Everyone here seems to be in the thick of it,
“How do you all dream?” You know what dimension, sounds,colors, feelings, supernatural powers, anything?
“Do you Dream at all?”
I find my dreams becoming more and more vivid…
Questioning thier actions?
So How do you all dream?
I know its a dream or i remember the dreams more if i try and read and cant. I also learned that sound is another thing that isnt part of it. Its all thought rethought and visuals.
I don’t dream much but when I do they come in strings. I’ll have a couple in a row over the course of a couple days. Some are detailed some aren’t. My nightmares mess with my head a lot. I’ll wake up from them and not be able to think straight for a little. They freak me out for some reason. Probably because most of my nightmares end in me dying. Even though most things are common things I’ll see in loads of movies things have a more dramatic effect on me in my dreams.
The rest of the things depend on the dreams but most of the times I only realize the environment when it has some meaning or relevence in my dream. A weird thing I’ve noticed about my dreams is that there isn’t a lot of talking. It’s like reading minds. I never really have to tell people things. Another thing is that a lot of stuff that I’d normally be able to do awake I can’t do in a dream. I always have this weird dream where I’m like to feet away from a goal in a soccer game and I can’t score. I’ll shoot and the friggen ball won’t go in the friggen net. Or sometimes I’ll just freeze in nightmares or regular dreams and die or something will happen. I don’t dream much anymore though…
Interesting,
As I have begun to search for how others Dream, Two facts always come up. Most People seem to either…
A) Not remember thier Dreams, or say they don't Dream at all,
This really bothers me for some reason......
B) Tend to have Nightmares...Beilieve it or not... From my own little personal survey, A majority agree on having prolific nightmares more often than just Dreams.
I tend to find myself awe-struck with my own dreams,
More often now than ever before,
I have been consciously dreaming…
I am not sure what to make of it.
I find my self often in a state of confusion as first, only then to be surpressed by the realization of myself dreaming. I usually can control it better now. At frist I would just seem to follow along not really interferring.
Just amazed that this is a dream in fact. I ask that one thinks about what the possibilities are here…Consciously Dreaming?
It sounds out there but I can not deny the truth.
When I become aware of it all, interesting things begin to happen.
I am in control, but only on certain planes.
I can compare it with the Matrix.
Jumping crossing from building to building,
Climbing Walls, even some sort of magic/energy seems to be in grasp.
Sounds far fetched, I know but it is a Dream…
I too have those dreams where you try and do one simple task and it just will not happen. Don’t know what to say about that one…
As for the nightmares, I have found that if you try and touch what ever it is that scares you, it will go away.
I can not how-ever remember the last time I had what I would consider a Nightmare…
But try it some time you never know…
All this and yet most are just like, “I don’t dream…”
What is going on here?
What possibilities lie in dreams?
Am I alone?
Are you alone? Not at all. I try to remember as many of my dreams as possible and I am thinking about trying some techniques to lucid dream more often.
I know that every flying dream that I can remember, I had to ‘swim’ in the air to stay afloat. My father says this is the same for him also. I often have dreams in which I die and in which I kill myself. I always wake up at the point of death. And then I have those dreams that just constantly change form and so forth, therefore making no sense whatsoever 
.
I always wonder what possibilities lie in dreams. It’s a fascinating topic. I love dreams!
I’ve only been able to control my dreams in one. I’ve had it about twice and it’s a nightmare for the most part. But it only works for waking myself up. I’ll be able to convince myself to wake up but not to do things.
If it wasn’t for this thread, I would have been dreaming right now… 
Sometimes i dream and never want to wake.
Sometimes im awake and never want to close my eyes.
I once thought I had a sleeping disorder…Im so not a morning person…it takes me hours to get out of bed if im in “my” bed. But I realized my problem…I jsut dont want to wake up…too warm…too comfy…who wants to drudge to work and leave those conditions.
Not two long ago I had a dream and I was standing in the clearing in the woods somwehere in front of two seperate objects about the size of me but with no determined color or shape…then I realized “Holy shit…im dreaming” then i suddenly delt myself start to wake as if I said something taboo…but I rebeled against waking and focused upon the two shapes infront of me…I crafted them into bazarre colors and patterns spinning them this way and that and i began to laugh and laugh…alls I could hear was myself bellow untill I laughed myself awake…pretty cool eh?
I have some really intresting dreams…but for some reason…that particular one is by far the most precious to me.
~JL
My dreams tend to be quite mundane. Dreaming about social situations, friends, family and so on. Sometimes a dream can cause me to wake up feeling quite uneasy, but it’s usually only because of the vividity of the situation it depicts, not because the situation itself is necessarily harrowing in the normal sense of the word.
One recurring theme I do have, though, which can often make me feel uneasy, is the result of my working/sleeping pattern. I generally work evening shifts and am lucky to be home before 12.30am. My sleeping pattern, as a result, has become an endless repition of going to bed at 3-4am at the earliest (it’s 3.48 am now for a reference point) and waking up in the early-mid afternoon. The downside, of course, is that I often struggle to awake for appointments I have that are at “normal” times for most people - late morning, early afternoon and so on. I generally need to set my alarm to ensure I’m awake for 5pm when I need to start getting ready for work. My dreams then, as I often oversleep for these appointments, often involve this scenario. I go to bed feeling anxious about waking up at the correct time, and so my dreams often play-out this paranoia. If I have a haircut at midday, I will have dreams about waking up late and panicking. Anyone who’s ever overslept will know that feeling of panic associating with waking up and seeing what the time is: I experience this sensation every other night in my dreams.
To provide a more specific example, last night (or yesterday morning to be more precise) I dreamt about “forgetting” to go to work. That is, I can remember looking at the clock, seeing it was 8pm and realising that I should have been at work at 6pm. I panicked, and set about calling work with an excuse as to why I was so late (I had come up with the excuse that it was because my parents had just seperated - semi-accurate, and one I must remember to use in real life should I find myself in a similar position 
). So I picked up my mobile phone and tried to dial in the number to my work:
No matter what I did, I couldn’t dial in the number. My first attempt was way off the mark, and then on my subsequent attempts, despite my heavy concentration, I just couldn’t punch in the right numbers. It was almost like being in a state of extreme drunkeness - regardless of how hard I concentrated, I just couldn’t punch the right numbers in. At this point I snapped my phone in half, and set about finding another phone in the house. It was at this point that I “remembered” that the other phones weren’t working, and so there was no way to pre-emptively make an excuse for my lateness. At this point I woke up in a state of panic, assuming I had overslept for work. Fortunately, I still had the luxury of another 6 or so hours sleep before I needed to be up.
However, not all of my dreams are so mundane. Another dream-theme which pops up quite frequently is that of paralysis: I’ll be somewhere (usually in bed) and just lack the ability to move. Often I realise I’m dreaming, other times I don’t. In the former case I try to scream to wake myself up (usually because I’m being suffocated by something) and in the latter case I try to scream for help. In both cases I can hardly part my lips, and nothing save for unintelligable gasps comes out. It’s a scary feeling of helplessness, though I often awake without that lingering sense of “despair” that often accompanies seemingly more “mundane” dreams.
Having said that, though, something happened about a year ago that made me wonder whether these dreams of waking up in bed paralysed were in fact “dreams”. Many of you I’m sure have heard of sleep paralysis, as it is often cited as an explanation for alien abduction stories, ghost encounters, divine encounters and other things. Essentially, what happens is you awken and you become “conscious” in a sense (your eyes open, and you can see and hear what’s happening around you) yet you continue to dream, and are unable to move (it has to do with the fact that your brain “immobilizes” your body during sleep, so that it doesn’t act out dreams and move spasmodically while you’re asleep). It usually occurs when - wait for it - you go to sleep in a state of anxiety (whether it be natural anxiety or the type stimulated by Caffeine, amphetimines and other such drugs).
So, about a year ago, I had to be up for work at midday (I had picked up an extra shift) yet I was still awake at about 8am. I was lying there in bed, extremely tired, yet still in a state of mild panic - firstly because I was scared that I might oversleep, secondly because I had a lot to do during that shift, and was unenthusiatic to do it on no sleep whatsoever to say the least. So there I was, simultaneously panicking about oversleeping and not sleeping at all. Despite this, I eventually drifted off…
I awoke soon later, at what almost seemed to be a split second after drifting off (I later deduced that I must have slept for about an hour and a half before waking). I was lying on my side and I felt the covers behind me being pulled up slowly, so I awoke with a jolt and turned sharply to my left. In the next split second, I saw and heard my cat jump onto the bed (she wears a bell in case you were wondering how I could hear her) and then felt her lay on top of my face (I had turned around and was facing my ceiling at this point). I felt her fur and her body heat on my skin, and soon realised that I couldn’t breathe. There I was, laying in bed, looking up at the sky, shocked suddenly out of my slumber, barely conscious, and with a cat on my face, so I panicked (which seems to be a common feature of this post :-/) and tried to move to push her off… which was when I realised I couldn’t move at all. I could feel my arm, to be sure, but when I tried to raise it to push her off, it was as though it weighed a tonne. I tried to move, but I felt so tired so sluggish that I couldn’t. My breaths came in short, staggered gasps, inhaling cat fur every time I tried, and I can remember laying there feeling as though I weighed so much that my body would sink through the bed and then collapse through the floor.
Then, without even being really conscious about it, I was able to turn over and rest up on my elbow. My cat jumped off, and I could hear her run under my table. I lay there with my head buried in the pillow, gasping for air. I was familiar with the concept of sleep paralysis, and it was at this point that I was conscious enough to realise what was happenning. I lay there, in the middle of my bed, my body resting on my elbow, my head in the pillow thinking “wake up, for God’s sake wake up”. As I lay there in this position, I could see my pillow (normally navy blue) start flashing, alternating between it’s natural colour and this brilliant electric blue, all the while words (as though from a newspaper) started drifting past my eyes, though I couldn’t read any of them. I concentrated on taking deep breaths.
I stayed in this position for what felt like a couple of minutes at least, until I become awake enough and had enough control of my limbs to stop fretting about my paralysis. I still felt groggy, lethargic, and - above all - sleepy. I would have gone straight back to sleep were it not for the worry of having the same incident happen again in another hour or so (I still felt the tiredness of mind and the alertness of body that had led to this happening in the first place). So, against an overwhelming desire to fall asleep I forced myself to sit up, and in doing so had my first lucid thought since awakening:
“I’m going to kill that fucking cat.”
Though my body still felt tired and heavy, I slinked out of the side of my bed and searched the side of the room to which my cat had run. I have a small room, so it didn’t take long - yet I couldn’t find it. I sat back on my bed and closed my eyes briefly, then turned and - through, bleery sleep deprived eyes - looked at my door. Against the dull morning light that filtered through my curtains, I could see that it was closed. It took a while to make the connection, but I soon realised it: there was no way my cat could have been in my room. It wasn’t in there when I went to sleep, my door was still closed, and it certainly wasn’t in my room now. I must have imagined the entire thing.
This was where my heart jumped sharply. I had hallucinated, as vividly as anything (right down to the exact sound of her bell, and the feel of her fur against my face) the presence of my cat in my room. It wasn’t just a dream that seemed real, I was fully conscious and had experienced my cat. It’s a difficult sensation to explain if you’ve never had it before, but to realise that something you have experienced so vividly is false, is a peculiar feeling indeed.
From this point, I made the assumption that many of my “paralysis” dreams (that I mentioned before), were also incidents of sleep paralysis (where I would wake up in bed, feel paralysed for half a minute, try to move/shout out then wake up “for real”) but I’m still not entirely sure.
Dreams are a peculiar thing indeed, and I could go on for days about them (I just may return with some more anecdotes later on) but I’d best be leaving it there.
So, for now, I’m off to sleep… to sleep, perchance, to dream. 
I wrote this in an online diary in mid 2000, it’s slightly surreal but on topic at least:
"i had a dream a few nights ago. hmm…can i remember it. it was pretty vivid. there was an advert on tv and this little blonde girl about 12 was in it and then we were in a room and she was there with her setup and my sister was saying “oh can i have a go” and i said “er…you can’t have a go you’re rubbish.” and then we were sitting at the dinner table…i don’t know whose it was…with my french exchange students parents. They said, would you like some french pasta and they showed us some lasagne and my sister said “Oh yeah we’ll have that” and then to me she said she didn’t want the usual squiggly stuff. Then the dad said to me something about the TV remote and I said something about when i visited last time and he scowled and i said that adverts came on every 15 minutes and was annoying. Then i started thinking about how i was going to get to sleep because the dad snores like a mongoose.
Then i was climbing up a hill with friends from school and going up and up until i realised that i was almost vertical and that if i fell off it would be 46 times my height and i would die. So i turned on my back and slid down on someone else so i didn’t get hurt and i could feel my stomach doing that thing when you go down really quickly. Then i woke up."
hmmm . . . My dreams seem to often resemble the description that JP gave. I will awake in the middle of the night and be unable to move. It almost seems as if I am possessed or that someone else has control over my body. Sometimes I will even levitate into the air and then be piloted at a high rate of speed out of my window and into the night sky. All the while I am completely lacking any form of control. I will usually realize that I am dreaming and then try and force myself to wake up. Upon waking up, I will find myself back in my bed, but still unable to move. I will again make an effort to break from my dream state, only to find myself back in the same situation. After several efforts, I will finally find myself back in the real world, but wondering if I am truly awake or still dreaming. I will usually get up and flip on the television for a few minutes to calm my nerves. This reoccuring dream sequence probably occurs 2-3 times every month, usually during times of high stress (i.e exams, deadlines, etc.).
I have heard of the sleep paralysis that JP is talking about and have wondered if it ever takes part in these scenarios. These particular dreams are much more realistic, vivid, and lucid than any of my other dreams. Definitely something I should look in to.
I seem to go through a period of not remembering any of my dreams, then a period of about a week or so where i have many, very vivid dreams which I do recall for quite some time afterwards. Many of them are very similar to ben’s dream above.
The rest take place when I am in that odd state between being asleep and being awake, and unfold like a novel or a film. Sometimes I am in it, sometimes not; but I always hate being woken up because I really, really, want to know what happens next. I’ve always thought this odd, since if it’s my brain creating it, I should know what happens next anyway, no?
I’m not sure they count as dreams though, since Im not properly asleep when they happen.
I love my story-dreams.
My girlfriend used to have dreams which she thought she woke up from but then something really crazy happened like some wierd figure burst through the door, at which point she’d realise she was actually still dreaming and suddenly wake up. She’d have a look around and note the positions of everything as a reference point to how things should be when she’s actually awake, before going back to sleep. But when she woke up properly to get to work, she noticed something would be different in her room to how she remembered it when she had made a note of everything before. Then she’d realise that when she had thought she’d woken up properly before when she’d made a note of everything, she was actually still dreaming. How confusing!
What I find interesting about dreams is that they’re no more real than what we assume our actual reality is from which we dream. When you look at a dream from the ‘reality’ you dream it from, it doesn’t seem to make any sense or follow any sort of recognised realistic chronological order. But while you’re in the dream, it makes perfect sense and seems to be completely normal. (Except of course when your conscious is interferring from the reality, telling you things aren’t how they should be and that you’re dreaming).
The only difference between the ‘dream’ and the ‘real’ are the rules which are accepted while we’re using them.
While you’re in a dream, it becomes your reality until you’ve realised otherwise. But while you haven’t realised, in this new reality, everything goes how it is expected, and any crazy rules that come into play seem normal at the time and you can even dream just like normal, within this dream. As was illustrated by my example that I opened this post with.
It might also follow that since you can dream within a dream which has become your reality while you’re still properly in it, maybe this reality we think is real now is actually a dream from a previous reality that we’re dreaming from. Like reverting from different states of consciousness that only seem real and normal and accepted while we’re in them.
However, the dream state is only recognisable from the current ‘real’ point of view where they seem illogical and unrealistic. It is not recogisable that the current real that it might be a dream from a previous reality, until you wake from that dream or your consciousness from the previous reality comes into play like when you have control of your dream from the reality. Evidence for this current accepted reality being also just a dream from a previous reality is near death experiences. You start drifting out of your dream which you thought was real, but don’t actually come out of it. Many dreams seem to end with death whether u see it in your dream or not. Death might just be a sign of waking up from that dream to go back into a previous reality from which you dreamt what you thought was your real life.
Other than the way that rules are different, you might argue that this life time might be so much longer than any dream you’ve ever had. But how can you know? When you look back at your life, even while you’re still in it, only a few things stay very vivid in your memory. I doubt when you wake up your memory of your dream would be any better. Which would explain why your dreams only seem disjointed and short. When you look back at your dream, you can only remember so much… That would be why you remember almost nothing from any dreams within a dream. Waking up would only make you forget even more of what you remembered while you were in your dream.
While you’re dreaming, maybe while you’re in it, it lasts a whole lifetime. You just don’t remember most of it except for bits and bobs that don’t fit together once you’ve woken up. Maybe you only seem to be in your dream while you’re the age you are now or thereabouts is because that was the most recent and memorable bit before you died.
It also leads on that if this life time is only a dream from another apparent reality from which we’ve dreamt all of this lifetime we think we’re having, which is the actual fundamental reality? Maybe the chain goes on forever? Maybe we’re just minds in a state of constant changing between dream states which only become the reality from which we can dream while we’re in them. Whatever rules the reality may follow, they seem right at the time.
This is a belief thats quite close to most religions that involve the belief of the soul. This soul must be the eternal entity that flicks between these different dream states.
Sounds stupid (and probably didn’t make much sense with me trying to explain it) and I’m very skeptical about religious beliefs, but the more I think about it, the more sense it seems to make.
This is kind of related to dreams, so I thought I’d mention it. It is possible to wake up during REM sleep (when most dreams occur) and, believe me, it is pretty scary. As you know, your body is paralyzed during REM sleep to prevent you running around and stuff. There have been a couple of times in my life when I have woken up and found myself unable to move. I KNOW I was awake, because a few seconds later I managed to sit up. Has this happened to anybody else?
my dreams are sometimes the reason, why I stay up till 4 or 5 am and don’t want to fall asleep being afraid to ‘dream’ once again.
Basically, I have nightmares and I am always trying to escape it. Somehow, in my nightmares I have to commit a suicide to wake up, but that doesn’t always work and my nightmares are pretty vivid, I must admit.
Neft Sojhan:
I haven’t expirienced it myself, but my dad has told it to me and I think he has no reasons to make up stories. It sounds really scary and makes me shiver when I imagine that, but I think it’s possible.
My dreams almost invariably follow the same theme - where I am trying to escape from something. This reflects my fear of everything and reluctance to let it harm me. My dreams represent my strong feelings of need to protect myself. They are made up of random manifestations of what my subconscious is most preoccupied with and put in terms that I can experience and relate to easiest - an ordered visualisation that ressembles the environment that I have evolved to interpret best.
Perhaps, xplicit^, your dreams are based on a strong subconscious preoccupation with fear of death?
Invariably, my dreams are always within the limits of reality. More often than not, they are about an uncomfortable thing happening to me - something that puts me on the spot. I never have dreams of people flying like superman, or shooting lasers out of their eyes, I don’t dream of colliding universes, cartoon characters intertwined with our world, or anything of the sort. It’s always about people, places, and things that really could happen, or could’ve happened.
What’s your take?
Wow, exciting stuff. My mind is racing with so much to say. I must be careful I don’t gable to much.
I too have a fear of sleeping. I used to have alot of nightmares. I find now that I can only go to sleep when I am physically exhasted, that way I am not aware of any nightmares. So usually I am awake for periods of 24 hours + before I try to sleep.
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Some days I will take a break from whatever I am doing to keep me busy and lay on the settee and close my eyes, relax and do some thinking.
I lay there thinking, only the thinking is automatic, it requires no effort and I am only semi aware of it.
Then my wife wakes me up.
It appears that I think in my sleep.
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I also have similar dreams to the thinking sleep, where I have to work an answer out to something. I dream through different senarios, concious of them, but unaware that I am dreaming. Sometimes I get locked in a loop and my dream goes round and round in circles.
Then I wake up, aware of what I have just been dreaming.
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I have only experienced sleep paralysis once and have only been concious of a wet dream twice. The paralysis appeared in one of the wet dreams I was aware of. A female that was sleeping in a nearby room had stradled and mounted me, pinning me to the bed. I was so sure it was real. Man it was totally mind blowing !
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I went through a period of lucid draming. As soon as I was aware that I was dreaming I would just zoom up into the air and fly and fly and fly… Total freedom… awsome.
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When I was in my early teens I had a dream (I was not aware that I was dreaming) that my eyes were bleeding. I am not sure how long it lasted but not very long. I am not sure how long it was between that dream and me waking, but I think it was a while.
When I woke I found that I could not open my eyes.
Ifelt my eyes with my fingers, trying not to panic. It felt like my eye lashes were encrusted with some gloopy semi dry substance. I started rubbing my eyelashes between my fingers, feeling the crusty bits crumbling off them.
When I had managed to get one eye partially open I got out of bed and made my way to my mum’s room, calling her but trying not to panic.
She helped me to the bathroom and helped wash my eyes in warm water until I could open them, re assuring me.
She then took me to the doctors. I was diagnosed with having Conjunctivitis. Which is an infection of the tear ducts, causing them to produce masses of ‘sleepy dust’.
The doctor gave me eye drops and told me to stay away from bright lights. My eyes have been sensitive to bright lights ever since.
Through out that experience I was not scared, but I was calmly trying to stay in control, and not panic. Trying to think rationally a way out of the situation.
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Hearing sounds in dreams.
I can only remember ever hearing a voice once in a dream, but sometimes I will hear voices as I’m drifting off to sleep which will jolt me awake. (Another reason why I try only to sleep when I am really exhasted). But then having Schizophrenia I suppose it’s to be expected.
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I think that’s it for now, well as much as I want to tell you anyway.
Thanks
MentulZen.
sometimes a person who youve never really got on with will be a totally different individual in your dreams; while someone close may nasty and untrusted, someone else such as someone off TV will be your best most intimate buddy. dreaming of having a wee, while needing a wee; dreaming of eating, when been hungry; dreaming of sex, when sex is on the brain; fighting, when aggression/tension is felt; drinking when thirsty (you get what i mean)–wish fulfilment.*
the distortion in dreams gives dreaming that illusional quality that waken life just doesnt offer. has anyone ever dreamed of a ability, such as flying or having magic powers? its the greatest feeling, a feeling that is only realised when you wake up. wish-fulfilment. thats how i see the reality of dreams (suppressed and desired wish-fulfilment) which could be true of the whole of existence? imagine all thoughts as they are now, in your normal consciousness, simply been you own fulfilled wish (nothing more!) i tried learning how i could control my thoughts and imagination and bring a fresh new heap of bizarre and fantastic becomings in my dreams; but i barely remember, it didnt happen! really im talking to myself and will be the only one who ever understands myself, so, me and my competent ego for the rest of my days (whether wanted or not) will live earnestly in thought and dream. i think therefore im awake; i dont think therefore im asleep. all thought (conscious or not) is a lucid one, even that of dreams.
[yarn…] zzzzzzzzz
I am now in my mid-thirties and the amount of times in my life when I could not remember my dreams would be about 7 times! I also do shift-work and I sometimes find that my dreams when I’m on nightshift are more powerful than when I sleep at night.
My dream world has always been vivid and powerful. I can still remember dreams I had when I was 9 still so vividly evenly today. I have had many, many lucid dreams - where you realize you are dreaming within the dream. I usually reason it out…hey wait, I’m not in high school anymore…it must be a dream…and then I take to the skies.
I find it quite easy to fly in my dreams, and have been killed, slashed, hacked to pieces, ran over by a steamroller, eaten by a shark, had my head cut off many times, but I still live through it - if you know what I mean, within the dream.
I had an interesting lucid dream this year when I thought…ok, it’s a dream I will just bend this steel girder, and I couldn’t do it, which makes me think that maybe there are some “rules” within the dream world - and yes I realize that I made the rules.
Dreaming…love it.