What are dreams?

[Criseyde]

I rarely remember my dreams, but I've had a few extremely vivid ones that have stuck with me. I'm becoming a little more interested in dreaming, though. What do you think they are?

Any and all perspectives welcome.

[ZephyrusX]

Dreaming is fun.

I wish I could give an rational and empirical explanation for dreaming, but I just don't have the words to do so. So I'll just say 'random stuff' that goes through our unconscious mind while sleeping and you translate that into something meaningful.

I do get some really vivid dreams that resonate with me on some level, but I think that is only because I am interpreting them in a way that is relevant to my life at the moment. I also get very lucid, vivid dreams that mean diddly squat in my life, like the time I thought I was dancing with a penguin.

Dreams are interesting though. Why is it that some people get really vivid, detailed dreams whereas others will not? My mother always has these wickedly detailed dreams that I enjoy listening to. I wish I could have those dreams. On the other hand, she also takes a tremendous amount of prescription drugs, so may be I don't really want them.

[ZephyrusX]

Oh, another question that piques my interest: is there any relation between imagination in conscious life and imagination in dreams? My mother is very imaginative in waking life and so are her dreams.

Originally Posted by ZephyrusX

Dreams are interesting though. Why is it that some people get really vivid, detailed dreams whereas others will not? My mother always has these wickedly detailed dreams that I enjoy listening to. I wish I could have those dreams. On the other hand, she also takes a tremendous amount of prescription drugs, so may be I don't really want them.

[Criseyde]

Originally Posted by ZephyrusX

Dreaming is fun.

I wish I could give an rational and empirical explanation for dreaming, but I just don't have the words to do so. So I'll just say 'random stuff' that goes through our unconscious mind while sleeping and you translate that into something meaningful.

I do get some really vivid dreams that resonate with me on some level, but I think that is only because I am interpreting them in a way that is relevant to my life at the moment. I also get very lucid, vivid dreams that mean diddly squat in my life, like the time I thought I was dancing with a penguin.

Dreams are interesting though. Why is it that some people get really vivid, detailed dreams whereas others will not? My mother always has these wickedly detailed dreams that I enjoy listening to. I wish I could have those dreams. On the other hand, she also takes a tremendous amount of prescription drugs, so may be I don't really want them.

This is what I've kind of thought too, that dreaming is the "leftover stew" of consciousness and you interpret them much like a Rorschach blot test. But lately, I'm not sure if that's true. I've directly experienced subjective communication, and I've heard so many stories of people having intense dreams that don't fit the Rorschach stew theory at all... maybe dreams are something different.

I do kind of wish I had crazy dreams. The snippets I remember often seem to be very blah.

[VinceG]

What I understand about dreams is that they're our way of exploring probabilistic realities. Like running simulations in our minds. Our minds are basically copied into dream characters and then we drop them into a world, either inside of our minds or out in the astral.

The sleep state differs from the conscious state by degrees, we don't become unconscious all at once, though it often seems that way when we are lying in bed trying to go to sleep, then all of a sudden wake up in the morning.

What happens when we lucid dream is, we become partially awake while we're dreaming, so that we can observe our dream world.

Vividness in dreams is caused when the content of the dream makes a strong enough impression on our minds to overwrite the normal conscious memory of oblivion. When we put conscious attention on what we experience while we're asleep, say by keeping a dream journal, and waking up and trying intently to remember what you were doing, you train your memory function to start writing your dreams to 'disk' every night.

This conscious pressure also makes lucid dreaming easier.

[raykilleen]

Dreaming is awareness in the Dreaming/Unconscious/Subtle level of the mind.
Levels of the mind:
Waking/Conscious/Gross
Dreaming/Unconscious/Subtle
Deep sleep/Subconscious/Causal
Consciousness/Absolute/Fourth

[ZephyrusX]

Keeping a dream journal definitely helps if you want to remember (or have?) more vivid and lucid dreams. I kept one for a while some years back and I could at least remember some of my dreams. I didn't always have lucid dreams though. It is a pain getting into the habit of keeping a dream journal. You have to have a note pad by your bed to write something down in the middle of the night. All I want to do is go back to snoozing.

I like the idea of probabilistic realities or simulations. I'd probably interpret that in the most empirical way ever though.

Originally Posted by VinceG

Vividness in dreams is caused when the content of the dream makes a strong enough impression on our minds to overwrite the normal conscious memory of oblivion.

When we put conscious attention on what we experience while we're asleep, say by keeping a dream journal, and waking up and trying intently to remember what you were doing, you train your memory function to start writing your dreams to 'disk' every night.

[ZephyrusX]

Can you give me an example of what you mean? Just make something up that conveys the general idea if you don't want to spill out the details of your dreams.

Originally Posted by Criseyde

I've directly experienced subjective communication, and I've heard so many stories of people having intense dreams that don't fit the Rorschach stew theory at all... maybe dreams are something different.

[Criseyde]

Originally Posted by ZephyrusX

Can you give me an example of what you mean? Just make something up that conveys the general idea if you don't want to spill out the details of your dreams.

Do you want to know what subjective communication is, or what vivid dreams I've heard about? I'm not sure what you're asking. Subjective communication is when people basically communicate without actually talking to each other. I've never experienced it so strongly as direct telepathy/having a "mental conversation" which both people could remember and repeat back, but I've definitely experienced randomly 'knowing' things that the other person never told me.

[ZephyrusX]

I was talking about the subjective communication thing.

Originally Posted by Criseyde

Do you want to know what subjective communication is, or what vivid dreams I've heard about? I'm not sure what you're asking. Subjective communication is when people basically communicate without actually talking to each other. I've never experienced it so strongly as direct telepathy/having a "mental conversation" which both people could remember and repeat back, but I've definitely experienced randomly 'knowing' things that the other person never told me.

[Placebo23]

By waking up in the morning out of a dream, you are not waking up. Only the content of the dream changes.

[Angela]

My dreaming awareness is a whole level of living that complements waking reality. It is not "leftover stew." More like an entirely different combination of ingredients that make up a recipe that is totally nourishing, and is like another course in a "meal" of varying realities.

I think the more you pay attention to and honor your dream awareness, the more rewarding it becomes.

[raykilleen]

Originally Posted by Placebo23

By waking up in the morning out of a dream, you are not waking up. Only the content of the dream changes.

I like, and if one practices skillful techniques of the yogic science you can keep the awareness going 27-7.

[MiBeloved]

Dreaming can either be imaging in your own mind or actual subtle activities in the astral world, or it may be a combination of both mind imaging and real subtle acts in the astral world.

The trick is to learn to sort what is real astral activity and what is just imagination in the mind.

[Luciddd]

The way I see it, dreaming is an overture to the actual potential of the mind. The capacity to be everything, which appear to be limited by "just your mind".

[cheesedip1]

I hope this is on topic, but why do I keep having deja vu dreams? It's wierd.

[Criseyde]

Thank you all for your replies, I've been feeling unwell all day, but I promise to respond more tomorrow!

cheesedip, it is totally on topic! I want this thread to basically be all about the nature of dreaming. Plus, you reminded me that I've had deja vu dreams too. Pretty crazy.

[Anagogy]

Originally Posted by Criseyde

I rarely remember my dreams, but I've had a few extremely vivid ones that have stuck with me. I'm becoming a little more interested in dreaming, though. What do you think they are?

Any and all perspectives welcome.

Dreams are awesome because you get to see how realities come into being through them.

People often think they lose consciousness when they go to sleep, but in actuality, falling asleep is a process of becoming interested in your thoughts as you relax and you get so absorbed in these thoughts you start to imagine they are real. You suspend critical judgment and temporarily accept another set of parameters as reality. You get to see first hand, how these limits or parameters give an experience its particular shape or "flavor". I often find myself with a completely different set of memories in the dream world .

The reality we experience in daily life is another type of dream. It has a consistent stability to it, so we call it real. We all dream the same dream and call it "reality". Occasionally, we experience similarly stable locals in the night-time dream world, which shakes up our belief in what is real and what is not real.

I can't say enough good things about dreaming. It is one of my favorite all time things to do.

[Weaver]

When i think back to all the dreams i can remember that i had. i would say that dreams are a projection of who we are currently being...

Like when i was younger i would often dream of suddenly being swept away into the air by the wind and not being able to get back down. but now i am able to fly with a lot more skill now, i am no master flier but i am way better than i was. anyway, me being swept away by the air was actually me not having much control of my physical life (i was a child) as i had to go to school and do what i was told and all that. but now i am older i have more freedom, able to do, go or have a lot more things than i could.

Other dreams of my past are to do with monsters. like when i was a kid, i would be chased by all sorts of creatures. at first i would be paralyzed with fear, then i learned how to run away, then i learned how to stand my ground, then they went after loved ones, i fought them a few times but this did not stop them, in the end i finally learned how to literally banish them away with just a thought. Anyway, me being hunted by monsters was actually me being extremely shy and timid in my physical life, so shy that i would hide under tables from strangers, but now that i am older i have more courage and confidence now, i can speak to and deal with strangers (monsters lol) easily now.

Dreams let us know how we really feel about things, they tell us what we really want, they tell us things about ourselves that we are unaware of... hmmm... this now makes me wonder that those that do not have dreams, already know exactly who they are which gives them no reason to dream. while those that have very vivid dreams, such as myself, have them because they are unaware of who they are.

So basically, i think we only dream when we are unaware of something about ourself. it is like they are telling us... "hey this is you. if you like it, show it. if you don't like it, change it then show it" and they will keep on telling us this (reoccurring) until we finally do choose to 'show it' in the physical world.

[VinceG]

Hehe, seeing and participating in this thread made my dreaming last night much more distinct and memorable. One of the things I noticed is that much of the difficulty in remembering dreams vividly is that they rarely hew to any kind of sensible causality.

It's like if you put a realistic chess position down in front of a chess player and asked him to memorize it. He'd do OK with it, but if you just took the pieces and scattered them randomly across the board and asked him to remember that, he wouldn't be able to.

[cheesedip1]

Originally Posted by Criseyde

Plus, you reminded me that I've had deja vu dreams too. Pretty crazy.

Right, but I feel like ALL of my dreams have been deja vu-ish ones. At least for the past 8 months or so. (At least it seems like it,anyways.)