Dreams

[zozo]

Last night I dreamed I was hiding in a large sports shop, other people were hiding too i think, someone bad was in there. Then the bad person found me, we were stood facing each other and he had an axe, or a baseball bat? He had swung it around and it smashed me in the head, I heard it as such a loud noise and my bones and teeth jarring, after that I was dead, so end of the dream.

[Bodhitree]

I had a dream this morning, and the dream was a computer game, and I was inside. I'd go into dungeons, except the dungeons would be empty, and at the end there was a paddock with several cars which I could take as my reward for completing the dungeon, and various goods. In the dungeon there would be an impression of goblins like from the Hobbit part 1, I'd look for them behind doors. Except the walls were neat and squared off and whitewashed. The cars were upgraded versions of old 1930's style automobiles. 

Then I would go back to my camp, where I could build various things like a unit of rangers or other things. There was a user interface for the camp that I could look at. I was just hunting around for a unit with which to explore the rest of the map and find the other players, when something said to me, "ooh you don't want to take that one..." when I was looking at the rangers. 

Ive had dreams which were games before, sometimes featuring very nasty or threatening boss entities, but this was quite a gentle strategy game with dungeons. 

[Deleted]

Aug 24, 2017 22:19:47 GMT zozo said:

Last night I dreamed I was hiding in a large sports shop, other people were hiding too i think, someone bad was in there. Then the bad person found me, we were stood facing each other and he had an axe, or a baseball bat? He had swung it around and it smashed me in the head, I heard it as such a loud noise and my bones and teeth jarring, after that I was dead, so end of the dream.

That sounds horrible, zozo, in my dreams I don't usually die or if I do it turns out to have been a computer game and I get another life. I have had dreams that I seem to die in but I end up in another world. There was one where the world was ending and we flew to another planet and we lived there. I don't know what that means but I don't think I am one of the chosen few who are going to leave when the world ends. 

My dreams are really weird but after reading this thread I am glad I am not the only person who has them. 

[Bodhitree]

I've done a lot of thinking about yesterday's dream. In particular there was a section that occurred while I was exploring a dungeon. I came to a whitewashed room with a door made of rough planks which was empty, and I was going to look behind the open door. I remember thinking, what could be behind this door, and into my mind came an image of this goblin, and I kind of wanted it to be there, wanted a good battle. But when I looked behind the door there was nothing there.

So this self that wants battle, wants a good fight... that is something I associate with computer games, like Diablo or Ultima Underworld or World of Warcraft. Battle is a risk-free affair in games where if you die you get another life and to try again, and if successful there is some treasure. In real life, I've never been in favour of battle, I'm cautious and risk-averse, I objected on conscientious grounds from going into the army many years ago, I haven't been in a fight since I was 16. So there was this real strong distinction between my dreaming self, which was channelling my computer gaming self, and my real-world self.

I think in the end my dreamer knew what was good for me... there was no goblin behind the door in the dream, nothing to stir up the emotions of a battle. I found it strange that I was thinking in the dream, that such a complex series of visualisations including a Hobbit goblin could come into my thoughts while I was still experiencing the dream. The cars as treasure too I thought was interesting... cars are an expression of freedom, magical things that allow you to transport yourself and the rest of your family much more easily then you could otherwise.

[Deleted]

Maybe that represents travel? Do you want to go travelling and don't have the means at the moment?

[Bodhitree]

Aug 27, 2017 7:43:17 GMT @daydreambeliever42 said:

Maybe that represents travel? Do you want to go travelling and don't have the means at the moment?

No no, money is ok at the moment. I haven't been on a proper holiday for about 4 years though. I haven't felt the need. But maybe it's a good idea to do some travelling this winter, or even this autumn within the Netherlands. 

[Deleted]

I can't go abroad as I don't have a passport. I have two friends in the North of England I am wanting to visit though. I have not been to Holland for more than 20 years. It is very pretty. They are a bit more progressive than us in some ways. I would like to live in Europe. 

[Bodhitree]

These last few days I've kind of come to believe that with too much fantasy in your mind you lose the focus on the real world... many people today live in fantasy worlds created for them by others. I think games are the worst offenders, followed by movies and then books. Especially if you direct your love through these things and become emotionally attached and involved then it can leave deep traces in you which can shape your attitudes in your dream worlds and so form an obstacle to spiritual realisation.

If you end up lucid dreaming and you behave like a wild man, attacking things you see because you believe you're in a game full of dungeons that means you're largely incapable of interacting rationally with anything extraordinary that you may encounter. You can get swept away by things that you've connected to strongly in the past, it's the habit of past experience. You see something that reminds you of something you've done or experienced and it shapes your expectations and reactions, no longer allowing you to perceive clearly.

While in fact it suits people more to be more serious, more direct in their lived experience. Not living so much out of the past but to be directly in contact with the here and now.

[Bodhitree]

Last night I had a very powerful dream, I don't remember much of it but it was unusual for its liveliness and the reality of its characters. It started in the ground floor of an apartment, and I suddenly dashed to the right into a room with a loft, where I found a man with whom I had a conversation, and he pointed me in the direction of a young man in a different room on the ground floor. This young man had some wires and things stretching over his face, almost like jewellery but tight to the skin, which he called "nano adaptations". They seemed to bind his left arm and his nose, very odd. I said to him we would "get him sorted out" and that "he would be fine". There was quite a jovial conversation. 

Then I woke up...

[snowstorm]

Aug 29, 2017 7:26:48 GMT Bodhitree said:

These last few days I've kind of come to believe that with too much fantasy in your mind you lose the focus on the real world... many people today live in fantasy worlds created for them by others. I think games are the worst offenders, followed by movies and then books.

A lot of fantasies are sold to people, it's about flogging stuff. Books are probably not as bad because you can use your own imagination, but then they are sometimes a never ending franchise, like Harry Potter.

[Bodhitree]

Aug 30, 2017 16:15:03 GMT snowstorm said:

Aug 29, 2017 7:26:48 GMT Bodhitree said:

These last few days I've kind of come to believe that with too much fantasy in your mind you lose the focus on the real world... many people today live in fantasy worlds created for them by others. I think games are the worst offenders, followed by movies and then books.

A lot of fantasies are sold to people, it's about flogging stuff. Books are probably not as bad because you can use your own imagination, but then they are sometimes a never ending franchise, like Harry Potter.

Yes that's true. I think it's also something about being more personally involved, in making choices for the games. With books you're experiencing the action at several removes, as you say you have to use your imagination. If you think of the Buddhist perspective, with respect to karma, the decisions you make in games are going to leave karmic imprints (even intense thoughts leave these, and so do all species of action), which is quite a scary thought... now I'm not sure if I am a firm believer in karma, but my experience is that it leaves traces in the mind at the very least, so who knows?

That it appears in my dreams, this connection with games, bothers me. On a psychological level it seems to imply a pretty deep level of conditioning. I wonder if I will have any more of them, this was maybe the fourth or fifth in about a year. 

[zozo]

I remember two dreams from last night.
In one there was a man on the grass outside the shops where I live and he was a kind of gangster, protection rackets that kind of thing. I had a bowl with me from my kitchen, went over to the gangster and asked him if he'd like some fruit (because I wanted him to like me) and he said apples. So I went in the greengrocers but it was much bigger than usual although you had to climb over wooden shelves and go through little wooden gates, so it was more overcrowded than a bigger shop. There were so many different varieties of apples I didn't know which ones to choose, I worried that I'd get some that didn't taste the best, and it took me ages. Then I was worried my husband would be angry with me for taking too long so I lied to him that I lost my wallet in the shop.
(This is all like real life. I do this, go to the shops, get confused in the shop, feel I've taken ages and worry that I'll be "told off")

The second dream I was running and running. I ran through a shop doorway (I think it was a hairdressers) and to get through the next door I had to run through the window display and past a partition wall into the next shop. Everyone had stopped what they were doing and looked angry with me, but I didn't say anything just ran.
On the path outside I ran past a family with a baby, there was a dog and the baby tried to say "doggy" but said "baby", pointing at the dog. I had spoken to them, then said "I have to go up here" and turned up a road, running.
I was running through wide corridors, like a hospital or school and there were lots of people. The corridor sloped down and instead of running I started to swim through the air so that I just carried on straight. I had forgotten I could do that, and had an idea.
I was running up many flights of stairs to get to the top of a very tall building, out onto the roof and ran towards the edge. At this point there was another woman with me running a little behind, she had seen me and wanted to do the same. I did think that maybe she couldn't swim through the air, so I hoped she knew if she could or couldn't because if she couldn't she was about to fall to her death. I didn't really want the company or to stop and speak to her though, so I left her to it, got to the edge and dived off.
The sky was very blue, I was very high, but I was swimming fine in the air.
At this point I think I was starting to wake because I had a conscious thought "what if asteroids hit while you were high up flying?" then this happened, and I felt like the dream had been ruined.

[Bodhitree]

I woke up this morning, had coffee and just settled in for a bit of a snooze on the couch, it was still early, and promptly had a dream. I was staying with a family who had just moved to a new house, a daughter of about five, a son of about sixteen, and a daughter in between who I never saw, and a man in his 50's, who was the father and a DIY-type. It was very harmonious.

The new house was older, perhaps built in the 1800's, and it had at least three floors above the ground. I went to investigate and nearly got stuck in the stairwell between some wooden spokes because I'm a broad-chested type. On the top floor I found a large landing with two beds on it where I thought I might stay, since it wouldn't be right to take a whole bedroom from one of the older kids.

And then I woke up... 

[Bodhitree]

I used to think I dreamt only once in a while, but since I've been keeping this dream journal I realise I dream quite a lot. This morning's dream was like yesterday's in that I woke up early, got up and had coffee around 5.30 and went back to bed and then dreamt. This one was about me and several companions journeying across the galaxy until we ended up on this planetoid where there was a huge multistory concrete building, open inside on each floor, which was home to some pirates.

I was trying to escape by selling some blue prints of a device which allowed people to broadcast their emotions, which was going to re-invigorate the ancient art of theatre. It had been invented by a companion of mine, now sadly deceased along with our starship. But I was wandering around in the top floor of this concrete building trying to get out past several factions of these pirates... I was thinking of escape via the laundry tubes. 

[Bodhitree]

I had a long dream which included a journey to get to a new house, which was fairly neat and not old in a residential neighbourhood like they have around here. It was on three floors and with a sloping roof, and set on an arced street.

I was also at my place of work, where they were moving from one building to another. I was looking for a book, which i couldn't find, and at one point I walked into a room and two old real life ex-colleagues were sitting there clearing out their desks for the move. There were corridors and wood panelled fireproof doors with windows in them, and I made it out to the courtyard after having checked my pockets - keys and lint. There I asked another real-life ex-colleague for a lift, but he refused saying he wasn't going anywhere near where I was going.

So I decided to walk, it was night when I started but strangely evening when I came to an area where a few young people were shouting at passers-by, it was a long arced footpath by the side of some buildings with glass barriers. All the passers by were scared, and they applauded me when I confronted the youngsters. 

Earlier in the dream there was a section where I was trying to get through a building to a restaurant by climbing through various internal windows. I got caught by a caretaker so I helped him to lock the place up including halting a few mechanisms which were running inside a lab, and I remember remarking what a great studio that space would have made.

There was more but that's all I remember.