Dreams - Living in a fairytale

[LearntYoung]

To me, dreams are powerful tools of the mind to help you deal with tough experiences in life etc.
Dreams have been my tool in dealing with grief, but have also been experiences on themselves.

For example, I've once induced sleep paralysis, after being told a method to induce lucid dreaming.
And just now I was walking downstairs when suddenly my vision got darker and darker, a tunnel vision got smaller and smaller until I was blind and I felt a shock.
Then I woke up...

These kind of things, I find fascinating, but I don't see how or why the human body has such a feature and why it scares itsself like that...

What are your thoughts on dreams and what's your weirdest dream experience?

 

[herbavore]

More than anything else I just love dreaming--even the nightmares. It's like tripping, you always learn something!

I definitely understand what you mean when you say that you have used your dreams to deal with grief. Dreams take me to places in my grief I would not willingly go awake. But they are necessary places. Dreams have also brought back the person I grieve for--sometimes as a baby, sometimes a child and sometimes as he was right before his death as a young man. These dreams are precious to me no matter how hard.

The weirdest dreams or dream-states in my lifetime took place when I first went off to university. It was not my first time away from home (boarding school and then run-away for several years) so I don't know why this particular place and time set me on such a strange course but I began to sleep walk. I lived in a dorm and my room was on the second floor. I would frequently be dreaming something very intense and scary and force myself into waking up and instead of waking up in my bed I would be outside in front of the dorm or in the stairwell or downstairs in the kitchen. This always happened really late at night when no one else was up but I always wonder what would have happened if a person saw me and started talking to me thinking I was awake.

 

[-=SS=-]

I love dreams (and sleep!). I find it far more revealing than the standard modern existence, far more moments of revelation and "ah-ha!" moments where I get a glimpse that there's something more to life.

Dreaming to me is about processing memories, dealing with anxieties and fears, in order to make your waking state more efficient. It's a way of visually communicating to you when something is wrong, or when you're doing something wrong in the waking state, so that it may be brought to your attention. In dreaming you tend to witness as opposed to the waking state when any number of egos can take over and keep certain things suppressed eg the sexual drive. I've had pre-cog dreams before, lucid dreaming is a regular occurrence, and occasionally a mystical dream where something is trying to communicate with me.

As for weirdest.. too many to pick from. Last night I had an interesting dream. This kid from primary school (around 20 years ago now) who was dirty, pretty disgusting, but also aggressive especially towards the class pretty girl, was in my dream last night. I got into the odd scuffle with him, one involving cushions and destroying a wall display in the classroom that ended up with the headmistress coming in and pulling as out of the classroom in front of everyone. I felt like I had to protect the pretty girls honor or something from this dirt bag.. she didn't like him, we were friends. Anyway, he was in my dream last night trying to steal my tobacco haha.. and started to fight me. I refused it all and he started to bite down as hard as he could on my hand. I just stood there and was thinking "hah.. i feel no pain, no fear at all". It's amusing when dream characters try to hurt or kill me in a dream and nothing happens, I just laugh to myself as I watch this dream taking place.

I woke up feeling very relaxed like I had just processed one of those old memories involving that kid, like I had let something go. Love that feeling. It's like you've done something good but you can't put your finger on it.

 

[Br1ngTh3Ra1n]

My best part of sleeping is dreaming
I take it personally and rage on someone if he cuts me off a dream !