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I'm curious how other people are able to distinguish between a dream that represents a fear from a dream that signifies a warning. If you dream of something that appears to point to a future danger, how do you decide that the dream is just your fears talking vs. a valid message from your inner guidance?
I recently had a big decision to make. I lost a lot of sleep over a period of months and couldn't decide which way to go. Was I to give in to the fear of my dreams and attempt to avoid their manifestations or was I to dismiss them as meaningless, the product of an active imagination? Upon rendering my decision, my very first dream involved visiting a psychic who handed a card to everyone that came with me. No one looked at their card. She told us to close our eyes and then after a short time passed, we were instructed to open them and look at our cards. The cards were individual and unique for all the participants. My card showed a person lying on the ground with a bullet hole in the chest. Yet, I was not shocked or upset while dreaming...only afterwards, in reflection.
So, did I make the wrong decision? If this were your situation, how would you react to it? Mind you, I dream multidimensionally and am able to stop a dream if I want to. I can even ask for it to recur so I can study it again. I simultaneously experience the dream, watch the dream from the sidelines, and analyze the dream symbolism. In this case, my card had been dealt, quite literally.
I placed this in the Religion and Philosophy section for lack of any other alternative.
For what it's worth, my mind tells me that they are a play of the subconscious mind, putting together all kinds of information we have gathered and stored, and then putting them together in a dream while we sleep. During REM sleep, the brain is VERY active in its process of putting all these random bits of information together and is the time when dreams are most vivid. It is because of the random nature of information synthesis during dreaming that dreams can seem so ridiculous at times and make no sense.
What composes a dream can be influenced by things we've been thinking about, a movie we watched, a discussion we had earlier in the day, our fantasy life, stressors and even physiological factors. For instance, some studies have shown that nightmares are often a result of sleep deprivation. Rather than going into REM sleep (we skip it altogether), we go directly into deep sleep. This is where, from what I understand, nightmares occur.
Yes, dreams can often tell you something, but it is your own brain talking to you: "Hey, you have this stressor in your life! Hey, you've thought about this person lately haven't you? Hey, wouldn't it be cool and fun if....? Hey, YOU NEED SOME SLEEP!" I wouldn't assign any kind of mystical, metaphysical or religious meaning to them.
Then you assume dreams have no purpose at all. I haven't accepted that premise since I was 5 years old. Nothing that occurs is without purpose. Meaning is meant to be discerned, not discarded because it's too difficult. You appear to believe that the individual cannot control the dream state. My experience indicates otherwise.
Most people ignore the "meaningless" dreams they have but I think they do so at their own expense. Dreams are a personal experience, a communication between oneself and the rest of the universe. Science may dismiss them as random firings within a brain that needs rest. But science explores the experience from the OUTSIDE, therefore it cannot offer a valid assessment.
Where else does spirituality occur except on the inside?
Last edited by mhouse2001; 06-11-2009 at 02:39 PM..
No, I think they do serve a purpose. Now there are all kinds of theories regarding them, but the one that makes the most sense to me is that they serve to clean up "junk information" from the brain that was stored during information gathering. Our brains store everything we perceive, whether we are conscience of those stimuli or not. Essentially the brain is a super computer. We have a CPU that processes information (pre-frontal cortex), a bus to move information along (synapses), a memory manager (hippocampus), RAM (shot-term memory) to move information in and out of the CPU and a hard drive which stores that information for use later (long-term memory - neurons). Sometime we need to defrag or delete files...that's where dreaming comes in. But that's just my take on it. Other people's ideas concerning dreaming may differ. BTW, I believe that lucid dreaming occurs....it happens quite often to me. That doesn't mean there is anything metaphysical about it at all.
Last edited by Fullback32; 06-11-2009 at 04:04 PM..
Reason: Added info
Meaning is meant to be discerned, not discarded because it's too difficult. You appear to believe that the individual cannot control the dream state. My experience indicates otherwise.
I can also control my dreams to a certain extent, particularly when I realize at some subconscious level that I'm dreaming and not actually awake. However I don't believe that the events in a dream are giving us warnings, foretelling the future or anything of that nature because our brains don't have the ability to know the future whether we're asleep or awake. If something is bothering you or you're wound up about one thing or another it only seems natural that you might dream about it because it's churning around in your subconscious mind. Dreams and sleep definitely serve a practical function but I believe it's a much more mundane purpose than having the ability to provide guidance as to how we should live our lives.
I can also control my dreams to a certain extent, particularly when I realize at some subconscious level that I'm dreaming and not actually awake. However I don't believe that the events in a dream are giving us warnings, foretelling the future or anything of that nature because our brains don't have the ability to know the future whether we're asleep or awake. If something is bothering you or you're wound up about one thing or another it only seems natural that you might dream about it because it's churning around in your subconscious mind. Dreams and sleep definitely serve a practical function but I believe it's a much more mundane purpose than having the ability to provide guidance as to how we should live our lives.
Our brains don't have the ability to know the future, they have the ability to predict possibilities. The dream state is removed from our sequential time perspective. It is not subjected to past, present, or future. I have indeed dreamt of future events (for example, seeing a calendar with dates circled that later corresponded to my time in a hospital for emergency surgery, something I would not have known at the time).
If dreams do not provide any personal guidance, then that only leaves two alternatives: emotions and external sources. Emotions are probably the most reliable source because they are rarely wrong, but they are also the least easy to manage. One "erroneous" emotion often serves the purpose of exposing the right emotion. Relying on external sources (other people, spiritual texts, religious advisors, etc.) is dangerous territory. What's inside is more true than what's outside. Better to rely on one's self, especially in these times.
I cannot be swayed by the idea that dreams are mundane and are not to be relied upon. Listening to the subconscious has, for me, been quite profound. Even in the middle of the day, by paying attention to seemingly random or innocuous thoughts, a more accurate picture of my surroundings can be perceived.
But the focus of this thread was to better understand how people discern the difference between being given a warning from just manifesting a fear. Directing me to pray to an invisible god will not work. I belong to no religion.
Last edited by mhouse2001; 06-11-2009 at 05:38 PM..
The dream state is removed from our sequential time perspective. It is not subjected to past, present, or future. I have indeed dreamt of future events (for example, seeing a calendar with dates circled that later corresponded to my time in a hospital for emergency surgery, something I would not have known at the time).
Why would being asleep put you into some other realm in which the very nature of time has changed? I have the feeling that you may be embellishing your dreams for the purpose of exaggerating their importance. I don't mean that to sound insulting, that's just how it comes across to me. When I think about the nature of my dreams I realize that it's not coherent, I have dreams of people who are both dead and alive and who've never met each other in the real world who are interacting together in my dreams. That's not strong evidence that my dreams are telling me something profound that I just can't understand, it's evidence that my brain is just taking a break from reality and serving some purpose that I can't comprehend.
Why would being asleep put you into some other realm in which the very nature of time has changed? I have the feeling that you may be embellishing your dreams for the purpose of exaggerating their importance. I don't mean that to sound insulting, that's just how it comes across to me. When I think about the nature of my dreams I realize that it's not coherent, I have dreams of people who are both dead and alive and who've never met each other in the real world who are interacting together in my dreams. That's not strong evidence that my dreams are telling me something profound that I just can't understand, it's evidence that my brain is just taking a break from reality and serving some purpose that I can't comprehend.
If one identifies only with their body, then the idea of timelessness in the dream state is impossible for one only identifies with the sleeping body and not the travels of the mind. I've left my body enough times to know that wherever I go, time is not measured in the same fashion. And space/distance is also experienced differently. Time is perceived sequentially by the conscious mind because it cannot process so much data. The subconscious/unconscious doesn't have that limitation. But that doesn't mean what it experiences is any less real.
As I am an individual looking for the truth, I am uneasy accepting that some portion of what I perceive is beyond my comprehension. If I perceive it, it serves a purpose. Nothing is meaningless. It is up to me to make sense of it. Otherwise, if I accept that a portion of my existence will not make sense, how do I determine which portion of the incomprehensible should be dismissed?
I think most people just give up too easily. Meaningfulness usually doesn't knock on the door. I find the landscape inside myself provides ample, immediate, and vastly personal opportunities for that kind of exploration.
By the way, how do you know you're not dreaming right now?
Last edited by mhouse2001; 06-11-2009 at 10:02 PM..
Nothing is meaningless. It is up to me to make sense of it. Otherwise, if I accept that a portion of my existence will not make sense, how do I determine which portion of the incomprehensible should be dismissed?
Actually a great many things are meaningless and simply happen by chance. A perfect example of this is reading tea leaves and trying to give some hidden meaning to the random patterns that the tea leaves happen to form. I think it's quite likely that the events in dreams are not representative of anything at all that can be directly related to anything that's happening or is going to happen in our lives.
I can understand how dreams could seem to be very important though because they do seem mysterious and I know from personal experience that a dream can really be intense. It's not surprising that over thousands of years that mankind has been fascinated by dreams and people often seek a deeper meaning behind them. So in that sense I'm not criticizing your thoughts about dreams at all because I couldn't tell you how many times I've woke up in the middle of the night because my dreams were so powerful that they scared the hell out of me. It's just that I don't think anything can be gained from trying to analyze something that doesn't appear to have any meaning.
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and discernment through the Holy Spirit.
