A Faraway View: a blog about dreams: June 2012

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Back to School

English: Shopping mall, St Pancras Internation...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here is a recent dream that may have occurred over a period of an hour or two before waking. As I dreamed this I woke up a number of times and then returned to sleep and back to the continuation of the dream.

In my dream I am at my cousin's house. It is a very large convoluted place beside what appears to be a lake. There seem to be many people present. In the house I have my own room which seems to have one wall missing and opened onto a deck area overlooking the lake.

I have to leave for some reason and find myself in a vast shopping mall-like place. After I've gone to do whatever it was I needed to do I start looking for my room. At first I find it readily, but then go back and make repeated attempts to find my room. Each time it gets more difficult to find it. The shopping mall begins to seem more like an indoor city as there are more than just stores.

Eventually I am back in my room and realize I have to get ready to go to school. I have the understanding in the dream that somehow some of my high school credits were invalid and I have to return to high school to get my degree. My wife helps me get dressed in some clothes that seem very strange for me. They are in garish colors and have a mod sort of design. I have problems putting my belt on because of the way the belt loops are made and my wife helps me put the belt on.

Then my "room" becomes the classroom. It is very large with no back wall and the lake in the background. There are numerous tables that are like picnic tables made of a plastic-like substance and well over a hundred students are sitting at the tables or milling about the classroom. No classroom study activities seem to be occurring, but there is much socializing. I see no teacher presence and the students seem to be running this environment.

A couple of well dressed young men that I know to be drug dealers are circulating the tables selling their merchandise. They are very clean-cut looking young men. One has a natty suit and a smart fedora and a bright toothy smile that makes him look very friendly. His associate not as well dressed but still dressed very fashionably and he has the same exact smile so that the two almost look like brothers though I know that they're not. I'm curious about the drugs they are selling and hope they will approach me.

Beside me a very cute petite teenage girl is flirting with me. I become very interested in her. I briefly think that she is far too young for me. But then I realize that all the students are accepting me as one of them. They see me as cool and having authority, but I feel more their age than my waking life age and start to believe that I too am a teenager. I am having very positive feelings about being back in school and I feel young.

There are a number of themes present in the dream that have a commonality with other dreams that I've had, including the big house, the large shopping center, and the meandering city that seems to be enclosed. Then there is the back to school scenario. I have often dreamed that I was back in school again as a student. Sometimes it is college while other times it is high school. Frequently the dreams have to do with being unprepared for a test, being lost in the school, or a situation where other students look up to me. Anxiety is usually short-lived in these dreams and everything usually becomes very positive.

Do you ever dream of being back in school? Are they anxiety ridden dreams or are they pleasant dreams? How do your school dreams compare with how your actual school experience was? Are there rooms in your dreams that have a wall missing?

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Ideas That Seem Amazing--Is The Fruition of Dream Concepts Possible?

Empire Theater (Photo credit: ChrisM70)

Let me relate some fragments of a content-laden and complicated dream that I had on the morning of Sunday June 17, 2012. I had experienced an extended period of inability to sleep, having awakened at about 1 AM and unable to return to sleep until sometime after 3:30 AM. After having fallen into slumber, I slept fitfully, drifting between dream state and semi-wakefulness with vivid dreams that continued with an ongoing story line.

The dream lead-in finds me on an extended quest to find something or get somewhere. I don't recall who my companions are in this early stage of the dream where I am wandering through various outdoor and indoor settings. The first notable thing that I remember is that I am inside a large building and come to a decision point where I must choose between going down a very long nondescript hallway with some doorways along the passageway which comes to a darkened area that dead-ends. My other choice is an old looking doorway to my left.

As I am trying to decide which way I should go, I audibly say to myself or to any companions that might be with me, "This looks like the kind of a hallway you'd see in a dream." After I have said this I immediately realize that I am having a dream and become dream-aware for everything that follows in the dream cycle in this morning session. From this point on I awaken at various times pondering the dream that I am having and then go back to sleep to continue the same dream.

Eventually I find myself entering a large movie theater with my wife and daughters, who appear as children in the dream. The theater is very filled with people and we have to look around to find a seat. My wife and one or two of my daughters and perhaps someone else find empty seats on the very last row. I briefly go somewhere with one or two of my other daughters for some reason I can't remember. When we go back to sit with the others all of the seats around them are taken, so the daughters with me and I go searching for another place to sit.

The theater is a very large chaotic place. Parts of it are like a restaurant, while other parts are like a store. There is fixed theater seating in the middle of the theater, but on the sides are many folding chairs as well as rows of attached seating that are portable. A large canopy extends above the seats in the middle and people are fixedly sitting in those seats while the perimeter of the theater interior bustles with activities of people engaged in looking for seating, milling about socially, and looking at merchandise on display. As my daughters and I wait for the movie to start, my long time boss from my previous job joins us. We are all happy to see one another.

As the film begins I notice that the screen is rather small and from where I sit it will not be easy to see the movie. I am disappointed that we will not be able to fully enjoy the movie from the angle we are viewing it. However, once the film starts I come to the realization that the movie is presented in a sort of triptych with the main movie on the center screen, while the similar film experience appears on side screens where the action is shown from slightly different angles.

On the opposite side of the theater from me I can tell that that audience is seeing the same film but from a different vantage point. The center screen is visible to me, but what is being projected upon it looks distorted from where I view.

Looking around further, I realize that not only is the film projected on three screens presenting three different perspectives, but a film-like experience seems to be projected on all the walls around us and upon the audience as well. There is no story to this film, but only a totality of a chaotic environment where visuals exist on many levels and the experience is a multi-sensory bombardment of sight, sound, smell, and tactile involvement. It is not so much a movie as it is a place where people are merely gathered to interact with each other and experience an artificially induced environment. I think to myself that this is a truly amazing idea.

After I wake up the dream experience lingers in my mind. I wonder if a place like this--an experience like I have visited in this dream--could actually be created. I ponder the possibilities. The dream theater was not like a 3-D amusement park ride like one might experience at Universal Studios or the like. Instead, this experience was like an artificial recreation of real life as depicted in some chaotic total dimensional movie in which we become a part of in this simulation of a phantasm of life as seen through someone else's mind.

Sound confusing? Of course it does! It's a dream and how can you adequately describe a dream?

Have you had any dream ideas that seemed totally amazing to you? But were they really that amazing when you thought about them or were they merely weird and confusing? Is the fruition of amazing dream concepts possible?

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Shared Dreams and Telepathy

telepathy (Photo credit: jox.)

In our previous post our guest Stephen T McCarthy related a fascinating dream experience that seemed to involve telepathic communication between him and a friend in another city. This story would suggest telepathy or perhaps even messaging from a supernatural source. It seems highly unlikely that this was just something that happened out of the blue.

Shared dreaming or communication among dreamers or between a dreamer and someone else is a theme that has been explored in movies as diverse as Inception, the Freddy Krueger films, Dreamscape, and many others. These dream concepts have fired the imaginations of the authors of fiction as much as practitioners of true and pseudo scientific dream research.

Many people have given accounts of telepathic and shared dream experiences, including some of those who commented on Stephen T McCarthy's post. Evidence suggests that there may be real substance to these dream communications.

We'll save dream messages from those who have passed, spirits, and God for another post. In this current post I would like to only think about dream communication between individuals whether both are sleeping, one sleeps while one is awake, dreamers in the same room, and dreamers in different locales.

After I had entered my twenties, my father became more spiritual than he had ever been before. My sister who is a year younger than I and I had moved away from home. She was living on one side of town and I was living with some friends in the mountains about fifteen miles from my parents.

One night I was experiencing a very deep traumatic depressive state that caused me to think strong suicidal thoughts. Fortunately I did not follow through in any way, but the thoughts were powerful. The next day my worried mother drove up to check on me (we did not have a phone in our cabin). She told me that during the night my father had dreamed that I was in trouble. Had he heard my anguish in his dream or was it a divine message? I do not know, but I was very impacted by this.

On another occasion my father awoke from a similar dream concerning my sister. He and my mother got up in the wee hours and drove to my sister's house. I don't recall what the exact problem was, but I do recall that it was serious enough to warrant attention that night. After I was told the story days later I was once again amazed by this uncanny ability my father had acquired. It was an ability that he demonstrated on other times in later years according to my mother.

I never asked my father about any of this and I haven't discussed it with my mother since her initial recountings of the stories. I can't determine exactly what the communication was, but it caught my attention and has been something for me to wonder about.

I cannot recall ever having personally experienced dream sharing or telepathy that I could verify, but I have had many instances where I suspected it could have been a possibility. There have been dreams in which my connection with a dream character was so vivid and palpable that I had an acute sense that a communication was occurring. I only wish I had been able or made a better effort to see if this had occurred.

In fact, since having started blogging, I have had several occasions where I have dreamed of other bloggers--people I have never met. The dreams seemed very real and the characters seemed very credible. I wonder. Have any of you ever dreamed of me? Perhaps we have had a telepathic dream experience.

Have you ever shared the same dream simultaneously with someone else? Have you ever inexplicably dreamed about the same topic as someone else at about the same time? Do you have any telepathic or shared dream stories to tell?

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Can Telepathic Communication Occur in Dreams?

Cover of Inception

In my last post a discussion began in the comments about the phenomena of simultaneous or shared dreams and dream telepathy. Since these are topics that I have often pondered and have been portrayed in various movies such as Inception (2010), I thought we might consider the idea of telepathy in dreams. Next week we'll look at the idea of shared dreaming a bit more, but today I've invited the blogger who opened up this topic in last week's comment discussion. Stephen T. McCarthy is my earliest blogging friend and can be found at Ferret-Faced Fascist Friends.

*****

My bloggin’ buddy Arlee Bird has invited me to tell this story here on his dreamy blog, so here goes . . .

Near Easter Day in 1996, my Pa passed away and shortly afterwards I helped my Ma sell her house. She bought a smaller one here in Phoenix and I moved in with her. I was spiritually fired up then, meditating regularly and recording what I learned in my meditation sessions and in my dreams.

Below are my meditation notes of Nov. 1, 1995. (Remember this, doggone it, you’ll need it later!)

Meditation - 11/1/‘95

God is the composer and the conductor of the song. We are individual members of His choir. As we sing in harmony with the other members of God’s choir we are able to bring into manifestation the greatest music ever written. As we sing what God has composed and arranged, we actually become His music. The song is in us and comes through us, and it is His gift to us that we are made capable of displaying and sharing in His glory and creation. We are The Lord’s music made audible.

God’s singers are many, but His choir is One.

I strive to sing my part in God’s music.

I focus not on the singers, but rather on the choir. It’s not the singers in God’s golden choir that I see, but the golden choir of God within the singers.

And now here are the notes from my Dream Journal:

Dream - March 30, 1998

One day last week (Tues., Wed. or Thurs.) I was skimming over some of my past dream and meditation notes, and in so doing happened to read a couple of lines from my meditation notes of Nov. 1, 1995. Leaving my bedroom I went into the kitchen where Ma was cooking and I just blurted out, “I am a singer in God’s choir!” And knowing how loony I can sometimes be, Ma just kind of rolled her eyes at me. Nothing else was said between us.

I got a call from Mark D. in Los Angeles and he told me about an astounding dream he had last week, either Tues., Wed. or Thurs. He dreamed that he walked into some kind of massive cathedral-like structure. He knew it was a house of God even though it had no religious icons. It had no roof and it contained segmented boxed areas that reached up almost as high as the eye could see, to a bright light above.

Each of these sections contained a different group of people worshipping God. Each group was dressed in different colored robes; all the colors of the rainbow were represented and there was a mass of people observing and shouting from the floor in a loud and ecstatic manner while the people in the sections were singing praises to God.

Different races were represented in the various sections, and as one section would sing a verse from the song and conclude, another section would then pick right up where the other left off, and in this manner each section sang their praises and gratitude to God, much like fans will do “the wave” in a ballpark.

There was some sort of organized structure to the singing and the song, and yet the song was not so much lyrics but tones and sounds. The place was just wild with joy! And some of the people standing on the floor were just observing while others were shouting and joining in while not exactly a part of the “organization” of the singers in the sections.

The sections reached so high that those singers in them appeared as mere specks to Mark standing down below. Mark said he moved into the group more, and he said that he was just overwhelmed by a sense of being “home”. He said that although he did not think of this as being the “end” of it all (the ultimate Heaven), he knew that this was where he really wanted to be. He said it was filled with this feeling of comfort.

Mark looked around him and up into the bleachers and thought, “Yeah, these people believe what I believe in.” He was very happy to be there and described it as, without question, a very spiritual experience. And then he was following with his eyes each section as it took up its portion of the song.

The song passed to a section midway up there and he saw me mixed in with that group of people. In the cathedral, I was the only person he knew, and he thought, “Wow! That’s Stephen up there. What’s he doing here?” And as he looked at me, our eyes met and I saw him and smiled at him in recognition. Mark smiled back and waved to me. He wanted to shout up to me but he said he knew it would be pointless because I was too high in the bleachers to hear him. Mark said I looked very happy and content. One thing that surprised him so much upon seeing me there was that I, who am usually so reserved and quiet, was mixed in and participating in this really wild, Southern Baptist-like celebration.

Mark said that this dream was so powerful and “real” that he felt he just had to call me right away and tell me about it. He knew he had written my phone number a long time ago on a yellow legal pad but he wasn’t able to find it. But then, a couple days later, after he had stopped looking for it, he just happened to stumble on it underneath a pile of papers, and so he called me.

Mark seems to have been getting more and more religious (Catholic) with the last few years, and I told him this dream is extremely significant for him. I feel it is some sort of calling from God Himself. I know it has tremendous meaning for Mark and he really needs to go within and find out what he is being told to do.

And for me it is far more encouraging than I could possibly explain; it has made me so hopeful. For just as Mark obviously tapped into my thoughts, it verifies for me that there is some real truth to my thoughts and at least SOME of my meditation visions and messages. Despite my many failings, I know I really am on the right track; my efforts have not been for nothing. And it seems I’m not just fooling myself – I really am in God’s choir. My heart is just overflowing now with hope and confidence in The Lord. “Things” really seem to be happening fast now – there IS a quickening taking place!!!

[*Incidentally, the “Mark D.” referred to in these notes is the same “Mark D.” interviewed in this video: ‘Alpha Dad Takes Down Depraved L.A. Cop’]

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Back to School

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Thursday, June 21, 2012

Ideas That Seem Amazing--Is The Fruition of Dream Concepts Possible?

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Thursday, June 14, 2012

Shared Dreams and Telepathy

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Thursday, June 7, 2012

Can Telepathic Communication Occur in Dreams?

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