I am interested in anyone’s take on a specific type of dream, the dream that includes censorship or harsh judgment for the dreamer. Are the censor and judge taught restrictions on one’s wish fulfillments? I’ll give an example. I dreamed of situations in which I was thoroughly admonished for the things I did. A good wet dream can be countered in process by censorship. But I’m not only talking of sexual dreams; I’m also talking of dreams that place judgment on other interpersonal relationships. I understand that physical pain in dreams translates to mental pain, emotionally magnified. But what right has this translation to impose judgment? What makes the judge or censor?
Embarassment, regret, and fear come to mind.
We judge and restrict ourselves through our subconscious, which is quite flexible, but often in some people, rigid as well.
Take a regular dream in which you see a tiger and flee. You think about the action about as much as you would think of the action to flee from a tiger in real life.
Through things like Lucid dreaming a person can stop their subconscious from acting, by taking their lucid consciousness into it. While lucid dreaming the person may see the tiger and say ‘wait a second, this is my dream… I’m not going to run away’.
Once the realization comes that our subconscious can take over, while completely conscious (in effect flipping it around) a human can understand how to say ‘Wait a minute, this is ‘my’ real life’ which is in effect, simply a shared dream.
When you can realize yourself as a dream figure in another figure’s dream , that is self awareness. – Linklatter.
O.G.,
Yes, I’ve caught myself in the middle of a dream saying this is only a dream. But I’m confused as to what in my psyche motivates the censor.
I’ve read about Freud’s interpretation of dreams as wish fulfillments or as attending to repressed desires and Jung’s interpretation as showing common, human symbolisms known from prehistory. Is the censor socially taught or is it part of the checks and balances system of the psyche?
Current brain studies suggest that when we dream the neurotransmitters, serotonin and brain epinephrine, which are responsible for transmitting information to the neocortex where it “makes sense” are shut down. The brain base shoots out acetalcholine, but its interpreters are off duty. Consequently, we get a surrealism from the brain’s attempt to produce a narrative of its own events.
Sometimes I see dreams as the brain’s way of emptying the garbage. But the censor, for me is still problematic.
So you think emotions have nothing to do with dreams?
Daybreak,
Emotions have everything to do with dreams. As Paul MacLean discovered, emotions are produced in the brain by the limbic system. This system doesn’t seem to ever shut down during waking or dreaming. Emotions are essentially prompts for activity, even if the activity, such as informational transmittal, cannot be completed.
edit: Nevermind.
Beliefs determine emotions, these in turn control our actions.
Emotions are the censors for our dreams, and they are both socially and genetically programmed. The unconscious houses mosts of our more fundamental beliefs, which is a direct link to our DNA – it’s more active than we like to think. Hypothetically the human conscious is capable of anything given pure enough thought because the dormant hologram gene we possess; (which allows us to experience the universe in any point, from our own point. Intuitively, like a hologram) things like precog, telepathy, etc. Some of our neural networks however, are pretty much cemented into place by our genetics. So… while you can change things in terms of your ego by delving into the subconscious through lucid dreaming or meditation (ie altering those censors) you cannot change such fundamental beliefs such as ‘I’m affected by gravity, I exist in a material plane, etc’ without serious… work.
O.G.,
Your responses continue to amaze me!!! I have often wondered why a kidney cell would contain the necessary information for constucting a me.
I talked in another forum about the holography of DNA information as reinforcement of the DNA project of constructing and maintaining the organism that is I; but I was told that such reinforcement would require more energy than is available in the physical system.
Freud seemed to think that the dream censor was a conflict between id and ego, between preconscious drives and desires and the mental postulates of self-esteem. Could he be right?
I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about, but it seems to me that our soul is capable of a ridiculous amount of energy. For example, if consciousness is able to move through the subconscious DNA ‘portal’ to run along temporal planes of existence (precognition), utilizing the hologram gene, then it seems like energy could in turn be brought into our plane through the same methods. And this is witnessed in my mind through Telekinesis, wherein an individual is manipulating energy itself.
It seems intuitive to me that if we can theoretically access the hologram potential (all matter), that would include a tap into all energy as well. I have a feeling this ties in with the zero point field, which is supposed to house absorbent sums of energy.
I think Freud had his terms a little mixed up, but he was definitely onto something. I see the ID more as something akin to ‘beliefs unchecked’. So if you are telling yourself one thing in the day time, but deep at heart you have a belief which doesn’t support this, the ID will win out. You can’t ‘fake’ self esteem and personality, it must be altered slowly from the ground/subconscious level.
Personally I’ve found drugs best for this but… I wouldn’t advise that for everyone 
kk.org/outofcontrol/contents.php
While I can’t remember where he said it, Kevin Kelly argued that networks need a time to decompress all the random information they’ve been given and to reorganize it into something meaningful.
Some network mentioned in his book did something very similar (errr, analogous) to ‘dreaming’ for just that purpose.
As for censorship in a dream? Processing guilt/shame/forbidden desire/ect.
After watching Waking Life, I took heavily into consideration a kind of Dan~ philosophy. Where if you understand that your life is something that you control completely you can do anything, its just harder to realize it in ‘waking life’. In a dream you percieve things as if they are real except you are missing certain senses to a certain point, this is what makes you realize you are dreaming.
Then when you wake up you have all of your senses about you again and you feel that it is reality.
However imagine that one day you gain another sense, you ‘wake up’ in a sense and realize that you have been dreaming all along, and now you know what reality really is.
I assume this would take a lot of work. Mabye Siddhartha had it right all along.
Good responses!
First, I’ll clarify something I said that O.G. commented on. In the other thread I had postulated that every cell in my body containing information about how to construct me was information that also continued to insure my maintence, growth and development. I was told there wasn’t enough energy in cells to do those things, despite the apparent holography of the information. My brain operates on 8 watts of electricity and can include billions of electro-chemical transactions. So I doubted what I was told.
There is so much more here than we could ever imagine.
Well, every cell in your body (eerrrr, except red blood cells) does contain that information, since the DNA in all of your cells contains the same information (Let’s not worry about epigenetics for now).
For some extent I like nightmares, because they make me happy when I wake up, as opposed to “good dreams”.
sebas,
Thanks,
As I posted elsewhere, Rilke, trying to decide whether or not to continue psychotherapy, said, “If my demons are expelled, my angels might fly away, too.”
O.G.,
Emotion existed before its socialization, IMO. The latter only intensifies it. can I unsocialize my psyche enough to bypass the censor?
Irr,
Yeah… but it’s tough. I’m still working on it.
Xunzian,
Thanks, I did not know that about the blood cells. But does this holography of information have a viable physiological function?
Does no one else here experience dream censorship?
Yeah, it is the portal for dormant DNA activation.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by holography.
Our cells are, for the most part, a big mess of fats, proteins, and nucleic acids. The information for assembling that particular mess is encoded by the DNA. So, does it have a physiological function? You bet it does!
But I think you are taking this on a more metaphysical turn than I would be comfortable commenting on.
As for Dream Censorship, I’m still not totally understanding what you mean.
I could tell you about a dream* where I was before a tribunal, is that what you mean? Or are we talking about little black squares hiding naughty parts in dreams?
- not technically a dream, but that’s another story.