Dreams and their "meanings."

Good grief! Men can't do anything right. Simple job of remembering a dream and they forget it. Pah men, useless and should all be served up in a variety of dishes!:p

Strange I remember my dreams in detail, even to the gnawing of the... honeycomb I dreamt I was eating last night.:D

Honeycomb...riiiiight...

And hey, I was good at writing in my dream journal at one time, I can haul out all sorts of wierdness for you if you want :) Of course, the problem with those is that I wouldn't be able to remember much of what was going on in my life at the time I had those various dreams, so they'd be useless for this project. Though I do think they give some insight into what goes on inside my head :D

I'm deffinately interested in knowing if your current recurring dreams ends after you take care of your ailment. That would be very indicative of whether or not dreams have any discernable meaning, though again, I still believe the same dream for, say, myself, would have an entirely different meaning.
 
Slightly off topic question here: Is a dream still considered a nightmare if you enjoyed it? What I mean is, I've had dreams where I was scared, running for my life, etc, but the dreams have always been very surreal (Something I really like!), and when I wake up, it is with dissapointment that the dream is over, and my playtime is up...

Just curious as to what everyone else thinks. :)
 
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Getting grouchy with me won't help. All that will do is make me batter and deep fry you until golden brown; and serve you on a crisp bed of lettuce with a lemon vinaigrette dressing.:D


Sorry about that. I didn't realize that I was coming off as grouchy. The bold faced type was just there to highlight my point.
Please don't fry me. And if you do, I would prefer some kind of creamy, mayonaisse based dressing.
 
A problem I have is that my dreams are frequently too logical. When this happens, it sets me up to mistake dream events for actual events when they are recalled from memory.

Here is an example of what I mean:

Recently, I dreamed that I was at work talking to my supervisor. The discussion was about an educational video that I am (in reality) supposed to order. In this dream, my supervisor told me that I no longer needed to order the educational video because it had already been taken care of.

The dream had no unusual or illogical occurrence with which I could readily distinguish it from an actual event. The recall of the situation from my memory was brought about when I sat down to update my To Do list.

My calendar is the thing that triggered a question in my mind about the validity of the memory. It was then I realized I had not been to work since the day I was asked to order the video.

This lack of oddity in my dreams concerns me. I do not enjoy being subject to chance occurrence of external events for discernment of memories.

Psydox
 
Slightly off topic question here: Is a dream still considered a nightmare if you enjoyed it? What I mean is, I've had dreams where I was scared, running for my life, etc, but the dreams have always been very surreal (Something I really like!), and when I wake up, it is with dissapointment that the dream is over, and my playtime is up...

Just curious as to what everyone else thinks. :)
Good point, I'd say no it's a dream. Then again it depends on the dream or nightmare. Yet again, are you supposed to enjoy your dreams in the first instance?

In your instance is it a dream or something else, fantasy perhaps?
 
A problem I have is that my dreams are frequently too logical. When this happens, it sets me up to mistake dream events for actual events when they are recalled from memory.

Here is an example of what I mean:

Recently, I dreamed that I was at work talking to my supervisor. The discussion was about an educational video that I am (in reality) supposed to order. In this dream, my supervisor told me that I no longer needed to order the educational video because it had already been taken care of.

The dream had no unusual or illogical occurrence with which I could readily distinguish it from an actual event. The recall of the situation from my memory was brought about when I sat down to update my To Do list.

My calendar is the thing that triggered a question in my mind about the validity of the memory. It was then I realized I had not been to work since the day I was asked to order the video.

This lack of oddity in my dreams concerns me. I do not enjoy being subject to chance occurrence of external events for discernment of memories.

Psydox
Sounds like a recall of memories going on than a dream. Like a replay as some aspect was not filed away. Does that make sense?
 
Slightly off topic question here: Is a dream still considered a nightmare if you enjoyed it? What I mean is, I've had dreams where I was scared, running for my life, etc, but the dreams have always been very surreal (Something I really like!), and when I wake up, it is with dissapointment that the dream is over, and my playtime is up...

Just curious as to what everyone else thinks. :)

I think a nightmare is more about the feelings of terror that the brain uses to create scary images than it is the images themselves.
 
This lack of oddity in my dreams concerns me. I do not enjoy being subject to chance occurrence of external events for discernment of memories.

Psydox

It sounds like you just don't remember dreams that occur during REM sleep (not uncommon), but do remember the more mundane dreams that happen in lighter sleep.
 
Good point, I'd say no it's a dream. Then again it depends on the dream or nightmare. Yet again, are you supposed to enjoy your dreams in the first instance?

In your instance is it a dream or something else, fantasy perhaps?

You're probabaly right, in that I would wager most of my dreams sit firmly in the fantasy realm. Very few of my dreams, other than the "I didn't do my homework/study for the test" dreams from highschool, are particularly realistic. The most realistic one I've had recently, that I can remember, was being at some sort of grocery store, but the layout, odd products that were sold, and the general activities going on deffinately lent it a surreal air that kept it from seeming too real. (which is fine by me, I get enough of "real" life in real life! Same reason I don't watch reality shows :P)
 
I just read an interesting piece by Richard Feynman in "All The Adventures of a Curious Character" called "Always Trying to Escape" (probably originally from "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" as "All the Adventures..." is a compilation) in which he writes about observing his own dreams. He describes that he stopped doing this when, in a dream, he realized he was sleeping with the back of his head against a brass rod and the back of his head had become soft. He reasoned that the brass rod had disturbed his visual cortex. When he woke up there was no brass rod and his head wasn't soft so he figured his brain invented these false reasonings why he shouldn't try to make these observations any more.

And to interject my own dream experience.. First, I feel fortunate that when I'm having a bad dream (or just a particularly boring one, curiously) I can think 'I'm getting tired of this' and wake myself up. I remember one semi-recently where Satan had just beaten up Superman at a county fair or something and was coming for me next. I hid in the back of a hot dog stand and when I heard Satan coming, I just thought 'Oh this is just getting stupid' and woke up (I guess Satan beating up Superman wasn't quite stupid enough...)

I also have a reoccurring dream where I'm not really falling or flying, but jumping Hulk-style, and I have no real control and can't stop, I just jump higher and higher.
 
I also have a reoccurring dream where I'm not really falling or flying, but jumping Hulk-style, and I have no real control and can't stop, I just jump higher and higher.

You must have seen "The Absent-Minded Professor".

I have a similar dream that I'm driving a vehicle from a great distance above it, and have to be careful lest I lose sight of the vehicle and it goes out of control. Most recently the vehicle was a triple-decker bus, and the driver's seat was on the top layer. It was difficult to navigate low clearances, particularly when I started driving it up the stairs in a hotel.
 
You must have seen "The Absent-Minded Professor".


Holy smokes! I think that's it! I'd never made that connection before. I wonder if those dreams will stop now with that revelation. (and please don't read any sarcasm into this, I really hadn't made the connection to flubber..)

I ah.. don't have pay for a dream analysis consultation now do I?
 
I doubt there's anything meaningful to dreams, other than stuff you've been thinking about.

I get a lot of these archetypical sort of dreams, that many people do.

I frequently have the kind where I want to run, but cannot, these range from terrifying, to annoying. Usually, they're preceded by me running from something. I have dreams in which my teeth are falling out, which is annoying. I haven't had any cannabalism ones yet though.

I have dreams in which I can fly, which is cool, especially when they're lucid. One of the more fun ones I've had went as follows.: I dreamed that I could fly, so I was flying around. After a while, I found, to my great surprise that I was a republic-fairchild A-10, complete with missiles and 30mm rotary cannon. Now, as people cannot normally be aircraft, I deduced that I was dreaming. As such, I had fun swooping around and blowing the everloving hell out of the dreamscape below.

Oddly, the execution of flying in my dreams varies quite a bit. Sometimes it's just plain flying, others, it's kind of a floaty jumping action, and others, it's controlled by concentration. Yet other times, the flying is controlled by my breathing, like bouyancy control during scuba diving.

Sometimes I have dreams which I could swear were recurring, but I suspect instead just contain deja-vu and make me think I've had them before.

One fun dream consisted of me sitting in a lavish dining room with a made-up character of mine. We talked about aspects of it's musculostructure and manufacturer, when I came to realize that it could only tell me things I already knew. Then I got to chow down on all kinds of dream food I liked with it. Tastes just as good as real food, but it's zero calorie.

I think the most disturbing dream I've had was this: I was in some kind of space station thing. the walls were white metal and plastic, and it all seemed overexposed a bit. the floor seemed a bit curved. I was not me, exactly, in the dream. I was instead, this kind of freakish wolf-biped thing, like a crude imitation of a human made out of dog. I was only like four and a half feet tall, and my hands (paws?) had been chopped off and replaced with robot hands. my shoulders had very limited travel, because they weren't laid out like a person's.

I had a helmet over my head, and was seeing things variously through the cameras on it, and cameras outside of me, on the walls and cieling. I wandered around from the empty room I started the dream in, and quickly found friends and family members, dressed in jumpsuits, and socializing. They were just as I remember them. I started talking to them, and they recognized me as myself, and talked to me normally and friendly, except the content of what they were telling me essentially boiled down to things that would kill me. so I just talked to everyone, and they were all suggesting I do things that would make me die, and then the dream ended.

Wierd, because I've never had a suicidal thought in my life, and am a generally happy person. And I ain't no furry 'niether.

I occasionally have dreams in which I die. Funny thing is, when it happens, It's always like in the PC game Half-life. The world goes to red, and then fades to black, I hear the kind of sound that I associate with tinnitus, a kind of high pitched squeal, and it feels like my eardrums are blown in (this last bit actually does not happen when you die in halflife. Unless you have the volume up absurdly high, I guess.)

I'm interested in hearing what it's like for other people when they die in their dreams. If only to see if my experience is or is not related to playing too much videogames.
 
I used to have teeth-falling-out dreams -- not "falling out" exactly, but very vivid dreams in which my teeth were crumbling away, chunks of them breaking off and coming out. As it happens, I know that this was an anxiety dream, and I know exactly what the anxiety was about.
Fact: At the time I was having those dreams, my teeth were in very bad shape due to years of severe neglect (financial reasons).
Fact: I have since had my teeth fixed and no longer have those dreams.
Conclusion: I dreamed about my teeth going bad because my teeth were bad.

I've only dreamed of flying two or three times in my life, but I sometimes dream that I'm light -- that I'm walking along with my feet barely brushing the ground or floor, a bit like Alice going down the stairs in Looking-glass House. In the dreams it always seems very sensible, like something I've finally got the hang of, or have remembered how to do. It's fun -- I love those dreams.

During the Reagan administration I had recurring dreams of nuclear war, for what that's worth.
 
You must have seen "The Absent-Minded Professor".

I have a similar dream that I'm driving a vehicle from a great distance above it, and have to be careful lest I lose sight of the vehicle and it goes out of control. Most recently the vehicle was a triple-decker bus, and the driver's seat was on the top layer. It was difficult to navigate low clearances, particularly when I started driving it up the stairs in a hotel.
Remind me never to accept a lift from you.

I often wonder if films or books play some major parts in our dreams?
 
Know what I hate? Dreams where I'm up high, on a mountain or something, and I get all dizzy and afraid of falling. Why can't I just be fearless in my dreams?

One dream I had was about a building at the top of the mountain. It was build as an overhang, with a see-through glass floor. I got all dizzy when I walked on it, and fell to my knees.

Now I'm afraid I will get that when I actually am up high on a mountain or in a building like that, which is no fun at all.
 
I doubt there's anything meaningful to dreams, other than stuff you've been thinking about.

I get a lot of these archetypical sort of dreams, that many people do.

I frequently have the kind where I want to run, but cannot, these range from terrifying, to annoying. Usually, they're preceded by me running from something. I have dreams in which my teeth are falling out, which is annoying. I haven't had any cannabalism ones yet though.

I have dreams in which I can fly, which is cool, especially when they're lucid. One of the more fun ones I've had went as follows.: I dreamed that I could fly, so I was flying around. After a while, I found, to my great surprise that I was a republic-fairchild A-10, complete with missiles and 30mm rotary cannon. Now, as people cannot normally be aircraft, I deduced that I was dreaming. As such, I had fun swooping around and blowing the everloving hell out of the dreamscape below.

Oddly, the execution of flying in my dreams varies quite a bit. Sometimes it's just plain flying, others, it's kind of a floaty jumping action, and others, it's controlled by concentration. Yet other times, the flying is controlled by my breathing, like bouyancy control during scuba diving.

Sometimes I have dreams which I could swear were recurring, but I suspect instead just contain deja-vu and make me think I've had them before.

One fun dream consisted of me sitting in a lavish dining room with a made-up character of mine. We talked about aspects of it's musculostructure and manufacturer, when I came to realize that it could only tell me things I already knew. Then I got to chow down on all kinds of dream food I liked with it. Tastes just as good as real food, but it's zero calorie.

I think the most disturbing dream I've had was this: I was in some kind of space station thing. the walls were white metal and plastic, and it all seemed overexposed a bit. the floor seemed a bit curved. I was not me, exactly, in the dream. I was instead, this kind of freakish wolf-biped thing, like a crude imitation of a human made out of dog. I was only like four and a half feet tall, and my hands (paws?) had been chopped off and replaced with robot hands. my shoulders had very limited travel, because they weren't laid out like a person's.

I had a helmet over my head, and was seeing things variously through the cameras on it, and cameras outside of me, on the walls and cieling. I wandered around from the empty room I started the dream in, and quickly found friends and family members, dressed in jumpsuits, and socializing. They were just as I remember them. I started talking to them, and they recognized me as myself, and talked to me normally and friendly, except the content of what they were telling me essentially boiled down to things that would kill me. so I just talked to everyone, and they were all suggesting I do things that would make me die, and then the dream ended.

Wierd, because I've never had a suicidal thought in my life, and am a generally happy person. And I ain't no furry 'niether.

I occasionally have dreams in which I die. Funny thing is, when it happens, It's always like in the PC game Half-life. The world goes to red, and then fades to black, I hear the kind of sound that I associate with tinnitus, a kind of high pitched squeal, and it feels like my eardrums are blown in (this last bit actually does not happen when you die in halflife. Unless you have the volume up absurdly high, I guess.)

I'm interested in hearing what it's like for other people when they die in their dreams. If only to see if my experience is or is not related to playing too much videogames.


I have had many dreams that I can recall in which I was killed. In the ones that I remember, the death itself was rather painless (but I have had dreams that involved pain in quite severe amounts), and was followed by a swooping out of the picture into an overhead perspective. I was still dreaming, but doublethinking myself into a strange self-narration about my own dream state. I was aware of my own death, but still persisting in the dream state of creating a narrative.
 
I have a hypothesis about the limits to how much one can bend reality in a dream. As I understand it certainly physical behaviours seem to be hard-wired into our perception - for example, the knowledge that you cannot walk through things, like closed-doors.

So, what I am positing is that it should not be possible to have dreams where these basic rules are violated. For example, I do not recall ever having a dream where I could pass through solid objects. This might indicate that the inherent understanding of these basic rules prevents us from being able to create that physical reality.

The justification for this would come from the fact that when we dream the parts of the brain that perceive and interpret the physical world - sight, sound, touch and so forth - and a fundamental limitation in the physical models that can be produced in our mind. I also note the commonalities in the way the experience of flying between people that might indicate a lack of ability to perceptualise other flying scenarios.

So I am wondering if anyone thinks they may have had a dream that might support or undermine this I would be interested to know. Has anyone dreamt the ability to walk through wars for example?

BTW one odd thing I have had in dreams is the ability to stay underwater without drowning. So when people have an innate fear about water is that because we fundamentally understand drowning or does our embryonic heritage in a watery environment suggest we do not fundamentally fear being in a water environment.

Also I have never been able to taste in dreams so I am always a bit jealous of people who say they can really taste in dreams. Always been a let down when I imagine tasty food that tastes bland.
 
I've passed through ceilings and walls and so on before, and I've had dreams that violate euclidian space (I dreamt of a chessboard land as a kid, with rolling hills and so on, but odd thing is, all the squares, even on rounded surfaces, were still perfectly normal squares). Like any computer, our brains can have bad logic, but we seem to have some pretty good error catching :D. I really don't think there's too much "fundamental" about a lot of that. Dreams are weird. If we can imagine a difference experience, I'm pretty sure we can dream it too, and I've imagined walking through walls plenty of times.
 
I have a hypothesis about the limits to how much one can bend reality in a dream. As I understand it certainly physical behaviours seem to be hard-wired into our perception - for example, the knowledge that you cannot walk through things, like closed-doors.

So, what I am positing is that it should not be possible to have dreams where these basic rules are violated...

I've been able to pass through walls on a few occasions with a bit of 'effort' but I understand where you are coming from. I think it's more a case of dreams being limited by experience - the more unknown an experience is then the harder it is to create a dream version of it. Likewise, the more common place something is (like hard walls) the harder it is to imagine things being different.

Perhaps as a more telling example, I can't remember any puberty driven sex dreams that resembled anything approaching actual sex - presumably because I had no idea at the time what real sex was like.

Similarly, the sensations of flying and falling in my dreams have changed a fair bit since going skydiving and bungee jumping.
 

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