Growing up I was told not to put any stock in dreams. They're nothing and you can get distracted from your purpose by trying to find meaning in them.
Yet I feel like there has to be something more to them than just the mind churning through influences of the day.
We still don't really know why we dream or why dreams are common among many animals. One theory is that they help us test things out before actually doing them. I don't know. I feel like if that were true, we would remember them better.
My experience with dreams has been becoming more intense lately.
To start out with, most of my dreams are very true to life. They are believable and realistic and about normal, every day activities. I tend to remember many of my dreams fairly well. There are some common themes, including the popular: dreaming that I'm going about errands while completely naked.
I noticed something a while back, which is that I often have trouble with my eyes in dreams. My eyes will be closed and I won't be able to get them open, or the lids will be very heavy, or I won't be able to raise my gaze or turn my gaze.
Sometimes this clues me in that I'm dreaming. More often, it just frustrates me. Within the dream I will think: this is something that tends to happen in a dream. Am I dreaming now? And I conclude that I'm not! Everything feels just too real.
Sometimes I force myself to test out whether I'm dreaming by jumping and seeing if I fly. Whenever I do this test, of course I do start flying and I have to acknowledge that it's a dream.
Recently I was having trouble with my vision and realized that it must be a dream, but I wanted to wake up. I really tried hard to wake up and couldn't. I felt trapped and panicked, afraid that I would never wake up. I kept dreaming that I was waking up but the vision problem remained the same. I dreamed I was laying in my own bed. I would try to stand up. Still dreaming. I would try going to the bathroom and splashing water on my face. Still dreaming. It was terrifying!
Shortly after that I had a dream where I was talking to my boyfriend while organizing a closet. I told him about how to tell that I wasn't dreaming. I know this isn't a dream, I said, because I have all my senses. I can feel the clothes that I'm touching, I can smell and hear and come into the present moment right here. But I was dreaming.
I had a similar conversation with a good friend in a dream later.
It reminds me of a Dr Who episode where Amy and Rory and the 11th Doctor are trying to figure out which reality is real and which is a dream. Each time they wake up to the other reality, they are absolutely convinced that the one they are in is the real one.
That's how I feel.
After I wake up, it's obvious it was a dream. While I'm experiencing it, it is so real that I refuse to believe that it's a dream. (Although I'm lucid dreaming more and more lately).
And I wonder if that's the point.
This is what the test is. Not to try out different experiences before trying them in real life, but to have a frame of reference for how what we think of as "real life" is actually a dream. A slightly different kind of dream, as its designed to last some 80 years rather than a few hours.
Yet I feel like there has to be something more to them than just the mind churning through influences of the day.
We still don't really know why we dream or why dreams are common among many animals. One theory is that they help us test things out before actually doing them. I don't know. I feel like if that were true, we would remember them better.
My experience with dreams has been becoming more intense lately.
To start out with, most of my dreams are very true to life. They are believable and realistic and about normal, every day activities. I tend to remember many of my dreams fairly well. There are some common themes, including the popular: dreaming that I'm going about errands while completely naked.
I noticed something a while back, which is that I often have trouble with my eyes in dreams. My eyes will be closed and I won't be able to get them open, or the lids will be very heavy, or I won't be able to raise my gaze or turn my gaze.
Sometimes this clues me in that I'm dreaming. More often, it just frustrates me. Within the dream I will think: this is something that tends to happen in a dream. Am I dreaming now? And I conclude that I'm not! Everything feels just too real.
Sometimes I force myself to test out whether I'm dreaming by jumping and seeing if I fly. Whenever I do this test, of course I do start flying and I have to acknowledge that it's a dream.
Recently I was having trouble with my vision and realized that it must be a dream, but I wanted to wake up. I really tried hard to wake up and couldn't. I felt trapped and panicked, afraid that I would never wake up. I kept dreaming that I was waking up but the vision problem remained the same. I dreamed I was laying in my own bed. I would try to stand up. Still dreaming. I would try going to the bathroom and splashing water on my face. Still dreaming. It was terrifying!
Shortly after that I had a dream where I was talking to my boyfriend while organizing a closet. I told him about how to tell that I wasn't dreaming. I know this isn't a dream, I said, because I have all my senses. I can feel the clothes that I'm touching, I can smell and hear and come into the present moment right here. But I was dreaming.
I had a similar conversation with a good friend in a dream later.
It reminds me of a Dr Who episode where Amy and Rory and the 11th Doctor are trying to figure out which reality is real and which is a dream. Each time they wake up to the other reality, they are absolutely convinced that the one they are in is the real one.
That's how I feel.
After I wake up, it's obvious it was a dream. While I'm experiencing it, it is so real that I refuse to believe that it's a dream. (Although I'm lucid dreaming more and more lately).
And I wonder if that's the point.
This is what the test is. Not to try out different experiences before trying them in real life, but to have a frame of reference for how what we think of as "real life" is actually a dream. A slightly different kind of dream, as its designed to last some 80 years rather than a few hours.
