Do Dreams Have A Meaning? (Buddhist, reincarnation, heaven, exist)

[I LOVE NORTH CAROLINA]

I've read that we all dream every night, we just don't always remember the dreams. It's not unusual to dream about something that is on your mind a lot just before bed. I don't think they have spiritual meaning either. I once had what I think was not a dream, but a vision about my nephew and it did happen, but they way I felt when I work up from it in the middle of the night and the context of it is why I call it a vision, not a dream.

[arod0331]

Eh symbolically maybe.

Like dreams of tidal waves and tornadoes mean stresses and worries in one's life.

[Huckleberry3911948]

i would take the high ground. the medical experts say its our way of processing stuff that happens during our waking hours.
thats my story and im stickin to it.
fyi i am no longer omen driven.
got me in a lot of trouble. i am now a religious moderate.
i have had religious inspirations and signs and acted on them with great success.
i have also crashed and burned. try the spirits to see if they are from god 1st.

[GCSTroop]

I watched my dog sleeping today. He was panting very rapidly, moving his legs as if he were running, and he even let out a slight whimper. He does this on occassion. By golly I do believe my dog was dreaming. I don't think it had any special meaning either.

As far as humans go. Nope. No meaning in the sense of some sort of higher power coming to me in a dream. Although I do feel that certain dreams can stick with us for a while. I've had nightmares that actually seemed to put me in a bad mood all day. But as far as some sort of "special meaning" I don't think so.

On the topic of dreams, I know a few people who swear up and down that they can lucid dream. Essentially, it is where you control your dreams while you're sleeping. Somehow the conscious, collective mind exerts influence on the unconscious "dreaming" state. I guess it'd be like your computer monitor controlling the computer? Something like that, I suppose. I'm skeptical of it but I think it'd be pretty cool if you could do it.

Lucid Dreaming -- Dream Views

[Tricky D]

Originally Posted by Blue62

I think dreams are a part of our sub conscious..

I agree.
I often dream up the answer, or actually, I wake up having the answer when I've got a problem.
Then again I'm able to focus 24/7 on solving a problem so wouldn't be surprised if I would still be doing it in my asleep.
Sometimes when I'm dreaming I'm aware that it is a dream and not real, but run with it anyway.
The 1 thing I'm still wondering about is: what if you dreamed that you are dying, would you then actually be dying or would you wake up from the dream?

[moonsavvy]

Good question. Sometimes I have dreams that seem to answer my prayers, and are very profound, I call those visions. Sometimes I have dreams that people come to me who have past on, I call those visits from the spirit realm. Sometimes I will dream of soaring through the sky or swimming effortlessly in the ocean, I call those dream travels.

Other times my dreams are so wacky, I don't even want to remember them!

[MontanaGuy]

June wrote:

Last night I dreamed that you proposed to me. (In Paris, or course!)

I thought we were already married!

[Wendell Phillips]

Dreams are the psychic manifestation of our repressed hopes and fears. The good have pleasant dreams for they have more hope than fear. The bad have nightmares, for they have little hope and much to fear. The amoral have no dreams for they have no hope and fear nothing because they have no conscience. The virtuous have sweet dreams, for their goodness transcends the desire of hope and the fear of evil.

[MontanaGuy]

My dreams rarely make any sense but they've very vivid. I'll be dreaming about different people I've known throughout my life that have never even met each other in real life but they're interacting with each other in my dreams. I don't think it could have any real meaning because it's so jumbled up and the events in the dream don't follow any logical storyline because it's constantly changing. I think our brains must need to dream and it probably does represent something that's happening in our life but it's just not intelligible.

[GCSTroop]

Originally Posted by MontanaGuy

My dreams rarely make any sense but they've very vivid. I'll be dreaming about different people I've known throughout my life that have never even met each other in real life but they're interacting with each other in my dreams. I don't think it could have any real meaning because it's so jumbled up and the events in the dream don't follow any logical storyline because it's constantly changing. I think our brains must need to dream and it probably does represent something that's happening in our life but it's just not intelligible.

I very rarely remember my dreams. I usually wake up knowing that I've dreamt of something but can't even remember what it was. The ones that I do remember seem like random smatterings throughout the past few days. Very rarely are they grand visions of winning the lottery or anything like that. My dreams always seem to be something like a filing cabinet that got dumped over on its' side with all of the files scattered everywhere. As the files are being put back into order it's just a bunch of random gibberish. This goes here, that goes there, this goes here, and then you have the filing cabinet organized. In other words, it feels to me like the brain is just throwing around random "files" so that it can recollect information when needed. Sort of like defragging your hard drive.

Edit: Slightly off topic. Is a dream where you won the lottery a dream or a nightmare? When I have had those types of dreams I usually end up highly disappointed that it didn't come true.