dreams are an endlessly interesting topic, everyone (?) dreams, and each in his own way. the only times one encounters dreams unlike his own are storytelling media, and it has always fascinated me how little these have in common with my own dreams. there is an infinity of things to talk about, so please use this thread to share your meta- thoughts on dreaming--that is, not simply recounting an individual dream without tying it to a broader point.
a few self-observations: i never sleep without dreaming, it happens every time i sleep without fail. i never dream about being anyone or anything other than myself such as an animal (to my dismay; i wish i could experience flight just once). even when my dreams don't make sense they are never confusing, i am always confident in the underlying logic of the moment.
i have never had a prophetic dream, or a dream in which somebody "spoke" to me from beyond the veil, or shared a dream with somebody else. i am particularly interested to hear if anyone has experienced any of these.
I remember reading that 'prophetic dreams' are a remnant of ancient times, and that something happened that switched out dreams from static, immobile conversations with the divine to those that are narrative-based, dynamic, self-centric and more abstract and surreal.
I don't think I've ever had a dream from a perspective other than my own. The events in my dreams are often feasible but not always, and usually the absurd element has to do with architecture, especially stairs and verticality.
I shared a dream once with my twin sister when we were kids and my sister shared one with my mother once. Neither dream was interesting.
My dreams often take place in an area that is an amalgamation of many places I have been but in my dream logic, it is a single location. It often takes the form of my childhood home but with an element heightened. My house was on a hill and it had a nice view of the neighborhood. In my dreams, this element is increased. In one dream, all the windows were bigger and I had a stretched panoramic view. There was also a fantastical element to this dream with the inclusion of airships and an Art Deco cityscape.
03-20-2023, 01:44 AM
(This post was last modified: 03-20-2023, 01:44 AM by Trevor Bauer.)
I had a dream about my dead grandma a few days after she died. She was sitting in my kitchen and about 40 years younger with minimal gray hairs. As the conversation proceeded, I began to sense that this was an impostor, and then started to feel the presence of an evil spirit in the room, which always takes the form of a slow, deliberate gust of wind that I clearly understand as having sentience.
This is a specific type of nightmare I have occasionally, but only ever when I take melatonin. Another time I felt that same 'windgeist' above me as I lay in bed, and it was briefly sleep paralysis before the stress of the dream woke me up.
I often read text in dreams. At least once, I read a formal letter of about two-thirds a page length in a serif font like Times New Roman. The content of the letter I perceived to be unflattering truths about me coming from my subconscious. The idea of a subconscious is pseudoscience, but that's not exactly a synonym for false. To me it would seem to be another you that you don't quite know or understand. An interesting crank case could be made for the idea that the subconscious processes language quite fluidly in reverse, and therefore the back-masking of our speech often contains hidden phrases which are intentional.
A few weeks ago I had a dream that I was being made the Pope. I primarily remember the sense of nervousness from it, along with having to confront a crowd. I'm not quite sure what it could mean.
Most of my dreams have no deeper meaning, but the ones that do are interesting, in those ones im usually in a void or large instalation stretching for kilometers, all alone, searching for a void
Has anyone had any experiences with glycine? I found that it helped me to sleep and made my dreams more vivid (I could recall the details of three of them on the same night and they stuck with me for a while), but it also made me insanely itchy after any kind of exertion, which I could not put up with.
I've been taking magnesium glycinate recently and I have been remembering many more dreams than I usually do. My sleep has also been disturbed for unrelated reasons, though, which also cause me to remember more dreams, so it's hard to establish cause. I'm curious about the itchiness. Is there a visible effect on your skin? Does it happen when you sneeze or when you're startled?
No visible changes. I was taking 2-3g of glycine daily for circa two months before the itching started. It occurred at least once a day during any kind of activity, such as a prolonged walk or lifting a heavy object; I didn't note it happening when sneezing. The sensation was concentrated around the back areas occassionally spreading to the torso, thighs and rarely the forehead. I would describe it as a type of itching usually associated with having ants or other insects on one's body but with an additional burning feeling. Each time it lasted for 10-20 minutes and was unpleasant enough to inconvenience me.
Taking glycine was the only large dietary change made recently so it was easy to recognize it as the cause, and the symptoms are already much weaker after quitting cold turkey for about a week. I will endeavor to start again after it ceases entirely but this time I will limit the doses to 1g per day. I have noted no signs of withdrawal except it is slightly more difficult to fall asleep (although othes causes might be at play here, my sleep patterns are far from optimal).
I've been sleeping with a fan near my face for the past few days and my dreams have been more vivid. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe I am just more comfortable. A gentle breeze on my face is very comforting to me. In these dreams, my family and friends show me aspects of myself that I need to improve. This is interesting because normally my dreams don't have a clear meaning or message.
