Poll: Significance of dreams

[CrimsonBlaze]

I've mentioned this a few time before on this forum about how I don't dream every night and when I do, it's usually weird dreams that I am aware of or nightmares generate by my subconscious to trip me up.

A lot of my dreams are usually topical and consist of some events that had occurred recently. Rarely would I have a dream that comes completely out of the blue and if it does, it comes in the form of a hyper realistic nightmare.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Sometimes. I did had a recurring dreams that I was back in High School which I can assume it was just hidden meaning that I missed my former high school life (didn't had to worry about finding a job and my purpose back then was simple). Sure I do get random dreams that I cannot understand the meaning but in saying so I do analyse each of my dreams online.

 

[stephaniesc1]

As someone who's interested in and experiments with lucid dreaming (have had several, and yes, it is really interesting), I can say that I think a more interesting question is whether dreams are important. I tend to think that we can either make them important or make them meaningless for ourselves, but that they have very little intrinsic importance.

For example, I am writing a book whose seed began with a dream I had back in May. For someone else, that dream would have just been weird, but for me, it was the start of the next level in my writing career.

I totally agree. Personally, as I've gained more control over my dreams through practices and exercises in lucidity, I've found that I can have more and more effect on what I actually dream about.

Yesterday night, for instance, I had a mind-blowing lucid dream.

The experience was kind of surreal actually, because in my mind I understood that I was actually still snoring in bed even as I was zipping over the air at three million kilometers a second. Though I understand that it had taken a great deal of conditioning to achieve this ability, I completely believe it was worth the effort.

When I intially experimented with lucid dreaming I took a crack at many free online "courses" I found while browsing forums. Yet, after attempting these strategies for about four months I continued to have no dominance over my dreams.

I believe the primary element that they were missing was the compelling technique that I got when I bought a professional lucid dreaming method with pretty superb reviews, Lucid Dreaming Fast Track - Mod edit: Link removed.

When lucid dreaming now I can simply go anywhere I want (but often I like travelling all across the air).

 

[MXRom]

I have an unsettling amount of deja vu and apocalypse nightmares.

By deja vu, I mean I dream of myself doing things and suddenly it happens later. For example, I dreamt of playing Shadowrun Returns long before I knew such a game existed. Today I played through the exact same segment as what I dreamed. I am not BS-ing, that same feeling of familiarity hit me like a truck when my decker was hacking the turret controls. That was just one of dozens of occurrences that I can remember. It might have some significance, or not I don't know.

By apocalypse nightmares, I mean exactly that. End of the world, etc. They are scary by the sheer scale of what's happening and my inability to do anything. The ones I remember most vividly were this one where a meteor the size of the moon hits the Eurasian side of the planet, not quite with enough force to shatter the planet, but enough to send it flying through space. I can vividly remember watching day rapidly turning to night and then to day again as the planet spun out of control, and how I and other people desperately clung to anything anchored to keep from getting blown away by the speed the planet spun. Eventually as the sun got further and further away, it became perpetual dark, the temperature started plummeting, and I could hear singing as people basically waited to die. Then I woke up and found I kicked my blanket off.

The other one was the world getting flooded and me being involved in a motorboat chase escaping nazi zombies on jetskis for some reason. That was just so weird I can't forget how ridiculous it was.

Still every dream I can remember(there are some that I forget the moment I wake up) was either deja vu or end-of-the-world-scneario-nightmare. Maybe there is some meaning to that. Or maybe I need to lay off the curry.

 

[McMullen]

These days, if I dream at all, I seem to only dream about things that I dread happening. If nothing else it helps remind me how ridiculous my fears are.

 

[ShipofFools]

Weather you dream, eat the shroom or do the tab, as soon as your subconscious takes over everything has a meaning. It might just be very hard to find any when the forest floor turns into frogs and you are staring at a cosmic goatman who sits opposite you while Hindu, Inca and native American gods dance in the canopy.

But most dreams I have are just Civilization-marathon induced stress dreams. Heheheh.
And also when my friend and I marathon'd Star Trek in a week I had these amazing dreams every night about my adventures in space.

 

[Buffoon1980]

Yes, some dreams have a meaning, but usually it's something extremely obvious and not very helpful. I have a lot of dreams about driving and losing control of the car (apparently this isn't uncommon). No prizes for guessing that I also have a lot of real, conscious anxiety about losing control of my life (this, too, is not uncommon). I recently had a dream in which I was able to talk to my deceased mother, and apologise for all the crappy things I'd done as a child.

These dreams are not the usual for me, though. Mostly I dream about random stuff, usually something that wouldn't be out of place in an action movie.