Dreams
When have you had a dream that you felt contained important information? Explain the dream and the circumstances. Will you follow the protocol in the “Dream Waves” article and try to catch a dream that will help your creative process? Explain.
What I have had a dream about that I felt contained important imformation was about my future course. when I had that dream I was wandering about which university I am going to and what course I am going to major in. I had two or three alternatives: (1)I am going to a famous private university and major in industrial engineering which is also typical in japan, (2) I am going to public university which is not famous and major in logistics that only two university has department of. I had to choose one of them, but it was so difficult to decide. I talked to my parents, teachers and friends, but I still wandered because it was one of the most important decision I have ever made. And I had a dream, in that dream I was in university and be with my future friends and we talked about our university which is latter one. And I realized that how famous the university is doesn’t matter when I choose the university, I just have to learn what I want to learn about. And then, I decided to go to my university. Many of my friends dont’t know my university, but I am majoring logistics which is very unique and intersting. I heard about job stuation after I graduate that our major is very unique, so we can get a good job easily. This story doesn’t sound like creative thing, but I think that it is also important to being creative and I wanted to tell you about this dream because it was very important dream to me.
Two years ago i had a boyfriend who was really into me. The first time that he told me that he loved me, I literally laughed in his face. He felt so stupid and embarrassed because I did not believe him at all. Even though we had a really great connection I didn’t like to hear those words. A couple months later I had a really odd dream. This dream really felt that it contained important information regarding my life and feelings towards this guy. I dreamt that we were laying down and just relaxing, and confidently and confortably I told my boyfriend “I LOVE YOU” in my dream. I woke up and realized that I actually was IN LOVE with this guy and the reason I was in denial the whole time was because I dated jerks before and I was a little afraid to get hurt and open up my feelings. The ironic part is now we are happily married. =) That dream was a definite sign for me although it was not exactly a dream that wil help with the creative process.
I do plan to follow the protocol. I have never attempted to use my dreams in that way. I hope it will work and help me find more creative ideas for my project because I am in need of them!
Will you follow the protocol in the “Dream Waves” article and try to catch a dream that will help your creative process? Explain.
i would like to think of a dream that could be considered creative for me but when i try to think of it on the spot, nothing comes to mind. the only way i can really remember my dreams is if i have a journal by my bed side and when i wake up every morning i take note on what i dreamt. but i find that very hard most of the time because what happened in my dream made sense at the time but by the time i wake up and try to put it into words it always sounds so far fetched and nothing ever really connects…if i could think of one thing that is consistent in my dreams for the last year or so i would say that i have had maybe 15 or so dreams where my teeth are falling out for an unknown reason or i am “tounging” them out and i want to stop but for some reason i just cant. i have tried to figure out what this means but i cant come up with a concrete answer. i have found studies that say that means i’m insecure or worried/anxious but i’m not sure i agreed with that at the time…whenever i would wake up from these dreams i would always think they are real and i would instantly grab my mouth in fear. i don’t think these dreams are creative in any way but this is the only dreams that have burned them selves into my memory recently.
Phillip, I had the “teeth falling out” dream repeatedly for a year and a half. It stopped when I decided to express myself and be who I was and, shortly thereafter, started teaching the creativity class. For me I think the dream meant loss of personal identity and voice.
You’re proceeding with the right method to collect your dreams. But don’t censor them as you record them. Jot down all the fragments you can recall; often the last fragment before awaking will suggest the one before that, and so on. Flesh out a description of the dream from the fragments as soon as you get a chance, and then try an interpretation. My favorite is the gestalt method invented by Friz Perls and described in the “Dream Waves” article: BECOME every object in your dream and speak as it. Also looks for puns, displacement (i.e., the queen as your mother), and condensation of two ideas into 1 concrete image.
A few years ago, my grandma died due to complications with her surgery. Shortly after her death I had a nightmare. In the dream I was walking alone on a street in my neighborhood. Everything about the street was eerie. There was a brown haze all around and the street itself was in bad shape. It had cracks everywhere. So as I as walking down the street I see my grandma walking on the other side. I call to her, and when we make eye contact I froze. She had blood red eyes. She just stared at me.
That dream has always stayed with me. I felt that it had a deeper meaning, but I don’t know what it could be. My dad had a similar dream when his grandma died.
I remember most of my dreams. For people who have a hard time remembering their dreams,I recommend talking about them or replay the dream in their mind as soon as they wake up.
What a spooky dream, Ashley!
After my maternal grandmother died, both my mother and I had dreams in which she gave us advice.
Okey dokey this is going to be a crazy post… I’ve have so many weird dreams but one dream that I had for about three years of my life was the one I like to call ‘AWKWARD’. Picture a kid sitting alone in the library eating pasta out of his thermos, reading his second 500+ page book for the day and you have a picture of me in middle school. During my entire middle school time and into the first year of high school I had the exact same dream every single night. Sometimes the situation was slightly different but it was usually of me waking up in the morning, walking down the stairs, eating breakfast and grabbing my stuff and walking out of the house. Then I would get in the car with my car pool and head to school. Then depending on the specificities in the dream I would realize in the middle of some very public place that I forgot to put my pants or boxers on that morning. This would immediately trigger everyone in the whole world turning and laughing at me at which point I would start running away and then wake up in a cold sweat usually crying. I am not sure what triggered this nightmare but I told this dream to my freshman sweetheart who told me to do exactly what happened in my dream and it would go away. So I did… I went to school with nothing but boxers on and nobody even noticed, or at least didn’t say anything. I’m not sure if it was that but the dreams stopped soon after that and I haven’t had it since. I would suggest that if you ever want to get rid of nightmare face that inner fear to get rid of it.
Wow that is pretty crazy. It must have taken some courage to go to school without pants on. I don’t think I could try that here. I think somebody would notice immediately. =]
Some times my whole life seems like a dream. I think I’ve been day dreaming through all of it so far…
btw- this isn’t supposed to be a Journal post.
Dreams can mean a variety of different information. They guide us, show us, and allow for a creative solution for a complication in one’s life. I have had many dreams in the past which I believed to be telling me something important. Whether the dream is about a test, an issue with my personal life, or just a nightmare, each has there own level of importance. I myself have had trouble following through with what the dreams have hinted as a resolution for the issue in the dream. I do not quite understand why this is, except for the fact that I have trouble remembering all the key facts of the dreams. Dreams also allow us to live in a world in which could not exist in this present life.
THIS IS FOR LOG 8 YOU SAID I COULD DO THAT LOG CAUSE I WAS A WINNER ON THE EGG DROP CONTEST.
Dreams are part of nature. They can mean so many different things, they can hold valuable information, give you advice on something that can change your life forever. There is this one dream that I will never be able to get past. I had a dream that I was skateboarding down this hill back home. This hill is a very dangerous hill to go down. When you go down it you have to cross through traffic and watch out for on coming traffic too. In the dream i was going down the hill in the summer and my friend and I were charging down it racing and both of our wheeles hit and my friend and I went flying, both of us crashed into each other. the very next day i went down the hill and the exact thing happend to my friend and I. Talk about deja vu!
Believe it or not, Charles, this phenomenon is not uncommon. I’ve had it happen to me more than once. In one dream I was sitting on a bus and talking to a friend. Several months later as I was on a bus with her in India, I realized that this was the scene I had dreamt. We both said the same things and were seated in the same way. Also, one night I dreamt what was going to happen in creative writing class that night. A creative writing student came to interview me for the student newspaper that afternoon–and said she had dreamt what we would do in class that night! We had both dreamed the same sequence of events, which did, in fact, take place.
Psychic Jane Roberts says that one function of dreams is to rehearse the events of the next day. Other authors have said that people around the world had similar dreams right before WW II started and that such “mass dreams” determine world events. Spooky, huh? But what the bleep do WE know?
Some dreams are extrmely creative and can be build up as the dreamer wishes them to be. For instance I had a dream once i was swimming a perfect water, then i got to shore and naked women wearing silk were everywhere. The beach was beautiful and it was awesome i definetly utilzed my creative mind because i just get making things. Other dreams are like movies which cannot be changed you just have sit back and watch it however it goes. I believe those dreams are messages from a higher power and should be paid very close attention to.
This first part is in response to phill T’s Bulletin on dreams. He says that he has these dreams where his teeth fall out of he pushes them out and doesn’t know what it means. I think it may mean he grinds his teeth in his sleep or clenches something of that sort. It could be his subconscious dream sleep mind, you know his teeth and gums are irritated so in his dream state they fall out and he experiences the pain. A couple weeks ago I had a dream where I was a bunch of people diving off a cliff into rocks and water and each time the person hit I would re-fall as another person. The time before I awoke I hit the rocks but didn’t die and just wanted to die so I tried drowning myself and awoke because I wasn’t breathing. My point to this is that your pain and bodily feelings and functions in the real world come out into the dream world.
I dream a lot and have been recording my dreams for over a year now and I don’t really get anything from them besides the satisfaction of rereading them later on. For this bulletin I just re-read a bunch and noticed in 2007 I had a dream where a friend died and his last words were that he was happy that he voted for Obama, now Obama is prez.
I think it takes time to really understand a dream. When I re-read my dreams I see that there are a lot of similarities. You can put the similarities together to interpret them.
I once had a dream that i truly believed had a very important message to me. I once dreamt that i was at my house waiting for my friends, then we were going to meet up with some other friends. It was a beautiful day beyond belief, and i’ve always been a huge fan of never wasting the day. After a couple of my friends arrived i contunied to wait, for the rest of them. time progressed and they went up to meet up with my other friends as i contunied to wait for my straggler friends. THey finally arrived as they arrived they sky turned gloomy and it was very sad. We left and arrived at the place we were going only to be infomred that we had missed all the fun. I realized that lately i had been not enjoying the present, i was always lloking forward to things, way too caught up with the future when, in reality i could die and never even get there. It also made me realize that tommorow is never promised. This led me to be more optimistc and creative in my daily life.
Very interesting dream, Ben! I do believe that in many cases, dreams come to us to give us information about ourselves or our situations.
Very interesting, Peter! You’ll note my response to Phil. I am having the “teeth falling out” dream again as well. When I experience it, I am then aware I’m dreaming (a lucid dream). I think, “Wait a minute! My teeth fall out only in dreams.” To test whether I’m in a dream, I then try to fly. If I can, then I know I’m dreaming, and I tell others around me, “You’re in a dream!” I then ask them, “Are you other people dreaming–or just figments of my imagination?” If they’re other people they say so and get blown away that we are in a dream world together. If they hunch down and look away, I know they’re fragments of my psyche.
I have had many dreams in which I’m really conversing with actual people, but that’s another story. . . . I believe one function of dreams is to connect us with others we may not necessarily know in this life.
Dreams-
I’m sure I dream every night, but its only so often that I can actually remember what it is that I dreamt the night before.
There are 2 reoccurring dreams that I have. One is the falling dream. I usually have that as I’m drifting off. The second dream I have that reoccurs is crashing my car. I read an interpretation on this and it said that I was feeling that I “wasn’t in control of my life”. I suppose I could have felt that way. Whenever it happens, I tend to have a lot on my plate. The falling dream, I can’t quite place.
I also have a lot of deja vue. Where you dream something and then sometime in the future you actually experience it. I don’t know how that is really possible. I kind of feel like it was the life I lead before this one, telling me what’s about to happen in this life, like it’s a major turning point or something.
Interesting post!
I have had many vivid dreams about my past lives in the late seventeenth and late nineteenth centuries. I have also been hypnotically regressed to those two lives. When I visited key places in England (17th c) and Vienna (19th c), they were just as I’d experienced them in dreams and hypnosis–except for architectural elements that had been added since the lives. In both lives I loved a prominent man (the same soul), so I was even able to confirm some of my dreams and hypnosis through research.
My most reoccurring dream throughout my life is usually the exact same every time I have it. I can’t remember how many times or how often I have it, but I can remember it once from my childhood, and a couple times from high school and college. It always starts with me walking a couple miles from my home and I see Tyrannosaurus Rex really far away on a hill. I think it is looking for me so I run home and it begins chasing me. I always make it right in time before it catches me. I don’t know how long the dream is I just remember the images and the feeling of panic and then safety.
I think this dream can mean that your problems will often follow you. They can affect you personally, your friends, and most often your family. I also think that if I never started running in the first place, the T-Rex would not have chased me. I can translate this as that most of the problems I have are generated from me. So this dream is a reminder to me that most of my problems are avoidable. I am reminded to make the extra phone call, walk the dog before leaving, or pay more attention to the road while driving. So I think that analyzing dreams is very important for everybody. We should all take the unconscious advice as a reminder that there are more factors in life to expect, prevent, and practice for that sometimes our busy minds overlook.
Excellent interpretation!
One solution is to turn and face the T-Rex.
David Prater
Creativity
February 18, 2009
Dreams and Creativity
To the creative person, dreams can be an important aid on their road to complete their project. Dreams and creativity both come from the right side of the brain. This tells us that, first, the thought process and neuron activity while dreaming is very similar to that of trying to concentrate on creating, and second, that you can use both interchangeably to help improve the other. When I experience a creative block I often try focus on the problems that are keeping me from achieving my goal. I concentrate on the obstacles in my way and try to imagine myself on a road to completion. Along this road I am sure to face different obstacles, therefore I use the skills and knowledge I acquire along the road to help me get around the mental blocks. For example, this past week I was trying to decide on what weekend I should do my creativity project on. This was a dilemma for me because the only logical weekend to do it was the weekend of spring break, which unfortunately was our only break in the whole semester so I wanted to use it wisely. At first I meditated on this subject and I asked my guide to help me with the situation. He told me that another exercise would come to me indirectly and help me with my decision. Later that day you gave us the idea to write down or meditate on a question before we go to bed, and our subconscious mind will help sort out the answer in our sleep. I did that exercise that night and I dreamed of Peter and I leaving the weekend of spring break to go off on our excursion. But in the dream I also pictured my friends and I at my cabin. When I woke I was perturbed by this because I expected the answer to be clear to me. For a couple of days I tossed this over in my mind somewhat disappointed. Then one day I realized something. I realized that even though we can enlist the help of our subconscious mind to help guide us in our decisions, It is up to our conscious minds to interpret the message from the subconscious, and make the final decision. This to me was a big personal realization. For a while now I have been hooked on personal growth, mostly in the spiritual realm, and I somewhat expect things to happen before me that will undoubtedly reveal the presence of a divine plan or set path. However I think the biggest proof of divinity is the ability of being able to channel and interpret our subconscious by ourselves, without the influence of something else. This gift of “free will” for lack of a better term, to me is a much more reassuring evidence of a God than the preaching of a pastor or rabi speaking of stories that happened thousands of years ago.
Anyway thank you for the dream idea, it played a big role on my road of personal growth as well as helping me towards my final creativity project.
A thorough and thoughtful comment!
Ben, I just got your blog response; for some reason I wasn’t notified it was there.
Your dreams and visions sound like fun.
me and my family are very very closely connected mentally. i grew up on a boat hence proximity wise, and because this i feel like we have a really good subconscious awareness of each other. me and my father will have a dream that will wake us up in the middle of night at around the same time or at the same time. there have been times when we were both looking around the boat at the same time at like 2 in the morning looking for the thing that may have caused us to get up. this happens with me and my mom allot to. sometimes i will get a call from my mom or dad in the middle of the night because in a dream one of them saw one of the other in trouble. living at sea we have all become very in tuned to our surroundings and each other. i am a big believer in taking thing out of dreams and delving deeper into what a dream might be telling you!~! dreams also help me create, they normally come during the incubation stage of my creative process when my mind is exploring new possibility and variations on my different ideas. i really try to take every thing i can from them and think that they can really revel allot to you if you know how to listen to them
Ed, I have also had dreams that connect with those of my husband and my mother. I believe that when we are close, we connect subconsciously in the dream state, as you said. I also meet, in dreams, people that I feel I know but have never met in this life!
I think the importance of dreams is that they represent our subconscious and allow it a voice that is normally either suppressed, ignored, or not incomprehensible to our conscious, ‘awake’ mind. I have had many dreams where the subject was what we refer to in the creativity course as the “shadow,” where traits or actions that I would not normally carry out are done so in the dream. Reflecting on these types of dreams allows for a very constructive look into the ego, and how it may either be lacking or displaying too much of that character trait. Other dreams seem insignificant to me, but I openly realize that maybe I am not ready or unable to understand their importance to my life. Dreams are very interesting things, and I feel bad that I overlooked their importance for so long, but the good thing is they are always there, giving us a mirror into which, if we allow them to do so, we can reflect on their meaning and apply them to improve our lives.