What do you think of dreams, are they prophetic or just the mind defragging?

merlin

merlin

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Location
Saint Petersburg Russia
Having just posted the thread on waking up, I wondered what were our thoughts on dreams. A long time ago I got involved in a dream interpretation group, which I found interesting and learnt to interpret dreams at a basic level.

When studying Carl Jung, I took on board his theory of dreams being a way of communicating with the unconscious, and found this very valuable at that stage of my life.

These days I am not sure at all, as my dreams are usually pretty mundane and simple distortions or fantasies of my waking life.

I know there are many theories, and the scientific take is its just the brain sorting out all the various memories and daily experiences, but there is no proof of this.

What are your thoughts, or don't you dream or at least don't remember you have?
 

I remember many of my dreams, some are really weird. I've read a wee bit of Jung. Some of mine are very deep, but I don't really try to analyze them any more. Some are quite simple - I'm guaranteed to dream I can't find my passport(s) the night before a trip.
 
Ameriscot said:
I remember many of my dreams, some are really weird. I've read a wee bit of Jung. Some of mine are very deep, but I don't really try to analyze them any more. Some are quite simple - I'm guaranteed to dream I can't find my passport(s) the night before a trip.
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Yes Lisa has a recurring dream about losing her job, I guess these are based on inner fears, like you losing your passport.
I used to have very complex and weird ones like you mention you have, and did have one recently, but couldn't be bothered to go into it really. I guess as you get older you tend to accept yourself more and just get on with life, living more in the moment, rather than dwelling on the deeper parts of our psyche :confused:
 

In the 90's I used to work on becoming lucid or having OBE's and that made me very aware of dreams. Some were truly weird!

And I have two passports I could lose! I have to travel to the US using both.

It's been a while but I occasionally have dreams that I'm late for work (haven't worked since 2007), am going for a job interview, or am beginning university.
 
My dreams are getting better all of the time, but, once again, I am to shy and sensitive to explain any further...
 
Ameriscot said:
In the 90's I used to work on becoming lucid or having OBE's and that made me very aware of dreams. Some were truly weird!

And I have two passports I could lose! I have to travel to the US using both.

It's been a while but I occasionally have dreams that I'm late for work (haven't worked since 2007), am going for a job interview, or am beginning university.
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Yes I did work on lucid dreams in the '80s and do have a rare one from time to time, I have never had an OBE, but I did have an accidental odd experience the other day.

I found some chocolate brownies in the freezer that had been their for longer than I care to guess.
I defrosted them and ate a couple but later came to realise they were cannabis brownies :stupid: which I had forgotten making, as I am not into any of that these days.
I subsequently went on an unplanned trip where the voice came came out of the radio, and I could see emails coming in without being near a computer. I could read them as well, but on checking later they were not real ones. For a moment I thought I had developed a new skill :cool1:

I must be careful in future to label things I put in the freezer :coffeelaugh:
 
These days I usually forget my dreams upon waking up, thank goodness. They are usually a wild mix of people, events and places, and its a relief to wake up and be back in my peaceful 'real' world. When younger I sometimes had prophetic dreams, some very pleasant and some not. I once dreamed there would be a someone staying with us. And sure enough a day or two later my a friend's brother unexpectantly arrived and stayed for a week. Not very woo woo, but there it is.
 
I don't believe that dreams can be prophetic in the true sense, that would imply that the future is fixed and knowable. It also implies that there is nothing we can do to change it, our actions are predestined. A very dangerous philosophy indeed.

I believe that the subconscious mind can often perform feats of extrapolation based on our experiences and knowledge that we aren't even aware we possess at times. These manifest as dreams that, sometimes, appear to coincide with future events, the law of averages makes this so. Alternatively the dream is so vague as to permit multiple interpretations, which may or may not come to be. We remember these and think "Wow, I dreamed that". What we don't tend to remember is the many times that the dream does not pan out.

Likening the brain to hard drive is one way of looking at it, although huge, the storage capacity of the brain is NOT infinite and presumably some method of garbage removal is necessary.

Weird and illogical dreams, I think, sometimes, may be the result of us remembering several dreams and merging them together into a hodge-podge of unrelated dreams as we awaken.

When I, or anyone else, accurately dreams next week's lottery numbers and sends me the numbers in time to buy a card, then I'll believe in prophetic dreams.
 
Shalimar said:
Thank God, Cookie, you are woo-woo enough as it is! Back to swimming in Glenfiddich I go, before I get
poked in the tail with wicked knitting needles by Mama woo!
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Shali, what has been going on while I've been quietly dreaming? Swimming in Glenfiddich? I seem to have missed something. As soon as I finish my cup of tea, I'll be able to think of an appropriate witty response. Til then I'm still in la-la-between waking and dream state..... zzzzzz.:yawning:
 
I don't have many dreams that make a whole lot of sense... just a jumble of scenes and conversations that I usually in some way can trace back to something that happened during the day.
 
Your loss, you just don't know what are you are missing, and I am thinking of getting some tats in strategic places to add to the excitement...
 
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