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Location: The High Desert of the American Southwest
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Well, yeah, sure, I reckon our deceased loved ones DO visit us in dreams, but only in the sense that their so-called "visitations" are solely products of our minds. Chemical reactions, firing back and forth in the form of neurotransmitters, which is the stuff of our memories.
During our deep-sleep, REM Cycle, our brain is primarily acting like a harried, over-worked file clerk, trying to find a place for, and then file away thoughts that were floating around during the previous day.
I know this is sort of a boring answer, and not nearly as provocative as the notion than dead people's spirits or energy come visit us in the wee hours, but alas, it is the truth, and the only real plausible answer.
Well, yeah, sure, I reckon our deceased loved ones DO visit us in dreams, but only in the sense that their so-called "visitations" are solely products of our minds. Chemical reactions, firing back and forth in the form of neurotransmitters, which is the stuff of our memories.
During our deep-sleep, REM Cycle, our brain is primarily acting like a harried, over-worked file clerk, trying to find a place for, and then file away thoughts that were floating around during the previous day.
I know this is sort of a boring answer, and not nearly as provocative as the notion than dead people's spirits or energy come visit us in the wee hours, but alas, it is the truth, and the only real plausible answer.
The mind really is an amazing thing. To this day I don't know if the dream/visitation I had of my dad was me just really wanting to "see" him and my mind making that happen or if it was something more. Either way, I really needed that dream. His death was sudden and I never got a chance to say goodbye. The dream allowed me to hug him one last time He was all about family and if anyone could figure out a way to come back to visit, it would have been him.
Well, yeah, sure, I reckon our deceased loved ones DO visit us in dreams, but only in the sense that their so-called "visitations" are solely products of our minds. Chemical reactions, firing back and forth in the form of neurotransmitters, which is the stuff of our memories.
During our deep-sleep, REM Cycle, our brain is primarily acting like a harried, over-worked file clerk, trying to find a place for, and then file away thoughts that were floating around during the previous day.
I know this is sort of a boring answer, and not nearly as provocative as the notion than dead people's spirits or energy come visit us in the wee hours, but alas, it is the truth, and the only real plausible answer.
Here's why I'm not sure you're right. I had those dreams -- after my mom died I squelched my emotions, determined to get on with life. My dreams were of me working out my emotions that I so obviously wasn't dealing with on a real basis. And after I had the bad one, where I broke down and let myself get hysterical on waking and scared the bejeebers out of my husband -- I was better, and I had a dream where I was talking to everyone about my mom, and telling happy funny mom stories. Hubs walked on eggshells for a week or so....
Mine were real dreams -- there was never a feeling that my mother was really there. Frankly, my mother loved me and if she could have come back, she would have told me to deal with my emotions and it was okay to do so, that no matter what she loved me and she and Daddy are jitterbugging in heaven to Glenn Miller. And she could have told when my great grandmother died -- that would have been handy! It took three more years to find that piece of info!
But other people say it was something that happened in their sleep, but it felt more real. It was different.
I accept the fact that I do not see the paranormal. In my world there are no ghosts. The time the home theatre system started playing the Venture Brothers DVD in the middle of the night, so the theme song kept playing over and over (this happened right after my mother died) was a short in the system. The system got tossed and the new DVD player doesn't do that.
BUT -- my husband has seen a ghost. My brother in law sometimes goes into a business and has to leave because he is uncomfortable. because he knows they are there....
This makes also accept the fact there are things out there I can't know. It doesn't make them any less real.
I know this is sort of a boring answer, and not nearly as provocative as the notion than dead people's spirits or energy come visit us in the wee hours, but alas, it is the truth, and the only real plausible answer.
It may be the truth and the only possible answer for you, but not for people who have experienced this and believe it has happened to them
I used to be very skeptical and no matter what "weird" things would happen I would always have to find a logical explanation for them, even if that explanation did not "feel" right.
This is a little off topic but one reason I started to believe. A few years ago my German Shepherd dog passed away at home during the night (in my arms). The next morning I woke up and the curtains in my living room were knocked down. When he was younger and was able to jump (he had spine issues and could not even walk by himself when he passed away), he would jump up to look out the living room window and knock the curtains down. He was the only one that ever did this. Anyway, I put the curtains back up, made sure they were nice and secure, and made myself believe it was just a coincidence. The next morning, the curtains were down again. I live alone so it's not like someone was doing this. I knew right then it was him trying to tell me he was okay now and was able to finally run and jump again. The curtains have not been knocked down since. I have had other things happen as well that I now know are not just a coincidence. I know many people will think I am crazy to believe in these things, but that is okay I still from time to time have doubts and questions about certain things, but deep down I am a believer.
I gave up my subscription to The Nation many years ago as well as the hard agnosticism I held at the time, after they published an opinion piece by Gore Vidal, in which he said that all human feeling and love boils down to a series of chemical reactions. This is called the "reductionist fallacy": the assumption that an explanation of reality at the lowest level of complexity explains everything. This is complete and utter bull, and I realized that if this what all there was, there wasn't much savor or meaning in life.
In fact, Vidal was an idiot: the complexities of reality are structured like a layer cake: the Brownian motion of molecules in response to heat is at the root of air and movements, yet a different set of principles can be used to describe small-scale eddies in a gas or turbulence in a liquid, and still another set of principles to describe the physics of clouds, and above that, the movements of large scale weather systems. Same applies to other complex systems, too. As Ilya Prigogine pointed out, order can and does spontaneously arise out of chaos in systems that are far from equilibrium
We have no idea why this is the case. But you can't take the random movement of molecules of air and derive from it the principles by which cold fronts are born, evolve, generate bad weather, and die. Back when I was doing studies in environmental sciences in the 1970s, we thought that absolutely accurate weather forecasts were possible if we only had enough measuring points. We now realize that this isn't the case: there are things in the universe that can't be determined no matter how many sampling points you have. In fact, the universe isn't a wind-up automaton.
When I've loved someone -- a family member, a stepchild, a significant other -- it was true that at one level of organization it's just chemistry, but that's not the end of the story. It's also a mechanism evolved to ensure the survival of our genetic materials, as well as the source of much of what makes life worthwhile: the arts, the sciences, culture. It trivializes who we are to take the route of extreme reductionism and dismiss all of this as the product of our genes or mere chemistry.
Which takes us back to visits by loved ones in dreams. My experience is that the dreams I've had of loved ones had meaning for me, whatever their origin. Did I really encounter them in these dreams? Most likely not. But these dreams have been useful to me in working through my feelings about those loved ones: feelings of loss, the things I've said in haste, the things I failed to say to them. Whether I attribute them to the visitation of their revenants, my guardian angel, the beneficence of a Hindu god, or my own subconscious doesn't really matter; they have deep meaning to me, and i need to honor that meaning.
I absolutely believe people can visit us in our dreams. I have had several. To confirm them even further my siblings and other friends and or family had dreams the same night where they were visited by the same people. One example after my mom passed I had a dream where she called me on the phone. The phone was on my desk in the kitchen and I heard it ringing. When I went to answer it it was not my existing phone. It was a phone with huge silver numbers on it. I picked it up and answered it "hello, hello?" No one was there but static on the line and then I looked at the phone again and amongst the numbers there was one key with a silver cross on it. I pushed it and said hello again and there was my mom on the line. We chatted . She told me she was okay. I asked how it was there. Her words were " the accommodations are quite nice". I asked her if my sister and daddy were with her and. She said yes and they miss you very much. I asked her what it was like is heaven real? She responded ". I can't tell you anything but know everything you do in life leads your to here". Then she was gone. That same night my brother dreamt that he was shake. Awake by my mom and she lead him out to his family room. There on his sectional sofa sat my father and sister. My mom and him sat down with them and had a long talk. My brother said he woke up in his own bed. The same night my niece dreamed that my father and mother visited her. I don't think any of it is a coincidence.
I absolutely believe people can visit us in our dreams. I have had several. To confirm them even further my siblings and other friends and or family had dreams the same night where they were visited by the same people. One example after my mom passed I had a dream where she called me on the phone. The phone was on my desk in the kitchen and I heard it ringing. When I went to answer it it was not my existing phone. It was a phone with huge silver numbers on it. I picked it up and answered it "hello, hello?" No one was there but static on the line and then I looked at the phone again and amongst the numbers there was one key with a silver cross on it. I pushed it and said hello again and there was my mom on the line. We chatted . She told me she was okay. I asked how it was there. Her words were " the accommodations are quite nice". I asked her if my sister and daddy were with her and. She said yes and they miss you very much. I asked her what it was like is heaven real? She responded ". I can't tell you anything but know everything you do in life leads your to here". Then she was gone. That same night my brother dreamt that he was shake. Awake by my mom and she lead him out to his family room. There on his sectional sofa sat my father and sister. My mom and him sat down with them and had a long talk. My brother said he woke up in his own bed. The same night my niece dreamed that my father and mother visited her. I don't think any of it is a coincidence.
Stories like this make me believe even more that they do visit. I am sure it was very comforting to find out your family is okay on the other side (heaven).
I do wish they would give us more details about how it is over there. When you lose a loved one I think it would be so much easier to go on knowing a little more about where they have gone.
One of my dogs passed away on July 19th. Yesterday I had a dream I was out walking him and my two other dogs (who are still with me). I was walking them in what looked like the town I grew up in which is odd because I have not been there in ages. What was also odd is that in my dream I knew what happened to him, I knew he had passed away, and I picked him up and was hugging him and thinking how nice it is to be able to do that. I don't think my dog was visiting me in my dream, but it was really nice to be able to hug him like that. This was the first time I had a dream with him in it since he passed away.
They can visit us, but we can also visit them, I think. We can go to that bliss-place where they are, and visit. But coming back to this earthly reality and waking up can be quite a crash, quite a shock.
This is kind of my experience. They (mom and dad) come to me in my dreams and it is so real. They are so real in my dreams I can almost touch them. Most times I do wake with tears in my eyes and try so hard to go back, to see them for longer.
It may be the truth and the only possible answer for you, but not for people who have experienced this and believe it has happened to them
I used to be very skeptical and no matter what "weird" things would happen I would always have to find a logical explanation for them, even if that explanation did not "feel" right.
This is a little off topic but one reason I started to believe. A few years ago my German Shepherd dog passed away at home during the night (in my arms). The next morning I woke up and the curtains in my living room were knocked down. When he was younger and was able to jump (he had spine issues and could not even walk by himself when he passed away), he would jump up to look out the living room window and knock the curtains down. He was the only one that ever did this. Anyway, I put the curtains back up, made sure they were nice and secure, and made myself believe it was just a coincidence. The next morning, the curtains were down again. I live alone so it's not like someone was doing this. I knew right then it was him trying to tell me he was okay now and was able to finally run and jump again. The curtains have not been knocked down since. I have had other things happen as well that I now know are not just a coincidence. I know many people will think I am crazy to believe in these things, but that is okay I still from time to time have doubts and questions about certain things, but deep down I am a believer.
I Believe you...
See my thread 'noises in the kitchen'.
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He was all about family and if anyone could figure out a way to come back to visit, it would have been him.
