with images and Jung's own handwriting in German. The normal English (font and) texts start at page 193-194. While the new file (31 MB) is black and white and in English only.

drive.google.com/file/d/0B49wUHiDSqvKcnN5M3hBS3pZeDQ/view?usp=sharing

drive.google.com/file/d/0B49wUHiDSqvKY1BHd3Y1SWlVQ0U/view?usp=sharing

Anyway, this doesn't mean you have to download and read it. I've uploaded them just in case you change your mind and to save space on my computer, too.

[note - anyone please feel free to download them. It's not for Mary Anne only. :-) ]

Have you ever tried Google drive? It's free and give us 15 GB free space. Yes, 15 GB, not MB. This will save so much space on our computers. Even it might take time to upload (depends on your internet speed) but it's worth a try. And you can access your files from any where; from any computer and your (Android) phone (Mac and iPhone also should do the same, I think).

P.S. As my poor computer lost all of its USB drive, so I tried to find the best solution to backup my important files. I found that Google drive is one of the best. As you might know that yahoo gives us only 25 MG per email and other free uploading site has its expiration.
Another best one is BitTorrent Sync. No limited space and use the same system as torrent. It can sync between your computer and your Android phone (again, don’t know about Mac/iphone). For example, I only drag some files on my computer to a folder in BitTorrent Sync, then I can access (download) them from my android device anywhere. So cool! :-)

[tribunalofmercy]

Thank you for that, Monty ...Sometimes I am sure I Sound crazy, talking about opening the book/file and seeing that it was in Thai (at the time I even copied some characters and tried to use "google translate" but didn't help me...)

The reason I was Annoyed (not at you - you know that, right? ) and not "surprised" is because of my crazy brain, which is Another thing I wonder about sometimes but could spend Wayyy too much time asking questions if I asked about Everything, you know?

As far as I know now, I am No longer psychic; as a child/young person, however,  I did not learn to differentiate between a "psychic vision" and Reality for a long time.    Therefore, for example, if I were walking somewhere and saw a car drive out of the woods and turn right, I thought it really Happened, but it did not - at that time; it was a psychic experience. Did not understand this fully until early adulthood and after my diagnosis of bipolar.


Also I experience some parts of life symbolically instead of "being in the moment" of reality...which is weird....for example, God (quote, unquote) once saved me from a car wreck but no one involved Remembers the experience; they blacked out or something. ...I didn't black out; I remember suddenly being in a field in early winter, where a flock of birds had been startled into flight. (weird!) - that happens to me sometimes, whether in a stressful situation or Not, so the idea that the Red Book was right in front of me, in German/English, and that was not what I Saw, does not surprise me. (however, still annoyed, and Appreciate your letting me try again. lol)