I dream every time I go to sleep, and alot of times just when Im resting my eyes and still conscious of reality like cars moving, radio playing, etc.
I dream so much and so lifelike, I almost do not look forward to sleep. Because it is a lie, and because the dreams usually outshine my real life. Alot of times it is like I am apart of an extensive movie scene, in another city, meeting new people. I rarely if ever, see myself in a mirror in dreams. What I am is a singular conscious entity, and totally assuming it is myself in charge. But I rarely see myself in any reflection. The majority I see buildings, if I am the driver of a car, a passing pedestrian, an individual among the masses, or back home with my family, even those deceased.
It wouldnt be so bad if my dreams were based on memories, but they are not. They are experiances demanding to be experianced in dream form. Some can make no sense for the purpose, and some can be exagerations of wierd circumstances. What confuses me is meeting people I have never seen, going to places I have never been, or being with people of which I do not socialize in real life. Are these composites of real life rearranged and redone?
There are some dreams when I am walking a busy city street, and I know my way around, but when I wake up, I think to myself, I have never been to such a street or neighborhood.
If these dreams were somehow inspired by hollywood movies, Im sure I would dream monsters, aliens, and space travel because I watch alot of science fiction movies, but they are not.
It is a totally different source of reality which has nothing to do with movies, tv, or other media influences. They are my own personal journey living in my soul. I actuall have more repor with people in my dreams than in real life. Its almost as if the mask of mistrust which we feel in the real world has been eliminated, thus leaving candid thoughts, sayings, and motions of what people really think and feel, and outwardly expressed.
This is where the dream world lets me down. Because when I wake up, I am no longer free, but a hostage in a well carved restrictive world, unlike the freedom to explore, express oneself, and socialize in another world made so strong, it feels like it actually exits. I would give anything to record these dreams so that other people could see, and also able to document for myself. Perhaps deep into the future, man will be able to submit those faint dreams into a hardcopy media form, so that it is more than a wisp of smoke.

Dreams are an expression of wave/particle duality. Like light existing both as a particle and a wave, our waking world is the solid particle portion, and dreams are the waveform counterpart. The quantum term "collapsing the waveform" into something solid by observing it is a good analogy for how dreams work. In this case, archetypes would be a good metaphor for a waveform.

An archetype is the sum total of associations to any given topic. When you think "Ocean", you have associations with beach, waves, whales, oil spills. You could go on and on building a very complex and densely populated system of connections if it was possibly to list every association you've personally made over the years with ocean. If you were to repeat that process with each of the individual associations like whale and beach, then do that for each of those new associations, continuing until you've covered everything you know, you would end up with a very complicated structure similar to a neural network. It's this individualized master structure that we travel on in dreams.

Every thing in dreams is an archetype. When you focus on an archetype in a dream, that causes some of it's associations to manifest. The associations with stronger connections, like those with strong emotional charges, are more likely to manifest than others, but over all the process is pretty random. So you focus on an archetype, and it's associations manifest until one of those new associations captures your attention and becomes your new dominant focus. Since that new element of focus is also an archetype. it'sassociations will manifest until one of them fully captures your attention and becomes the new dominant focal point. This process keeps repeating it's self from the moment you fall asleep until the moment you awaken.

What's important to note for the topic of this discussion, is that like snowflakes, no two people will have the same archetypal structures. These structures are created by each individual, and since each person has different experiences, we all have different archetypal structures. This means that there can not be a stable dimension or reality that dreamers can go to where different people will see the exact same thing. What we see in dreams is determined by our own individual archetypes.

Even in shared dreams, each dreamer participating experiences their own independent dream. And there are differences in shared dream accounts, resulting from the different archetypes each person possesses. An animal lover and someone who has been mauled by a dog will not see the same thing were they to encounter a pitbull in a shared dream, for reasons that by now should be obvious.



[edit on 12-5-2010 by The Cusp]

Originally posted by YouAreDreaming
Dreams are thoughts, thoughts create reality. Reality is a dream.

I get that feeling as often if not more often than the inverse.

I personally think there are many different levels to dreaming. It seems our subconcious mind does need to work out and resolve our day to day problems and anxieties and this makes up a large proportion of dreams.

There are other 'dream states' such as lucid, precognitive, astral and everything inbetween. Some of those can feel more real than reality in my experience

Does anyone else here find that they have more dream recall with the waxing of the moon? This may sound a bit strange but I have definitely noticed that I recall my dreams more clearly when the moon is in it's waxing phase, ie new to full.

Today I had a dream in which I was asking myself " Is this a dream? I think its impossible, since I can touch, read and just feel alive like in real life "...10 seconds after I was surprised it was a dream and I woke up saying " Wow ".
It was a dream in which I could just feel like in actual reality, all was absolutely real.
For me, it was another universe.

Originally posted by WatchRider
I've often wondered if some of the dreams that we all have take place not in our imagination or merely 'organic' in nature but if there really is much more too them than this.
Some of us may of heard how dreams may be symbolic or represent a message we need to interpret.
Again I think sometimes there's more to it than even that.
I recently had a dream where I ascertained information that I later learned to be true on real life.
The information will remain private but I wonder if that in dreams we are interacting with persons from another dimension or reality. This other dimension being sentient of this one.

Thoughts and ideas on this appreciated.

My psychic abilities seem to only manifest in my dreams!!!! Dreams are important. Don't try to narrow them down as to the nature of them. They will exert their influences on you no matter what you think of them. At least once you have passed the personal level. As long as you, yourself, is controlled by some sorts of personal psychological complexes (either with your parents or your childhood), those dreams are often limited in their scope and influence.