Any suggestions appreciated...

Hello everyone!

I hope you are having a great day wherever you are in the world. My day is good, but my nights are a different story. Here's why....

My little 'dream problem' started around mid-December when I took a trip to Pennsylvania to visit family. I stayed with friends and after the second night staying there, I had a very vivid dream. I have had vivid dreams before, but this seemed more 'real' than anything I have ever experience before. In the dream I was talking with friends, then I was getting married for a second time, and in the 'church' sitting right behind me was my first wife - it's worth noting I am not and have have been married in real life. In the dream however, I was married already with children to the first wife, and even though we're still married, she encouraged me to take a second wife. I'm not into polygamy or anything similar in real life, so this idea/dream left me a little shaken. When I eventually woke up I had experienced my two marriages, children to both wives, and began to see grandchildren appear on the scene. I'm not old enough, yet, for grandchildren so this was also something that seemed a little strange.

Anyway I dismissed it, and put it down to being a 'one-off' experience. Except, that the next night I had another very vivid dream. This time I was re-building a disused railway line, and re-opening stations and getting rail services running again for a line that was shut down fifty years ago. I remember helping to lay rails, and bolt them to the sleepers under the rails, for putting the balast in place around the rails and sleepers, and talking to the crew also putting the rails down. In the dream I was in charge of making it all work. Of putting the plan together for the re-opening, and for getting it all rolling again. I clearly remember this dream as though it was a day in my actual waking life... I vividly remember talking to people on one of the re-opened station platforms along the route and having my back slapped. Even what suit I was wearing, the colour of my tie, and so on - even the colour of the mug I was drinking tea from (it was a dusty sky blue, holding it in my left hand).

Night three, and I had another dream equally vivid, but this one woke me up. I don't remember much about this, because at the point I woke up I was quite frightened. I'm not sure what made me feel so afraid, but it made me put some music on and I read my book for a while - so I forgot about what I had been dreaming about.

This sort of thing went on for a few more nights, until I flew home.

Now I'm home I am having stange dreams still. They aren't as vivid, but they are making me become conscious in the middle of the night.

Now for the bit that really gets me... For the last two nights, I have woken in the middle of the night with the distinct feeling I'm not alone. I do live alone, but last night I woke with the strong feeling I was being watched, and there was a presence in the room with me. I was actually terrified, which isn't a feeling I can say I have felt often in my life. I was certain that I had woken because of a noise in the room that I hadn't made. Although, when I sat up and put the light on, there was nothing there... The whole experience was quite overwhelming and I would say had quite sinister overtones, although I'm willing to accept that it could just have been a couple of bad dreams.

It is worth noting that I live in an old house. There have been 'instances' in the past where ghosts have been spotted but nothing quite so sinister as this.

As I write this, I'm laid in bed. It is dark outside and there is no one else in the room but me (at this precise moment). Sometimes my girlfriend stays over, and she gets spooked out by stuff like this, so I can't exactly talk to her - she'll refuse to stay here ever again. So, if any of the good people of ATS have any ideas, please let me know.

reply to post by dampnickers


Do you wake up with a dry mouth?

reply to post by brice


Good question... Last night when I woke up I felt like I was dehydrated, and hadn't had any liquids for a week! The night before however, I woke up and noticed I had droolled onto my pillow and was salivating like I was expecting a tasty meal or something similar. When the dreams initially started though, I didn't pay any attention to whether I had a dry mouth... only on these last two nights have I paid very detailed attention to what has been going on around me at the point I wake up.

Realistic dreams are a symptom of sleep apnea, Starving your brain of o2.

reply to post by dampnickers


1. Sounds like a subconscious thing. Apprehensive about commitment...? Just spit-balling here since I don't know you, but I would do some introspection regarding that one.

2. Past life I.M.O. KInd of out there I know, but geeze that was specific.

3. General anxiety. It could be over too many vivid dreams. You are probably dreaming more than you remember, and if some of those are nightmares you can get in an apprehensive spiral that makes you have more vivid dreams and nightmares, which causes more anxiety, which causes more vivid dreams and nightmares, and so on and so forth.

reply to post by dampnickers


Hi There,

It sounds to me like you're being bothered more by the feelings of someone watching you & sensing an invisible presence in your home, as opposed to the recent increase in vivid dreams, am I correct?

For the increase in vivid dream activity, many medical conditions might be causing this.

Here is one link on possible medical conditions that cause increased vivid dream activity:

www.netwellness.org...

Have you begun a new medication, increased your level of exercise, began taking a new vitamin supplement or herb or have changed anything about your diet in recent months? Any of those could have an effect on your dream activity.

As far as the house, I would call a priest and ask if he could please come and bless your home. A priest will do this free of charge (some accept a nominal monetary gift, however if you're so inclined). The priest will say special prayers, use holy water and it really helps in my experience.

Some people use sage and other herbs for smudging to clear a home.

Wearing sacramentals such as a scapular and items blessed by a priest can help, also having Saint Benedict medals. I use salt blessed by a priest, too.

For people who believe in them, there are certain gemstones that are said to have protective qualities about them i.e. black tourmaline, etc.

Do you spend a lot of time indoors? I would suggest getting sunshine, fresh air and exercise to help clear your mind.

As far as possible interpretations of the dreams, I can't offer any suggestions. Dreams can be profound and detailed and vivid such as yours. I drempt I was leaping over a river with hippopotamusses courageously and made it to the other side the other night - talk about weird!! But the key in that dream was that I was courageous and victorious.

I hope some of this might help you.

- AWoman

The dreams are about your inner desire for a wife and family. However you doubt your current partner is the one for you,but you love her. Your biological clock is clicking and your dreams are telling you to start laying down your tracks .
Pure speculation of course

At first I would probably say that your subconscious is trying to tell you to lay some solid foundations in life once and for all, other wise not only will your ex-wives multiply, so too will your grandchildren.

You see I have also worked building new railways in arid areas, and the key to a long lasting railway are solid foundations.

It's the key to everything I guess.

But more to the point, If you lay out your tracks with a solid base plan, and stay focused on traveling the same path over and over, the rewards will come and you'll get the back-slapping kudos from your peers which you well deserve.

But stray from that path and relationships will breakdown, which leads to another relationship and so-on and in fifty years your gonna have 1000 great great grand children.

* * * * *

As for the noises that go bump in the night, I have experienced that all my life. Sometimes I hear people bashing on my bedroom wall, just behind the bed-head, and of course I am home alone, but I search the house anyway.

Other times I will wake up and see people or beings standing around my bed and I am unable to move. Again, I live alone so when I wake I search the house.

The only tell tale sign that I have ever had that somebody may have been in my room while I slept or in the house is, when I walk from the kitchen into the garage and jump into the car, the rear view mirror is turned the opposite way and I can smell tobacco. I don't smoke and nobody else drives my car. Hmmmm.

* * * * *

I have a question to ask you about your dreams, to see if they were related to the bumps in the night.

During your dreams of ex-wives, future wives and future grand children, Did a question enter your mind which you had to answer?

If so, the reality of your answer may not become clear for at least 20 years.

Cryptic I know, but hey it's your dream.

PS. Don't go off the rails.

dampnickers
Hello everyone!

I hope you are having a great day wherever you are in the world. My day is good, but my nights are a different story. Here's why....

My little 'dream problem' started around mid-December when I took a trip to Pennsylvania to visit family. I stayed with friends and after the second night staying there, I had a very vivid dream. I have had vivid dreams before, but this seemed more 'real' than anything I have ever experience before. In the dream I was talking with friends, then I was getting married for a second time, and in the 'church' sitting right behind me was my first wife - it's worth noting I am not and have have been married in real life. In the dream however, I was married already with children to the first wife, and even though we're still married, she encouraged me to take a second wife. I'm not into polygamy or anything similar in real life, so this idea/dream left me a little shaken. When I eventually woke up I had experienced my two marriages, children to both wives, and began to see grandchildren appear on the scene. I'm not old enough, yet, for grandchildren so this was also something that seemed a little strange.

A few things, when we dream, the landscape we are in, the people and symbolism we experience that is unique to each individual, is you telling you about you. Everything in the dream is a representation of your psyche.

In your first dream, it may be helpful to look at the women of your life as concepts, or ideas that you have and are marrying yourself to. Has your way of thinking changed at all around the time of, and since you started having vivid dreams? I would interpret children with these wives as concepts that spawn from the major concepts that are symbolically represented as the women you've married. Did you come up in a Catholic or Christian setting? Our upbringing, and even ancestry will lend to our symbol sets.

dampnickers
Anyway I dismissed it, and put it down to being a 'one-off' experience. Except, that the next night I had another very vivid dream. This time I was re-building a disused railway line, and re-opening stations and getting rail services running again for a line that was shut down fifty years ago. I remember helping to lay rails, and bolt them to the sleepers under the rails, for putting the balast in place around the rails and sleepers, and talking to the crew also putting the rails down. In the dream I was in charge of making it all work. Of putting the plan together for the re-opening, and for getting it all rolling again. I clearly remember this dream as though it was a day in my actual waking life... I vividly remember talking to people on one of the re-opened station platforms along the route and having my back slapped. Even what suit I was wearing, the colour of my tie, and so on - even the colour of the mug I was drinking tea from (it was a dusty sky blue, holding it in my left hand).

I would interpret re-building a railway line that's been out of use for a long time, as rebuilding in your psyche a foundation upon which some "train" (of thought) can move freely through your psyche/temporal landscape. This could actually be a symbolic representation of physical rewiring of the neural pathways in your brain. Again, this comes from taking on new concepts, or ways in which you view the world in and around you and since it is a re-building of an old track I would see this as you going back to a way of thinking that you had in the past, but re-working it to fit with your current experience in life. Holding your tea in your left hand, I would equate with keeping yourself refreshed by the right side or your brain, the feeling, intuitive, artistic, creative side, since the right half of the brain controls the left side of the body)

I'm going to recommend something to you here called Psychocartography. It was developed by a man who has worked on, and continues still to develop a continuation of Dewey Larson's Reciprocal Theory of the Physical Universe (RS Theory). Bruce's work is called RS2, and as part of it, he developed a method of establishing communication between the waking conscious self and the unconscious self, through the language of his personal symbols. I'm currently working on it for myself and it is making understanding my dreams much less guess work, because I'm able to understand what the dream is trying to convey to me, by understanding what my personal symbols mean to me. You can find information on Psychocartography here in the Introduction to Magnum Opus

dampnickers
Now for the bit that really gets me... For the last two nights, I have woken in the middle of the night with the distinct feeling I'm not alone. I do live alone, but last night I woke with the strong feeling I was being watched, and there was a presence in the room with me. I was actually terrified, which isn't a feeling I can say I have felt often in my life. I was certain that I had woken because of a noise in the room that I hadn't made. Although, when I sat up and put the light on, there was nothing there... The whole experience was quite overwhelming and I would say had quite sinister overtones, although I'm willing to accept that it could just have been a couple of bad dreams.

Quite often when a person is in the development of psionic (psychic) ability, they begin having lucid dreams/astral projections. Your physical self holds a template of you that cannot be erased until it's eventual end at "death". When we dream, think of the dreamscape like a holodeck from Star Trek, in which you have created the program for yourself. The you that experiences the dream is an energetic double, or copy of the template that is you, and when you go into your psyche, it can also feel as though you've gone outside of the body. There are many people that report this feeling of a presence in the room, when what it is in reality, is your physical self with the original master copy, integrating the reflected energy double that was dreaming. As you wake up, you may experience feelings of being pulled backwards or falling. This can be frightening sometimes and because of it the energetic double of you may try to run from it, but in the end this will be an unfruitful endeavor, since the natural process for waking up is that the double reintegrate, and the dream be relayed onto your physical brain. Simply put... you are both in bed, and somewhere else dreaming, and when you feel the presence of someone watching, there's a strong possibility that it's just you, being aware of the reflected version of you in close proximity to your waking consciousness.

I recommend for you to read Astral Dynamics by Robert Bruce for a more in depth explanation of the mechanics of this energetic interaction between you and the reflected double.

reply to post by dampnickers


Stop caring.

or think of it like this...

dont pay attention to it.

requires you to firmly root yourself in your descion. then you wont have to deal with it anymore.

brice
Realistic dreams are a symptom of sleep apnea, Starving your brain of o2.

/sigh... what some people come up with on ATS :rolleyes:

Actually, most sleep apnea sufferers have a decrease in noticeable dream activity, vivid or otherwise. Theres even evidence that while snoring, you dont dream (REM) at all, and snoring is extremely common in people with sleep apnea.

OP, youre not "Starving your brain of o2" You can safely relegate that suggestion for youre having vivid dreams to the whacky bin.

reply to post by CaticusMaximus


My younger brother has sleep apnea and has vivid/lucid dreams on a regular basis. When he is in REM sleep, he moans like a zombie, and while I thought this was something like snoring, trying to get more oxygen, I've now come to believe that he is somehow creating a tone, much like a monk chanting a sound.. like ohm, but it's unique to him in that this is how his body tunes the frequency of his consciousness into the temporal realm/time-space/cosmic sector. He's a big guy and has had myriad health problems since early childhood, including a heart murmer, sleep apnea, and a nerve condition that doesn't relay the message from his stomach to his brain that he's full, which is why he's such a big guy now.

joeyv23

dampnickers
Hello everyone!

I hope you are having a great day wherever you are in the world. My day is good, but my nights are a different story. Here's why....

My little 'dream problem' started around mid-December when I took a trip to Pennsylvania to visit family. I stayed with friends and after the second night staying there, I had a very vivid dream. I have had vivid dreams before, but this seemed more 'real' than anything I have ever experience before. In the dream I was talking with friends, then I was getting married for a second time, and in the 'church' sitting right behind me was my first wife - it's worth noting I am not and have have been married in real life. In the dream however, I was married already with children to the first wife, and even though we're still married, she encouraged me to take a second wife. I'm not into polygamy or anything similar in real life, so this idea/dream left me a little shaken. When I eventually woke up I had experienced my two marriages, children to both wives, and began to see grandchildren appear on the scene. I'm not old enough, yet, for grandchildren so this was also something that seemed a little strange.

A few things, when we dream, the landscape we are in, the people and symbolism we experience that is unique to each individual, is you telling you about you. Everything in the dream is a representation of your psyche.

In your first dream, it may be helpful to look at the women of your life as concepts, or ideas that you have and are marrying yourself to. Has your way of thinking changed at all around the time of, and since you started having vivid dreams? I would interpret children with these wives as concepts that spawn from the major concepts that are symbolically represented as the women you've married. Did you come up in a Catholic or Christian setting? Our upbringing, and even ancestry will lend to our symbol sets.

dampnickers
Anyway I dismissed it, and put it down to being a 'one-off' experience. Except, that the next night I had another very vivid dream. This time I was re-building a disused railway line, and re-opening stations and getting rail services running again for a line that was shut down fifty years ago. I remember helping to lay rails, and bolt them to the sleepers under the rails, for putting the balast in place around the rails and sleepers, and talking to the crew also putting the rails down. In the dream I was in charge of making it all work. Of putting the plan together for the re-opening, and for getting it all rolling again. I clearly remember this dream as though it was a day in my actual waking life... I vividly remember talking to people on one of the re-opened station platforms along the route and having my back slapped. Even what suit I was wearing, the colour of my tie, and so on - even the colour of the mug I was drinking tea from (it was a dusty sky blue, holding it in my left hand).

I would interpret re-building a railway line that's been out of use for a long time, as rebuilding in your psyche a foundation upon which some "train" (of thought) can move freely through your psyche/temporal landscape. This could actually be a symbolic representation of physical rewiring of the neural pathways in your brain. Again, this comes from taking on new concepts, or ways in which you view the world in and around you and since it is a re-building of an old track I would see this as you going back to a way of thinking that you had in the past, but re-working it to fit with your current experience in life. Holding your tea in your left hand, I would equate with keeping yourself refreshed by the right side or your brain, the feeling, intuitive, artistic, creative side, since the right half of the brain controls the left side of the body)

I'm going to recommend something to you here called Psychocartography. It was developed by a man who has worked on, and continues still to develop a continuation of Dewey Larson's Reciprocal Theory of the Physical Universe (RS Theory). Bruce's work is called RS2, and as part of it, he developed a method of establishing communication between the waking conscious self and the unconscious self, through the language of his personal symbols. I'm currently working on it for myself and it is making understanding my dreams much less guess work, because I'm able to understand what the dream is trying to convey to me, by understanding what my personal symbols mean to me. You can find information on Psychocartography here in the Introduction to Magnum Opus

dampnickers
Now for the bit that really gets me... For the last two nights, I have woken in the middle of the night with the distinct feeling I'm not alone. I do live alone, but last night I woke with the strong feeling I was being watched, and there was a presence in the room with me. I was actually terrified, which isn't a feeling I can say I have felt often in my life. I was certain that I had woken because of a noise in the room that I hadn't made. Although, when I sat up and put the light on, there was nothing there... The whole experience was quite overwhelming and I would say had quite sinister overtones, although I'm willing to accept that it could just have been a couple of bad dreams.

Quite often when a person is in the development of psionic (psychic) ability, they begin having lucid dreams/astral projections. Your physical self holds a template of you that cannot be erased until it's eventual end at "death". When we dream, think of the dreamscape like a holodeck from Star Trek, in which you have created the program for yourself. The you that experiences the dream is an energetic double, or copy of the template that is you, and when you go into your psyche, it can also feel as though you've gone outside of the body. There are many people that report this feeling of a presence in the room, when what it is in reality, is your physical self with the original master copy, integrating the reflected energy double that was dreaming. As you wake up, you may experience feelings of being pulled backwards or falling. This can be frightening sometimes and because of it the energetic double of you may try to run from it, but in the end this will be an unfruitful endeavor, since the natural process for waking up is that the double reintegrate, and the dream be relayed onto your physical brain. Simply put... you are both in bed, and somewhere else dreaming, and when you feel the presence of someone watching, there's a strong possibility that it's just you, being aware of the reflected version of you in close proximity to your waking consciousness.

I recommend for you to read Astral Dynamics by Robert Bruce for a more in depth explanation of the mechanics of this energetic interaction between you and the reflected double.

edit on 1/20/2014 by joeyv23 because: (no reason given)

The best interpretation is right here ^^

I also have to add to the OP, if for some reason in your future, you meet a person in real life and you realize it was one of them from your dream, you will know it was not just your psyche, and that it was a precognitive dream. They are sometimes very hard to tell.

I have had at least a dozen if not more majorly vivid dreams that were precognitive in origin. So precognitive that they appeared on the TV news. I would definitely look into Psychocartography! Good luck!

And oh, I have an O2 monitor that I will wear occasionally while sleeping. I had read about lack of O2 during vivid dreams and decided to test the theory on myself. Every time I would awake from a dream when I was wearing it, my O2 stats were 99-100%...No lack of O2 there

redhorse
reply to post by dampnickers

 

1. Sounds like a subconscious thing. Apprehensive about commitment...? Just spit-balling here since I don't know you, but I would do some introspection regarding that one.

2. Past life I.M.O. KInd of out there I know, but geeze that was specific.

3. General anxiety. It could be over too many vivid dreams. You are probably dreaming more than you remember, and if some of those are nightmares you can get in an apprehensive spiral that makes you have more vivid dreams and nightmares, which causes more anxiety, which causes more vivid dreams and nightmares, and so on and so forth.

What can be done about scenario 3.
I think this is what's happening to me right now, but what can I do to stop them?

reply to post by Chukkles


Anxiety can be tough. It is like a snake eating its own tail in many ways. All I can really offer here is to seek out a trusted friend to talk to, or if you are really concerned perhaps a good therapist without an agenda (not for everyone I know). The last thing is, I know that there is a pervasive Freudian, and Jungian tendency in popular culture to put a lot of emphasis on dreams as some tangible thread that we can follow into the rabbit hole of the subconscious; but more often, vivid, frightening, and/or frequent dreams are of only a tertiary relation to the real cause of anxiety. I wouldn't worry overmuch about the details, or even the frequency of these dreams, but you may want to take a look at what is causing you anxiety while you are awake.

If you think that your are in an anxiety spiral because of your dreams themselves then, frankly, relax. Sometimes, dreams are just dreams. The details are of little consequence.

For what advice in an anonymous on-line forum is worth, that is what I've got.