Filtering out mental rubbish

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03-09-2009, 12:25 PM
SnakeCharmer

Filtering out mental rubbish

Hello everyone,
this is my first post on this forum, but I'm not new to LDs. Been having them since I was 6 (I'm 27 now). They started after my sister took me to see my first horror movie. I guess a week of nonstop nightmares will force you to know when you're dreaming and when you're not:)

Anyway, I'm going through a dryspell for almost 2 years now. LDs come perhaps once a month. My problem is mostly concerned with dream recall. Desperate to fix this I have started keeping a dream journal and doing reality checks throughout the day, but so far have had no progress.

I have a specific question and a problem regarding this.
I've quit my job and started a postgraduate programe. This means I've been studying a lot. A lot as in 5-10 hours a day, and it's related to mathematics.
This interferes with my dreams. They are mixed with apstract things (related to my studies), things I wouldn't even know how to begin writing down in my journal. I feel that I have 'real' dreams, but it seems they are somehow masked by this mental rubbish.

Is there a way to filter it out, or a way not to have dreams like that? Some sort of exercise or a technique to selectively improve my recall?

To be honest, this so called rubbish has proven to be useful in understaning mathematical concepts I wasn't able to understand a night before, but I would like to LD and remember LDing again.

Am I making any sense with this?
03-11-2009, 12:34 AM
KingOfTwilight

I get ya.

I would say to completely clear your mind before bed.

Drop all the mathematics.

Just focus on the kind of dream you'd like to achieve.
03-16-2009, 10:38 AM
Phantasos

Quote:

Originally Posted by SnakeCharmer

To be honest, this so called rubbish has proven to be useful in understaning mathematical concepts I wasn't able to understand a night before, but I would like to LD and remember LDing again.

Am I making any sense with this?

Yes, some days ago I dreamt about climbing a hyperplane after reading too much about integrals.
03-16-2009, 11:23 PM
SnakeCharmer

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phantasos

Yes, some days ago I dreamt about climbing a hyperplane after reading too much about integrals.

Did this dream improve your understanding of concepts you were studying in any way?

In the morning I usually find that the concept I dreamt about is internalized.
Also, this kind of abstract dreaming does not usually happen with other subjects for me, only mathematics.

Quote:

Originally Posted by KingOfTwilight

I get ya.

I would say to completely clear your mind before bed.

Drop all the mathematics.

Just focus on the kind of dream you'd like to achieve.

Yes, I've followed your advice and it's better now. I just do some breathing exercises and focus on relaxing my body and brain.
It resulted in 2 LDs in the last 5 days.
03-16-2009, 11:28 PM
KingOfTwilight

Quote:

Originally Posted by SnakeCharmer

Yes, I've followed your advice and it's better now. I just do some breathing exercises and focus on relaxing my body and brain.
It resulted in 2 LDs in the last 5 days.

Good to hear :D
03-17-2009, 07:45 AM
Phantasos

Quote:

Originally Posted by SnakeCharmer

Did this dream improve your understanding of concepts you were studying in any way?
In the morning I usually find that the concept I dreamt about is internalized.

Hard to say. It happened only once for now (I've studied really hard that day - something like about 6 hours of reading and examples analyzing, also made some exercises), but I will check it next time :).

Funny, that night after climbing a hyperplane I also had more concrete dreams, but they also were strange. For example, in one of them I was involved in rather strange form of art: I was hooking something which looked like chains of sausages (but it was not really sausages) to ceiling, and then we decided to move, and we tried to carry them over but they looked very poor being hooked off the ceiling... :shock: Actually, after waking up I found this things were rather creepy. Now I suspect that it were actually f(x), and when we hooked them off, it became f'(x) :D.
03-21-2009, 06:30 AM
BigFan

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phantasos

Hard to say. It happened only once for now (I've studied really hard that day - something like about 6 hours of reading and examples analyzing, also made some exercises), but I will check it next time :).

Funny, that night after climbing a hyperplane I also had more concrete dreams, but they also were strange. For example, in one of them I was involved in rather strange form of art: I was hooking something which looked like chains of sausages (but it was not really sausages) to ceiling, and then we decided to move, and we tried to carry them over but they looked very poor being hooked off the ceiling... :shock: Actually, after waking up I found this things were rather creepy. Now I suspect that it were actually f(x), and when we hooked them off, it became f'(x) :D.

Sausage like objects being functions or climbing a hyperplane :shock: lol, that gave me such a good laugh :lol: