I am curious about people's opinions regading either attempting understanding or actually understanding you dreams. Do you find it benificial? Does it help you with your lucidity?
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I am curious about people's opinions regading either attempting understanding or actually understanding you dreams. Do you find it benificial? Does it help you with your lucidity?
I've never had any luck with making heads nor tails of meaning in my non-lucid, and it hasn't brought me any closer nor driven me any farther from lucidity. Others may have had luck with dream meanings, but I haven't found any particular hidden meanings anytime I've tried.
I actually did a report on dreams for my health class a few days ago.In my opinion, dreams don't really have any meanings; They're just a collection of randomly placed sounds, emotions, and visualizations that play through your mind in the stage of REM sleep. Then again, I could be wrong. There is no universal definition of dreaming, because every culture, ethnicity, or religious group has their own definition, so as far as I'm concerned nobody knows :)
Some times when I look back at my dreams I think WTF why was that there. Other times I can look at the elements in my dreams and see that they were themes spawned from what I did, said, watched on TV, saw the past few days. I don't find it really beneficial but I think it's good to focus your brain on dreaming.Quote:
Originally Posted by starzandstripes
It is critical that you record 100-dreams exactly as possible before you attempt any serious interpretation.Quote:
I am curious about people's opinions regarding either attempting understanding or actually understanding you dreams. Do you find it beneficial? Does it help you with your lucidity?
As a bonus the more familiar you become with your dreams the more likely you are to become lucid. As far as the meaning of dreams, I largely agree with the above posts. Very few of my dreams have had even a hint of special meaning.
On the rare occasions they do have an air of significance, the significance was totally personal. No dream interpretation book could have possibly helped. They were not Earth shattering revelations by any means, more like symbolic of different motivations in my life.
Dreams can give you insight into the way you think, the way you react to things, but there's no set way to interpret them. Like Zebrah said, usually you're just receiving playback of whatever you were thinking about during a given day. If you were dreaming of an exciting space battle, it means you like sci-fi; it doesn't mean that you feel that your life is occurring in an intense vacuum of, um, communication and that you're struggling for... um... forget it. You see what I mean.
Sometimes you can track your dreams back to the source. You've been thinking about a tv-show; you're dreaming about the characters. You're writing a story; you're thinking about the characters, setting, things that you have to research. You've been daydreaming about rescuing damsels in distress; you dream about that, too.
Some dreams might have a deeper meaning. I give some credence to the idea of a shadow, a DC that represents parts of yourself that you resent or suppress. But again, we're back to the obsession over those traits, which would lead to dreaming about them.
Pouring over possible meanings for your dreams might be beneficial, if only because you start to recognize the patterns that characterize them. Start to recognize occurring features of your dream, and you might be able to recognize your dreaming. And the entire process is likely to improve your recall, which, really, is the core skill that you need to lucid dream.
Reviewing your dreams is important, but personally, I think dream interpretation is a load of crock. May they offer some insight to your psyche? Sure. But, being that any sort of crazy crap can happen in your dreams, and you are not thinking clearly/acting rationally, I hardly think they make reliable measuring sticks to gauge yourself against. Perhaps if you have some sort of clear, constant recurring element, perhaps shooting people in the face or having your teeth fall out, it may mean something, but for the majority of dreams, they can be triggered by just about anything in your day-to-day routine. Just chillax and go with the flow, bro. :)
I have found this site to be VERY handy for interpreting my dreams. http://www.mydreamvisions.com/dreamdictionary/
It was creepily accurate on every dream I have had so far. Like dreaming about a cardinal when I was really happy one day. Or dreaming about a siren when I felt inspired. I even dreamed of a tower thinking how arrogant everyone inside it seemed. I ran to the top of the tower and jumped off, gliding to the ground. Turned out the meaning of a tower is arrogance. By jumping off I guess I am free of any arrogance? Not sure but it was fun to thing about. ^_^
It could also, possibly, mean that you're using arrogance to propel yourself to a desired location, but in reality are falling due to the arrogance you used - your own or another's - and will certainly injure or even cause your own death, yet you wouldn't even know it 'cause you think you're flying.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zakar
The reason I post such an interpretation is to illustrate how far off people can be when interpreting others' dreams. I think you should interpret your own, or you'll get flawed, a-little-too-literal interpretations otherwise. :)
P.S. Zakar, I don't mean for my interpretation to demean your interpretation, demean your dream's value, nor to insult you - I used it merely to illustrate the above point. ;)
Hi all: I came upon this post thanks to a google alert I have set on "dreams". Anyway I agree with MrDreamsX that no dream interpretation book can help you interpret your dreams, but I will take it a step further to say that one shouldn't use dream interpretation books, symbol dictionaries or ask someone else to interpret your dream. Only the dreamer can interpret their dreams.Quote:
Originally Posted by MrDreamsX
And to answer the original question -- Do you find it beneficial to find meaning in your dreams -- YES! ABSOLUTELY!
[link removed].
Well I think dreams are reflection of your overall attitude, like Samael said(in a longer and clearer version though). For example you are very stressed the whole day, so you may dream a stressful dream too.
But they could also show some forbidden meaning. Like what Zakar dreamt, about the tower and stuff.
I also think dreams can be forewarning. Because my mother sometimes have dreams that happen in real life. Like years ago, she had a dream about our expensive bike that will be stolen. And just after a few days, we found out that our expensive bike outside our house was released from the lock and gone.