dreams re-considered

[mansman]

Sometimes the clues to great mysteries are so common and in-our-face that we cant see them at all. Their value, that is.

Consider this: just supposen we never dream, sleep if you like but dreamless sleep for all. Better yet lets suppose some unknown tribe of people in fact, are every bit as we are excepting they never dream, not by day or by night.
Now one could forgive these for believing that (ultimate) reality must certainly be a material world of unknown origin, full of real solid objects much like the world they inhabit by day. But us, we dreamers, well we ought to know better shouldnt we?
For are we not night after night, constantly reminded of how immaterial, imaginary and fleeting worlds and things can be.

M

[Animus]

I pretty much don't dream anymore.

When I was a child/teen I would dream every other night. The content of my dreams was usually what is commonly considered a "Nightmare". But in my teens I was never really afraid of what was happening and usually quite lucid of the fact that it was a dream and only a dream.

These days, I dream once a month maybe, and still the same content. The last dream I recall having was two weeks ago and consisted of my sister being murdered by an oversize tractor, which ended up killing me too. So I'm still dreaming that I am dead and there is nothingness, except I'm still aware that I am dreaming, so bored of my dream I woke up.

The waking up was weird, because it actually felt like I reached part of my mind into the part of my mind that was supposedly dead and then pulled myself by the hair back into reality.

lol, and I say dream as in dreams that I actually remember, no doubt I dream and don't remember them, I don't really consider those to be dreams though.

[Steven Coyle]

...

[Trevor Salyzyn]

A dream is like when some lady drives along a country road that she's driven a million times before, who sees a UFO and the next thing she knows she's waking up in a field. The other driver thanks his lucky stars she didn't call the cops.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

It seems to me likely that most dreams are a fall-out of an ongoing subconscious [meaning we have hardly or no memory] processing of memory which recombines stuff as to be able to prepare the brains for future events. It's a form of learning or re-enforcing, dry-running, deconstructing and reconstructing our picture of reality.

Our brain can act like a meaning generating device, it constantly constructs and reconstructs, seeking consistency and easily pretends or assumes consistency where it's really lacking. Seen this way dreaming is not something "we do when asleep": it's only when we sleep that the dream process has more resources and less constrains. Also, having memory of our dreams or not doesn't seem relevant at all. At times we might catch a glimpse of what's going on there but any interpretation is more likely wrong than right. This is why I suspect conscious or lucid dreaming where control over events is taken or at least dream memory remains intact, isn't as beneficial as often implied by practitioners. In a way, they might be missing the entire point: the 'message' already has been relayed and it probably doesn't mean what you think.

so bored of my dream I woke up.

Good one!

[skipair]

At times we might catch a glimpse of what's going on there but any interpretation is more likely wrong than right.

Ummmm...

[Ignius]

THIS is a dream.