Ship of Fools: Dreams, a thin place?

Thread: Dreams, a thin place? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by GeorgeNZ (# 18672) on :

Can dreams sometime be a window through which sometimes we see less darkly, where the veil between this world and the spiritual world thins?

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

I don't think so, our brains are processing the day's information during dreams. Our anxieties are dealt with then too. Dream deprivation can be very harmful, they are important for our mental and neurological health.

Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :

Yes, that and too much cheese ...

Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :

quote:
"'In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.

Acts 2 v17

It's not that I'm turning into a proof-texting evangelinazi, so much as I'm so bored of the sound of my _own_ voice.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

The problem is when people think that their dreams of jumping into a bath full of Smarties wearing a Batman costume* Mean Something™.

In my experience applying discernment sensibly in this realm should lead to people keeping their mouths shut, 99.9% of the time.

==

*in the memorable words of Adrian Plass

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

Dreams will tell us what we know - but may not be conscious of. The language they use is visual and associative and can be symbolic. They sometimes reference the immediate future.

Most of the time they are like our conscious thoughts - overwhelmingly trivial. But occasionally they contain insights, or present an image of particular beauty (or terror) which impresses us.

But they arise within our own psyche - which is quite mysterious enough - and not from any agency outwith it.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:

quote:
"'In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.
Acts 2 v17

It's not that I'm turning into a proof-texting evangelinazi, so much as I'm so bored of the sound of my _own_ voice.

What have the last days, The End of Days, The End Times of pre-messianic Judaism, presaged in The Book of Joel, realised in the Christ, got to do with now, two thousand years later? Indeed what did they have to do with the Christ and the birth of the Church? The editing of the Joel (spokespersons school?) prophecies - for want of another word - was over by 400 BC and their secondment by Peter at the time of the transcendence of Shavuot is typical of the now long obsolete ancient-classical hermeneutic of the time.

If God wants me to have a dream or prophesy, He will. He has never done it for anyone any of us has ever known in any transferable way. The probability of Him doing so is in the order of magnitude of one hundred billion to zero to date in terms of people. A hundred trillion, a quadrillion to nought in terms of dreams and prophecies people have synthesized, made.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

I used to do dream analysis, as part of psychotherapy, and it is very delicate work. The therapist cannot issues interpretations of dreams, as they used to in the old days, but has to see how the client views them.

I think there are 'spiritual' dreams, but they may not have a meaning that is palatable to the dreamer. And often, it's best to leave it alone.

I had a client who used to dream about Mecca quite a lot (not a Muslim). Well, we went through various interpretations, including the mandala symbol, based on the walk around the Ka'aba.

But I don't like books of interpretations.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

I'm 52. I've read a lot. I sometimes have dreams of things I don't think I had knowledge of, but I can't say I didn't once read something which stuck. For example I once dreamt there was a coffin in my kitchen with a brass plate with a year of death on it. When I woke up, I was able to find a death certificate I wouldn't have been able to find if I hadn't dreamed the year of death. (I knew the person's first name, but not surname). But I assume that at some point I must have known the date of death and it just resurfaced from my subconscious in my dream.

Academically, I sometimes research with my eyes deliberately unfocussed, and it sometimes works, but I assume I'm just accessing something that's already tucked away in my brain.

[ 04. November 2016, 11:04: Message edited by: North East Quine ]

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

Surface structure: the bits snd details which decorate the emotional and thematic structure: which may tell us something about feelings we know we have and those we don't.

I used to be fearful of falling and hitting the ground in dreams. Until I fell through the ground. I also learned the secret way to fold paper airplanes which allow flying.

It is easy to dismiss dreams if we think we are in control and logical, like the computers we created in our image and think they reflect back who we are. But we aren't computers and we aren't evidence-based logical creatures. We harbour impulses and wishes that we'd reject if we really knew ourselves. Dreams reflect all of this. Though we also dream about little bits of fluff that have blown into our heads by mistake, as Winnie the Pooh instructs.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Yes, dreams were definitely out of favour for a while, I suppose a vague kind of positivism was at large, but today, I think it's changed quite a lot. Of course, you get the willowy fairy people who want to live in dreams most of the time. But there is a middle way.

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

We forget a lot. When I was 4 or 5 I had a vivid dream - which for many years I believed was a genuine memory - of walking through a park with sculptures of prehistoric animals. At the time I had never been to such a place, and this was of course pre-television. The answer lies, in all likelihood, in the local cinema, in some Pathe Newsreel short probably about the Crystal Palace Park dinosaurs.

What is more interesting is the dream imagination capacity to synthesise something new out of the fragments of memory and experience. An instance is another childhood dream of going out of the yard door of the terraced house where we lived and finding myself on a tropical beach with a line of palm trees. The detail that stays with me is of the silt of dead palm fronds and blown sand underneath the trees. Which is what there would be.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
The detail that stays with me is of the silt of dead palm fronds and blown sand underneath the trees. Which is what there would be.

You are a descendant of the Telmarines and I claim my £5.

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

It might be instinct coded into our DNA, or Jung's concept of collective unconscious. But there are some very typical dream themes most have experienced: falling, and being chased.

It's easy to suggest that no-one whose ancestors weren't fearful of falling or of escaping from being chases didn't leave descendants because they fell and died, or were eaten by animals in the dark or killed by the neighbouring tribe. It has always sounded a little trite to me, but maybe it is true. It's a whole giant leap from there to go full Jung (or if you want Joseph Campbell) whose ideas suggest there are archetypical stories of our lives, our dreams and aspirations, and all of our experiences are iterations on common themes, of which there are a limited number.

Some dreams seem outside of the historical European typical themes. After sitting out in the autumn watching perhaps 200,000 snow and canada geese fly over for more than an hour, I dreamed of flying and feeling the wind through my feathers. When there's enough of then they fly low enough that you can hear the wind through their wings. That, and watching barren ground caribou across a river for 5 hours in an endless stream (I haven't a clue how many) create an overpowering image that it is neigh on impossible not to process in falling-asleep thoughts and to enter dreams.

Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :

Dreams.

Yes.

But rarely. Very rarely. Some people never.

Combine with some other things to get far more, dreams is just one style of communicating. Andrew greeley counted over half of us have some experience, most are not dreams.

And most dreams and never repeated.

Rarely. But real.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Practically speaking that's all people never for me. Greeley - who's guess is as bad as anybody's - nonetheless looks like a good read. "Practically speaking, your religion is the story you tell about your life.".

[ 04. November 2016, 14:46: Message edited by: Martin60 ]

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Yes, that and too much cheese ...

Experts now think the cheese thing a bit of a myth.
If fact they now seem to want to say a cube of mild cheddar before bedtime settles the system for a good night's sleep.

Not that I would know as my own sleep is inconsistent, often punctuated with quite vivid dreams which are mainly anxiety based and of little apparent significance.

Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :

The prevalence of metaphor in dreams can be quite startling.

I remember one from 15 or so years ago - during a long research project which was going nowhere and had been like that for quite a while - where I was smashing my head into a wall, over and over again. The wall came equipped with a spike, as I think of it now. That phrase 'banging my head against a wall' was not unfamiliar to me, but it would not have occurred to my conscious mind to use it, I don't think - but my unconscious lapped it up.

The other night, I had a dream about rowing with the wife. It was only when I woke up that it struck me that the rooms in which this was taking place were in my parent's old house where I grew up and which I left at age 18, years before we met. It's striking what dreams sometimes tell us about how we feel about things.

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

Like a dream I had where someone I knew and I had flats on two floors of the same stair - literally 'living on top of each other'. It was a caution about my over-involvement with this person I would have been wise to heed.

Posted by The Phantom Flan Flinger (# 8891) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:

quote:
"'In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.
Acts 2 v17

It's not that I'm turning into a proof-texting evangelinazi, so much as I'm so bored of the sound of my _own_ voice.

But I dreamt dreams when I was a young man...

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Me too, startling, technically accurate apocalyptic ones. One heavenly one.

All stuff I made up from stuff others made up.

Chilialism in the time of the bomb.

Posted by Jack o' the Green (# 11091) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I had a client who used to dream about Mecca quite a lot (not a Muslim).

Were they into Bingo in a big way perchance?

Posted by Humble Servant (# 18391) on :

I once dreamed I was driving down a narrow road and could not avoid hitting a fox. The following morning I found a fox had been killed on the road outside my house, but out of earshot or view.
I don't know the meaning of that. Pure coincidence perhaps. I don't dream about foxes much, but I occasionally dream about driving. It seems an odd coincidence but the alternative is to believe that we are aware of things whilst sleeping via some sense that we know nothing about.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

The Greeks held that there were two kinds of dreams. The ones that come through the gates of horn are true dreams, and the ones that come through the gates of ivory are false. Clearly if any truth comes through dreams there's a lot of chaff in the mix.
I've only had one dream that I am certain was a Message from Beyond. I ignored it.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Humble Servant:
I once dreamed I was driving down a narrow road and could not avoid hitting a fox. The following morning I found a fox had been killed on the road outside my house, but out of earshot or view.
I don't know the meaning of that. Pure coincidence perhaps. I don't dream about foxes much, but I occasionally dream about driving. It seems an odd coincidence but the alternative is to believe that we are aware of things whilst sleeping via some sense that we know nothing about.

It may have been a recurring dream that you only ever remembered the day it was randomly fulfilled. A dream precipitated by you previously encountering a dead fox on the road without even registering it beyond the moment and maybe the squeals of brakes and fox a thousand yards and more away on a clear night.

Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
I don't think so, our brains are processing the day's information during dreams. Our anxieties are dealt with then too. Dream deprivation can be very harmful, they are important for our mental and neurological health.

One thing I certainly don't suffer from, and that's dream deprivation! I've dreamed vivid, complicated, technicolour, cast of thousands sometimes, with every detail sometimes remembered clearly for years, since I was a child. Why my brain spends so much time presenting me with these complicated stories I really don't know ... well, I do, it is as you say! I just wish I had the genes to be a writer of fiction!

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Humble Servant:
I once dreamed I was driving down a narrow road and could not avoid hitting a fox. The following morning I found a fox had been killed on the road outside my house, but out of earshot or view.

That seems to me a textbook example of my supposition that our awareness extends a short way into what we think of as the future. Something a little out of the ordinary catches our attention and we recollect or dream about it. That dream/recollection is as likely to happen immediately before as after.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

That short way is because our pre-conscious awareness stores information quicker than our conscious awareness. It's ALL in the past.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

A classic 'big' dream from my collection: a man dreamed of a woman strangling in a wardrobe. His first associations with this was his mother, natch, but several weeks later, he was musing that it reminded him of his own creativity, strangled for various reasons. A bit later he started writing his first novel. She bangs, she bangs!

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Humble Servant:
I once dreamed I was driving down a narrow road and could not avoid hitting a fox. The following morning I found a fox had been killed on the road outside my house, but out of earshot or view.

That is really remarkable. I live in an area with lots of foxes, but I have never seen one that had been hit by a car.

I actually think that the most interesting thing about this thread is the acceptance of the idea that there is a spiritual world.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:

quote:
Originally posted by Humble Servant:
I once dreamed I was driving down a narrow road and could not avoid hitting a fox. The following morning I found a fox had been killed on the road outside my house, but out of earshot or view.
That is really remarkable. I live in an area with lots of foxes, but I have never seen one that had been hit by a car.

I actually think that the most interesting thing about this thread is the acceptance of the idea that there is a spiritual world.

It's remarkable that you find that unremarkable coincidence, with an easily rational explanation, remarkable.

And what have dreams got to do with the spirit world, whatever that is?

Let alone the future, which is null.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

I dreamed that a JCB had driven into my garden. When I got there (had been away), my neighbour told me that one had. I believe!

Posted by angelfish (# 8884) on :

I love having dreams - they're fascinating (mostly insights into what's bothering me). One that sticks out in my mind is from when I had taken the decision to give up my City job and look after my baby, but all my other Mummy friends were going back to work. I dreamed that we were all running for a train (at Blackfriars Station in London), and they all jumped on it, but I was slowed down by the pram I was pushing and didn't get on it in time. The train pulled away with everyone else on board and I was left behind on the platform. Not cryptic at all, but it helped me to process my feelings at the time.

I have had one experience of a dream that I think was sent to help me. I had been badly hurt by someone, and unable to forgive them properly and move on. One night, I dreamed he and I met and were delighted to see each other, and embraced as friends. When I awoke, I had totally forgiven him and was completely free of the burden of unforgiveness. It was marvellous.

So I think that dreams can be given to help us overcome problems our own minds impose on us. The "an angel appeared to him in a dream and told him to flee to Egypt" type of dreams must be very rare - otherwise we'd be living like babies, asking God to direct our every move.

Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :

I have quite vivid dreams that I sort of remember when waking. Some of them are quite funny, others are nonsense, others are funny nonsense and still others are disturbing outworkings of my negative feelings towards some people. I didn't used to have many dreams. They started when I began taking medication for a mental illness I think.

Posted by Galloping Granny (# 13814) on :

I have always had vivid dreams; for several years I recorded them.
But for some years now they vanish as I wake. I'm aware that I've been in interesting situations doing interesting things with interesting people, but all I'm left with is an occasional brief sensation later in the day of the ambience of the dream, and then it's gone forever.

Yet I can remember a recurring dream of my early childhood, that I was riding a goat across a vast grassy plain while a voice chanted "Waiarapa! Waiarapa!" – I'd mis-heard the place name "Wairarapa"

GG

Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :

I dreamed last night that I found a clump of matted hair and sticky weed at the nape of the neck of one of my dogs. In my dream, I remembered the place in the garden where she is likely to have picked the weed up.

INTERPRETATION: I am feeling guilty about the gardening and need to do something about it.

[ 08. November 2016, 22:49: Message edited by: simontoad ]

Posted by angelfish (# 8884) on :

My standard "haven't done the gardening for ages" dream (which occurs whenever there is any kind of work that has been left undone for too long) sees me in my garden, but it is a huge English stately home kind of garden with fountains, and topiary (not in good nick) and a pond in which has grown a behemoth, huge catfish, giant eel or something else quite scary. I have to kill the beast and put the garden in order. I love that dream - just because for a moment I know how it feels to own a wonderful massive garden, even though it is accompanied by fretting and guilt.

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

My very vivid last night's dream was riding my winter bike in a snow storm in Winnipeg, going into all the stores along Portage Ave and track standing inside (meaning stopped but not touching the ground with feet, bouncing), and teaching people a song which had the words "nothing really matters" repeated. It was before the arena moved downtown. I was rather happy to have had such a positive dream.

(I sang it to my wife before she'd had her morning coffee and she contradicted me.)

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

heheheheh.

I dreamt yesterday of chasing my sister through a huge department store crawling with dangers and traps. It doesn't take much to connect this to my worries over her ovarian cancer treatment.

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