I had a strange dream last night. It involved passports. It was my usual frustrating dream of lines and missing planes but I was in a line for passports and I had 2 in my hand, one was an American one and the other I don't remember. I was trading in my American passport for a Mexican one because supposedly that's what I needed to get through another line quicker. So with that accomplished I was looking for my other line and found it and there were only a few Mexicans ahead of me and As I'm looking down at all my paperwork and my 2 passports a sense of panic washed over me....like what the frack did I just do?? How am I going to get back to the states? Then I woke up.
@Chrissy Page , Do not go outside of the USA for awhile. That should take care of that dream. Seriously, we all have to process what we can see happening around us, and a dream we can't tell no.
In our world, today, our brains are flooded with visual input. Maybe it's as simple as watching too much TV, as Ike suggested, or too much time in front of an electronic screen. It makes me wonder if blind people dream a lot. I think our dreams are merely a defragging process, that our sub concious brain performs. I think that same conscious brain, then tries to give meaning to it all.HA!
Yes, Joe, to "defragging process" ! Be careful what you search for on google and don't make typos. I mean how many times have you gotten a disturbing image after using google image?! For instance: If you want to know how to make smoked fish for dinner DON'T google "smoking fish"…
Having dreams, good or bad, are a rarity for me. I don't understand why I go to sleep and wake up 7-8 hours later without any visions/thoughts of that time spent sleeping? Really ... nothing. I've wondered about it often. Now, if I'm ever sick with a cold or with aches and pains, and take a bedtime sleep aid, that will trigger a dream or nightmare, but otherwise it's clear sailing .... I'm weird!
Bonnie, maybe that means that you not only sleep very soundly but you wake up directly from that deep REM sleep (you have no need to wake up slowly because the REM sleep completed your full sleep cycle since you sleep a full 7-8hr night deeply)…because I think our dreams don't enter into our memory (consciousness) until we are half asleep and half awake as we are awaking.
Yes I would agree with that, my sleep patterns are very erratic so I am aware of many dreams each night. Quote When people say, “I don’t dream,” they’re really telling you that they don’t remember their dreams. Remembering is easier if you wake up in the middle of a dream or almost immediately afterward. Consequently, light sleepers, who are apt to wake up frequently during REM sleep, generally have better recall than their sound-asleep bedmates. Remembering is also easier when you awaken naturally, like on the weekend or during a vacation. The jolt of an alarm clock, on the other hand, is liable to make your thoughts jump abruptly from a fantasy dream to a nagging to-do list.
My take on dreams is that there are two kinds (at least), the first is the simple defragging type mentioned earlier in the thread, where the mind is processing and allocating the days experiences into various parts of our memory. The other more complex ones are in my opinion a form of communication between the unconscious and the conscious mind, in the form of visual symbols. These tend to be various anxieties/problems/issues that have been buried in our unconscious, but now need to be acknowledged and acted on by our conscious mind. I feel the recurring dream is often an indicator that we are not listening to our inner voice, concerning some issue not being dealt with. If continually ignored they can turn into nightmares in my experience. These types of dreams have occurred to me when I have been going through various crisis in my life, often dreaming about water (emotions) and drowning, when I ignored them they would eventually turn into dreams of fire and houses being destroyed by fire, life changes would then forcibly happen. Immediately after these changes the dreams would stop.
When I smoked, I didn't remember my dreams, assuming that I dreamed at all. But I quit smoking more than forty years ago.
I had a wonderful dream last night. I awoke and went back to sleep and the dream continued. First time a dream had done that to continue. It was a nice dream for I met my true love and he was buying and bringing me presents. My dreams seem to change as I grow older. This was the first dream ever that continued after I awoken and went back to sleep. Sometimes I don't dream for months and then start dreaming and I'm always myself.
Well now, that's an intriguing question for sure! Why do I say that? My first instinct was to say "oh sure, I'm always myself in dreams." But then the more I thought about it, I realized something... if I'm dreaming about people I don't know, or places I haven't been, what is the *proof* that I'm myself? That may be too deep for me to think about today but really... if someone in the dream doesn't call me by name and it's filled with things and people that are not familiar, maybe it's *not* me! Speaking of dreams... had a number of weird ones all in a short span of time right before I woke this morning. The last one was creepy... it was like a real male voice woke me, but the house was quiet. He kept saying "sixty-three, sixty-three, sixty-three" until I woke up. If someone has an interp for it that would scare me... please *don't* tell me!