Halloween dreams and nightmares

[Murfreesboro]

If by lucid dreaming, you mean that sometimes you become aware in your dreams that you are dreaming, yes, I've had that experience, too. Usually it happens when I'm having a nightmare, and I edit it in some way to make it less terrifying.

[Murfreesboro]

The nightmare I remember best happened when I was maybe 23 or 24. I'd been to San Francisco for the first time the summer before, which made a great impression on me, but I was back in Nashville when I had my dream.

In my dream, I was in San Francisco, and there was a big earthquake. I looked up, and a wall was falling on me. I was panicked and desperate to escape, but I realized there wasn't going to be any escape. This was going to be the moment of my death.

When the wall fell, I awakened. But the really creepy thing was that I slept back then in a completely dark room, alone. So for a few moments I wasn't sure if I were dead or alive. I tried to comfort myself by thinking, Well, you must be alive, because you are conscious. But then I thought, What if you died, and you went to Hell? Maybe this is what Hell is, just being in the dark alone, for all eternity.

And that was the most terrifying thought I ever had in my life.

[Andybev01]

I find it disconcerting to wake in a partly lit room after an intense dream. It's difficult to rapidly adjust to the real world from a dreamscape, so I sleep in as dark a room as possible.

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

That sounds like one Hell of a experience, Murf. No pun intended. I know how you felt in that moment, as I had a dream about being buried alive in a dark grave and I was trying to claw my way out then I woke up gasping for air, it was night and there wasn't much light around so for a moment I wasn't sure what was going on.

I think the worst nightmares I've had are abut my family, like the nightmare at the beginning of this thread, and I've had a couple of dreams about my mother dying, and when I woke up I called her immediately to make sure she was fine.

I've also had dreams where I'm fully aware that I'm dreaming, or where I know something isn't the way it should be. I recall one dream in particular where I was watching tv and holding a baby, I was distracted because there was a story on the news about a war coming, but then I looked at the baby and it was me! I was holding myself as a baby and at that moment I knew it shouldn't be possible, the baby smiled at me, and I smiled back, then I heard a loud explosion outside so I went to the window to look outside while still holding the baby, and when I looked out the window I saw the whole world burning. I looked at the baby and he smiled at me again ... and then I woke up.

I still don't know what that dream meant, any theories?

[Murfreesboro]

That's a wild one! I can't begin to interpret it. But I have occasionally had doppelganger dreams, if that's a word I can use to describe coming up against yourself somehow. I recall a nightmare I had in my youth, in which I was being pursued by a satanic cult, and I was running from them. Then I came up against a mirror and saw myself, but all reddish and weird looking, as if I'd been taken over by some kind of demon. Then I woke up. I've never been sure where that came from, either.

I DK. Holding yourself as a baby, and then seeing the outside world burn? Maybe loss of innocence? Maybe fear that the world would destroy you? Maybe, since the baby smiled at you, a reassurance that, no matter what, you'd never lose your essential self?

[Andybev01]

Bingo, Murf. Never losing ones essential self.

I have had a recurring nightmare ever since I was a little kid of being chased by zombies, so I'm not a huge fan of the genre.

I owe that to my brother letting me watch NOTLD as a kindergartener.

More recently however, I have had some very detailed, immersive dreams of a burning city, and having to make it out while evading warring groups.

These are in color and high-definition, surround sound quality dreams but most of my dreams are.

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

People have been speculating on the purpose and meaning of dreams since the beginning of humanity. Some people theorize that it is a glimpse into another reality, that the events that happen in dreams are actually happening somewhere in the multiverse. Others speculate that they reflect some unresolved issues we have in our lives that we have to deal with. While some people think that they are messages from another plane of existence, such as the afterlife, where we can communicate with deceased relatives, and some people think they are spiritual messages, communication from a religious source.

On the other hand, some people think that dreams don't have a meaning, that it's just a way for our consciousness to stay active while we sleep. Some people say that if our brain didn't stay active while we sleep that we would die, that it always has to remain active like a shark in the water, while that might be a possible reason for dreams, I don't think it's true because there are people that don't dream when they sleep, whether that's just the way they are, or because they are too intoxicated to remember.

I suppose that the purpose of dreams will always remain a mystery.

[Murfreesboro]

I don't know about multiverses, but otherwise I think dreams can function in all those ways. Sometimes you can tell that they were triggered by random events from your recent experience. Sometimes they seem to be symbolic of problems or issues that are bugging you. And sometimes they do seem to have some prophetic quality, but not always.

I believe it was the ancient Romans who believed that morning dreams, the ones we have right before waking up, are true.

I had very vivid dreams during my pregnancies, and some of them did seem to have prophetic qualities. At least one seemed to be about a pivotal moment in a previous life, even though I don't believe in reincarnation. That tendency to enhanced dreaming made me wonder if that experience during pregnancy was the source of the old adage about "women's intuition." I've never really heard any other woman talk about it, though.

When my MIL died, my older son was living in Germany for a college semester abroad. She had not been acutely ill,, but she'd been in a lengthy decline for a number of years. She died on a Sunday, and it took us about twelve hours to reach him, because he'd gone to Neuschwanstein castle for the weekend. It's way out in the country. And of course there was a six or seven hour time difference. Anyway, when we finally contacted him to tell him about his grandmother's death, he already knew about it, because she had come to him in a dream.

[Andybev01]

We are held together by electric current so why couldn't we send and receive like a shortwave unit?

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

It's interesting that you mention dreaming during pregnancy, as my mother, wife, and other women that I know have told me that some of the most unusual and beautiful dreams they ever had was while they were pregnant.

Some people say that it's because the mother is also experiencing the dreams that the baby is having, and it brings up the question, do babies dream while in the womb? If they do, can it affect the mother as well? It was even the plot of one of the Nightmare on Elm St. movies. It's a interesting theory, and one that might actually be true.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I've had dreams where I'm having conversations with dead relatives. In particular I often talk with my grandfather, and even though he died 35 years ago, I have dreams where he still looks the same but I'm the age I am now, and I'm talking with him about current things going on in my life. I've even seen him playing with my kids. I dream of other relatives as well, but my grandfather appears to me the most. So even though they are gone, through dreams, they are always here with us, and possibly even communicating with us.

As for us being electric beings, it's absolutely true, and it's the base of Einstein's position on the very existence of our species. I covered some of this when we previously talked about his theory on the afterlife, but he also believed that in this life we are connected to each other, you can call it intuition, or psychic phenomenon, but in some situations we can reach out and communicate with each other.

I mean, there are so many mysteries surrounding our existence, you could spend your whole life trying to unravel it, and some people have.