Able2knower Dreams

I dreamt that Mrs. cav was sleeping on the floor with two pillows wedged over her ears to drown out my snoring, then I got up to pee and stepped on her, and realized IT WAS NOT A DREAM.....

I think dreams are dreams, a flow of ions or biochemical bits and pieces from 'storage' and that the effort and/or amusement of giving them meaning is interesting in itself, another kind of window, and... that this effort is ongoing while dreaming, with an 'overlooker' watching the dream, as well as while awake later.

I also have a view almost no one agrees with, but seems to play out for me, that what you eat or drink has some effect, some times. I once woke from an amazing dream and made the perhaps absurd connection that I had had meat for supper. (I don't each much meat, so it stood out.) If I eat a steak or a salmon filet, a lot of protein, I often have such an active and complicated dream that I semiwake and say to myself "steak!" If I have a bowl of nice hot pasta, I seem to have very comfy non adventurous or involved dreams. And I remember noticing chili pepper as a factor once or twice. Too much alcohol will get me going on wild dreams too (I think, hard to get a baseline for that one).

I think hormone fluctuations are a factor re the sexual component; once I was prescribed a hormone that had both estrogen and a small amount of testosterone, after I had been put on an estrogen diminishing hormone for surgical reasons. After the surgery they gave me a kickstart with this hormone Estratest. (Women do have some bit of testosterone normally.) Well! Gads, I got some Really strange dreams, discussed it with the md, and stopped those pills... and never had those dreams again.

Sexual hormones are not the only hormones we have, and if hormone fluctuations do have an effect on dreams then the others may too.

Drom, nothing in my posts on this thread is serious. I just enjoy taking a gentle dig at Gus and at others whom I consider friends.

Your Michaelangelo's David dream put me in mind of our good ole Assscroft (Sorry, I just can't seem to make myself spell his name correctly). He of the modesty drapes. If a couple of breasts get him by the short hairs, I can just imagine what a good sized penis would do. My God, it would probably send him into cardiac arrest! However, it would be much easier to drape.....

Osso, I like your hormone and food theories. Since our bodies are little more than hormone factories, it makes sense that our subconscious would respond to any changes. Unusual foods and alcohol both seem to make a difference in my dreams.

I ended the night with pictures of animals and dreamed of them in all their furry, cuddly glory.

Diane-- I know, it was obvious; I was joking you too; note that about half of what I say is meant in jest. What can one have without laughter? Anyhow, I am not part of the Self-Righteous brigade!

I'm being forced off the computer by some rabid person of 'greater need'; I'll respond to the rest of this later!

Good night everyone!

I dreamed that the world changed.

I dreamed that the world changed too, but put on dirty clothes.

I think some dreams have meanings....of course they play into our subconcious, but its usually some sorta fear that triggers it. And I do believe that some are merely just dreams..like you said, Osso.....has to do with what we eat.

But for example....my brother in law used to dream about his wifes, ex-husband coming into thier bedroom in the middle of the night and opening a window....he'd get up and shut the window and it repeated itself over and over. It bothered him....

So, I done some homework on it, and everything that he could piece together and when I got the answer to it...I had hit the nail on the head. The window represented his wife, and the ex..coming in and toying with the window represented his fear of maybe loosing his wife back to her ex husband....you get the jist.....

I think some dreams have meanings....of course they play into our subconcious, but its usually some sorta fear that triggers it. And I do believe that some are merely just dreams..like you said, Osso.....has to do with what we eat.

But for example....my brother in law used to dream about his wifes, ex-husband coming into thier bedroom in the middle of the night and opening a window....he'd get up and shut the window and it repeated itself over and over. It bothered him....

So, I done some homework on it, and everything that he could piece together and when I got the answer to it...I had hit the nail on the head. The window represented his wife, and the ex..coming in and toying with the window represented his fear of maybe loosing his wife back to her ex husband....you get the jist.....

I get the gist and often the gist makes sense but I think the dream chemisty flutters out first and that we give it a story as it appears, perhaps before waking. I know this sounds like sillyness, especially using the word flutter, but I use it on purpose. I am sure we have values added to some of our incoming perceptions and that things get logged in in some way I am now far from being acquainted with, though I once understood biochemisty to some extent. How things arrange or are arranged in biochemical cycles is beyond my ken now, though I'd be interested if anyone ever figures it all out. Still, my own temporary view is that our sense of dreaming is some seeming screen effect, a quick overview of the exposed catalog section, perhaps even the detritus.

You know, my dreams I hardly ever remember. When I do....I realize why i dont want to. Those are usually fever or medicated induced so, yeah..they are more to the extreme---well, I HOPE they are at least.

Osso, yes, I agree with that. I have to get back up to date on this stuff -- I am now referring to studies that are 7-8 years old -- but the "latest" I knew was that dreams are random synapses firing that we then put together in ways that make sense. The putting-together can itself be significant, but the makings are pretty random. They often have to do with what we have experienced that day or thoughts we have had that day. It's also thought to have a big part in learning -- strengthening pathways, etc. (As anyone who has studied frantically for a test can attest, you often dream about what you are studying, and it's been shown that those who sleep before tests do much better -- not just for obvious reasons like rest, though I forget how they controlled for that.)

At any rate, that makes a lot of sense to me, and fits with my dream experience.

Hhh I had another one of those annoying recurring dreams last night! I seem to dream about this a lot: I'm in the place where I went to secondary school and VI form college, and I wait for hours until it gets dark for a bus. At night, the bus finally comes, and takes me to the wrong place. Last night, it wasn't far away, but a week ago, I dreamt that the bus took me through Paris to what looked like Northern Africa.

Osso's theory is a good one, and probably scientifically sound (from age 16, I only carried on Chemistry-- as you could only choose to study three subjects for your last two years- so I really don't know about the science of dreams.) I find that I have those mundane bus dreams after eating cheese. Osso, were your dreams frightening or just plain weird?

Makemeshiver: I think so too. Hormones and chemicals to the brain act upon your sleeping mind, and the 'spillover'- the dream- can often have meanings. Freud argued this too, in the Little White dog analysis.

Drom, I am not sure I have ever been frightened in a dream. Most typically I am solving some situation which makes sense at the time; as I awaken I have a short period of awareness of the dream content being strange, an ephemeral whiff. Once in a while - rarely, really - I wake up relieved that the dream wasn't true, having something to do with a seemingly real-time situation.

On the science of my conjecture, I have read some data that supports some of my take on dreaming but I had thought this way long before I read that, whatever and wherever the piece was. Since I read most of my medical news from New York Times articles now, it was probably in some article there.

Oh yeah, dreams are definitely a consolidation of recent events (not necessarily the day before), plus a mixmaster. But I think there's also room for some Freudian symbolism (wishes and anti-wishes, or aversions, e. g. you dream about what frightens you) and Jungian symbolism (literal symbolism and mythos, like if you dream of someone giving you an orange, the orange may be a substitution for an apple so the scene is reminiscent of the fall from Paradise), though whether that's within the dream itself or in the later interpretation, I can't say.

Now, has anyone tried either directed dreaming (you tell yourself you're going to go in a particular direction or do a particular thing, during an actual dream) or continuing the story line after waking? For example, in the popcorn on the floor dream, I was semi-conscious and thought, I'm really a bird, because birds are tossed popcorn on the ground. So I took some in my beak and flew away. It was a satisfying end to the dream but not really a part of it.

I have definitely told myself, while dreaming, "this is only a dream". But I don't think I've done more than that as far as directing my dreaming self.

The dreams I remember tend to be about a crisis or at least a panicky situation. I do have more peaceful or pleasurable dreams, but I don't tend to remember them as well.

Osso: that's pretty much how I dream, apart from the fact that I often wake up thinking 'Thank God that that was only a dream,' usually due to embarrassment. As you've seen, I have long chains of dreams, probably hours apart, seeming as if they follow each other, but after the last chain of the dream, I go through a kind of transition to waking up. It's usually at the point that I realise, 'this is obviously a dream,' that I fall asleep. I get frightening dreams too; once, I dreamt that the Tsar's henchmen had come to kill my dearest friends and I, by shooting range. That was awful.

Jespah: what you have said is basically what I feel about dreams too. Dreams just weird me out, but I enjoy writing them down. I think that the meaning comes through the interpretation, and dreams are basically the buckets in which a million thoughts fall. I think it would be bizarre if the sleeping mind were capable of giving so much meaning to things as they happen. Does anyone ever get 'déjà entendu;' when someone says something whilst you're awake and it matches or near matches what someone has said in a dream before it happened? I get that a lot: is it just I? Has anyone ever dreamt in another language, or in black-and-white?

Directed dreaming is an interesting thing; I generally cannot get to sleep without a 'pre-dream,' a very pleasant dream that I direct, that is not really a dream, but rather the manifest of my awake imagination. In the middle of the pre-dream, before the end usually, I fall to sleep. My dreams are usually so weird that I cannot continue building on them whilst awake. Nevertheless, if a dream were to present me with a good storyline, I would sometimes try to develop it. I cannot usually control my dreams whilst in them, apart from telling myself to wake up. My dreams are so vivid in front of me, it seems as if they be real. One weird thing is that I can never see myself in these dreams; I'm usually looking through my eyes at everyone else. If and when I see myself, it is in a different form, but that happens rarely. A while ago, I dreamt that I had collapsed from a yellow seat, and that my old Politics teacher's dead dad was one of my Guardian angels. Everyone has three, and 'they couldn't find three relations of yours [mine] that weren't smashed.' He then told me that 'Heaven isn't all it's cracked up to be; there are too many Conservatives.' I then looked at myself when he was telling me to get back to Earth, and I was not there; I was the wind.

I keep having the same kinda dreams lately. They seem so real that I actually think I'm awake running around doing all the things I would do in a normal day. I also keep dreaming that I'm watching myself sleep and dream. It's like I have 3 personalities if that makes sence. But as soon as it's time for the dreamt me to wake up, she never can. She tries and tries, but she's too tired to open her eyes and everything turns to slow motion. She can hear people calling her but she just can't wake up. I don't know why this dream keeps accuring, but eventually i'll figure it out.

kerver, I've had that trying-to-wake experience too. I can see myself asleep and I'm sure that the phone is ringing or someone is standing over me yelling, but I can't drag myself up from sleep.

kerver and mac, that seems to be a lot like the anti-wish or aversion aspect, e. g. you want to do something, but can't, like dreaming that you have to walk some place and suddenly your legs each weigh a ton and you can't move.

drom - I also do the "pre-dream" ritual. Maybe it's a leftover for when we were read or told stories as children. Here we are, adults, yet we still want a story to drift off to.

Mine tend to be me instructing someone on something (eh, I'm a Virgo, and geeky to boot), so it's something like being dropped into some preagricultural civilization on some other planet, and I'm helping the inhabitants learn to plant crops and do pottery (things I don't do IRL, although I do garden). So I'm just imparting something. It's sometimes also an adventure, e. g. I'm fighting aliens or whatever, but the pre-dream can't be too engaging or else I won't fall asleep. Hence, mine are kind of task-oriented and repetitive, so if/when I fall asleep in the middle, I just pick it up again the following night. So the next night I help the friendly but primitive aliens with sheep-shearing, or I hide from some not-so friendly aliens in some other place.

Toldja I was geeky.

Yay! I thought that I was the only one, because most people whom I know look incredulous when I mention 'pre-dreams' in any dream-orientated conversation. It probably does come from reading when younger; I always remember asking someone to read, or I read myself. For me, I think of a million things at once, I have a thousand worries at one given time, so I concentrate on a single-faceted thing in a pre-dream, usually either relaxing or exciting. The only problem with my not having task-orientated pre-dreams is that sometimes I get caught up in the pre-dream, start concentrating about it, and don't get to sleep until desperately tired.

I don't think that that's geeky, Jespah! Geeky is the people who try to impress (Arts-related) Oxford dons by doing long division in their heads.