A new theory of dreams

[Elidor]

Standard dream analysis calls for the interpretation of dreams according to significance to the subject’s subconscious and conscious life through decoding symbolic elements. This is too shallow an analysis. Rather than examine a tree, let’s examine the forest.

When we examine many dreams over a period of time, larger patterns emerge. In a dream last night, I was shown a building where children were taking turns tumbling down a hill. It was explained to me (I never saw my tour guide) that this is one of the important parts of the dream process, where we experience and face down our fears and phobias. This holds true for many common dreams across a broad range of cultures.

Oddly enough, Robert Monroe describes something very much along these lines in his second and third books, although in his case he sought out the learning process. It was his belief that most people who don’t drink or take drugs go to “dream school” where they are taught how to get the most from life and how to grow spiritually.

I have always winced when I hear dream analyses that impose rigorous symbolic logic (a most dubious type of logic) on dreams, which, if they do indeed have significance, have significance only for the person who has them. Asking another person to decode your dreams is like asking someone to eat your lunch and hoping to gain the calories thereby.

We also use the dream state to practice our navigation of time-space and the use and control of energy. Time-space is not the most intuitive place to navigate, and from the time we are infants, we practice our control and mastery over it in our dreams. Many dreams involving travel and physical activity focus on this. There are many other things we do in our dreams besides learn, but I’m trying not to be long-winded here, so I’ll leave it at that.

There is much with personal significance in our dreams, but it is a mistake to think that every little thing has some hidden mystical significance. Before anyone goes and gets all Freudian on their dreams, they should remember that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. There is a plain purpose behind our nocturnal lives; our own betterment through education via the dream process.

[Behind the Aegis]

1. interesting read

As someone who likes to interpret dreams, I found some of what you put down, very interesting. I don't agree with some of it, but that is just me. :) I agree that dreams should not be broken down like an instruction manual. However, this is a good way for people to start decoding dreams. As we learn more, we are able to find patterns and also realize that a cigar is not always a cigar, nor is it always a symbol for sexuality (or other traditional meanings). I feel sometimes I dreams are nothing more than "purges" of useless information, sometimes they are just entertainment, sometimes prophetic, and sometimes a mystery to solve.

However, I also feel sometimes it is better to have others "read" dreams because they don't try to read into certain things. Like I said, I read dreams, but sometimes ask others to help me with mine because I know I may not be seeing what is really right in front of my face. I also use sensations and intuition when reading dreams, which I feel aids in what I am doing. One thing I really agree with is that sometimes having another read a dream from you, that person may miss something of personal significance. I think the thing that exemplifies that best is the free association game. How is it that a person can say "black" and each person you ask may have a different word pop in their head? I feel that happens because of our associations, which then translate into our dreams. So, when I do a reading and I see something I would translate one way, but feel it is wrong, I will go with my "feeling" and not the traditional meaning.

Take a look at my thread about dreams (if you haven't already) and tell me what you think.

Thanks for the interesting reading.

[Elidor]

2. Thanks–one point I must recant

While I personally rarely share my dreams with others, I love reading about others' dreams. In fact, I'm something of a dream junkie. I, too, feel an intuitive sense of much that lies just under the surface of dreams. I'm going to enjoy reading the rest of your thread. There are some good dreams in there.

I left you two recent dreams to look at. :D They're brief.

[Elidor]

3. The Topography of Dreams

The places we go when we dream are vivid places with recognizable features, laws, and consistencies. All over the world, many people share common archetypal dream elements. If one scrutinizes their dreams for any length of time, it becomes obvious that we each have a certain set of places we go when we dream. Some of them we remember, some of them we do not. Many of these we return to again and again. I have begun this catalogue of places I am intimately familiar with from the other side through years of regular experience.

The City
The City is–for me–a bleak place. Not everyone sees it so; this is just my particular filter. It is a place of eternal nighttime and cold winds, with soaring highway overpasses plunging up steep hills full of (mostly) empty buildings with darkened windows. A few scattered souls haunt the place, coming and going as quietly as ghosts. A handful of the people there are awake, and quite distinct from the zombies. They will engage you.

The City is both a way-point and a destination. Most people don’t stay for long. Many stop by briefly to get oriented and leave immediately. I have tried to look up friends in the City, but it usually involved laborious searches up steep hills with no transportation, the terrain always familiar but never quite recognizable. Occasionally, I go to an apartment there and stare at the walls until I fade out.

The Staging Area
I have to assume that everyone has their own personalized version of this one. For me, it is a large, secluded area next to a busy Interstate highway. Though the world is flashing by just over the fence, I am in a huge private enclave with various friendly people who seem to be trying to help me. I have returned here again and again, just as often as the City. It’s a mellow place where I can relax and try to prepare for the lessons ahead, both in waking life and in the dream world.

In one dream, the staging area was a huge nursery/industrial area with lots of small trees in rows and some heavy equipment, pylons and other construction supplies. A friend of mine seemed to be the owner, and he let me have the run of the place. He seemed to be hoping I would surprise him in some way, but I stumbled around in something of a daze, not quite getting it.

Apartments
I have more than one place I call home on the other side. The best one is a very nice two-story building with a pitched roof that stretches to the ground at each of the corners. I have a unit on the second floor, with soft lighting and a Japanese simplicity and harmony. I took possession of it once and have rarely returned. I always felt a little uncomfortable there. Too upscale for a guy like me. And truth be told, there’s not much need for a residence there. It’s more about going out and seeing things.

The apartment in the city is another story altogether. It’s on an upper floor of a large building, with a single window looking out onto the gloomy City and a pair of shadows on the floor that might with some thought become a couch and television, if I so desire. I have only caught myself there a time or two, but it resonates in my memory.

Caves
Caves have very special significance for me. For other people, it might be airplanes, boats, swimming, birds & flying, or almost any other thing under the sun. But each of us has that experience where we perceive the paths from this world to the other. I find them daunting, presently occurring as deep shafts that require special rope techniques.

Because I know some cavers on this side, I have sometimes dreamt of them trying to coax me down some deep hole. Other times, they show up after I find holes of my own. There were perhaps 3-dozen dreams like this that I can recall within the last four years, and many more that I don’t.

Sometimes, I’ll dream of a house with a tunnel in the basement. The tunnel leads to a special place that I must guard or a very narrow birth-canal that I can’t fit through. This is a path out of the body, but it is deceptively pictured. When you find yourself dreaming of caves or other such unusual experiences, dive in and explore. More on this soon.

[Elidor]

4. Leaving the body through Aperture Dreams

A little background: about a month ago I asked for any higher powers who could hear me to help me project. I had immediate results.

Two recent dreams which have had a profound impact on me: The first was a fairly standard (for me) cave dream: some fellow cavers and I were deep underground. They were coaxing me up a small passage that got tighter as it went higher. I’m not claustrophobic, but it got so tight that my head got stuck and I became acutely uncomfortable.

Someone who had gone up before me was urging me to continue on, but it was very strange in that hole, and my perceptions were all in disarray. Everything seemed upside-down and inside-out. It was so much tighter than anything I could fit through intact.

And that’s the crux of the matter: you can’t fit through intact.

I’ve had this dream many, many times in my life, perhaps a thousand different variants of this same experience. It’s all very familiar to me. And I always get stuck. Until last night.

This time there was no pretense to caving. They–I have little idea who “they” were–showed me something I interpreted as a black box and asked me to put my head inside it. (Yeah, it sounds like a freaking UFO abduction, doesn’t it? Ha-ha.) I did so, and instantly encountered the too-tight tunnel constricting my head, the same as all those cave dreams. At their urging, I pushed myself in further and the disorientation became extreme. It was a kind of mental nausea akin to having one’s head underwater. Everything was upside-down and very fuzzy.

I quickly realized two things: 1) I could get through, but my BODY could not, and 2) though some part of my mind could finish the trip through the tunnel, it was VERY STRANGE out there on the other side of it. My mind would not emerge unchanged. My brain already felt scrambled.

My vision improved as I pushed myself toward the far end and I saw some people there. It was somehow explained to me that I was looking at a scene from my childhood. I wasn’t particularly interested in it (I was not lucid), and pulled back out of the tunnel.

They showed me to another tunnel, said that it was very popular, a service of some sort. I stuck my head in but it was the same unnerving constriction, and I indicated I was tired. I saw something through this one, too, but I have no idea what it was.

I awoke directly and put on a Hemi-Sync CD through the headphones. After counting down, there was a vibrant explosion of white light which danced before my “eyes.” As it faded, I saw that the tiny star that sits so remote in my inner sky was grown quite large, and was pulsating and swaying. It was now a fiery white ring.

I had to leave it at that. I was too excited to proceed. I’m still excited about finally getting to the other end of the “tunnel.” If I had to guess, I’d say I’ve probably had a thousand Aperture dreams over my life. At long last, I finally got through. Next time, I’ll jump in headfirst, without hesitation. You stick your head in and you let your body go. Kinda like the hokey-pokey, only harder. I'm hoping there's lucidity on the other end.

I hope all this wins me the Craziest Dream of the Year Award.

[OKthatsIT]

5. so many kinds of dreams...i have a simpler way of knowing ....

what they mean. I simply follow my emotions. What was i feeling when events changed ..why was I creating this landscape, etc...I can usually understand this type of dream as means of expressing the part of myself that has been suppressed...my emotional body. The part of us that we must constantly restrain from spontaneously expression. So we sleep and it comes forth, uninhibited.

But then there are dreams which are not of my own making. Some dreams are out of body, some are visitations, some are alarms that someone is not well, or someone telling me what theyre about to under go a big change, some are telling of the future...these dreams are not of my own psyche, though my psyche must recognize them for what they are. These dreams are more literal in meaning. I act as a receiver and get the message. Sometimes they feel like dreams because my emotional body receives the information first, then my mind gives it form. Through feeling, I can tell if the dream was my own landscape..or that of something else.