How do you dream?

I usually dream on my back, sometimes on my stomach, often on my sides... I dream with all action in the first person, and yet there is always a narator of sorts, a director or advisor of my actions... I feel the emotions, but the rational seem apart from me...

An original way to put the question! For me, it is both because sometimes I am in my dreams and sometimes I am not. "Dream people," that is, faces that I have not seen in life, fascinate me. Are they composites? Are they faces I have glimpsed that did not consciously register in my waking mind?

BTW, most of my dreams are conversations. True talking heads.

Well if you don't mind I am going to put down here a dream I had a little while ago, I seem to have my dreams in 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th....person.
Sometimes me knowing it is me being me,
sometimes me knowing it is me not being me,
sometimes me knowing it is not me being me,
sometimes me not knowing it is me being me,
sometimes not me knowing it is me being me,
sometimes me knowing it is not me not being me,
sometimes me not knowing it is not me being me,
sometimes me not knowing it is me not being me,
sometimes not me knowing it is not me not being me.
Sometimes there is absolutely no me at all and I seem to have dreams or memories from other sources or people.

In the dream I am going to now share with you I lived a life that had nothing to do with me what so ever and yet was so real I was able to retain it and get most of it down, you will see when we get the blogs up that I am a dreamer not of the listless variety but someone who has a very tangible and actual reality going on that seems to have nothing to do with my waking world reality. I love my dreams and when I get the chance I get them down.
I would like after this to go into genre, theme, style, form, type, category of dreams, meaning to say, story, wet, memory, parable, prophetic... even things like comedy, tragedy, history, romance, adventure. And if we could we could try to describe some of the surrealist dreams we have.
I often have some dreams that are episodes, taking up from a previous dream.
I can actually once been awakened from a dream fall back asleep and go on from where I left off.
They are intricately detailed as you shall now see;
(taken from a blog and my dream journal log)

This was an important dream and most of it is already gone sadly.
I was a 12-13 year old black girl living in 1940-50 Deep-South.
I know this because it was hot and the air was thick, and we sweated clean sweat continuously through out the dream. Handkerchiefs and bandanas were in the hands and pockets of everyone ion this dream.
I had a sister who was younger than me she was about 4 or 5 and a mother who was a drunk and a prostitute.
We were starving children but still hungry for life and play, me and my sister sang songs and picked flowers in the back yard, purple Bourganvilla and Buttercups.
Our mother was a prostitute but was with this man who I am not sure was her pimp but she kept the roof over all our heads with her ‘business’.
This maybe pimp would beat her at night and I would quite and cradle my sister, she already knew all to well not to cry to loud.
This bad man was only around when it was night and the house was empty, for I think we were also a half way house eatery, not a brothel but the tenants all worked from home.
There would be a party from time to time where we would play with the neighbour kids and would jump rope and tell horror stories of Dracula and the Mummy.
I was the best and the queen of the neighbourhood.
In these parties the record player would go on and the adults would dance smoke cigarettes and drink bootleg rum and gin. Lights would be shaded in pink and lilac.
My dream kept focussing on the record player, a big black disk that looked warped but would go around and around and belt out songs that tasted of the farms and concrete jungles.
The harmonica the horn and the ever presence of the drums and a close bass.
My mother would work the room and I would look up at her in awe as I was the one who was brave enough to come in and try to sneak out some honeyed-peanuts for my court waiting outside. Who were thrilled at my bravery with their ears pressed against the door.
But the parties would end and the bad man would shout and wail at my mother.
There was this one white man who was old enough to be a young grandfather but he would be escorted into the bedroom by my mother and was the only ‘customer’ my mother ever let us be around.
Before his appointment he would play cards with us and always let us win, he would give us 5 cents a piece but always trusted me with my sisters, which was not always a safe bet.
But we felt safe around him, he would take off his yellow hat to greet our mother and she would invite him into her room and smile back at us as she closed the door.
The record player was playing a woman singing of fruit, the record player was that which made us rich.
We cut to another day where my mother had just served food, I think she ran an eatery as there was a portable cooking pot and a stack of plates and at the end of this night she plated up some white meat and gravy for us, there was not much but the meat was tasty and moist. Me and my sister ate it down and went to bed.
We would know a beating was coming because the music was turned of or neglected.
It was on this night that the bad man beat my mother again, she did not scream but she did cry a lot.
One day we came home form school to find uninterested police in our apartment,
Our mother was dead, murdered and gone.
The record player was not playing but I could hear songs.
I knew who had done this but the police did not seem at all interested and disappeared quickly.
I was left holding my sister who was wailing and pulling at my shirt as she buried her face in my neck she would not stop crying and I was not strong enough to hold her as she tried to climb into me and be safe form a very sad horrible world.
I started to cry which made it worse for my sister but I could not help it, this was despair, this was utter loss and desperation, we had no one.
We were alone and they had not even bothered to check we were in need of care.
Have you ever cried in a dream?
Have you ever felt your tears run and you chest shake and not able to catch enough breath through the sobs, in a dream?
They had released the bad man already, the authorities did not care, there was not interest or proof enough to implicate this bad bad mans deed.
And as the dream ended I just remember saying to the little girl she could stay with the white man who would surely take us in, that he would make her breakfast of eggs and oranges and make her laugh.
He was such a kind man I felt safe I could leave my sister with him.
And I just remember the little girl crying and saying this line to me, ‘but how can a old white man look after a ni**er child’?
Every time she would cry so would i.
There was something about the record player that kept playing songs from the throat of a woman in loss and pain.
And I am not sure but I think the record player was the only thing we could keep.
Have you ever woke up while you are in the middle of dreaming you are crying?

(this was my conclusion in the blog)
That was my dream last night, I sometimes wonder about past lives.
I also wonder if the white man with the yellow hat would have looked after my sister.
I also wonder what plans I had?
Was I going to kill the bad man or was I going to find work and set up a home for my sister.
I hate it when I have a dream and the people I inhabit have no resolution have no saviour.
Maybe a church would have taken in the girls?
What do you think?

Thanks for your time and hope I did not divert you to much from your topic cause, I will post later an answer proper to your instigated investigation.
Thanks again, sometime sun

I have dreamt in many ways, as a child and young man I dreamt mostly realistic dreams, with few exceptions. They were in usually in 2nd and 3rd person rarely in 1st.

As adult I dream more abstract dreams, unrealisticly with many weird symbolic things, the views are like movies ..both in 1st, 2nd and 3rd.
These dreams are sharp and clear, unlike my childhood dreams which usually were blurry.

Hi Razzleg,
I have bouts of extremely vivid dreams and bouts of no dreams.
I Have NEVER had a dream ouside of the 1st person. I am always me in my dreams. And never even considered it possible for a person to dream in 2nd or 3rd.
Hope that helps, Have a great day.
Mark...

From what I can recall, I mostly dream either in first-person, or I'm not personally involved in the dream. The dream is just happening.

I recall having some third person dreams, but that's not the norm.

Hi Razzleg
Several years back I joined an online 8 wk course on dreams, I learnt how to observe them and often I would become concious while I was dreaming, this was usually through seeing or doing something in the dream that wasn't natural, like flying. A little bit of conciousness would notice this and I'd realise that it couldn't really be happening and I was dreaming and I'd be able to explore the dream scenario for a few moments before fully waking. I stopped this dream observation as I was never getting a good nights sleep and even now, I often wake up several times through the night after having a dream, this gives me chance to reflect on the dream and get it into my memory for contemplation the next day.
Sorry I digressed from your question, the point is, over the years I've been aware of countless dreams and I can't recall one where I wasn't in the 1st person.
All the best to you.

Lucid dreaming is an interesting topic. I have an acquaintance that has also studied strategies for encouraging this state, and he highly recommended it. I don't know when/if I'll get around to it, although it sounds cool and relatively non-time consuming. I manage to lucid dream on my own on rare occasions, but it tends to interrupt the course of the dream and causes me to wake up rather abruptly.

That was a very impressive and moving dream. Do I understand you to have said that you have written accounts of many of your dreams? If so, I would very much like to read them, and I suspect that I am not alone in that.

I am probably on my way out of this forum (I was already on my way out of the Philosophy Forum, but I decided not to let the move to a2k make the decision for me), but I would like to keep in touch with you. I don't mean this in any very intense way (because I'm very solitary, by choice, and I seldom e-mail anyone except my immediate family), but if you keep a blog (i.e. if you were keeping one, and intend to start keeping it again when things have settled down here), then that would be an ideal way to keep about the right amount of contact. Again, I suspect that others would also be interested. (I didn't follow any blogs at the old PF, indeed I have never followed any blogs anywhere!)

Thank you Twirlip,
I will send you my email in a PM and you can send me yours and anything I write and feel proud whether it be posts or blogs I would be more than happy to send to you.
When they are up and running I will then try to get down at least one dream a week from now on.
Thank you so for your encouragement.

Is the Sun always awake?
Doesn't It get to close It's eyes and dream sometime?

How I dream tends to depend on what I eat or, sometimes, drink. Or, once, what prescribed pills I took.

all the dreams i can remember are first person, they are usually epic (lots of people and places from my life), and i'm often aware that i am dreaming

Me too, on all three, didge. Oh, and my dream life has many colors.

Sometimes I am in the dream, other times I watching other people, then I'm aware that I am both. Dreams can be very confusing, especially when the story has no thing at all to do with reality. I also have had many, many flying dreams -- not that I'm actually 'flying' but am able to push off the ground into the air, move my arms around, making turns, actually sorta dancing. People are watching, and I've gotten much better at it over the years. Sometimes I am in a swing -- Oh, dear God, have you ever swung so high that there will be no end?" Frightening!

I also have dreams that should/would be helpful in my day-to-day affairs except that I often don't listen. At times a person is just talking, explaining, making me aware of things I should know. Once, after terrible problems with a neighbor this fellow said, "Have you ever read Matthew (Biblical scripture, for which chapter and verse)?" I checked out the scripture and it was the one everybody knows: Why are you looking at the speck in someone else's eye when you haven't examined the beam in your own?"

I remember about 90% of my dreams. When I have strong emotions in my dream, I dream in first person. In a horror dream, for example, I am always in first person. The only time I ever remember being in third person is when I see myself wandering in my dreams or if I am judging my actions during my dream. I think my mind changes into a 'narrator' or 'outsider' so I can be objective.

Wow! Sun, I must say that upon reading your dream I must also subscribe to your service. I have NEVER had such an intricate dream with absolutely no relation to me as was yours, right from the first line it was, wow. I have not a sufficiently concrete psychological insight as to account for the personally estranged 1st person setting of your dream but indeed I am absolutely marveled and amazed by it.

I have also had my share of astonishing dreams but all of which I remember involve myself. The affirmation of 1st or 3rd person however is sometimes vague, it is as though the vantage point has not a definite state, almost like 1st or 3rd or 1st AND third or neither all at the same time, (I see where the term quantum dreaming comes from) or is that quantum mind? either way dreams are a product of the mind. I guess the best way to describe this non definite vantage point is as an...........I cannot describe it, it is like the concept of 1st and 3rd person have no meaning and are inexistent, like I am in an unconceivable state where I am not confined by such silly and needless concepts, indeed it is an extraordinarily eccentric experience. Either how, it was truly great to have heard your dream sun, thank you.

Thank you Soul Brother.
You ever need and and ask for me will always try my best to be there for anybody who would like me.
I still have not had enough time to truly answer and elaborate on what I hear other people saying here, all of which I think is beauty.
How cannot such a thing as dream experience be anything other beautiful.

I had this dream before the merger and now seems prophetic.
I have kept it to a short dream telling as this is not my thread.
If any one would wish for some of my epic dreams I would be more than happy to oblige upon request.
This will be my last recount I promise.

I was in London and a tourist. I was with a bunch of television characters, all Americans.
We were all friends and youthful and brash except for our Mother and Father. I was an adopted member of this family.
I had come to them bare and without speech, they had learned me how to speak.
We were all late for the train which if we missed we would all be late for something.
else, possibly our plane.
The Mother of the family had given me a letter from someone, who I found was my blood family and she had told me to think about what the letter said before I made the decision to come back home with them, I think Okalahoma was mentioned.
I found that the letter was a weird sort of will and that it had directions to my inheritance.
As I followed the wills instruction I came upon a library that was out in the open, right in the middle of Trafalgar Square.
They were all my books the will told me.
But then as I started to box them up I realised that I only had one friend with me who was trying to rush my packing, a whole library.
As I started to move the books it started to rain and I worried my inheritance would get wet.
My friend brother was helping me, but we had a train to catch and Mother had the tickets.
So we boxed up some and took them to the train station, as I ran back alone for more books I just remember thinking ‘do I have time to save all of my library?’ ‘Are you willing to lose your family for some books?’ ‘what is the point in having a whole library if you have no-one to love?’
The rain started falling again and as I was half way through packing I looked up to the sky and knew the books were meaningless.
I dropped the heavy bag I was carrying and ran for the train station and as I arrived I saw the end of a train go out of sight and reach.
I was left there on the platform alone.

There are many details I left out like the braces my brother wore on his slacks,
The curly of my mothers hair.
The SMELL of the station platform.
And so so so much else.
I still have the dream retained if any one has any questions.
But this dream was trying to tell me something and I would open up the question also now.

What do you think this dream meant?

All my best intentions,
sometime sun

I went through a period when I studied the meaning of dreams. I clearly recall one thing: We know the meaning of our dreams. If we think about them a bit.

My dreams all seem to be mostly in first person. I say seem and mostly because as another person suggested, it's more like a blurry merger of primarily first-person action and dialogue with some other part of me watching the whole thing.

When I was in junior high, a teacher gave me an assignment to write a book report on Freud's dream analysis techniques. I've been fascinated with dreams ever since. This is not the thread for me to expand on this, but I've always wondered how a person can come up with the stuff in dreams -- they are so complicated, strange, unexpected and overflowing with stuff I didn't know I knew and can't imagine how I knew. I frequently wake up in the middle of a dream, surprised, even doubtful that my mind was the source of all that stuff, as if it came from somebody else. Weird, I know, but a feeling that never quite goes away.

--Bill