"Life itself is only a vision, a dream."
People often try to look "into" dreams in order to find meaning or a subtle message of some sort.
It is a funny circular interaction... the 'mind' is trying to decipher the product of that same mind!
Any kind of applied dream interpretation is really nothing other than a fictional narrative of your own creation.
Dreams, like Life itself, exist only to exist.
Of course, it is impossible not to make connections or associations with certain dreams. I try to just see dreams as an interactive simulation, more than a cypher to be decoded. My dreams are vivid & I can often remember what I've dreamt about. Waking up slightly & dozing back off makes me remember more of them.
Just in the past week, I've dreamt on different occasions I was:
1. in jail w/ Snoop Dogg as my cellmate
2. driving & talking to one of my ex-girlfriends in my car
3. in a car fender-bender & had to fill out paperwork at a police station
Often, I'll be in a variation of a building from my past that often morphs into another familiar building as the setting or situation changes. For instance, I'll be in a building that's similar to my college library & I walk into another part where it becomes a nightclub. There I'll be talking to someone who seems extremely familiar with a real personality, even though when I wake up the person is apparently a total figment of my imagination!
One funny dream I remember very clearly was waiting in a subway station with my sister & one of my brothers. We couldn't find our train, so we were sitting with our luggage in the middle of a corridor. In the dream, my arm started becoming sore, so I put my suitcase down. It became more painful till it was searing, then I suddenly woke up- with my arm scrunched in an uncomfortable position!
Sometimes, my mouth being dry or an itch in my throat while I'm asleep will translate into a parallel dream discomfort, that I force myself to wake from.
Recently, I was dreaming of sitting on a bus, & these teenagers near me started saying things to each other that made absolutely no sense. At that point, I became aware that I was dreaming & actually thought to myself, "Ok, this is weird, I am definitely in a dream here..." The way I could think to get out of it was to start yelling out loud. It felt like I was beginning to be pulled apart. I was still yelling as my voice became metallic exactly like when Neo is absorbed by the liquid mirror in the Matrix. Then... Boom!, I was awake w/ my heart racing.
Travel & directions are not my strongest suite, so being lost or having to find my way out of being stuck somewhere is a situation that happens pretty regularly while I'm dreaming. Often I dream about driving around a city trying to find a bridge or a certain street, but all the street names are wrong & nothing makes sense. Forget trying to read maps or GPS or even use type on cellphone- because technology doesn't seem to work well in the dream realm. It all looks like babble/hieroglyphics & perhaps my mind just isn't focused enough to recreate it.
I've already written about my experiences with times where I experienced flying. These are probably the most fascinating because they are so lucid & outside normal human ability. These originate in the same organ that is forming your ordinary waking perceptions, so there can be a quite startling realism involved.
Anyway, the original reason I started this post was this theory I just came across- that dreams are basically a virtual reality simulation to play out situations in the subconscious. There is no ultimate purpose for it, but perhaps the function can be understood to be an experiential training program that allows your brain to play out random scenarios that can be sublimated into one's experience.
It is a funny circular interaction... the 'mind' is trying to decipher the product of that same mind!
Any kind of applied dream interpretation is really nothing other than a fictional narrative of your own creation.
Dreams, like Life itself, exist only to exist.
Of course, it is impossible not to make connections or associations with certain dreams. I try to just see dreams as an interactive simulation, more than a cypher to be decoded. My dreams are vivid & I can often remember what I've dreamt about. Waking up slightly & dozing back off makes me remember more of them.
Just in the past week, I've dreamt on different occasions I was:
1. in jail w/ Snoop Dogg as my cellmate
2. driving & talking to one of my ex-girlfriends in my car
3. in a car fender-bender & had to fill out paperwork at a police station
Often, I'll be in a variation of a building from my past that often morphs into another familiar building as the setting or situation changes. For instance, I'll be in a building that's similar to my college library & I walk into another part where it becomes a nightclub. There I'll be talking to someone who seems extremely familiar with a real personality, even though when I wake up the person is apparently a total figment of my imagination!
One funny dream I remember very clearly was waiting in a subway station with my sister & one of my brothers. We couldn't find our train, so we were sitting with our luggage in the middle of a corridor. In the dream, my arm started becoming sore, so I put my suitcase down. It became more painful till it was searing, then I suddenly woke up- with my arm scrunched in an uncomfortable position!
Sometimes, my mouth being dry or an itch in my throat while I'm asleep will translate into a parallel dream discomfort, that I force myself to wake from.
Recently, I was dreaming of sitting on a bus, & these teenagers near me started saying things to each other that made absolutely no sense. At that point, I became aware that I was dreaming & actually thought to myself, "Ok, this is weird, I am definitely in a dream here..." The way I could think to get out of it was to start yelling out loud. It felt like I was beginning to be pulled apart. I was still yelling as my voice became metallic exactly like when Neo is absorbed by the liquid mirror in the Matrix. Then... Boom!, I was awake w/ my heart racing.
Travel & directions are not my strongest suite, so being lost or having to find my way out of being stuck somewhere is a situation that happens pretty regularly while I'm dreaming. Often I dream about driving around a city trying to find a bridge or a certain street, but all the street names are wrong & nothing makes sense. Forget trying to read maps or GPS or even use type on cellphone- because technology doesn't seem to work well in the dream realm. It all looks like babble/hieroglyphics & perhaps my mind just isn't focused enough to recreate it.
I've already written about my experiences with times where I experienced flying. These are probably the most fascinating because they are so lucid & outside normal human ability. These originate in the same organ that is forming your ordinary waking perceptions, so there can be a quite startling realism involved.
Anyway, the original reason I started this post was this theory I just came across- that dreams are basically a virtual reality simulation to play out situations in the subconscious. There is no ultimate purpose for it, but perhaps the function can be understood to be an experiential training program that allows your brain to play out random scenarios that can be sublimated into one's experience.
Nature.com:
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