anybody? not recurring dreams (although bring them up if you must). more like things that happen over and over in multiple dreams. me, i have two things.
first, teeth. specifically, many times in a dream i will find myself clenching my teeth. this soon devolves into a combination of clenching and pushing the lower jaw forward. as a result, my bottom front teeth start to loosen and detach. from that point on, if i close my mouth in the dream, it starts again, and it is very hard to unclench. i am aware that these are not baby teeth, and will not come back. i very vividly feel the loose teeth snapping their roots and the taste of blood fills my mouth. always freaks me out, but i don’t think i’ve ever awoken with a start from one of these dreams.
second, running. running is usually very difficult in dreams. not just when i am running from something scary. all the time. i have to use my arms to pull myself along as i run. it’s almost like running in water against a very strong current, only air (but more like water, because i feel no wind- only resistence).
the crappiest thing is that about a year or two ago i began realizing in dreams that these things only happened to me in dreams. had a nice period of lucid dreaming. but now, the thought that runs through my head is “Oh no! This only used to happen to me in dreams! Now it’s happening in real life. Shitters.”
WOw! I have the one where my teeth fall out all the time. I hate that. Not quite as bad as when my penis falls off. I can put it back on if I try hard enough. It goes back on kinda like how playdo will stick if you smash it together right.
THe running thing. Yep, all the time. Plus, my guns never work right in my dreams. The bullets always go really slow and sometimes barely make it out of the gun.
Lucid Dreaming? Man I will not even get into all the things I have done here. I am a very strong lucid dreamer. I laughed during a Discovery Channel documentary about how rare they are and how the active lucid dreamers will have like one or two every couple months. I used to have two or three a WEEK!! Haven’t much lately though. But it is probably because I do not have much time to sleep. I just sleep in four hour durations here and there. Man I hate my schedule!
Anyway, lucid dreaming is a very wonderful thing. I don’t know why I was so prone to them but I am thankful for that.
Snakes. Snakes everywhere. On tables, chairs, beds, floors, in cars, etc. So many you have to push them to one side to walk or do anything. And I’m the only one who thinks this is strange, or is concerned about it. I try to tell my parents and they just tell me to “come on, you have to go to school” (or bed, or whatever) as if I were telling them the sky is blue.
Waves of water. At the beach, sitting on a high seawall, with waves coming in. They get higher and higher until I’m afraid they’ll wash me away. But I don’t move. The waves never get me…I always wake up first.
Childhood to adulthood:
Running. At night, usually. Sometimes someone’s chasing me, sometimes I’m just trying to get somewhere. But the thing that is interesting is that running is effortless. I can run for hours at a time and not get tired. And the reason for this is that my feet don’t touch the ground!!! I’m actually floating about 3 inches above the ground and make the running motions in the air to get myself moving to where I want to go. (Neat dream, actually.)
If I have recurring dreams, they’re usually of a sexual nature, and the people in them change, but the situation stays the same. Oh well. [current mental image: kilts :)]
I heard somewhere that it is impossible to read something in a dream because dreaming is done with the part of the brain that does not handle reading. So words in books of whatever will be a huge mess of symbols and letters that do not make sense.
This is true for the most part. But I HAVE read things in my dreams before. When I realize I am dreaming, after I have impressed everyone with my flying abilities and such, and after I teach all the people how they are just dream characters and they will not exist when I wake up, I try my best to read books and other things. More often than not, I cannot make them out. It’s like I am looking at words but I just can’t seem to read it or tell what it is saying. I have definitely recognized letters and numbers and I have read small words before but that is about it.
Grrr… now you got me talking about my dreams… you will all think I am a big freak in no time now.
[ul]
[li] Walking a long distance home from a place that isn’t in my real world. Done it so often I’ve begun to remember the shortcuts.[/li][li] Walking around a large hospital/dormitory/discount shopping mall (they were separate but are now combined) on the near south side of Chicago. Again, I’ve gotten to know my way around pretty well, considering the place is laid out poorly.[/li][li] Looking at uninteresting, older used cars. Typical example: 1978 Buick Century. Silver, in very good condition–only 35,000 miles. Silver interior, no vinyl top. A real grandma car. $2500 for a car that is no classic is a bit much, but think of its condition! (Yes, they are that detailed.) I guess I get sick of walking everywhere.[/li][/ul]
Sometimes the themes are combined, as if that would make them any more interesting. No smut; the only celebrity to ever show up was Marie Osmond of all people.
I think you can see why I feel no real desire to go to sleep. I can be that boring IRL. I don’t have to go to sleep for it.
see bear_nenno, i saw an episode of the batman cartoon where ol’ batty had been kidnapped and forced into a matrix-like existence where there was no batman, and bruce wayne’s parents were still alive. how did batman break out? he tried to read something, and couldn’t. the rationalization given was the same that you gave.
but ever since then, i specifically remember instances where i have read in dreams. usually it is beuatiful and transcendent (not actually causing transcendence, i’m being slightly hyperbolic), and sometimes i am near crying when i try to remember what i read after i wake up. same goes for music.
I have a few recurring themes. I’ve done a fair bit of dreamwork on myself, so I have at least the first two themes analyzed.
The metro. I think it represents my humanist philosophy (since it’s socially responsible mass transit as opposed to little compartmentalized corporatist cars).
The boat. I think this represents my fear of my parents’ yuppified way of life, which I’m afraid of turning into unawares.
Nuns. I’ve had nuns, or rather nun costumes, in the last two dreams I can remember. In one of them, a bunch of teenagers ran past wearing nun costumes. In another one, a nun with male genitalia wanted to have sex with me.
Oh, yeah. another one I’ve had a few times: bounding very high up into the air and staying there, making headway, until I decide to come down. It’s like a very, very high jump.
JB, that is where I heard that a person could not read in his dreams. We must be like the same person or some shit. I cannot believe that. I did not want to say I saw it on a batman cartoon because that would sound silly. I think it really is a theory though.
I only saw the end of that cartoon, and ever since I heard him say that I have tried reading in my dreams. This was YEARS ago thuogh. It really is difficult though. SOmetimes I even think I can read things but when I wake up, I cannot remember what it was. Usually text is just random or funny letters that I cannot make sense of. BUt like I said, sometimes I can.
You know how at the doctor’s you have to look through that eye thing and tell them what letters you see. On the last row, the letters are hard to make out and the longer you stare the more the letter looks like something else. That is how it is for me sometimes.
Also, when in physical confrontations (in lucid dreams) it is very difficult to hurt anyone, or even affect them by physical means, like punching or kicking. I am more successful if I use my mind. Like knocking them back by “thinking” it, or shooting magic shit at them from my hands. This works a lot better.
ok, I have said enough. Leave me alone!!
oh the joys of flying. it is few and far between (as least in the dreams that i remember). most often it is a result of my running dilemma. i find that if i kick my feet out backwards while the strong backcurrents are going, i find myself aloft. this is another thing which makes me cry when i wake up.
and matt, sometimes i hover. kind of like trouble’s siuation. but sometimes more like yours. like if i jump and concentrate, i can prolong the peak in the air. sometimes this gets very sophisticated and leads to hovering, during which i can hover myself (a few inches off the ground) all over the place.
bear, is the penis thing associated with any pain, or just terror that your dude has fallen off? women, what kind of odd anatomical things happen to you in dreams. i don’t think happy has ever fallen off of me, but that’s still a fascinating dream.
p.s.- i go through phases. for a long time, i have been resolutely anti-freudian dream interpretaion. for instance, bear, you can philosophize all you want, but if it happened to me i would just try and remember as much of the dream as possible, and think about how i felt during. how do you all deal with your dreams?
No pain, It is like it is supposed to just come off. When it happens, I am like “Man, not again” and I just try really hard and concentrate to get it back on.
I never interperet my dreams. I think anyone who does is merely guessing. I do not waste my time with that. I just try to have as much fun as I can while I am dreaming. I have gone on crime sprees, hi jacked school buses, played God with the denizens of my dreams, showed off my flying and magic abilities… you name it!!
I have the flying dream, a few times I’ve had the teeth chipped/falling out dream. I also have the “I’m not prepared for some test/event thing”.
A recurring dream I have had (I have it maybe a few times a year now, but it used to be several times a month, or more) is about my dad. After he died, I would dream that he didn’t die after all, but still, he was really sick. My elation over seeing him again and realizing he wasn’t dead was immediately dampened by the realization that he was ill, and was dying. I think it is easy to interpret this dream - I went through intense grief - a living Hell - after my dad died. I think the dreams are about my fear of going through all that Hell again. (And also about missing my dad, of course.) My grieving process was horrific, partly because I was surrounded by really tacky and insensitive people who almost pushed me over the edge. (In other words - I don’t think I’ll have to endure that brand of Hell again - knock on wood.) But the dreams remind me of what happened, and what I fear so much.
I used to have these wonderful dreams, like the end of that one Narnia book where they sail to the sun, and the water is clear, deep, warm, and sweet, and they can see the merpeople villages at the bottom.
I used to dream that I could breathe underwater, and I’d swim all day amongst small sandy islands and beaches in the warm, clear, pure water.
I, oddly enough, have NO trouble reading in my dreams. It’s not nonsense stuff that I ‘think’ I’m reading, it’s actual words and letters. Maybe it has something to do with my being able to spell mostly anything, even if I’ve never heard the word before. Perhaps I just work that way.
I’ve tried hard to lucid dream, I often realize I’m only dreaming, but I still cannot make stuff happen. Usually when I realize I’m dreaming, I wake up. I hate that.
how do you deal with waking up? having dreams like that would literally kill me.
also, i had my first lucid dream when i accidentally fell asleep in the counselors office in my senior year of high school. later that week, i read an article in Omni (do they still publish?) about spinning in dreams. later that week, i had another dream in the same office, and i spun!
have you ever spun in the water, along the axis of your body? think of dreamspinning like that. i have always been upright, though. the main problem is that after spinning, you are in a different dream environment. so if you had been seducing Maura Tierney, after spinning you very wellmay be at the park looking for weed.
two related questions- do you get high/drunk/fuckered up in your dreams?
and why do you think you tend to wake up after you realize that you are dreaming?
You poor, poor thing. You are missing out! I can do anything if I think hard enough. Change the color and shape of things, turn something into something else, make it rain, make the sky red… you name it! I am omnipotent!
There was this one time though that this guy claimed to be the real dream master. I was in some house and he wanted to fight me. I do not know what started it. I forget the details. But he grew like 100ft and went through the roof and was about to attack me. So I was like, no big deal, I can do that too. So I made myself get as big as him and put a huge hole in the roof. All I remember after that (this was years ago) was that nothing I did had any effect on this guy. He pretty much kicked my ass. Good thing I woke up before it was over.
Other than that one bastard, I have been able to take on anyone. Even hundreds of people at a time.
I have a cemetary that I find myself in often in my dreams. It’s always the same cemetary, but in different parts of it. There is a beautiful church, and a library (!) on the grounds, too. It’s very gothic, lots of large, old oak trees, and statues of angels everywhere. I feel very safe and secure there, too.
I also have a theme of forgetting something, usually when I have a test or a stressful event coming up. Anxiety dreams are a bitch.
Well, Bear_Nenno, after that website you sent me to, you can rest assure my dreams won’t be as pleasant from near on.
Anyway, Farley, what would kill you? The swimming dreams? They were so wonderful and pleasant. I loved them.
Oh, and Nenno? I think the biggest problem with my not being able to lucid dream is that I go to bed so late that by the time I’m getting around to lucid dreaming, it’s light outside, enough so that I can’t continue sleeping. I have a feeling that lucid dreaming rides so close to the surface of conciousness that the presence of the intense morning light brings me the rest of the way out before I can stop myself.
I’m also quite often in places that I know or recognize, but have been completely rearranged and distorted, rebuilt, with strange, unusual floorplans. I wish I could build a house like my house is depicted in my dreams. It’s sooo cool.
i meant the shock of going from the wonderful dream world back into the crappy world, really early in the morning, and having to go to work. that’s what would kill me.
knowing that i had been in paradise and then losing it.
I have a recurring dream of living in a dorm on a college campus. It’s not any place I’ve ever been to IRL, but I’ve had it so often I could easily draw a layout of the dorm, and a decent map of the campus.
I’ve had lucid dreams twice. The first was several years ago, I was in what seemed to be a maze of trenches dug in a battlefield, and all these people were chasing me with guns. All of a sudden it occurred to me that this had to be a dream, and I woke up immediately. I was paralyzed after I woke and couldn’t open my eyes for about 10 seconds.
In the second lucid dream I was just walking around in a room, and suddenly realized I was dreaming. I started touching the doors and walls and I could actually physically feel them, which kind of surprised me, I didn’t think I would actually be able to feel things in a dream (how else would the old “Pinch me, I’m dreaming!” work?) I was also surprised of how completely aware I was, yet still sleeping and not even close to waking up. There was an object on the floor and, just for kicks, I decided to levitate it, but soon after that I woke up.
