Recurring dreams

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by DaveC426913, Apr 14, 2018.

  1. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Inspired by JamesR's dream thread, I'm curious about what kind of recurring dreams you have. And do you think they highlight things your mind is processing?

    I regularly dream of going into my basement to find dozens of fish tanks I've neglected for months. Instead of dying from starvation, I am always surprised to find the fish have not only flourished but diversified into all manner of new critters. I think the fish are my creative projects that frequently get shelved, and then come back to the fore in my mind.

    I regularly dream of driving - often from the back seat. I can steer but I am always worried about how I'm going to stop since I'd have to climb into the front seat to reach the brake pedal. Alternately, I'm trying to stop the car from sliding into a ditch/river, and the brake pedal won't depress far enough to actually bring the car to a complete stop. I think this is a metaphor for not feeling in control of the direction my life is going.

    I often dream of furball kittens tousling underfoot while I'm trying to walks up stairs. I think the kittens are my children - always interfering but ultimately a good thing in my life.

    I also dream of having to navigate crazy subway platforms, where the platform gaps are huge, or you have to get down on the tracks to climb into the doors, or cross to the other side of the platform. I think this is a throwback to a very young age (4 or so) when my mother used to take me on the subway.

    What are yours? Can you describe them and their possible significance? Can you do it in a single paragraph?
     
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  3. Andrew256 Registered Senior Member

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    Sorry, can't do it in a single paragraph, that's an interesting topic though.

    When I was a kid, I had a recurring dream which went by mostly the same scenario every single time. It's quite bizzare through:

    I lie on my bed. Suddenly I have a heavy feeling on the chest, it's getting heavier and "pushes" me through the bed. There's a tunnel underneath the bed and I'm falling down, kinda like an Alice down the rabbit hole. While falling down I can see windows on the walls of this tunnel, and there are different kinds of bags standing on the sills - women's bag, men's briefcases, old saggy bags...

    Then, I softly land on the hospital bed. I'm in a hospital room, there's no one around and no furniture, just me, bed, and four tiled walls. I get up from the bed, go outside, and appear to be on the flight of stairs of my appartment. I look between the flights upwards, and I get undescribable sense of fear, like a fear of heights, but vice versa - a fear of a huge space going upwards, above me. And this fear causes me to wake up.

    Sometime there's a slight variation - instead of landing on the hospital bed, I land on the rear bus seat. I lean my head backwards, and looking throught the back window of the bus upside down, I see tree tops flying by.

    Another variation - I appear to be in an empty circus arena, the colorful circus lights are flashing around brightly but not a single person around.

    It always starts with the fall throught the tunnel and always ends up on the stairs. The middle part gets mixed up from time to time.

    As for interpretations, I think that heavy feeling on the chest is caused by sleep paralysis, and the tunnel with windows and bags... I honestly don't know, especially why the bags? The hospital bed could be from my childhood fear of hospitals in general, the circus and the bus - I really have no idea. And the flight of stairs, and the fear I get there... I also have no idea. I never had the fear of heights, but the sight of a tall structure going upwards right above me always gave me an uneasy feeling.

    I had this dream since age of 5-6 I think, and stopped at age of 16-17, so, around 10 years of this recurring dream. Nowadays I'm over 30 and I only have recurring dreams of some events that made a big impression on me, like skydiving or performing on a stage before big audience.
     
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  5. Jake Arave Ethologist Registered Senior Member

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    I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream I can remember; perhaps I do have them but they are far too vivid and particular to remember. Never recurring to my knowledge. I have a basic theory that dreams, especially those that are most frequently shared, are part of a collective unconscious. Such dreams as being naked or exposed in public, falling from some incredible height, or losing ones teeth. I don’t think that “dreams” as we know them mean anything. Truthfully I think it’s simply a part of our genetic makeup, and it helps us cope or realize particular phenomenon as a society. I wouldn’t presume to know much about dreams, but it makes sense to me from my point of reference — having not experienced dreams as you do.
     
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  7. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    ???
    This seems ... paradoxical.
     
  8. Jake Arave Ethologist Registered Senior Member

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    Bahaha vague* sorry I confuse the two.
     
  9. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Not recurring but bizarrely specific.

    I dreamt that my wife and I found ourselves in a perpetual mall that extended in all cardinal directions. I started measuring steps to see if it wrapped around or whether it was really unbounded in all directions. We could not find an exit.

    Our phones would not allow access to the outside world except through a proxy which told us only what we needed. We began to wonder if this mall was on Earth at all.

    We did find a room on the very bottom floor (so we determined that the mall was vertically unbounded), and my wife had the brilliant idea of trying to see how high we could jump. The room had a 20 foot ceiling, which is about 7 times higher than we should be able to jump. This suggested we were in a gravity field of about 1/7th Earth mass. She concluded that we must be on a moon in the outer solar system - possibly Jupiter or Saturn.

    Turns she was right. Our phones told us about seven new resorts that had been opened up on the moons of Uranus and Neptune.
     
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  10. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    There do seem to be some common dreams. I suspect we have all dreamed of being naked in public, or not being able to find our locker in school, or forgetting the combination when/if we do find it. I've had several disconcerting dreams of my teeth crumbling away in my mouth. Or driving off a bridge. I always wake up before hitting the bottom.
     
  11. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    may i suggest these dreams might be all connected to a desire of wishing to look after your children ?
    you cant climb a mountain for someone else, you can only climb with them, and that takes a lot more effort.

    the subway thing might be you putting yourself into theposition of your children emotionally
    being worried about how they will cope with the worlds big issues.

    if this is a recurring dream, then i would suggest you may have some unresolved worry about one of your children whom you think needs your guidance.
    maybe you feel there is a conflict of ideas on how to resolve or manage life issues and that sits in your subconscious as you worry about them solving it.

    just a casual thought

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  12. geordief Valued Senior Member

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    I feel that the "meaning" of a dream only becomes more apparent when that person sees it himself (and that understanding is effectively part of the whole process,in a feedback kind of way perhaps)

    Anyway

    Last night went down to the jetty ,what did I see?(x2)
    A spilled shipping container floating in the water a disturbance of sorts

    Resumed the dream later and attempts were being made to recover the container using a sort of aquatic low loader. (da capo

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    )

    My take?

    Apart from the unusual (for me )resumption of the scenario in the same ,or interrupted dream I put it down to the road works going on in the locality at the moment with traffic lights but nothing really stands out.

    Love this sort of thread ,though. I used to love my dreams and attempted the old lucid dreaming back in the day but gave it up as it was quite draining in a way.

    EDIT:this is not a recurring dream ,just one from last night.
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2018
  13. LaurieAG Registered Senior Member

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    The first yes but the second no.

    The first recurring dream is more like a series of 6 dreams based on the same location with 2 or more common people and this dream recurs every 7 years or so over 40 years and the plot moves on. I suspect it will continue developing but I will keep it short and not go into much detail because children may be reading. I am also a normal heterosexual male.

    The location is basically on a large silver bus with plush red velvet covering all the seats and furnishings, it could possibly even fly but I never get the impression of it flying although I have travelled on it and entered it and left it on various occasions. The person who is in all of the dreams is a lithe blond woman who wears very few clothes and is very horny to say the least, I won't say why I know that so you'll just have to take my word. The other main character is a male slightly older than the woman with black hair and a black beard who seems to be in charge of the bus and everybody else on it. On the third recurrence of this dreamscape he was very angry and accused me of stealing his wife although I can assure you that I have only ever noticed that she was horny and never got anywhere remotely near what Bill Clinton would define as 'never having had sexual relations with that woman'. At all times she has remained chaste in my presence, like Sir Gawain and the Green Knights wife, and I have behaved as a true gentleman even though it was only recently that I was allowed back on the bus by the bearded one. She came onto me very heavily again, still nothing had happened, and he was so enraged he actually dragged her off me, threw me into the corner of a room at the back of the bus and drew a large knife. I wasn't actually scared, I was more like crumpled upside down in the corner wondering what had happened, when he started to come towards me with the knife and then all of a sudden he just started laughing loudly and walked away, weird. I think he has finally figured out that the problem wasn't me and that more than likely the interpretation is that she was my muse or something platonic like that.

    The second is a composition of many different dreams in the same dreamscape that end up with following paths along ocean cliffs until the paths disappear or following train lines that disappear into a swamp after many trips on the train both ways or a substantial bridge that slowly disappears into single planks and then nothing over the water. While I never give up following the different paths and usually wake up after a while I have noticed that in between all of these locations there are massive buildings on the ground that have many rooms, series of steps and unusual circular staircases that I remember going up and around and through many times so I recognise them all and then massive construction sites that are just as complex with tunnels and water obstacles. Sometimes I am driving a car on a road trip and go past these sites where I know if I look right I will see the huge blocks of monstrously sized decaying mansions, which I have spent wandering in many times, and further along I will come to the huge headland with many different large cliffs and inlets surrounded with water and huge waves which I have also spent many times climbing or body surfing and continuously swimming against the huge currents, and if I go further I know I will come to the path along the cliffs on the ocean side that disappears so I have to climb along the barbed wire fence to keep on going. Not once did I fear being injured or get despondent and there were always people there that I could follow or even talk to until the trail ended and I never gave up searching or exploring because it was enjoyable fun just following things until I could follow them no more.

    While some of these trips in this dreamsacape involved 'flying' I found that I was usually restricted by telephone and power lines etc and could never get aloft more than a simple glide until I had one really vivid dream. It was like my head was all that was flying and I had no concept of my body (no it was definitely a dream) but I did soon come to the conclusion that if I hit anything or stopped thinking 'up' my dream would stop so I manoeuvred through and around the various obstacles presented to me until I managed to break through into clear air and rose to a position around 500m high and hovered. From this position I could see the ocean and a familiar sandy beach with 8 foot waves peeling off nicely in front of me, often with somebody riding them, so I just sat there, for I don't know how long, just marvelling in the glory of the whole scene until I suddenly snapped out of my trance and regained the urge to rise higher. Now while this stage started off interesting I soon came into scattered clouds so that I could see nothing in front or below me and only the urge to get to the end of this path propelled me forward for what felt like an eternity until I finally came to the end of the clouds and once again came to clean air.

    I had reached a height that I would guess as being around 5km high and had such a marvellous sight before me that it is etched into my brain and although I had never seen anything like it in my entire life I will always remember it. Stretched out before me in the distance was a huge henge in the water. I was on one side and the other side comprised of two gigantic rough rectangular white pillars with a lintel piece between them such that I could see that there was nothing on top of the lintel because its top surface was exactly the same height as I was. Off to each side of the circle between me and the back pillars there was a set of smaller pillars with lintels, almost at right angles to the back lintel, that were both around two km high at their tops and in front of each of them and also inward on the circle were single pillars approximately 500m high. Right in the centre of this circular henge, that looked like some sort of huge throne or altar, was a humongous maelstrom that had a centre that contained fog, mist and frothy water. From my high position overlooking the maelstrom, and by moving forwards and then backwards to my original position, I could see that it had a huge bulge of water around it and I especially noticed that it actually had a shallow bottom because the amount of water above the water line equalled that water that was missing below the water line in the centre.

    From my position I could see that there were what looked like boats trying to dock at the 2 smaller pillars while some were stationary outside its influence many were in the process of being swept into the maelstrom itself. I could also see that there were what appeared to be tiny people on the middle lintels on both sides and, from my position at the top on the open side, I could also see that there was nobody on the top lintel. Suddenly I had the urge to dive straight down from my lofty position into the exact centre of the maelstrom to shake the very foundations and bring the whole thing crashing down when I heard a strong authoritative voice, the only voice I have ever heard in my head and during a dream to boot, which said "DO NOT ENTER THE MAELSTROM". Well to say the least that shook me a bit more than anything else that I have ever experienced during a dream so I stopped and soon woke up with my memory of the whole dream as vivid as I have told it to you now.

    I could figure out that the first stage involved removing personal entanglements and the second stage was about losing yourself in something that was natural, enjoyable and non destructive but the third stage meaning eluded me, apart from knowing to never give up, until I read a dialogue between Thoth and Ammon (also called Thamos) described by Plato in his Phaedrus. Thoth presented his various inventions and gave the pro's while king Thamos responded and gave the con's. At the end king Thamos gave the con for writing as causing many problems because people could appear to be wise through writing even though they did not learn from the heart and were really wise so I wrote the following as the meaning of the third stage of my dream because I suspect I don't really have to do anything to destroy the altar in the vision I saw as it will destroy itself due to its own shallow foundations. I'm not particularly religious either and after reading many translations of the ancient classics the following is the only thing I can find that remotely fits.

    Today an eerie silence has descended on the uppermost tier of the altar of Mammon, tears in the dust betray the presence of the spirit of wise king Thamos. A chilling aloneness engulfs the lofty heights as the rationalists below unite to invoke the maelstrom of the serpent of chaos. They can not see that their altar has a shallow bottom hidden by the fog and mist generated as a result of their endless leverage on the oars of human industry. They will both consume and be consumed by the terrible natural forces released through their efforts, so be it (amen).
     
  14. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not as attached to my chill'uns as all that. I'm a pretty self-involved dude.
     
  15. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Agree. I don't think there is much objective meaning to dreams; it is all about an individual's association.
     
  16. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    is fairly relative. i receive what your saying.

    the fluffy kittens thing is quite interesting.(to use as an example)
    there are soo many ways it could be intepreted(twisted or presented) in an intellectual manner, yet simple un attached emotions floating around and crashing into each other really do not care for cause and effect etc... lol
    the crystal ball gazing fraudsters could swing it either way to suggest your selfish and think others should harden up
    or
    overly sensitive and need to harden up yourself.
    or you need to stay the coarse, or you need to be careful etc etc add nausium.
    LoL
     
  17. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    I have an Aunt who is into interpreting dreams (or "making sh1t up" as I like to refer to it as), so I ran these past her and summarise below what I think she said...
    A fish tank is reference to your emotions. If you've neglected the fish tank then you've been neglecting your own feelings. Fish in fish tanks are emotions that you've yet to set free, so to see a neglected fish tank give rise to some unusual creatures seems to suggest that you have bottled up some emotions that are now far more complex than they were when bottled up. Had they died then the emotional issue had likely been supressed, whereas yours has merely mutated!

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    Yes, driving is often seen as being about change. The fact that you're driving from the backseat suggests you willingly gave someone else control but are concerned about where they're leading you. The inability to depress the brake pedal is a further sense of not being in control, even when you haven't delegated.
    Kittens fighting can also be about life not moving in the direction you want, especially if you can't stop them fighting. Kittens, though, aren't really a reference to your children. That link would be far too obvious for dreams!

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    Ah, nothing is as simple as that.

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    The imagery may be from those memories but you need to look at more than that. But again it seems there is a link (according to Ol' Auntie!) in that subway terminals represent a choice to be made, and the train is your life moving in a certain direction. So it may be that you are subconsciously struggling, or making it difficult for yourself, to move your life in the direction you want.
    I struggle to remember any dream. I went through a phase of writing them down as soon as I woke up, especially in the middle of the night, but the writing was often illegible.

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    I'll try and dig some out, but alas there were no repeating ones.
     
  18. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    How do you know this?

    Surely, my subconscious relationship to fish tanks is unique to me. I doubt there is a subconscious racial memory about fish tanks.

    I should state I do not believe in generalized dream interpretation. I do believe they can be interpreted, but only on an individual basis.

    Again, how do you know this?
     
  19. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    I refer the honourable gentleman to the first line of my previous post. Hopefully that will answer your question?

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  20. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    Not a recurring dream but retarded enough to post.

    I had a dream about a table I wanted to get the day before. (Yes, furniture.) Dreaming about a nice romantic dinner at the table. I woke thinking that there was something totally messed up with me, and to get the table out of my mind.

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  21. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Totally missed that.

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  22. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I often dream that I bought a house or rented an apartment and then forgot about it.
     
  23. mmatt9876 Registered Senior Member

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    I do not remember most of my dreams but some of my recent ones I have been having are of my parents and I visiting my grandparents in their old homes or somewhere else. All of my grandparents have passed away sadly but it is great to have nice dreams of them. Sometimes I have scary nightmares too about different things.
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2018

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