Dreams, are they scary, in color, black and white or just insane?

I use to think dreams told me things about the future. Nevertheless, I have learned not to question or even think that they are signs of anything.

I do feel and sometimes see what the future holds, but is it instinctive? I believe with an open mind, and if you are in tune with your thoughts, you can pretty much predict what can possibly happen next. Like stepping out of your “so called box’’. You know when the time is right to do certain things and you know when it is risky. I love the feeling of both.

What are your thoughts on dreams and instinctive thoughts?

 

I think dreams are a blank canvas that your subconscious uses to paint pictures of things that are already there. Sometimes they're things you're hiding, ignoring, or fear. Other times they're things you desire, love, and cherish.

I don't believe that dreams, in and of themselves, have any meaning. They're created in your head using the memories, experiences, and feelings already contained with in it. If there is something in a dream that troubles you, it's because you put it there. I used to have several reoccurring dreams, one bad one always seemed to be coupled with sleep paralysis (A most unfun and horrific experience). It took a long time but one day I realised those dreams weren't trying to communicate anything, I was, to me. It's one of the reasons I try to keep a clear conscience, I need to sleep at night.

For a while I dabbled in lucid dreaming, and got a lot out of it. I still sleep with my radio on, it helps me realise when I'm in a dream state, sometimes I'll control the dream, other times I sit back and enjoy the ride.

One thing I have noticed lately though, the dreams that trouble me, they're always a worst case scenario for something in the real world that's bothering me, something I need to make a tough decision on.

 

I'm hoping my dreams are just mental farts, cause some of them are too disturbing to hope that they are reflective of my real desires.

 

I tried the lucid dreaming for a bit. Very interesting outcomes.

Sleep paralysis is a pretty incredible feeling also. Scary and intense at times.

 

Most of my dreams are pretty mundane. Childhood memories and relatives who have passed away. Of course ones with girls in them too, I like those.

But of course there's the occasional one about zombies or I'm about to be eaten by a shark. I always know I'm dreaming though so I just wake up. A reoccurring theme is me accidentally dropping my cell phone in some sort of lake or creek. Or I jump in to go swimming and I forgot my cell phone was in my pocket.

What I find interesting is that for some reason the topic of dreams came up when I was talking with some friends and a fair amount of them said they either don't dream or they don't remember their dreams, they weren't sure.

 

I dream in black and white, and I don't remember most of them. I wake up sometimes when a dream I'm having surprises me-- like someone from work show up in it unexpectedly. And then I don't forget them b/c I wonder why my subconscious put that person in my dream.
I think dreams can have a premonitory aspect to them, and at least, in my family, some of us would dream of one of the family and then call them only to find out that something had happened, like someone got hurt or something of theirs was stolen or something.

 

I nearly always dream in color. When I was a teenager and early 20something, I did lucid dreaming as part of my daily practice, and now, even though most of my dreams are not lucid, I remember most of them when I wake up.

I have very few nightmares, although when I do, they're doozies. And occasionally I have had mystical dreams, though that's kind of a different conversation. Mostly, I have three different kinds of dreams, in descending proportions: sex dreams, action-adventure dreams (superhero/legendary hero/etc.), surreal rehashing of mundane events.

 

I love dreaming and always dream in color. Most, and certainly the best, have women in them. Nightmares rarely happen. Only dreams that bug me are the ones about going back to a war zone. Been there, done that, didn't like it.

 

Most of mine are in black and white but I sometimes dream in color. A good deal of my dreams involve me trying desperately to get somewhere or get something done and finding I can't due to one frustrating barrier after another.

In my last lucid and colorful memory, I was trying to get home to change into some proper attire after finding myself at a party in a huge penthouse wearing my pajamas. I had to make my way through a bizarre mall which exited out onto a deserted lot where I was met by gang members who robbed and shot me. I had no clue that they'd killed me until a group of people came up to me to inform me that it was now my job to join them in greeting the newly dead.

Most of the dreams I end up remembering have this frustrating "can't get where I want to go" theme.

It goes on a bit but I'm sure my insane dreams probably don't sound any more weird or insane as everyone else's. It's the nature of dreams.

For the record, I don't believe dreams can be easily analysed. I don't really know if it's useful to even try. I'm basically a very positive and contented person and have no intention of fucking that up by second guessing myself based on a dream.

 

Well hope you never have to go back into a war zone. Your avatar is pretty nightmarsh. I didn't know what it was until I took a good look today.
When I dream I'm usually always moving, running through different rooms in a huge mansion. I also have dreams where I can't move and someone is touching me. I see someone leaving my bedroom and I try to sit up to see who it is, if feels so real.
--- merged: Feb 11, 2012 1:35 PM ---

 

i never dream in full color. sometimes its black and white, sometimes red, sometimes sepia-tone... but most often its green... always monochromatic though...

the really strange ones are usually sepia-tone... the bad ones are black or red... never fore-telling, but sometimes very coincidental...

 

I always dream in color, and I never realize I'm dreaming. All of my dreams are incredibly realistic and intense...which is awesome when I'm having a dream about sex or riding a dragon or something, but terrible when it's about zombies.

It's also hard for me to separate the dream from reality when I first wake up, especially if I'm awakened suddenly by someone or something else. One time, I was having this dream that Lordeden kept taking everything out of my hands....I picked up a magazine, he took it away. I picked up the remote, he took it away, and so on. I happened to be snuggling with his pillow when he came to bed, and when he tried to get it away from me, I growled at him. I also had a mini-freak out once when the dogs came in and jumped on me...I'd been dreaming about getting attacked by wolves at the time. Pretty sure I screamed.

Then there's what I refer to as my "falling dreams." I haven't had one in a while, actually (which probably means I'll have one soon.) Everything about the dream is completely typical, until the end... I'll fall somehow, either slipping in mud, falling down stairs, tripping over a stick, whatever. Instead of hitting the ground, I feel like I've fallen into cotton, and I black out. When I open my eyes, I'm awake in my bed, but I usually can't move for at least a minute. Weird.

 

This is what's often termed as sleep paralysis. More often then not you'll be in an awake state, but they're often mistaken for dreams because you'll hallucinate.

I'll have a horrific experience with this maybe once a year, and it's usually quite extreme where I can't move for minutes and am completely convinced someone is in the room either breaking in or about to kill me. I can't scream, shout, or move, just lay there with a heightened sense of fear and anxiety and hope to god what I'm seeing isn't actually happening. The problem a lot of the time is this happens as I'm coming out of a very vivid dream, it's hard to tell when I suddenly transitioned states, the major difference is the dream and the hallucination are about totally different things, the dream will be what ever, the sleep paralysis is nearly always a stranger in the room. Shitty thing is I can never see the strange clearly because my vision will be really blurry, this is due to the fact I can't fully open my eyes.

 

Yes the stranger in the room; but mine is always sexual in nature and I can not see who is leaving the room. I only see the shadow.

 

I always have the strangest dreams, the great god Morpheus is my constant companion. I stopped trying to make sense of them, I just see them as the days events mixed up and jumbled around. Throw in a dash of childhood trauma, an overbearing father and various bloody occurrences and there you have it. Severely fucked up dreams.

 

I'll concentrate on 'instinctive thoughts', which may or may not occur during sleep or hypnagogic states.

My predictions are the result of my matching patterns: determining probabilities based on similarities in more developed 'other' contexts and extrapolating process in 'this' context.
My 'instinctive thoughts' are rapid applications of the above process, given that I regularly practice it in more formal contexts, since the principle of garbage in, garbage out applies. Gut reactions are only as reliable as the background work done to develop them. The background work can be done by oneself, or through osmosis from role models - parents or teachers, in which case one might get the knack but not necessarily understand it unless some desire and strategies for learning were included in the 'osmosed' package.

Instinctive thinking refined by practicing pattern elicitation and prediction, can be further enhanced : Choose a certain kind of context - be specific, because the instinct for making effective moved in auto repair will have different elements from instinct for effective moves in social interaction. Go into light trance/reverie/have a jolly good think/

Search through times I KNEW I right ... and I was. Notice similarities in the feeling of the KNOWING ... get a solid sense and remember that sense ... store it. take a breather ... like a wine taster has a few sips of water between different wines to clear the palette, then go through the above sequence whilst:
Search through times I KNEW I was right ... and I was not.
Search through times I KNEW I was likely wrong ... and I was
Search through times I KNEW I was likely wrong ... and I wasn't.

the KNOWing in each of those searches will have some different characteristics in some or all of feeling, seeing, hearing and we're thus charting the quality of the instinctive thought for that specific context. It's a way of identifying when we are 'on our game' rather than in a state of 'cornered adrenalin', or 'in the zone' rather than in a smug or complacent mood, or, 'feeling lucky' rather than, for example, 'desperately hopeful'. Or feeling lucky as distinct from feeling the echo of the 'lucky' from last time, which may not apply to this time. Etc.

 

I can't figure out why I don't remember having dreamt. It's been years since I even was aware of dreaming. Back when I did dream, it was always in color, and very vivid color. Some of the dreams were so real that I was sure I was experiencing things that seemed slightly (more than slightly) off. Strange. I wonder what happened.

From what I understand, in REM sleep your mind is cleaning itself out, so there are lots of neurons shooting sparks through synapses. Your brain is getting these signals from the cleaning process, but they follow no real pattern, so the dream is your brain's attempt to impose a pattern on the random firing of synapses. What appears in your dream is therefore in some way a reflection of how your brain approaches things. Or at least that's the conclusion I draw.

 

Zen you could not have said it more clearly.

There is definitely a clear procession of seeing and understanding instinctive thoughts.
I have been this way since a teenager and sometimes I just want to turn it off.
It gets to a point where it feels like dreaming, paralyzing me, until I go through the procession of my instinctive thoughts.

Finally a decision...

 

Dreams for me have always been in colour and very detailed. Not always based in reality as in some I could fly. Some good, bad, exhilarating and scary. The largest difference between dreaming < 20 yrs old and dreaming > 20 years old is that I no longer wake from nightmares. I usually either face the fear directly and subsequently realize it is a dream or I know it is a dream and just let it run its course.