Have You Ever Woke Up Laughing?

humor (Photo credit: bertknot)

        In the previous post we looked at dreams that make us tired.  Those are typically complex dreams involving work and stressful situations.  We actually may be dreaming these sorts of dreams because we are already tired and stressed and these sorts of dreams are an ineffective way our mind deals with these circumstances.  We go into sleep tired and emerge from sleep still feeling unrested due to our dream stress and activity.

        But what about dreams that relax us by making us feel more lighthearted and amused.  There may be different reasons a dream might relax us.  In this post we'll look at funny or nonsensically amusing dreams.  These dreams might include silly imagery, absurd situations, or actual "jokes".  If we awaken from a dream of this nature we might feel happy, we might be smiling, or we can even awaken in laughter.

      In a recent example from my sleeping life, I was dreaming of activities with my family at a location I cannot remember--perhaps my mother's house. Both of my granddaughters, Marley and Lillee are present. I one point I realize that Marley, age 4, has been put to bed. My youngest granddaughter, Lillee, age 2, is still awake and on my daughter's lap. Lillee begins saying a number of phrases that include the word "no". However, instead of saying "no" she makes some sort of sound and gesture that I find tremendously funny. I begin laughing and awaken while laughing.

         After I've awakened having had this dream, I feel very upbeat and happy.  I try to relate the dream to my wife but I cannot describe what it was that I found so funny about my granddaughter.  I am unable to recreate the sounds or gestures my granddaughter had been making in the dream.  It all seems cute perhaps, but no longer funny in waking life.

         The humor in this particular dream seemed to be related to a verbal joke.  In other funny dreams the "joke" is what has appeared to have been an actual spoken joke that seemed funny in the dream.  Rarely do these dream jokes seem funny after I wake up and attempt to relate them to someone else.  Perhaps the sense of humor in dreams is far different than that of waking life or maybe it's not even humor at all, but some sort of symbolic subconscious representation of humor.

          In other funny dreams I may see some sort of ridiculous image or find myself in some sort of ludicrous circumstance and wake up laughing about what I've experienced.   Usually I either don't remember what it was that made me laugh or if I seem to remember, I cannot express the dream experience in any words that make sense.

           My wife and others have sometimes told me that I was laughing in my sleep.  In those circumstances I rarely remember since typically remembered dreams are only those dreams from which we awaken.  Likewise, on a few occasions I have heard my wife or my children laughing in their sleep.  They too have been unable to relate the reason for the laughter and were unaware that they had done so.

          Humorous dreams probably alleviate mental and emotional stress that we may be experiencing in our lives.   A silly dream is probably a nice way to wake up from sleep and face the new day.

         That wacky subconscious dream mind sure has a peculiar sense of humor.

          Have you ever woke up laughing?   Does dream humor that you've experienced make sense?   Where do you think dream humor comes from and why do you think it happens?


     

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Dreams That Make Us Tired

dream... (Photo credit: Norma Desmond)

        IN the comment section of my previous post, Eve said:

 I've had dreams that seem to last for hours and hours...have you ever had a dream where you're running from something, or someone..it seems to last all night long, and when you wake up you're actually tired because you've been 'running' all night? 

      Thinking back on my own dreams I don't recall many times where I woke up tired after a dream where I was running from something--in fact, maybe never.  However, many times I have awakened from dream sleep feeling very worn out much as though I had spent a long hard day at work.  There was probably a good reason I felt this way when I woke up--I was dreaming of work.   

       In recent months I have been having an especially large number of dreams about work.   These dreams typically involve stress caused by not being on schedule or feeling pressured by upper management.  In some  of these dreams I may be back traveling with a road show as I did during the 1980's.  At times I am lost or delayed by peculiar events.   I realize that I will be late for the show and an audience will be waiting.  My tension is increased by confusion, indecisiveness, and forgetfulness.  I become frustrated because I am unsure of what to do or how to do things.

      In other dreams I am working in a scenario similar to the warehouse where I was manager in my last job.  There are things I can't remember--processes, products, product locations, customers, and even workers who I manage.  I attempt to achieve tasks that were once familiar to me, but now are things I no longer understand.   I am concerned about my job performance and fear repercussions from the company owners.  Losing my job becomes a burdensome worry in the dream.

      My interpretation relates these dreams mostly to my state of unemployment which I have been in for four years now.  During the first two years I collected unemployment and looked diligently for a job without success.  After the unemployment benefits ran out I gradually spent less effort looking for work and trying to consider other ways to make money.  I will begin collecting social security in March.  I still hope to find a good source of income, but if I don't then I suppose I can consider myself officially retired.

      The long period of joblessness would account for my sense of uncertainty if I were to rejoin the workforce.  Since my previous jobs were of such long duration, I use them as a reference point and model for any new job situation in which I might find myself.  In my dreams I return to the jobs that I have known in the past, but having been away leaves me with a sense of insecurity.  This sense of  insecurity and my own having forgotten what my jobs may have entailed leads to anxiety, apprehension, doubt, and stress.   A night filled with these encumbrances causes fretful sleep and mental turmoil which wearies me and causes me to wake up tired.

       Have you experienced similar dream sleep problems?   Do you ever awaken in the morning feeling tired as though you hadn't slept?   What do you think causes you to wake up tired?

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Is Afterlife a Dream or a Reality?

Colorscript for "The Afterlife" (Photo credit: Phil Strahl)

         Perhaps someone can help me with this one.  I was watching so many movies during the holidays that they have sort of run together and I'm forgetting what I've seen where, but I think I heard the information that I will impart in this post from a movie that I saw.   My question to you might even be the result of a confused memory of a dream where I might have gotten my information.   Tell me if you've heard this before.

          Recently I saw--or thought I saw--a film in which one of the characters is talking about death, dying, and the nature of the afterlife. This character mentions something to the effect that Timothy Leary had expressed a belief that death involves a process where we become so aware of the existence of time that our final seconds of corporeal life are broken down to such intensity that the seconds and milliseconds become like years, centuries, and eventually eternity.   In other words, heaven or the afterlife is essentially an eternal dream that our mental or spiritual self--or soul if you will--dwells in.

        I personally would not subscribe to this belief since I do believe there is a tangible nature to the afterlife, but it is an interesting concept to consider.  After all, it has been proven that a seemingly long dream can occur in a brief span of minutes and even seconds.  Many of my dreams will seem not only to have lasted for hours, but will also have a dream memory or history that seems to have happened at a point beyond my sense of experience of the dream that I've had.  This could mean there was a previous dream sequence that had occurred but had transferred into memory or the memory could be a false or perceived history that is implanted into my mind as a part of the actual dream experience as I remember it.

        Whatever the case may be, time has been distorted because I positively know that those long dreams only occurred within a specified time span according to my last approximation of what time I had fallen asleep and the time I awoke.  The perceived dream time is in no way near the real time of sleep.

         If the body were shutting down as it would in death, would the mind also slow down to a hyper-speed in a negative direction?   Like a gourmet sampling food or wine, would our mind in a dying state savor each tiny fraction of life seconds until that final moment when soul/spirit/mind is suspended in an eternal dream?

         This is just something that came to mind as I pondered this movie that I saw or dream that I had or wherever it was that I got this idea.   Now if I could only just remember.

          Does anyone know what I'm talking about?   Do you know of any metaphysical theory that expresses a similar or the same concept?    What do you think of the idea?

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A Dream Case Against Gun Control?

Plymouth Reliant station wagon (Photo credit: dave_7)

           Here is a dream that I had a few weeks ago before my gun control posts at Tossing It Out.   Since gun control was in the news and I had already been planning to do a series on gun control at that blog, this dream may have been the result of those ideas floating around my mind.  The dream may also be expressing other fears and concerns I may have been having at the time of the dream.

My Dream:

           I am driving through an unfamiliar urban area -- a bad side of town that may be on the edge of the urban center.   My silver 1960's or 70's looking station wagon breaks down at an area where there is an auto repair garage and some other businesses.   I notice that I am in an area predominated by black people.  I take my car to the garage to be repaired.

           As I wait for my car to be repaired I am confronted by three black men who threaten me and want to rob me.  I see that at least one has a pistol.  I too have a pistol concealed in my clothes.  I take it out and shoot the man with the gun and he appears to fall down dead.  One man escapes, but the other, an older man about my age, is detained as I aim my gun at him and tell him to stop.   I call 911 to tell them a man has been killed and I am holding another would-be robber at gunpoint.

        The man and I are now on a desolate mountain highway at a place where a dirt road or trail seems to be going off into a higher elevation.  I keep looking at the dead man to make sure that he really is dead.  I call 911 again as it is taking a long time for them to respond.

        As I wait for the police to arrive, I talk to the older man whom I am holding at gunpoint.  We start getting along but I continue to hold my gun on him since I don't totally trust him. I begin to feel a sense of kinship with him.

        Then we are in my house and I'm fixing us something to eat.  We continue to talk and it seems like we are old friends.  He tells me about a doughnut shop in the place where we had first encountered one another and for a moment I seem to be there looking at the delicious looking doughnuts.

       Another black man comes in the living room.  He seems to be some kind of stone worker breaking up beautifully colored stones to be used in my house for something.  I call 911 again.

       Suddenly I am in an old part of a city that seems to be in a decayed state.  I go to a huge old theater building.  Inside it is vast, empty, and dark.  Some men are there.  I see that they are emergency workers summoned by my 911 call.    An ambulance pulls up to a back door of the theater and a strange looking casket that resembles a sarcophagus is delivered inside to where other caskets are. I know that the the man I killed is inside this casket.  They open the casket in order for me to identify him.  He doesn't look the same.  He's more like a naked white man with a wooden brown look to his skin as though he's been wood stained.   I see his abdomen moving as though he is breathing.  I tell the EMTs what I am seeing.   They say he's actually dead and this movement is a reflex action.   The "dead' man starts to get up and looks at me with teeth bared.  I'm scared.  The emergency workers give him some kind of injection to try to kill him.

       I leave.    I find myself in my car with my father who is driving at first,  then riding in the passenger side, and then he is gone.   I am going somewhere, but it is not clear where I am going as I wake up.

       What are the racial references about?   What do the locations represent?   Why does my father, who has been dead for over twenty years, appear briefly in the dream and then disappear?

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Sickness Sleeping

English: sleeping Japanese macaques in Kanba falls
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

         No, I didn't reverse the words in my title.  I meant exactly what I wrote:  Sickness Sleeping--those long expanses of sleep time during which may dream and dream some more.  Sometimes when fever accompanies ones sleep while ill this is referred to as fever dreams.

          Last week, when I was quite ill and spent much time in bed, I would sleep for hours throughout the day and during the night.  As I slept, I dreamed seemingly long dreams that would continue even after awakening and then returning to sleep.

           Now I don't recall what any of those dreams were, only that I had dreamed them.  I wanted to write them down, but in the dull ache of illness I had no desire to be writing dreams.  My brief sorties to the computer were spent checking emails.   I did compose my brief blog notices why I didn't feel like posting anything, but I was in no mood to be recording dreams in any way.

           I can recall having dreams during sick times when I was a child and later in life as well.  Dreams would be expected during these times since so much sleep can be involved with being sick.   Often it seems that the dreams during sickness are stranger and more vivid.  Perhaps this is partially due to the fact that being bedridden we are confronted with less realistic events during the waking hours--less for our mind to interpret or sort out.  Our waking hours may consist of more television watching, reading, or just suffering through our discomforts.  In these times of sickness the dream times are almost as equally real and important as our waking times.

          Have you experienced more vivid and prolonged dream sessions when bedridden with illness?  What types of sickness dreams do you tend to experience?   

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