A deeper look at dreams

[QUOTE=Draz]Fun fact. You only dream of faces you've seen in real life.[/QUOTE]

Fun fact. You don't.

[QUOTE=IamRAMBO24]This I partially agree with. i think I met a guy name "Nathan." He was a flaming homosexual. He told me to lie down and he wanted to jizzle hot steaming lava cumm all over my face. I was willing at the moment, but my conscious mind told me this was wrong.[/QUOTE]

You kinda just announced to the world you're secretly a flaming homosexual that enjoys such things but don't want to accept it.

Well this thread degenerated quickly.

cool thread minus the side-argument veering in to the pointless zone. :lol


i would definitely love to lucid dream! i... think. actually i'm really pleased to be developing an ability to decode my dreams. most of my memorable dreams, like a couple per week, if i sit and reflect on them i'll be able to link the actors and the places with something that happened or a point that's being made. like a summary or a different POV on a previous or on-going situation. less and less is it just random weird / fun stuff... more and more there's specific messages.

i find this really cool, because this often means i'm essentially getting advice on what to do from brain regions networked and operating in different ways than normal. almost like a friend who understands my whole situation intimately and has their whole take on it.

still, i want to keep developing this ability. i suppose it has to do with the fact that i meditate and self-reflect a lot and am getting to understand myself worlds better than i used to. also seems like the more i understand myself, the more i have insight in to other ppl, which could potentially mean insight in to other ppl's dreams, too. woohoo on that!

anyway, cool thread, cool replies. :cheers:

[QUOTE=gigantes]cool thread minus the side-argument veering in to the pointless zone. :lol


i would definitely love to lucid dream! i... think. actually i'm really pleased to be developing an ability to decode my dreams. most of my memorable dreams, like a couple per week, if i sit and reflect on them i'll be able to link the actors and the places with something that happened or a point that's being made. like a summary or a different POV on a previous or on-going situation. less and less is it just random weird / fun stuff... more and more there's specific messages.

i find this really cool, because this often means i'm essentially getting advice on what to do from brain regions networked and operating in different ways than normal. almost like a friend who understands my whole situation intimately and has their whole take on it.

still, i want to keep developing this ability. i suppose it has to do with the fact that i meditate and self-reflect a lot and am getting to understand myself worlds better than i used to. also seems like the more i understand myself, the more i have insight in to other ppl, which could potentially mean insight in to other ppl's dreams, too. woohoo on that!

anyway, cool thread, cool replies. :cheers:[/QUOTE]

Decoding the meaning of your dreams can be so rewarding. It was a dream that gave me the message to stop caring so much about politics. At first, I thought the dream was telling me to CONTINUE caring and to keep pursuing that interest. But as I kept thinking about the dream, I realized the meaning was the opposite. Once I finally understood the dreams meaning, I felt a lot of relief and happiness over my decision to forget politics for a while.

Lucid dreaming is very rewarding, but for some people (like me) it takes a lot of effort. For others it comes a little easier. For me it's something I go back to every now and then. I don't care about my dreams for a few months, then I'll go head first into writing them down and trying to lucid dream.

In my lucid dreams I've been able to fly many many times, and once shot lighting bolts out of my hands :D. I've made it snow to try and convince other dream characters that I was dreaming. In all honesty, yes I've tried to have sex, but I always wake up when I try. lol. I am just now trying to work on the deeper aspects of lucid dreaming, like asking questions to my subconscious and learning things about myself. Up until now I've always just gotten too excited to care about that stuff.

The most amazing VISUAL I've seen in a lucid dream. I kept having false awakenings, where I would wake up in my bed thinking I was awake, but I was actually still in a dream. It happened about 5 times before I realized I was dreaming and became lucid. Upon that realization I jumped out of my bedroom window and instead of seeing my normal yard, the entire world was a vivid, bright, colorful MARIO land. I seen yellow coin blocks, goombas, bright green grass, everything you'd see in a Mario game. And I was just flying through the air looking down on it. It was so amazing and vivid, I feel excited just thinking about it.

And that feeling of realizing you're dreaming, and just jumping out of your window like that, it's so surreal. In your real life you're so constrained by the laws of physics, gravity, social norms, etc. But once you realize you're dreaming, for the first time you just feel completely and utterly FREE, and bound by nothing. There's endless possibilities, no rules, and zero danger or consequences.

wow, joe. i'd almost think you'd never want it to end, right?

and did you say that the keeping of the journals helped you achieve the lucid dreaming?


re: experiences you mentioned,
i haven't flown for a long time. i think because for me it is not the time for imagination but the time for subterranean exploration and rational analysis.

i used to be able to jump as high as i wanted versus a basketball rim, but usually didn't feel like dunking it-- was just content to lay it in for some reason. i think maybe because i'm not ready for life to be that easy, yet. or that level of aggression and showmanship is just not my style. maybe.

i too wake up when sex is just about to happen. i think maybe for one of two reasons: 1) there is a biological waking component that is necessary more than even just having a sleep erection, 2) i don't have comfort, familiarity and understanding of women *yet* to have sex with them at the subconscious level.


[quote]I am just now trying to work on the deeper aspects of lucid dreaming, like asking questions to my subconscious and learning things about myself. Up until now I've always just gotten too excited to care about that stuff.[/quote]
that is brilliant. please understand that i want to murder you out of a pure stream of jealousy, but other than that, am very curious to hear how that proceeds. i.e., politely waiting. =)

[QUOTE=gigantes]i too wake up when sex is just about to happen. i think maybe for one of two reasons: 1) there is a biological waking component that is necessary more than even just having a sleep erection, 2) i don't have comfort, familiarity and understanding of women *yet* to have sex with them at the subconscious level[/QUOTE]

Sexual intimacy will release high amounts of hormones and adrenaline so when you feel like you're about to have intercourse that stuff peaks and you wake up from too much activity in your brain, or a wet dream occurs and you know... you kinda jizz in your sleep.

[QUOTE=eriX]Sexual intimacy will release high amounts of hormones and adrenaline so when you feel like you're about to have intercourse that stuff peaks and you wake up from too much activity in your brain...[/QUOTE]
well, it usually breaks off during heavy petting... but maybe even at that stage too much biochemistry has been altered to maintain REM sleep.

maybe different physical response pathways get activated which have more immediate priority than sleep. like when you induce gagging it will always short-circuit a case of the hiccups.

What happens if I'm dreaming of sex and my gf is giving me a HJ, would that wake me up or would I actually c*m??

[QUOTE=gigantes]wow, joe. i'd almost think you'd never want it to end, right?

and did you say that the keeping of the journals helped you achieve the lucid dreaming?


re: experiences you mentioned,
i haven't flown for a long time. i think because for me it is not the time for imagination but the time for subterranean exploration and rational analysis.

i used to be able to jump as high as i wanted versus a basketball rim, but usually didn't feel like dunking it-- was just content to lay it in for some reason. i think maybe because i'm not ready for life to be that easy, yet. or that level of aggression and showmanship is just not my style. maybe.

i too wake up when sex is just about to happen. i think maybe for one of two reasons: 1) there is a biological waking component that is necessary more than even just having a sleep erection, 2) i don't have comfort, familiarity and understanding of women *yet* to have sex with them at the subconscious level.



that is brilliant. please understand that i want to murder you out of a pure stream of jealousy, but other than that, am very curious to hear how that proceeds. i.e., politely waiting. =)[/QUOTE]

I never want them to end, haha. Mine are usually so short and sweet because of all the crazy things I do in them.

Here's how you go about communicating with your subconscious mind during a dream.

First there's all the pre-planning. Basic skills you need to make communicating with your subconscious possible. You can google them all if you want so I'll just list them.

-"How to Lucid Dream." Google that and you'll get results on basic things like keeping a dream journal, performing reality checks, etc.
-How to stabilize your lucid dream. This will give you skills on staying "grounded" within the dream, so it 1) is visually sharp (as opposed to blurry like most dreams) and 2) so that you don't fall out of lucidity or wake up.
-Staying calm during your lucid dreams. Doing things like FLYING or trying to have sex are really exciting, but they have the habit of waking you up. A lucid dream where you fly through the sky will be a short one.
-You must remember that you want to ask your subconscious mind a question to begin with. There are different levels of lucidity. At the lowest levels, you may realize you're dreaming but have no concept of who you are as a person. But at higher level lucid dreams you will know your name, know your address, know that you are currently laying on your bed, that you have work in the morning, remember what you did the night before, remember your screen name and password on ISH etc. You need to reach an upper level of lucidity to communicate with your subconscious. If not, how would you even know you want to ask yourself a question? Let alone what to ask. This is achieved simply through practice and experience. The more you lucid dream, more of your lucid dreams will be higher level ones.

So FINALLY, you're in a higher level lucid dream, and you're ready to ask your subconscious mind a question- what do you do? It's simple. Everything in the dream is created by the subconscious mind. The characters, the walls, the ground and the sky. If you want to communicate, just ask a question. Yell our your question to the nothingness. WHAT IS MY DREAM JOB. An answer will be delivered to you. I've heard different stories from different people. Sometimes a dream character will walk up to you and tell you the answer. Sometimes it will be written across the sky. Sometimes it is shown to you through an image.

Watch this guys video, he tells a really amazing story about his experience doing this. [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeMaPv3bzHw[/url]

Another interesting way to play with your subconscious mind in your lucid dream- ask dream characters what they represent. Go up the creepy old person and ask him what he represents. "Why are you in my dream? What do you represent?" Sometimes, the dream characters won't tell you. Despite you supposedly being "in control" of the dream, they act as independent agents. But the more skilled you are as a lucid dreamer, the more they will just fess up to their purpose. "Oh, I represent your fear of nursing homes," says the creepy old man...

I am just learning to do this so I have very limited experience. A few nights ago I became lucid, and for the first time I remembered that I wanted to communicate with my subconscious mind. I stabilized my dream, and got myself ready to ask a question. Only 15 seconds into being lucid I woke up. Grrr! But I look at this as a lifetime hobby and I'm in no rush. I don't put all of my time into lucid dreaming, but I'm becoming better at it- slowly. I'm hoping that within 10 years I can have it somewhat "mastered." But trust me, you can master it a lot faster if you're willing to put in the effort. To me I go on and off with it, and that's why it takes me so long. Right when I begin having lucid dreams, I start slacking with my dream journal. I'm not sure why I do that, it's not a conscious decision, I guess my thirst for it just becomes satiated. But soon enough I get right back to it, writing down my dreams again :cheers:


Edit: A part of it I didn't get into is dream characters lying, or your subconscious refusing to show itself. It gets a bit deeper than I explained in my post, and like I said I'm inexperienced with this aspect of lucid dreaming myself. But this was the basics in any event.

thx for all that, joe. very interesting.

starting at the lowest level of dream lucidity almost sounds like starting with a huge dose of amnesia.


also interesting for me since i seem to be approaching loads of this same stuff... but from an awake POV. for example, i'll often pause, empty my mind, and frequently get an interesting and unexpected answer back. it's almost like i'm starting backwards to you-- i'm getting the answer and have to figure out what the question was.

anyway, this seems to be directly related to the meditation-- sensing obstacle thoughts / emotions and learning to let go of them to get a more pure answer back from the center of my being.


[quote]Right when I begin having lucid dreams, I start slacking with my dream journal. I'm not sure why I do that, it's not a conscious decision, I guess my thirst for it just becomes satiated. But soon enough I get right back to it, writing down my dreams again...[/quote]
that sounds like a very normal, healthy response, i.e. you want the work to proceed at a comfortable pace. your desires / responses are coming from different areas and are therefore at odds, but your executive system is finding a stable and workable way of managing them as a whole, despite whatever appearances might suggest.

[QUOTE=gigantes]thx for all that, joe. very interesting.

starting at the lowest level of dream lucidity almost sounds like starting with a huge dose of amnesia.


also interesting for me since i seem to be approaching loads of this same stuff... but from an awake POV. for example, i'll often pause, empty my mind, and frequently get an interesting and unexpected answer back. it's almost like i'm starting backwards to you-- i'm getting the answer and have to figure out what the question was.

anyway, this seems to be directly related to the meditation-- sensing obstacle thoughts / emotions and learning to let go of them to get a more pure answer back from the center of my being.



that sounds like a very normal, healthy response, i.e. you want the work to proceed at a comfortable pace. your desires / responses are coming from different areas and are therefore at odds, but your executive system is finding a stable and workable way of managing them as a whole, despite whatever appearances might suggest.[/QUOTE]

I've only meditated a handful of times in my life. It really helped the anxiety I had at the time. I would meditate before going to a party, or when I was extra stressed. It would just calm me down and make me feel a little more in control of my emotions. I've never experienced anything like you're talking about, and that sounds pretty next level. It's crazy the type of things meditation or lucid dreaming can achieve. They both sound like such hippy new-age non sense, but they're both very real and powerful.

Just had a dream in which I decapitated my parents with a sword that my mom tried to kill me with.

It was pretty intense.

i had a lucid dream a couple days ago...

first thing i did when i realized i was dreaming was try and f*ck a girl.... :roll:
i actually got the bj but woke up before and sex could happen.

then i kept thinking i woke up and would be in my bed then something else would happen and i'd actually wake up.

it happened multiply times and i started getting pissed so i had to stay up for like a minute to make up it stop.

[QUOTE=eriX]You kinda just announced to the world you're secretly a flaming homosexual that enjoys such things but don't want to accept it.[/QUOTE]

It was a dream. Whoopti f*ckin doo. You're acting like I just woke up one morning and decided I wanted to suck some d*ck just because of a dream.

[QUOTE=gigantes]i too wake up when sex is just about to happen.
[/QUOTE]

This usually happens for me with the exception of a dream I had about two months ago. This was actually the opposite, where the dream lasted through the entire act and it was much more vivid than a lot of other dreams. I also did a lot of things in the dream I don't normally do during sex.

I decided to read up on those 'what do dreams mean' sites. It was almost scary how accurate it was in describing what the dream was interpreting about my subconscious, and pinpointed exactly what I was going through at the time.

Did you ever leave your body and take a walk after falling asleep? Maybe it was not your dreaming. First time when I had an astral projection I felt not human. Being able to stand next to your body, watching yourself sleeping is most incredible thing you can experience.
And yes, you can see some unknown people during that, who are just roaming around you at that time.

[QUOTE]DREAM AND CULTURE. The function of the brain which is most influenced by sleep is the memory; not that it entirely ceases; but it is brought back to a condition of imperfection, such as everyone may have experienced in pre historic times, whether asleep or awake. Arbitrary and confused as it is, it constantly confounds things on the ground of the most fleeting resemblances; but with the same arbitrariness and confusion the ancients invented their mythologies, and even at the present day travellers are accustomed to remark how prone the savage is to forgetfulness, how, after a short tension of memory, his mind begins to sway here and there from sheer weariness and gives forth lies and nonsense. But in dreams we all resemble the savage; bad recognition and erroneous comparisons are the reasons of the bad conclusions, of which we are guilty in dreams: so that, when we clearly recollect what we have dreamt, we are alarmed at ourselves at harbouring so much foolishness within us. The perfect distinctness of all dream representations, which pre suppose absolute faith in their reality, recall the conditions that appertain to primitive man, in whom hallucination was extraordinarily frequent, and sometimes simultaneously seized entire communities, entire nations. Therefore, in sleep and in dreams we once more carry out the task of early humanity. [/QUOTE]

Not sure how much i agree with this, but tis interesting. The first sentence is surely correct at least. An interesting thought, also, is how common it is to dismiss dreams as being not real, and therefore unimportant; but nothing could be a purer expression of yourself than your dreams, nothing is as wholly and truly your own (and of your own making) as these are.

[QUOTE=joe]No, but I don't think Freud's theory is true. Your subconscious mind takes control during your dreams, and produces whatever it can imagine. The other night I was purposefully trying to retain consciousness as my body fell asleep, and it's amazing the images that pop up in your head just before you enter sleep. I seen a wall made of faces, strung together by colorful plastic, all singing together. Some worm-like creature with black spines but a smiling white face. Many other things I probably forgot by now! So I don't think dreams have to reflect you real life experience at all.[/QUOTE]
Freud was a crack head.

Well, an important part of Freud's work on dreams was that the mind obfuscates the truth because it would be too painful or powerful to directly view in a dream, which would wake the mind up from its dream state. The reason that people or places in dreams might look very familiar is because they are a combination of the different traits from important people or place that you've experience or thought of in the last day.

[QUOTE=Jailblazers7]Well, an important part of Freud's work on dreams was that the mind obfuscates the truth because it would be too painful or powerful to directly view in a dream, which would wake the mind up from its dream state. The reason that people or places in dreams might look very familiar is because they are a combination of the different traits from important people or place that you've experience or thought of in the last day.[/QUOTE]
I think Freud gets too much credit for this stuff: it looks like he borrowed extensively from Nietzsche, made the terminology more acceptable, effectively popularising his concept of sublimation (he even used the word several times). He talked a about Freudian repression, but called it 'inhibition' - the same with the super ego and guilt (calling it [I]ressentiment[/I], false morality, bad conscience). Even his "overman" was his term for an individual that was successful in transcending the fundamental conflict between established morality and instinctive urges, discovering a sense of inner freedom, and setting one's own standards of valuation (i.e. one of the primary aims of psychoanalytic treatment).

Freud formalised these ideas. What he really added, was refocusing everything around sexuality, adding concepts such as ***** envy, the Oedipus complex, and other highly speculative propositions. What i don't like is that he denied such influence when it is so clear, leading to many contradictory comments such as declaring “the degree of introspection achieved by Nietzsche has never been achieved by anyone, nor is it likely ever to be reached again” at a time when he'd declared himself to have never even read Nietzsche!

He made a pretence of not having any philosophical antecedents (when he had many); i don't know why, but it seems likely to be for reasons of prestige, so he could carve a new science in his name (while disdaining the philosophy he devoured and then pretended had no influence on his ideas). His correspondence shows he had a clear familiarity with Nietzsche's early work, in the 1870s, even. Unsurprisingly, many of his followers ended up looking rather more like a cult than a science.

This is the shortest quote i could find that discusses it in any detail (talking about Ernest Gellner, and his concept of the Nietzschean minimum, all of which can be found in Freud in one form or another):

[QUOTE]The first point of this Nietzschean Minimum is what Gellner calls ‘the self-devouringness of morality’, by which he means that morality in the pejorative sense is a contorted and tortured outcome of the same wild sources that feed our basic desires. For this reason its ascetic conclusions are dishonest. ‘Self-devouring’ is a phrase meant to capture the necessary inconsistencies of the position: because Nietzsche condemns some morality but not all morality Gellner argues that ‘is not the condemnation of dishonesty itself a survival of that self-tormenting conscience which is being damned? In the name of what value or ideal can we damn cunning and the moralistic self-torturers if they prevail? Was it not they themselves who invented the ideal of the abstract truth? So do we not damn them in the name of a pseudo-standard which they themselves deceitfully invented, and in disregard of the more terrestial norm of success which we ought to reinstate?’ Brian Leiter in his later book on Nietzsche’s ethics explains this apparent contradiction in terms of a distinction between morals in the pejorative sense, morals ‘for the herd’ as Nietzsche charmingly puts it, and morality that allows the higher types to thrive.

The second aspect of the Nietzschean Minimum is the idea that excellence is parasitic on aggression, which therefore condemns humanitarian, ascetic morality as a perversion. The third aspect is a social Darwinianism, where conflict rather than harmony is the norm and characterizations to the contrary are against our true natures. Enlightenment values are merely on this view ‘… the old priestly venom, the resentment and self-hatred of the weak, the attempt to set up their weakness as the norm and to stigmatise vigour as evil…’

Schwitgebel’s book is a depth probe into the very deepest swamps of our self-image. Since Nietzsche concluded that most of us are incapable of self-knowledge, and Freud developed Nietzsche’s incredibly brilliant insight into the subterfuge of unconsciousness, there is now powerful empirical evidence beginning to produce data supporting the idea that our minds are mysterious not only to others but to ourselves also. Up until recently methodological suspicions of Freudian techniques hampered alternative approaches to investigating these mysteries. Ernest Gellner wrote his devastating critique of the Freudian movement in his The Psychoanalytic Movement, characterized it as an ideology structured in ways similar to those of a religion. Given that modern currents of thought have generally shunned religion, the Freudian content tended to be considered too spooky to be genuine.

The main problem Gellner identified was that Freud took the hard-nosed Nietzschean Minimum, which included the violent and power obsessed beasts of irrational and unknown motivations lying in everyone’s breast, and domesticated them for mass consumption. By adding an extra helping of sexuality, the salon-titillating aspect of this business gave the whole movement a genteelly scandalous reputation for all those unhappy wealthy unemployed and bored wimmin and that extra whiff of sex gave it the extra something the rather scary Nietzschean stuff didn’t have. As Gellner puts it about Nietzsche, ‘The Transvaluation of Values, which he commended, is questionably coherent, highly nebulous, sounds as if it might be arduous and perilous, and, let’s not beat about the bush, is a bit above the heads of ordinary people. A highbrow classicist-philosopher is shrieking against long-term historical trends which are hardly involved in the daily concerns of most people.’

So Freud is basically Nietzsche Lite, to borrow a soft drink metaphor. The middle classes loved it, and coupled with the provenance given to the whole movement because Freud was a medical man, Freud has become the religion of the stolid, affluent bourgeoisie. Lacanian Freudians like Zizek should brood on this as they try and roar Marxisms from these bourgeois s

Wheres the .gif of a little black kid who saw something on the screen and fell off of his chair.?