Dreamscape Ponderings

I have been fascinated by dreams for most of my life. There have been many personal experiences I have had in dreams that have amazed me, and terrified me. I have had lucid dreams, and dreams that were totally out of my control.

There have been many different ideas on what dreams are, where they come from, and what they could mean – but in truth, no one is 100% certain why we dream.

My longstanding personal belief is that dreams are just a byproduct of an active mind during sleeping stages. This has been further reinforced to me during bouts of lucid dreaming, where I become a god of my dreamscape and control everything.

But every now and then I experience something… slightly more encapsulating.


Dream: The Island

I once had a dream that I was on an old ship that was sailing to America from England. We stopped at an island and loved it so much we decided to stay. After a few years people began to get sick, and a plague started spreading throughout the colony. It was decided that we should leave the island to escape the plague – the only problem was that there wasn’t enough supplies for everyone to go.

A decision was made to pack the ship with as much supplies as possible. A few of the men went onboard, and all of the healthy women and children.

In my dream I was one of the men who had to remain behind, while my wife and children went aboard to make sail for America. My wife and children had fire-red hair, and I loved them with all of my heart. In the dream I remember hugging each one of my family members goodbye, kissing my little children, and crying at the gut wrenching loss I was feeling. I literally woke up from the dream crying.

To this day I still feel some pang of longing for the red-headed family. I remember how much I loved them, and the sorrow I felt.

Now, here is where the story gets interesting.

I told my mother, who is an avid genealogy junky, about this dream. She then told me that some of our family ancestors who were coming to America from England did in fact stop on an island for a period of time, and then inexplicably left. I have often wondered if I had a dream about a past life, or perhaps an ancestors past life experiences.

My Question to you, the readers:

Have you ever had a dream so profound, and so emotional that you still remember it today?

That is the one thing that always gets me wondering about dreams – how can we have such a strong emotional love for a “fictitious” character out of a dream?

Perhaps dreams are something more than we imagine them to be. Perhaps they are the gateway to remembrance.

I have wondered about dreams as well. I have often had dreams where I have lived for a period of two months and when I wake I remember the whole two months. The memories will fade quick if I don't write it down.

I had a prophetic dream when I was 8, nothing special, just walking through a store behind my mother, who was bringing a black dress to the dressing room. In the dream i was watching a the dress was dragging on the ground behind her. Woke up and lo and behold, mother took me to Mervyn's, where she picked the same dress and it dragged on ground on the way to dressing room.

After 9/11 I had a dream of another attack, I saw bars/restaurants exploding on both sides of the street, with people running away. In the dream I knew the city started with a "B", but couldn't remember the actual name. A few months after the dream I saw the same scene on TV of the bombings in Bali.

As a side note, after my father divorced my mother, he was basically living in a crappy apartment and quite depressed. He dreamed he bought a winning scratchers ticket at a certain store. As soon as he woke up, he went out to that store and bought some scratchers. He won $10,000. This enabled him to buy a plot of land (this was about 30 years ago) and put a down payment on a house. So far, I haven't had my dad's money mojo, but I did dream of "being together" with a friend from work (who I didn't know had just been dumped), a few weeks later we started dating and we have now been married for 9 years.

I absolutely believe there is more to our dreams, you just have to have to courage to be able to deal with the bad stuff as well. After the Bali incident, I made myself stop remembering my dreams for awhile, because it really scared me. You also have to be able to sort out the different types of dreams, like the OP said. Some are to work things out, some are to enlighten, some are memories, and some are your body trying to tell you things.

That is a very interesting post, mystic0608. I really enjoyed it, and thank you for sharing.

I think dreams have much more to them than we realize - I have read of psychic phenomena like you describe, communication with deceased loved ones, etc.

I fully think there is more to dreams.

As I stated in my above post - those intense feelings of love from dreams make me think there is something more. I have never had intense feelings of love for any thing I have ever seen in a movie, etc. So I would assume I would feel the same about a dream.

It is almost as if I am remembering a person I truly did love, and those feelings are coming back.

I love dreams - all of them, S&F
A couple of things

I dreamed once that I got shot in the head
I often dream that I am awake

I have had spiritual dreams, flying dreams and lucid dreams
I remember most of my dreams from practice and always spend my day thinking on them - huge fascination.

I have some theories about dreams and am in the process of writing a book on the subject

Great thread, thanks for sharing

CD