Exploring the Bizarre: Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Dreams

[zoobyshoe]

Whacky or what, no ideas at all Zooby?

A nice, big collection of raw material for a stupid quetion or stupid anser is my main reaction:

"Recently, when a Polish aviator of my acquaintance and his stalwart wife were towing a 1967 Ford convertible of random special forces experts into the great blue yonder on their way to a mission in Hampstead Heath, they encountered difficulty in the form of the revenance of none other than Germany's ace fighter pilot, The Red Baron, hot on their tail, firing tracers and closing on them. This disturbed the soldiers, who, trained for stealthy, earthbound hand-to-hand, were out of their element, and began complaining, and shouting for the pilot to draw the Red Baron to the ground, land, and let them have at him on their accustomed battlefield. Shouting back over his shoulder at them to shut their pie-holes, he pulled the special orange lever, jettisoning the wings and tail, and reassured his wife: "Tighten your belt dear. I'm just going to accelerate for the next two years. He'll be out of petrol before we are."

Who knew the Polish aviator was married?

 

[wolram]

Zooby, :rofl:

 

[wolram]

Gale, i would hate to have a dream like yours, have you been eating a lot of chicken of late? or may be some thing is telling you to become a vegi.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Gale, i would hate to have a dream like yours, have you been eating a lot of chicken of late? or may be some thing is telling you to become a vegi.

Gale has some sharply scary dreams. I remember one about a giant lobster wrecking and terrorizing a city she had a couple years back.

 

[wolram]

Gale has some sharply scary dreams. I remember one about a giant lobster wrecking and terrorizing a city she had a couple years back.

Also food related, has some one gained or lost a few pounds of late?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Also food related, has some one gained or lost a few pounds of late?

I have, yes, but i think of this as deepening my insight into gravity. I took a clippers to my head and prolly shed a kilo before I got too tired to continue. It's kind of useless since it just keeps growing back.

 

[Gale]

i have the WEIRDEST dreams ever. a few nights ago i had one about this poor family. they were so poor and living in this shack because they were dumb and were always spending money, and then somehow town records got mixed up, and they moved into this mansion. they end up spending tons more money that wasn't even theirs. like, the mum use to get gourmet cakes, and only eat a wicked tiny slice (cause she was on a diet) and then throw the rest away. anyway, eventually the rich old guy who owns the place came back. he was eccentric and didn't press charges, but the family had to move back to their shack. They were all disgruntled about losing the money, but one of the older daughters was frugal and taught them how to save by buying food in bulk and stuff. and then the son was like "ya mom, and now we've saved so much money, we can afford these sweet rocket surround sound speakers!" so in the middle of their shack are these sweet speakers...

 

[matthyaouw]

I had a pretty odd dream the other night. For some unknown reason I was pregnant, and was about due to give birth when I realized I don't actually have the parts nessecary to do that. This means I need to have a caesarean. Along comes a man with a scalpel, and from here on things get pretty graphic. I'll spare you the details of what happened next.

 

[Lisa!]

I had a pretty odd dream the other night. For some unknown reason I was pregnant, and was about due to give birth when I realized I don't actually have the parts nessecary to do that. This means I need to have a caesarean. Along comes a man with a scalpel, and from here on things get pretty graphic. I'll spare you the details of what happened next.

:rofl: :rofl: Had you watched that Arnold's movie?

 

[matthyaouw]

:rofl: :rofl: Had you watched that Arnold's movie?

A long time ago, yeah! I'd forgotton about that. :rofl:

 

[*Kia*]

My dreams are often bizarre - well the one's I remember are so I presume the others are too - either that or they are so mundane and boring that they aren't worth remembering...

I can often re-introduce myself to a dream if I wish.

Astral wandering is something I find fascinating although indescribably difficult but not impossible.

My last "odd" dream that I recall was:

I was going swimming with Steve (my OH) but when we got there the entrance to the ladies changing rooms was a LONG way down a dark unlit cobbled passage way. The male changing was just inside a double door.
So Ste goes in and I make my way down this dank cold dark passageway.
Eventually it opens out into a "cavern" type area. There are stairways running along the walls and four short staircases meet upto form a platform in the middle.

I walk up onto the platform and from there I can see a doorway marked "bar" and I can see people inside. I head for this doorway but I am approached by 3 lads.

I don't know what they say but I am afraid - then 2 just aren't there anymore and the one remaining lad is very young (11-12 years).
We go to the bar but they won't serve him - then weird things happen in the bar with people swapping seats and drinks so that he can get a drink.

Next scene we are outside wolrams cottage and the pathway is wet concrete so this lad and I write our initials in the wet concrete which then instantly sets.

Next scene Ste and I have parked my car on the bad bend opposite the lane that leads to wolrams cottage. When we get to wolrams cottage only MY initials are in the concrete......

 

[CosminaPrisma]

I don't usually remember my dreams at all. I had a sort of interesting one last night. I try calling up an old friend from high school (haven't contacted her in 5 + years) and I say "Hi, this is Cosmina (a substitute for my real name for the purposes of this forum)" and she just picks up, breathes a little into the reciever, or sighs, and then hangs up. After 2times of her hanging up my feelings are really hurt. Then I'm in this park wandering toward a building that's covered but contains picnic tables, I guess the bathroom is there or something. There is this guy who gives me the creeps walking around in my general direction. He is a white guy with brown hair cut into a buzzcut wearing sunglasses. I change direction, because he is creeping me out and I walk by a basketball court and an area where there is some sort of gather going to with children and families..I walk by some charcoal grills not being used and by the basketball court where the people are and some tall trees (this is a park and its summertime) The creepy guy follows me and in the distance I hear him ask something to the effect of "What kind of gathering is this?" But it was worded differently & I can't remember exactly...his voice was kind of strange too, like it didn't match anyone's I knew. Anyways, after he asked me that, as I was really scared I started to run...that was the end of the dream..but I ended up in some kind of mid-wake dream state where I kept on thinking that I'd ACTUALLY called the friend and she'd ACTUALLY hung up on me...and kept on wondering why...until I woke up and realized that I hadn't actually called her ever.

 

[wolram]

My dreams are often bizarre - well the one's I remember are so I presume the others are too - either that or they are so mundane and boring that they aren't worth remembering...

I can often re-introduce myself to a dream if I wish.

Astral wandering is something I find fascinating although indescribably difficult but not impossible.

My last "odd" dream that I recall was:

I was going swimming with Steve (my OH) but when we got there the entrance to the ladies changing rooms was a LONG way down a dark unlit cobbled passage way. The male changing was just inside a double door.
So Ste goes in and I make my way down this dank cold dark passageway.
Eventually it opens out into a "cavern" type area. There are stairways running along the walls and four short staircases meet upto form a platform in the middle.

I walk up onto the platform and from there I can see a doorway marked "bar" and I can see people inside. I head for this doorway but I am approached by 3 lads.

I don't know what they say but I am afraid - then 2 just aren't there anymore and the one remaining lad is very young (11-12 years).
We go to the bar but they won't serve him - then weird things happen in the bar with people swapping seats and drinks so that he can get a drink.

Next scene we are outside wolrams cottage and the pathway is wet concrete so this lad and I write our initials in the wet concrete which then instantly sets.

Next scene Ste and I have parked my car on the bad bend opposite the lane that leads to wolrams cottage. When we get to wolrams cottage only MY initials are in the concrete......

You wrote your initials in *MY* wet concrete, just you wait.

 

[Orefa]

Over breakfast my wife said that she dreamed I gave her a pearl necklace for Valentine Day. "I wonder what it means!" she wondered out loud. Well, I'm not so dense as to miss such an obvious suggestion so I smiled and said "You will find out tonight." I am now back from the bookstore with a nicely wrapped book titled "The Meaning of Dreams". Ha! And they say men cannot take hints.

 

[wolram]

Over breakfast my wife said that she dreamed I gave her a pearl necklace for Valentine Day. "I wonder what it means!" she wondered out loud. Well, I'm not so dense as to miss such an obvious suggestion so I smiled and said "You will find out tonight." I am now back from the bookstore with a nicely wrapped book titled "The Meaning of Dreams". Ha! And they say men cannot take hints.

:rofl: :rofl: Guess where you will be spending the night.

 

[zoobyshoe]

My last "odd" dream that I recall was:...

This dream strikes me as all sex issues: male/female, secret, hidden things, what's permitted or not, that sort of stuff.

I had a sort of interesting one last night.

I get a "Jungian" feeling about this dream, meaning it's one of those kinds of dreams where the characters in the dream represent aspects of the dreamer. The lonely, creepy guy may represent how you felt after your girlfriend on the phone treated you as a kind of non-person three times in a row. You're out wandering around trying to get away from that feeling, but it keeps following you around. His interest in the picnic gathering is really your interest, but you want to reject that kind of lonely "outside-looking-in" on other people's social interactions, so you run away from it. The dream began and ended with your upset over her rejection on the phone, so I think the whole thing stayed on that subject.

I think in real life, you probably wanted to approach that woman at some point when you felt unpleasantly lonely, but "ran away" from the impulse.

But I'm just throwing out my impressions here. Could be way off the mark.

 

[*Kia*]

This dream strikes me as all sex issues: male/female, secret, hidden things, what's permitted or not, that sort of stuff.

hard to see that.
especially not in my present life stage - no secrets, no hidden things and no issues about what is permitted

 

[zoobyshoe]

i have the WEIRDEST dreams ever. a few nights ago i had one about this poor family. they were so poor and living in this shack because they were dumb and were always spending money, and then somehow town records got mixed up, and they moved into this mansion. they end up spending tons more money that wasn't even theirs. like, the mum use to get gourmet cakes, and only eat a wicked tiny slice (cause she was on a diet) and then throw the rest away. anyway, eventually the rich old guy who owns the place came back. he was eccentric and didn't press charges, but the family had to move back to their shack. They were all disgruntled about losing the money, but one of the older daughters was frugal and taught them how to save by buying food in bulk and stuff. and then the son was like "ya mom, and now we've saved so much money, we can afford these sweet rocket surround sound speakers!" so in the middle of their shack are these sweet speakers...

Did the poor family not have a dad?

 

[zoobyshoe]

hard to see that.
especially not in my present life stage - no secrets, no hidden things and no issues about what is permitted

Then my description is simply a rohrschach test for me: themes that would apply if I had that dream, or what those images make me think of.

 

[scott_alexsk]

I believe that most dreams are just strange embodiments of something that one is thinking about. I remmeber one time when I went to bed thinking about fighter jets, that night I dreamed I was in the airforce, though it was strange and messed up. I remmber one really strange time I dreamed I was falling down an endless pit. The walls looked like the inside of a colossum except it was completely straight and went on forever. I only woke up from it when I hit the ground, on the floor of my bedroom.
-Scott

 

[zoobyshoe]

I only woke up from it when I hit the ground, on the floor of my bedroom.

You fell out of bed?

 

[hypnagogue]

Shortly after I had achieved deep self-hypnosis for the first couple of times, I had a vivid dream set around my childhood home (apartment building by the water). There was a submarine sitting by the shore and I entered it as it started to submerge. I recall pretty vividly the kinesthetic sense of descending and being jerked around in the submarine. Then I had a kind of disembodied third person view of the sub moving through the vast and dark waters with a pair of searchlights cutting through-- it evoked a really majestic and vaguely mysterious kind of emotion, not unlike the kind you might get watching a good documentary about the ocean I suppose. Eventually the sub reached the floor of the bay-- my memory gets fuzzy here but I recall being inside the house with some other people, and I think eventually some kind of law enforcement surrounded the house and either wanted us to stay in or get out, but I can't really remember.

Anyway, aside from the vividness of the dream and some of the unusual sensations (the movement of the sub, the 'majestic' emotion), this one stands out to me because it occurred just after some experiences with deep hypnosis. I'm usually skeptical about dream interpretations, but it seems likely to me that in this one, submarining through the dark waters was some kind of automatically generated metaphor for the hypnosis experience, with the bay perhaps representing my subconscious and the submarine trip perhaps reflecting the exploratory nature of my hypnosis sessions. I could be wrong, but if I was then the dream and its relationship to the events leading up to it would constitute an unlikely set of striking coincidences.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Makes perfect sense and I'd tend to think you nailed it except what analogy to the hypnosis experience do the surrounding law enforcement people have?

 

[hypnagogue]

Makes perfect sense and I'd tend to think you nailed it except what analogy to the hypnosis experience do the surrounding law enforcement people have?

If you wanted to be speculative, you could perhaps guess that it was some kind of subconscious defense reaction (I was making autosuggestions while hypnotized)-- you're not supposed to be here, you're not supposed to change that, etc. But I'd be more inclined to say that it was just a random bit tacked on at the end that didn't really have anything to do with the hypnosis. At that point I think the dream was fairly far removed from the initial submarine/water theme. Besides, I don't think there's any reason to believe that dreams must have some unifying metaphor or whatever that applies throughout the course of the whole dream. It could be that if they represent anything meaningful at all, it's only in random bits and chunks that need not be related, much as the immediately experienced dream content tends to be jumpy and disjointed.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Were the law enforcement types wanting to arrest you or protect you?

 

[hypnagogue]

I don't remember that part of the dream very well, but I'm pretty sure their presence was not a positive one. I think they either wanted me and the other people to stay in or get out (whatever it was, it was against our wishes, or at least not something we appreciated being ordered to do), but it's fuzzy.

 

[Mk]

Shortly after I had achieved deep self-hypnosis for the first couple of times, I had a vivid dream set around my childhood home (apartment building by the water). There was a submarine sitting by the shore and I entered it as it started to submerge. I recall pretty vividly the kinesthetic sense of descending and being jerked around in the submarine. Then I had a kind of disembodied third person view of the sub moving through the vast and dark waters with a pair of searchlights cutting through-- it evoked a really majestic and vaguely mysterious kind of emotion, not unlike the kind you might get watching a good documentary about the ocean I suppose. Eventually the sub reached the floor of the bay-- my memory gets fuzzy here but I recall being inside the house with some other people, and I think eventually some kind of law enforcement surrounded the house and either wanted us to stay in or get out, but I can't really remember.

How do you get out of the self-hypnosis than? I guess you believe in hypnosis.

 

[hypnagogue]

How do you get out of the self-hypnosis than?

Just count up to 10, while telling myself that as I get closer to 10 I am becoming closer to normal waking consciousness. If I really wanted or needed to, I could just open my eyes and move around without doing that, though I might remain in somewhat of a hypnotic state for a while.

I guess you believe in hypnosis.

This is like me talking about my dream and someone saying "I guess you believe in dreaming." I have experienced various definite and distinct changes while under hypnosis, so I know there is something to it.

But if you don't believe me, perhaps you might believe papers published in peer reviewed scientific journals?

Functional MRI data revealed that under posthypnotic suggestion, both ACC and visual areas presented reduced activity in highly hypnotizable persons compared with either no-suggestion or less-hypnotizable controls. Scalp electrode recordings in highly hypnotizable subjects also showed reductions in posterior activation under suggestion, indicating visual system alterations. Our findings illuminate how suggestion affects cognitive control by modulating activity in specific brain areas, including early visual modules, and provide a more scientific account relating the neural effects of suggestion to placebo.

http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1174993

To address these questions, 14 suggestion-prone healthy subjects rated reality of pain that was induced either by laser pulses to the skin or by hypnotic suggestion during functional MRI. Both pain states were associated with activation of the brain's pain circuitry. During laser stimulation, the sensory parts of this circuitry were activated more strongly, and their activation strengths correlated positively with the SRP. During suggestion-induced pain, the reality estimates were lower and correlated positively with activation strengths in the rostral and perigenual anterior cingulate cortex and in the pericingulate regions of the medial prefrontal cortex; a similar trend was evident during laser-induced pain.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=548310

 

[wolram]

my memory gets fuzzy here but I recall being inside the house with some other people, and I think eventually some kind of law enforcement surrounded the house and either wanted us to stay in or get out,

Sounds a bit iffy to me, are you planning a heist

 

[zoobyshoe]

Besides, I don't think there's any reason to believe that dreams must have some unifying metaphor or whatever that applies throughout the course of the whole dream.

I don't think "underlying metaphor" either, but I do think they're coherent according to a dynamic we don't employ while awake, things like the mean aunt's "cutting remarks" can become a wall studded with sharp things in a dream. A word to picture translation.

Also, as I was saying to Greg, I think similar things that happen at different times and places get pidgeon-holed together and come out all together in dreams.

The overall course of a dream is probably also coherent in that it sticks to a train of emotions we often experience. I think people have emotional "routines" that they tend to stick to. One specific emotion tends most often to lead to another specific one, and so on, in series. That can be interrupted by external events of course, but I notice the same ones getting repeated in my dreams, sometimes in daydreams and mental wanderings, too.

It could be that if they represent anything meaningful at all, it's only in random bits and chunks that need not be related, much as the immediately experienced dream content tends to be jumpy and disjointed.

I think the "random bits and chunks" though, are related, probably by emotional reaction to them. If I dream of a particular person in the same dream as a particular animal it's probably because they both evoked the same emotional reaction from me at some point: one reminds me of the other in a strong way, so that thinking of one leads to thinking of the other.

 

[Mk]

This is like me talking about my dream and someone saying "I guess you believe in dreaming." I have experienced various definite and distinct changes while under hypnosis, so I know there is something to it.

But if you don't believe me, perhaps you might believe papers published in peer reviewed scientific journals?

Well, sorry! I asked a question in a thread in M&B, but no body really answered. It wasn't its own thread. I'll ask.

 

[scott_alexsk]

Yeah Zoobyshoe I did fall out of bed. It was strange since it seemed like I was falling for five minutes in my dream.
-Scott

 

[Drimar]

Yeah Zoobyshoe I did fall out of bed. It was strange since it seemed like I was falling for five minutes in my dream.
-Scott

u didn't hold tight enough.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Yeah Zoobyshoe I did fall out of bed. It was strange since it seemed like I was falling for five minutes in my dream.
-Scott

Very interesting and intriguing. I haven't ever fallen out of bed but have heard of it happening to people. Yes, I agree that's strange about the sensation you were falling for five minutes. Hard to explain.

 

[scott_alexsk]

I think the answer in the apparent length of my dream may lie in the human stress reaction. The human body undergoes several changes, in the stress reaction. These changes include the movement of blood away from the skin, deceasing the chances of the person bleeding to death if an injury occurs. Also the blood is flooded with fat, to allow the muscles the most energy possible to get out of the stressful situation. It seems to me but I am not sure that during this stress reaction the perception of the brain changes. People always seem to say during dramatic events that "time stood still." I have no idea whether or not this is shown to exsist or is shown to be a part of the human stress reaction, but it seems like this is coherent since the changed perspective of the human mind on time, slowing it down substancially, allows the person the most chance to act and safe himself. Now with this in mind it is possible that when I rolled off the bed, the sensation of falling triggered a stress reaction and in turn caused my persecption of time to change. I am sure this seems very far fethched to everyone else . Does anyone else know anything detailed about the human stress reaction? (proably a Biology or Brain Science Question).
-Scott