What the... does this dream mean?

We got the wrong dream interpretation, FC…

I’m sure you’re as sad as I am.

I’m inspired to cause more dreams of this nature.

No Magsjy, nightmares are not wonderful. I have my share of them sometimes. The last one I had was of my daughter falling off a boat into the ocean. Just as I jumped in after her, I woke up. I kept saying thank god, thank god - :laughing: some agnostic I am. Then I sighed in relief and had to convince myself that it was only a dream by repeating that a few times.

Some dreams are easier to interpret than others if we know what it is going on in our lives. I don’t necessarily think that dreaming of this or that specifically as is written in dream interpretion books is right on - the human psyche is much more complicated than that but I do realize that material in the dream has to deciphered from the symbols and metaphors in them.

The experts also say that we have to face the scary parts, entities, in our dreams, and that they may speak to us.

How does a night lamp help you - except after you wake up? And a dreamcatcher?
Perhaps I ought to have said that they are not wonderful but wonder-filled? Same difference I guess. What I meant is that it is still quite remarkable what our brain chemistry is capable of conjuring up - the kind of landscapes given to us, out of the material of our dailly lives. And if that is the case, then what we need to do is to take care of our waking existence as best we can…figure things out, etc.

Have you ever thought that dreams might just be mostly meaningless interpretations made by your brain in a state where it is not fully able to communicate between various areas of the brain, ie those commonly associated with context, meaning or reason. When you are asleep it seems there is a significantly reduced signalling between all the various areas that generally are in play when we consciously make sense of the world. Whilst I wouldn’t be so gauche as to assume this means dreams have no reason or meaning, I might well suggest that most of it is a mix of the days experience and your minds lack of ability to put it in a narrative you could make sense of, and hence has no consistent meaning beyond general fears and doubts you experience on a day to day basis, none of which are related to specific things in a dream.

I know I sound crazy. :stuck_out_tongue:

Not crazy. I spelled this out earlier. It’s the interpretation given in the Time/Life book “The Brain”. However,I do believe that unresolved problems cause nightmares. I’m retired. My worst dreams are being back at work with a co-worker who evicted me from her home when I was hospitalized. These dreams are an unwanted replay of the past ad nauseum. They are gut reactions, bearing little resemblance to rational thought. It’s almost as if that affair resonated throughout my body.

Yeah as long as we don’t start going down the road of smoking a cigar as a woman means precisely that you have penis envy or whatever other specific nonsense that we tend to read into dreams I think it’s quite right to say dreams are general and reflect a way of dealing with things broadly rather than specifically.

As far as nightmares go you do tend to have more early on in your dream state, most of which you fail to remember unless you wake up, as the night progresses you tend to have more benign dreams, dreams you are more likely to remember as you move towards consciousness. I would suspect that most nightmares are actually just a normal way of the body stressing itself without you consciously being aware of it with the ultimate result that it removes stress, and it might explain how we prime our brain so we ultimately wake up more relaxed. When of course though we have dreams that repeat themselves over time which you often remember, I think in that case you may be right this is something other than a natural de-stress and more likely to reflect unresolved issues.

Since we are nearing Christmas, I am reminded of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” When Scrooge got his first visit from spirits, he claimed it was because of something he ate. But to stop with that explanation would have limited Dickens’ elaborate symbolisms of a corrupt life. Perhaps, beneath the fantasy was Scrooge’s guilt. So why couldn’t unresolved issues, even if prompted by poor digestion, be at issue here? We seem to want the spirit visitations to be real as suspension of disbelief in the resolution of problems that may spell out the nature of the problems.

I think I have found the significance of the sleeping blue dog, and it’s not what I thought. :neutral_face:

Oh sure leave us hanging… :slight_smile:

I don’t mean to, but I don’t want to talk about it in any detail whatsoever, but my questioning on where the colour blue came into the scenario has now been revealed.

Well then I am glad for you, I hope it settles your mind.

The scene:

As I stood on the landing ready to go downstairs I saw what I thought was a bear dart past.

I shouted to everyone to stay upstairs and go to the nearest bedroom for safety.

The beast eventually made its way upstairs… it wasn’t a bear but a jet black lion, and was groomed like a poodle… all curly black mane and hairless body with hair around each paw. He pushed against the door, but his fragile frame had no effect on the closed door so he toddled off.

It’s a dream similr to what I had, before a a real crisis happened in my life. The dream was of a cat, cute and cuddly, which suddenly turned into a roaring lion. Then a real crisis occurred in my life.

I don’t think You have to worry Mags, this is in reverse, something or somebody threatening, is really harmless. The fact that the door has been closed, may be a sign, that You want the beast, rather then the quite ? it’s a kind of beauty and the beast theme. you really down deep prefer the beast.
You want to let him in but ‘they’ constrain You.
I don’t know, if this interpretation fits, but it may work.

Some mllion years humans (including some ancestors of homo sapiens) lived together with wild animals. Since about 6000 years humans have been living together - more or less - with pets and other harmless animals and not or hardly with wild animals. You personally have never lived together with wild animals but merely with pets and other harmless animals. So there is no other sense behind your dream and no other (mostly paranoid or megalomanic) interpretation of your dream meaningful than the simple fact that there is a discrepancy between your species memory and your personal memory. What did you do at the said day before you went to bed, Mags?

Arminius, The dreams she is having may not require personal experience with wild animals. Personal memory may be hidden from an abyss, or type memory, whereas, as far removed we are from the origins, they are still intricate parts of the overall content of our sub conscious.

On some level, MagsJy, to me your dream seems to be about first impressions. First you thought it was a bear and then discovered that it was a jet black lion (sounds beautiful) groomed like a poodle. But then you mentioned his “fragile” frame like it was an anorexic lion.

The fragile frame part might have to do with our sense of powerlessness at times not being able to affect something difficult (as in the closed door) and we give up too easily (so he toddled off). I think that at times, whatever the reason we have a particular dream, the reason for that dream could come about from something which occurred or we thought of or saw even weeks or some months before. These things remain lodged in our brain and maybe certain things bring them about. But of course it could also be something which just happened that day too.

I used to have this recurring dream about lions… thankfully no more. lol. This or that lion would be chasing me and I would
be running for my life and screaming and just at the moment that I was about to open a door somewhere for safety, the lion would pounce on me and I would wake up screaming.

I did not say that Mags had personal experiences with wild animals. Please read my post. I said Mags had no personal experiences with wild animals. …
And “sub-conscious” (?): well, you can interprete anything and everything with “sub-conscious”. That’s pure arbitrariness.

That’s just the point, having or not having experiences with wild animals is irrelevant. Dreams of them still come up and they may mean something.

whatever the sub conscious is or isn’t, is another name for that something where the meaning may be hidden.

This is why people ask what dreams mean, even if the don’t go for formal analysis.

One has to be very careful, because there is no real prove or evidence for your statement that “dreams still come up and the may mean something”. One could also say that dreams mean nothing, because there is also no real prove or evidence for it. We merely have our own experiences and the knowledge of our ancestors. The rest is arbitrarily interpreted.

That is true to a certain extent, dreams may or may not mean some thing. However, basically, Ibdo not believe in the concept of nothingness. I feel even not dreaming at all may mean something. As long as there is some content, meaning is there, because the question is inordinately asked why dream at all, if not for some purpose? The purpose may be minimum a discharge of accumulated energy in terms of symbols, but why these symbols and not others? That is for the brain to answer and symbols are not a function of pure neurological mechanisms.