Repeated dreams and related theories

I have been having repeated dreams consistently for the last two weeks. This thread has two purposes.

First, what does it mean, in terms of what dreams are, to have repeated dreams? For example, some feel dreams are "random insignificant thoughts being recycled". Because I have had repeats, I don't think so.

Second, does anyone have any theories about how dreams work, that are able to be tested by having repeated dreams? For example, a small fluctuation of a symbol within the dream may reveal how symbolism is portrayed.

Of course, any other thoughts regarding dream re-runs are also welcome.

I have a repeating dream about the school in the town where I grew up.

Background Info: I didn't actually graduate high school from this school that I dream about - my parents moved so I spent my junior and senior year at a different high school. This was extremely difficult for me since I went to my hometown school since 1st grade. And to be moved to a completely different (and huge) school in the last 2 years of high school was so hard because everyone already has their social cliques established. Being the new kid is hard, but throw in my mom's divorce, re-marriage, moving to a different town, and starting all over in a new high school made it all the more difficult. It turned out fine and I'm glad it happened in hindsight, but it was really hard to adjust. Looking back, if we hadn't moved to the city, I wouldn't be where I am today - so I'm grateful it all happened.

So I think my dreaming about my old high school in the small town where I grew up symbolizes a time in my life when everything was fun, happy and simple. But usually I go back there in my dreams as my present-day self, to prove to everyone that I succeeded in life. I guess it's kinda like proving it to myself that I'm somebody, and have my old hometown recognize that. It's very egotistical when I think about it - I think I like the reassurance and positive feelings it gives me.

I never actually try to have these dreams, they just sorta happen. I've never tried to stop them, because I like to remember my old life and remember my old friends names and how they looked as I remember them. Even after 9 years since seeing those people and leaving that school, I still remember every little detail. It's like my mind's way of keeping the memories from fading away.

I've never once had a dream about the high school I actually graduated from. To me, it just wasn't my home. I only spent 2 years in that town - once I graduated, I immediately moved out to go to college. I'd think at some point I'd have a dream about that school - but I never have. I think it was just a stepping stone to get from Point A to Point B.

Sorry about the long post - I've never actually sat down and tried to figure out why I have that repeating dream, so most of this post was thinking out loud. Thanks for reading. :)

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Originally posted by Distant Clone
For example, some feel dreams are "random insignificant thoughts being recycled". Because I have had repeats, I don't think so.

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actually Stephen Laberge came up with a theory on how dreams are made that's quite sound and would explain repeats

dreams start as a random image... lets say that image is a tree... this image of a tree reminds our subconscious of a park, suddenly there's a park around us, the park makes our subconscious think of walking, now our dream ego is walking, this scene brings up the memory of walking with your mother in a park at the age of three (just a random memory it pulled up), suddenly you notice your moms by your side, your subconscious thinks "she should be talking" it pulls on all its previous memories of how your mom would talk and she starts talking about some random thing, etc etc
this would keep going on until your mind has inadvertently created a multi-layered scenario that seems to have a massively deep storyline about you saving earth from a nuclear bomb that would have wiped out mankind...

using this method of dream creation your mind could just pull on a folder of your mind that contains that dream you had a few nights ago and just keep getting the information out of it to build the dream

I as an LDr believe this theory due to watching my dreams form so many times (Iv successfully WILDed at least 200 times)

After reading that, BBob, I've started looking at it a little differently. The explanation is plausible, but it leaves me a little uneasy on one point. After having repeats, I start to notice the same cinematic integrity of dreams. For example, last night.

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My first dream started as a small island surrounded by orangish lava and greenish toxic waste. The muddy shore held a castle that stretched towards the sky. The feeling was gloomy and dark, and as the dream panned up, the castle turned to gold. The walls started to weave back and forth, and narrowed down up at the top, as they became figurines of people.

The dream zooms in on one person's ear, and the diamond earring in it. I understand that a person is there to take it, and only that. As I wonder "There is so much gold, and all he wants is an earring?", the statue comes to life, and breaks out two swords. The theif pulls out a shield and a sword, and fights for awhile, before finally being killed by the statue-come-to-life.

Then, a snowman statue jumps down from his little post and displays his concern for the Asian person, with the diamond earring, saying he is going to get seriously hurt one of these times.[/b]

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Other than that, having repeated dreams seems to show that there are cues in dreams. One time I was walking in a park, and then I was just compelled to go search for a person, and do it in astral form. Also, in a different "rerun", after chilling outside of a restaurant, watching the traffic, and a train, I am prompted to sing the same line from the same song, with the same ball of straw coming out of my mouth.

To further the cinematic argument for a director, have you ever gone against the grain in a dream? For example, one time I was in a scary maze with evil creatures, and simply decided I was going to levitate out of the maze instead of navigating it. Like six times in a row, I did that and I kept getting put right back in it. I even heard a subtle "NO!!!". Finally, the scene lightened up, all the enemies were removed, and I was stuck with two other people, and I finally navigated the maze. It's like the director yells "Cut!" and the scene starts over. That might be what most consider the false awakening.

Contradictions. Like in the above example dream, toward the end, all the monsters that came to life treaded through the poisonous toxic waste, bringing it up all on the shore. In the dream in was a good move, but I thought "Wait a minute? How are the humans supposed to live on there now?". After waking up, I decided the island represented greed, and really no humans should exist there.

Lastly, what about music within a dream? On several occasions, I have heard unfamiliar songs in my dreams, how is that explained? They actually made sense too, fit the situation, some of them rhymed, it's like it was part of the story. Please don't call that "random" too.

I do think that all of this may be from the subconscious, but I probably do not have the same view of the subconscious as most other people, more of a person than a mind. I think the subconscious is you, but much more advanced, smarter, wiser, more learned. I do believe in reincarnation, and that our subconscious stays constant across all our different lives. Of course, then, time is only an illusion, to keep this all possible, as we eventually become the subconscious.

Now I'm starting to think that a dream is no longer a story with a moral, but a movie with a story (and moral), and a director (the subconscious), possibly a sound track, and you are one of the stars.

I didn't mean dreams are random, I meant that they start from a random image, then the subconscious builds on it to form the dream...

in other words, your subconscious is indeed the one sorting through the vast trillion terabyte database of your memories, if dreams were truly random memories being thrown into a pot of boiling consciousness, then absolutely no dream you would ever have would make any sense at all...

in other words the theory I described to you would make it possible for your subconscious to accidentally show you things

and about the music in your dream, it could have just been a blend of 2, 3, maybe 100 different songs that your subconscious put together while digging through your memories

note: I didn't say it was random, I just said that the subconscious builds on what it thinks should go places, (it can be compared to doing a search function on a vast web-page and taking one of the first 3 matches you get... search for "walking" and you might get "walking in the park", or "walking down the road with Tommy"... its just the web-page your mind is ctrl-f'ing is the vast store of every memory you've ever had (though some are closer to the top then others, time decides this)

that likely didn't make sense but wth it sounded good to me :)


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about how you can dream of monsters and stuff...

you have to remember that we're constantly making up things in our heads, seeing stuff on TV, hearing stories by mouth, and maybe even reading about stuff... all that's put into this database as well

Recently I have had a couple of repeated dreams. The interesting thing is that the first time I was completely clueless as to why I had them. The second time, after "future" events passed, the meaning was entirely clear. My question is why?

I am assuming there is a reason, possibly it serves as a preparation. I think that it may be the same principle as muscle memory. That is, the more times you repeat an excercise, the easier it becomes to do. Just like, the more times you have the same dream, the easier it is to remember.

I would like to know from those who have/had recurring nightmares. Do they keep getting more and more vivid each time? I don't think the vividness would reduce any...

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Originally posted by Burns
I have a repeating dream about the school in the town where I grew up.

Background Info: I didn't actually graduate high school from this school that I dream about - my parents moved so I spent my junior and senior year at a different high school. This was extremely difficult for me since I went to my hometown school since 1st grade. And to be moved to a completely different (and huge) school in the last 2 years of high school was so hard because everyone already has their social cliques established. Being the new kid is hard, but throw in my mom's divorce, re-marriage, moving to a different town, and starting all over in a new high school made it all the more difficult. It turned out fine and I'm glad it happened in hindsight, but it was really hard to adjust. Looking back, if we hadn't moved to the city, I wouldn't be where I am today - so I'm grateful it all happened.

So I think my dreaming about my old high school in the small town where I grew up symbolizes a time in my life when everything was fun, happy and simple. But usually I go back there in my dreams as my present-day self, to prove to everyone that I succeeded in life. I guess it's kinda like proving it to myself that I'm somebody, and have my old hometown recognize that. It's very egotistical when I think about it - I think I like the reassurance and positive feelings it gives me.

I never actually try to have these dreams, they just sorta happen. I've never tried to stop them, because I like to remember my old life and remember my old friends names and how they looked as I remember them. Even after 9 years since seeing those people and leaving that school, I still remember every little detail. It's like my mind's way of keeping the memories from fading away.

I've never once had a dream about the high school I actually graduated from. To me, it just wasn't my home. I only spent 2 years in that town - once I graduated, I immediately moved out to go to college. I'd think at some point I'd have a dream about that school - but I never have. I think it was just a stepping stone to get from Point A to Point B.

Sorry about the long post - I've never actually sat down and tried to figure out why I have that repeating dream, so most of this post was thinking out loud. Thanks for reading. :)

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Wow, I've seen you post about your recurring school dreams before, maybe I'm just rereading your post. But I must say that my sutuation is 99% like yours. I grew up in a small town and went to one school for 9 years (there was no 4th grade). Then I moved to the US and did my junior and senior years here. Indeed, adjusting was a bit hard, but I didnt mind it.

About a year after arriving in the US the dreams about school started. I must say that I the only thing I miss about that school are my two best friends. These recurring dreams are varying slightly, but 95% of the time i find myself in one of two classrooms sitting in the spot where I was sitting the last year I've attened that school. Sometimes I take tests there or listen to some very hard lesson.

This was quite annoying, but it just so happened that I was really interested in LDing at that time so I created a mantra for myself to repeat every time I go to sleep. I would remind myself that I switched countries, schools, that my old class would graduate a year before me, I used every bit of logic I could find to prove that those dreams were dreams. Well, I succeeded - now every time I see this kind of recurring dreams I become lucid. On top of that I can enter that dream at will using dream reentry.

There's a weird thing about the classroom I see most often - math class - in a few lucid dreams I paid close attention to the people in the classroom. I found that some people were missing and some people had multiple copies of them sitting in place of missing people. Some kind of mind censorship maybe?


Another remarkable similarity is that I had a top of 1 or 2 dreams about the US school even though I liked it a lot.


Now why I see those dreams? I have two explanations. The first one is purely psychological - missing that school, trying to prove that I'm better off now, etc etc.

Here's an idea I want to share with you

intro

Some people say that recurring dreams are messages from subconscious. I may have proof of that. For a *very long* time I tried to establish contact with my subconscious mind.
But it never happened. I remember asking for an audience with my subconscious once and being kicked out of a dream by a dude that materialized out of thin air.

Now, all this time I assumed that my subconscious mind is hostile that it doesnt want to be contacted and it prevents me from having LDs. But there were some events that radically contradiced that - finding digital clocks that made me lucid in random places, etc.

please read this

As I compiled this post I had a mini enlightment :D I realized that these recurrrent dreams were actually attempts of my subconscious mind to communicate with me! First of all they started/intensified around the time when i formulated my desire to speak to my subconscious mind.
Second, I can enter them at will using dream reentry method (that works for all dreams btw, but I can enter this dream without dreaming of it before)
Finally the most obscure detail that I realized only recently upon closely examining the class. When I first started to have these dreams I spent a lot of time fighting my enemies, talking back to that bitch math teacher, fucking hot chicks or using powers. Right now none of these elements are present! My enemies are "covered over" with the clones of neutral guys, hot chicks are covered by the same clones or neutral chicks. The bitch math teacher is replaced by a "generic" teacher. My powers fail in that class. All distractions are gone! All I have to do is ask for an audience with my subconscious... I will try to do this tonight and tell you how this went...

That sounds logical, could easily explain why dreams might come back.
Eg.: The same tree will always trigger the same park with the same story (walking).

I don't think they really have any significance, I once dreamt about a dream.. and it came back years later.

Same for like.. many other dreams, they seem to be recycled every 5 years or 10 years.

I was able to reenter the repeated dream I have twice and asked "Why am I here (in the dream) ?" First time I had a FA, but the second time a classmate actually replied that I keep seeing this dream because I'm not paying enought attention to my LD induction techniques and dont use them often. This is true.

For the past 3 nights my dreams were crazy - I saw many variations of the repeated dream in different settings - different classroom, once the dream took place on a bus.

During the second LD after I finished talking to the classmate the teacher attacked me and pretty much forced me out of the dream.

This was a very deep experience and it only been 3 days :D I still got half the summer to dig even deeper...

I have many repeated dreams and most of them has nothing to do with the real reality.

Distant Clone: When I was young I considered those dreams as nightmares. These dreams never changed their clearness/vividness. They were always so real that I couldn't think of it as a dream. But one thing changed. At first I saw parts of the whole dream. Later (few months, years) I was seeing bigger parts of those dreams and eventually I dreamt the whole life in one whole night.

You can check a short description of it in my dream journal (I know it's a mess). The repetitive dreams which hunt me for my whole life are written in the first topic. The last topic (26/07/06) is also a repetitive dream.

http://www.dreamviews.com/forum/inde...howtopic=29798

Later on I tried to figure out why I dream the same dreams...I thought that there could be a message in some of them. One dream "Haste tree" was the first dream which showed slight changes everytime I was in it.
But most of the dreams never changed....they are kind of memories I can't change.

Dreams which are repetitive and I can change them are dreams from which I start my lucid dream adventure. After reading some topics about dream signs and themes I put those dreams in "theme category".

Conclusion: hm..I guess I achieved nothing with this post. But at least I know I have three types of repetitive dreams. The ones I count as "memories", the ones I can change to LD and those which are "symbilic".
Symbolic dreams are dreams which have the same plot/dialogues etc but in various but similar settings.