The Topic of Dreams

[The Harbinger of Ferocity]

The Topic of Dreams

For a place of such creativity and novelty, there's not been too much ongoing discussion with this matter of dreaming outside of the various roleplay topics themselves. Before you ask, no I do not include the spam forum, as this topic is intended to be a more serious and sincere collection of people's recounting, understandings thereof and anything relative; for some people the whole is a personal matter yet for others it is little more than a nighttime television series with no plot. Some dream to remember, others dream to forget. Regardless if you're invested on the front of interpretation, oneirology, spirituality or just sharing stories there of, feel free to put them here.

Let me say it now that if you are going to be explicit, immature, offensive, or strangely close-minded about the discussion of dreams then this topic is not for you.

Politely share, comment and discuss at will.

I will share my experiences in my following post.

[Shoryu Magami]

I don't have an immediate contribution to offer you - at least in terms of an example of a dream - but I think this is an interesting thread, and perhaps this little bit of discussion material will be of value to you here.

Actually, I suffer from a problem that causes me to forget any dream - virtually the instant I'm coherent - I have that could help me with my main story project in some way, so unlike a lot of writers very little of the content of my inspiration actually comes from dreams. Like I said, for whatever reason it's often only dreams related to my story have this problem -- anytime I have some pointless or disturbing dream, or a nightmare that forces me to relive events I'd rather put behind me, I'll often remember it vividly, but I'll never remember dreams that'd help my project.

Sadly, there's not much else to add here for now, but I like the thread idea.

[The Harbinger of Ferocity]

I will be the first to say that I encounter some routinely bad stuff in my dreams, frequent lucid dreamer or not. If it is a good day to sleep, nothing happens. If it is a decent day, I get some dreams that I have control over or have some sort of insightful meaning to me. If it is a bad day?

Talking About Bad (Really Bad) Personal Dreams and Experiences with Them

You start to realize how desensitized you have become when what are regularly considered nightmares leave you with only a few hours of bad sleep and a pretty cold, unemotional feeling when you get up. To be to the point without being too graphic, a lot of them are reliving events or recompiling them into newer and more unsettling realities. There's some deepseated insecurities I have with people that I have been working on and through for my entire lifetime that have only been made worse - we are talking to the point that I am pretty convinced when I go outside every day I am about to get picked off - but they are even more disturbing in dreams where your mind runs rampant without regular inhibitions.

Usually they turn from whatever seems to be a normal day, sometimes days I have lived before or ones that mirror life today, into disaster. This alone is pretty scary because if I am not aware, there's almost no easy indicator that this is not my life and is a fabrication of the mind. They follow patterns of involving people I distrust and for one reason or another we are forced into some sort of working scenario where they just cannot be uninvolved for whatever reason. Other times they are just faceless, nameless people. End result doesn't change. Somewhere along the line, usually in a city or confined environment, there starts up an exchange and my "own people" turn against me. Usually I am able to fend them off, withdraw, shoot - rinse, repeat. Sometimes it gets savage, other times it stays "neat" like that.

It is a bad feeling, I am not really sure what you can describe it as, other than you "know" what it feels like to be hunted. It is a lot worse when you knew, know or even regularly see these people and have to try to not think that, or not think you "killed" them in a dream or that you distrust them so much as individuals that they act as stand-ins. You can't un-see it. Other times you get glimpses back to them when you are going about life and you just time travel to another mindset and place, leaving everyone else looking at you and wondering where you went. It's cliché, I know, but it is a real thing.

But that isn't always the case. Sometimes other than finally catching up on sleep, I have the pleasure of getting to lucid dream. I make a pretty strong effort to double check reality, as the above compels me to, but when things do not align and I can tell it? What I would give to make those last longer. For myself the easiest way is to check the time, yet even that's hard to do. What I tend to notice is just strange inconsistencies.

For one, if I am not really me. If I am some other identity and my immediately recognizable dream qualities aren't manifest, something is off. That sounds backwards, but believe me, it is a lot more strange to be someone else in a dream and then have to think about returning to your own dream existence after. Other times it is when physics are off or the behavior of people are not aligning correctly with what I know to be true. Sometimes its the damn mist or haze, which is in places it shouldn't be - like indoors. That's when the limits are off. These I will share in time to come, because who does not want interesting or fascinating dreams?

Responding in turn to @Shoryu Magami, I have a similar but different experience with my writing. In the rare circumstances I have a decent dream and I do encounter some of my own works, I cannot influence them or alter them at all. The identities of these select few individuals I have no power over. It's bizarre in that sense, because otherwise these dreams are completely lucid and malleable as well as subject to recall. Involving them? Information gets lost, I cannot exercise anything on them directly and the conversations tend to be surprisingly informative and satisfying, even if I could tell you nothing about them.

[Vor]

Great topic, I've always been interested in dreams and lucid dreaming, even though it's not something I can see myself getting into.

I don't dream often, in fact most days I'm so tired from my day that I just fall into a deep sleep a few minutes after hitting the sack and wake up in the morning with no recollection of my dreams. It's strange, because when I was younger, I used to have vivid dreams and nightmares, but with every passing year I seem to get more and more grounded in reality? The few dreams I have now are pretty simple things, like relieving a memory from childhood or just dreaming that I'm late for work and horribly stuck in an endless traffic jam

Dreams have played a role in my life though, especially when I was younger, as I said. I remember this recurring dream, I'm going out on my balcony and suddenly the whole things snaps off and I barely manage to grab a hold of something as I dangle helplessly from the fourth floor. It always felt so real because everything about it was so...life-like? The exact sound the door makes when I open it, the same small crack on the balcony's railing that bugs me every time I go out there. It just had all these little details that made me believe that this time it's happening for real, only it's always a dream and I wake up with a start. Now, I guess you could say that's just a fear of heights and maybe it's so. But back then, I didn't have any fear or heights whatsoever, but I am afraid of heights now. Did my dreams fuel this phobia? Or was my subconscious mind always aware of this?

Another recurring dream I have is of losing one particular tooth. I swear this is probably one of the earliest recurring dreams I've had and it continues to plague me to this day (very infrequently compared to the past, but still). It starts with me waking up, going to wash my mouth and realising that I've spat out a tooth in the sink. Then I'm either pitying myself for being an ugly bastard or thinking "Oh my god, this is gonna cost a fortune for the dentist to fix" and then I wake up. I've read that it's something to do with self-esteem issues, a fear of smiling or fear of losing something. I dunno, could be true. I mean, I don't have a pearly white smile and my teeth are crooked (didn't want to wear braces as a kid, hindsight's a bitch), but I don't feel too strongly about it and I'm smiling and laughing all the time, doesn't feel like it's an "issue" to me. And yet, I keep getting this dream. How come? I keep asking myself.

But yeah, as I've gotten older I have such vivid dreams less and less. I remember that when I was in my second year of high school and had gotten really serious about RP'ing and writing in general, I started getting dreams again. This inspired me to write a series of loosely-linked short stories, to which I gave the rather unoriginal name of "Dreamscape". I tried to keep them as close as possible to what I had experienced and recalled of my dreams, though obviously I did get carried away artistically. They dealt with the concept of self and being, out of body experiences, drugs, addiction, sexual fantasies and other repressed thoughts which seemed to surface while dreaming. I kept at it for a while, but then university and a job happened and I stopped. The dreams stopped around the same time.

So yeah, I just rambled without providing anything constructive to the discussion, just throwing out some random thoughts.

PS. Do you guys dream in black & white or colour? I always dream in colour, but I have friends and relatives who keep telling me that they dream in greyscale. I've read interesting theories on the subject, from reasonable to totally outlandish ones. Guess it's yet another mystery of the mind we haven't been able to solve yet.

[The Harbinger of Ferocity]

Rambling without providing apparent constructiveness is, in its own way, very much in vein of the way dreams are, @Vor. Regardless, they were interesting stories and seem to have a fairly notable impact on you than a good number of people - it was not until more recently I myself started to ask questions of "Do my dreams fuel my perceptions?" or "Do my perceptions fuel my dreams?" Not exclusively I mean, they're a bit of give and take, but in general. While mostly in relation to the bad dreams, it has a lot more interesting and deeper implications with the good or decent dreams, especially as more and more lucidity gets involved.

Not that I am an expert, but from my own experience with tooth related dreams - one of the few "dreams everyone supposedly has" that I share, as for example I have not had a falling or flying dream - mine are pretty firmly rooted in my aforementioned insecurities around people. I am no stranger in needing to blend in, but it wounds me on a much deeper level when I cannot be my own persona and identity. Mine changes by each time, but yours sounds like it might be more related to something you encountered or thought you did in youth, that's my guess.

To answer your question, I dream in color and very rarely can recall voices or sounds. In the dream they are present, but I am not able to recall what is said, instead only the gist of their meaning or intent. I could paraphrase it, but it is far more startling if and when I can remember words. The color tends to be foggy or misty, with distances being hard to determine.

[TheMadAsshatter]

There were a couple months in High School where I regularly kept a dream journal. I had it under my bed and as soon as I had a dream, I would note the date and start writing in as much detail as possible, sometimes drawing maps and floor plans. I would pretty much do this from the time I woke up to about halfway through my first class. I noticed that I started dreaming more frequently, regularly, and vividly than before, but for whatever reason I stopped the habit and now I pretty much only have a good dream once or twice a week. It was almost daily when I kept the journal.

I've had a lot of dreams; some of which have kind of terrifying implications. For instance, and I don't want to get into too much detail, but at one point during High School I had a dream that I was going on a shooting spree. Yep. Straight up murdering people; mostly people that I saw at school on a regular basis, and not even people I didn't like. I still have no idea what spurred it, and I would never do anything like that in reality. I guess my brain was just not in a good mood that night, or something. It's the only time I've ever had a dream where I was just slaughtering people with no cause or basis.

Likewise, I've had a few dreams where I brought airsoft guns to school, handed them out, and everyone just started going at it. Those were fun. Most of the dreams I had of or at school were either terrifying in some way (either like mentioned above, or of the "go to school naked", or "forget your locker combo" variety), or some goofy parody of usual school shit, and rarely in between. Weird how that shit works.

I've also noticed that the games I play tend to influence my dreams. Like when I got DayZ a few months after it first came out (the mod, not the standalone game) I played the shit out of it. I literally started dreaming that I was playing it. Not that it was real life, but that I was playing it. Like what the fuck brain? Why not go all the way? The same thing has happened with other games. Garry's Mod, Project Reality, Stalker; sometimes where the game is real, and sometimes where I'm just playing it, and sometimes it switches from one to the other. And then when I played Amnesia a lot and downloaded custom stories out the ass... Crazy-ass nightmares were pretty prevalent during that time.

But if my dreams aren't about games, they're usually just kind of random. There's not really a common thread to them, with one exception. A lot of dreams that I have where I'm either running from something, or trying to defend myself from something, I'll find that I'm either not running as fast as I should, or having trouble fighting back. Like, if I have a gun or something, at least half of the time I almost can't pull the trigger without using both hands, even though I'm a seasoned shooter in real life.

Sorry, I'm probably rambling a bit. I feel like it's kinda hard for me to talk about dreams without just vomiting out some of the most noteworthy dreams I've had with little to no organization of my thoughts. However, on the topic of dream journals, would you have a problem with me using this thread as one?

[The Harbinger of Ferocity]

@TheMadAsshatter, you are perfectly welcome to store recountings of your dreams here as a sort of dream journal. Mind you they will be able to be read by anyone, so do not share anything you do not feel comfortable with. If you are fairly open about it, I just ask that you maintain it at a mature or reasonably inoffensive manner.

Most people, from what I have gathered, experience similar issues with performing actions in dreams or feeling a sense of success or advancement. A lot talk about the "infinite hallway where you run forever" as an example, but fending off something is another distinct one too. I personally believe the complexity of an action, even if well defined in reality, is made more vulnerable in a dream - as with having to use both hands to pull a trigger; as though the more moving parts or changes it causes in reality are just amplified and multiplied in the oddness of a dream. I've heard you can learn to perform them better by trying with repetition in dreams or even just on a daydreaming level of thinking on them, but I myself have not had an issue with carrying out an intended action so it is a bit foreign to me there.

[TheMadAsshatter]

Even when I'm not running from something in a dream, I'll sometimes experience running in slow motion, or not getting enough power in each footfall.

Oh, and there's another one. When I was younger, I would sometimes have dreams where I would be thrown out of something, or start freefalling for some reason, and everything would slow down, and I wouldn't be able to hear anything except for a dull ringing.

[ArenaSnow]

Even when I'm not running from something in a dream, I'll sometimes experience running in slow motion, or not getting enough power in each footfall.

@TheMadAsshatter

Not uncommon, from conversations I've had with others. And it's certainly not uncommon for me.

I'd add more, but alas, RPguild is very low on my list of priorities at the moment.

[The Harbinger of Ferocity]

@TheMadAsshatter, while I have felt sensations of "falling", they almost always occur when in the process of losing conscious. The only exception is "surfacing" or feeling like gravity has briefly changed when waking up. All the rest? Short of sounds, I have never experienced that. This said, the ringing has happened before, even to the point of being painful.

[Witch Cat]

Oh, we talking about dreams? Finally! I was waiting for one of these. Time to play doctor!

Even when I'm not running from something in a dream, I'll sometimes experience running in slow motion, or not getting enough power in each footfall.

Oh, and there's another one. When I was younger, I would sometimes have dreams where I would be thrown out of something, or start freefalling for some reason, and everything would slow down, and I wouldn't be able to hear anything except for a dull ringing.

@TheMadAsshatter

I've heard that a sensation of falling in dreams is triggered by low blood pressure, and the sudden awakening is meant to help you raise it back up. I'm unsure about the legitimacy of this claim, but I have a lot of these dreams and my blood pressure is kinda low, so it might be true. And there's obviously some differences in the details between our dreams. In my "falling dreams", everything is pure black except for a small item on the floor. Maybe some leaves, a blanket, a puddle, a doll, ice, etc. etc. Very random. And the item usually looks very cartoon-y (bright colors, smooth edges, etc.) and everything is silent. In my dreams, I silently walk towards the item and step on it, the second I do step on it, I'm violently thrown back and I wake up with my legs kicking. My dreams are very weird with little to no context to them so I always wake up asking what happened in my dreams.

For example, the earliest dream I can remember happened 2-3 days ago. In it, I was outside with my old classmates from Middle School, it was a bright sunny day. Blue skies, green lush grass and everyone was playing with a beach ball. My old math teacher was in the group too. I tried approaching them but the second I did they all turned to me and frowned, I tried being happy and asking what's going on. They didn't answer and just stared, as if they were angry. And then I woke up.

My nightmares usually make more sense, but the ones I remember right now are very NSFW. I might have to look through some old dream journals to look for an acceptable one to post here.

[Shoryu Magami]

I've been planning on responding to this thread again for days now, @The Harbinger of Ferocity, pretty much the moment you replied to me, but things have (as I'm mentioning in the couple of threads I'm dealing with now from my backlog) been getting worse on my end lately and it's prevented me from having the time to do so. I was going to read over what everyone has said and give my insight, but I'll need to limit my responses for the time being as well as their detail.

I actually relate to the people who don't recall a lot of their dreams, though - regardless of what little sleep I sometimes get - I still believe that I always have some sort of dream. A lot of people claim they don't actually dream, but I feel they simply don't remember them -- it's actually not uncommon for a person to forget their dreams the moment they're coherent, to the best of my knowledge. I've already mentioned that I have this problem, though it seems far more common when my dreams are useful to my main story project -- it's almost as if something in my mind is actively trying to prevent me from being able to use the revelations I obtain from my dreams, though I can't for the life of me tell you why.

The dreams that actually end up remembering as usually nightmares or ones with more bothersome memories from my past, though admittedly I actually don't remember many dreams at all these days. When I was younger, I actually had a lot of really screwed up dreams that were vivid enough - and stuck in my memory enough - that I actually know what it feels like to go through certain things I've never experienced in full depth in reality, so I actually have a lot of nightmares that've invoked trauma within me on a similar level to what would happen if those experiences had been real. I've actually taken a few elements of these experiences and converted them into my project in various ways.

This is one of the tamer examples, but I've had a recurrent (to the best of my knowledge) dream where everyone around me - including the people I knew - all had glowing red eyes and were trying to kill me. I'd run from place to place, defending myself along the way, until I'd eventually get to my dad's place (he was the closest person in my life, but was dead by the time I started having this dream), and then he'd actually be alive still but would turn out to also have those red eyes. This is usually when the dream would wake me up. Certain elements of that dream have been used as inspiration for certain aesthetics or concepts in my project since then, though admittedly I haven't had this dream in several years now.

I'm noticing a lot of people mention lucid dreams here, but I honestly don't have enough recollection of my dreams to tell you whether or not I always have total control over them. I can pretty much guarantee that my dreams feel like reality though, to the point that it's one of several reasons why I question the reality around me in the 'real' world. Sometimes my mind will question things that seem strange (such as my dad being alive, to go with the previous example) and sometimes my mind won't. I don't have enough memories of my dreams to tell you which is more common, but rather just that I know my dreams always feel real. I also find that when I'm in the right mind state I have an exceptional amount of 'mind over matter' control in my dreams. A very recurrent dream from my childhood involved me standing at our beach shore (we lived on the outskirts of what could be considered a small beach), and I'd basically walk into the water, tell myself I can fly, and I'd be able to levitate and float across the entire riverbed.

PS. Do you guys dream in black & white or colour? I always dream in colour, but I have friends and relatives who keep telling me that they dream in greyscale. I've read interesting theories on the subject, from reasonable to totally outlandish ones. Guess it's yet another mystery of the mind we haven't been able to solve yet.

@Vor

I dream in colour - at all times to the best of my recollection - but I'm actually wondering if people who have a long history watching old movies (which were in greyscale) might dream in greyscale due to it. It's not uncommon for dreams to be heavily influenced or based on whatever you're doing, watching, or thinking about prior to falling asleep, especially if those things were something you had a lot of time subjecting yourself to.

[The Harbinger of Ferocity]

Accounting for multiple instances of synchronicity stemming from dream imagery, thoughts and life, myself and the few others I often hold close proximity with in work or away are much more convinced there's something odd afoot. Extremely unlikely instances of highly specific phrases and numbers such as the "Gordian Knot", the number 440, among others - including Carl Jung himself - made for an interesting experience. I can only hope this holiday season as we disappear into more work for a few weeks shows even more result.

You know dreams begin to become much more uncanny when you have isolated reports giving the same things. Especially when these individuals are not in the core collective of understanding or discussion and by that I mean those outside my circle of company. The skeptics, knowing or unknowing, help qualify it significantly.

[TheMadAsshatter]

I've recently been having a lot of dreams about work. Like last night I dreamed that I was late, didn't shave, hair was a mess, breath smelled, and I had to test for my CDCs that day.

Shit was scary. I'm glad it transitioned into the typical mishmash of random shit a couple minutes later.