The Wake Up Code

Coat of arms of Serbia (Photo credit: thivierr)

        In my previous post I described a dreaming incident during which I awoke from a dream and then returned to sleep to continue the same dream scenario.  During this dream situation I was having what was not a particularly unpleasant dream in a setting that brought me a good feeling.  According to my observation of the hours on my alarm clock, the second dream segment lasted about 27 minutes.

        I woke up about a minute prior to when the alarm would be going off.   Interestingly something odd happened in the dream that was almost like a prompt for me to wake up.  Within the dream I heard some words spoken that seemed to be my wake up call.   Let me describe the latter moments of the dream and the words I heard spoken.

       Towards the end of my dream I am in the same theater where I have been throughout the dream sessions.    I go looking around the theater environment to find myself to be in what seems to be a sort of shopping mall.   From the backstage area I look out into this mall-like place to see food establishments and various other businesses that are not necessarily stores, but more like professional offices and service businesses.   There are some people milling about and sitting on benches, but the place is not very crowded.  In fact the place does not look busy at all.
   
     As my eyes scan the scene before me I see uncertain places that somewhat confuse me as to where I am.  I look behind me to see that the theater is still there.   I am apprehensive about venturing out into the alien environment outside of the theater.  I look for a bathroom.  I look for some of my fellow cast members and people I had been with previously.  I look into dressing rooms and other rooms that are in the backstage area.

        Either from someone around me or within my mind I hear a voice say "Hospitality was always the source of the finest days of Serbia."

      Upon hearing this I immediately wake up to see that the alarm is about to go off.  I puzzle over the final declaration I heard in my dream.  What did it mean?   Was is a code designating that it was time for me to wake up?

       Do we have prompts that cue us that it is time to leave a dream and awaken from sleep?   Have you ever received a strange or nonsensical statement in a dream that left you puzzled after you awakened?   Do you think these types of messages are cryptic codes that are saying something to us?   What do you think the message I received meant?  

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Returning to the Scene of the Dream

 "Midsummer Nights Dream Act IV Scene I--A wood - " (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

       Previous posts have discussed topics related to ongoing dream topics throughout a night's sleep and the déjà vu experience in dreams.  But what about a brief jump back into a dream prior to completely waking from a sleep session.  Specifically I would be referring to the short span when we might awaken from a dream to discover that we still have a few more minutes of sleep time that we can resume before we intend to leave the sleep activity and we return to sleep and to the same dream we were previously having.

       An example is a recent dream experience that I had.  I had been dreaming an intricate dream that seemed very long and involved.  As with so many of my dreams I was dreaming about being on the road with a traveling theatrical production.  The principle players in this dream were my brother and his wife and their daughter and her husband.  There were also unremembered/unidentified persons who may have been family members, friends, or people from my past road tours.

       Like in many dreams of this nature I am confused about my job, there are issues about time, I am having certain conflicts with others in the dream, I am uncertain as to where I am or where I am going next, and many other situations which give me a certain amount of consternation.  However, despite all of these elements there is a certain element of pleasure and positive feeling about the dream.   This is possibly due to the dream players on one hand and the dream setting or situation on the other.  I am with people with whom I feel comfortable and in an occupational setting that brings me good memories.  I overlook the turmoil welling within me because I am happy to be there.

         Then I awaken.  I look at the clock to see that it is 5:01--29 minutes before the alarm is to go off.  I get out of bed to go to the bathroom.  I briefly consider staying up and going to my computer.  Instead I decide to go back to bed to see if I can go back to sleep until the alarm goes off.   The clock now reads 5:02.  I close my eyes and immediately return to sleep.   I return to the same dream setting that I was in before I woke up.

       For the next twenty seven minutes I sleep and dream in the same vein of the dream I had been having.  I am in the same settings with the same cast of dream players and experiencing the same sense of uncertainty and consternation.  It's okay and all is well until I awaken once more.  The clock now reads 5:29.  I get out of bed to wake up my wife.

      Since the dream was a relatively good one for me, I wanted to return to the dream to continue being in the experience of it.   Despite an underlying tension in the dream, I felt comfortable being there and was more than willing to return to the dream after the first awakening.  This type of thing has happened to me before, but not with regularity.  And in this particular case the event was more pronounced when I look back upon it.  Though there did not seem to be a conscious effort on my part to make this happen, it all seemed to occur very naturally.

        As an addendum to this, my final awakening was interesting in itself and rather curious.  The way I woke up will be the topic of my next post as I discuss "The Wake Up Code".

        Do you ever return to dreams that have been comfortable or pleasant?   If so is this something you do willfully?   Or often?   Are you able to will lucid dreams?

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Fear of Dreaming

Dreams 10/52 2011 (Photo credit: JanetR3)

        Many people will commonly say that they don't dream or don't remember their dreams.   The former is untrue since according to researchers we all experience brain activity during sleep that would correspond to dreaming.   If we didn't dream our mind would not function properly.

        Those who say they don't remember their dreams may be resisting them.  There may be an element of fear that could stem from nightmares reaching back to childhood or to some traumatic event.  The dream deniers might be trying to escape the possibility of dealing with the nightmare experience.

        The dreamers who revel in their sleep life and think about their dreams and relive them through thinking about them or analyzing them welcome dreams.   Dreams are like an alternate life where messages may be delivered or life may be evaluated or interpreted.  The dream is often a refuge from the worries and concerns of daily life.

        There is a high probability that we can control our dreams and regulate the timing of when they occur.  Dreams before waking are the ones we remember.  The person practicing dream avoidance could be subconsciously scheduling the dreams to occur only during pre-awakening  sleep time in order not to remember what they have dreamed.

         The act of dreaming is a behavioral activity that can be conditioned to occur as the subconscious may desire.   If the mind has been trained to avoid a particular unpleasantness, our subconscious can purposefully avoid such encounters.  Just as in waking life we sometimes find ourselves acting in a specific way to avoid an unpleasant situation, the mind can find ways in sleep state to avoid the unpleasantness of dreams.

           Do you want to dream during sleep?   Are you afraid of dreaming?    Have you ever feared going to sleep because you were afraid of dreaming?    Have you ever awakened from a bad dream that made you afraid to go back to sleep?

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Sex Dreams

English: Cover of the fantasy fiction magazine Avon Fantasy Reader no. 14 (1950) featuring "Temptress of the Tower of Torture and Sin" by Robert E. Howard. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

       Did I get your attention?   We'll see if this title gets more traffic to this post.   After all sex sells and it's something in which most of us have some sort of interest.  We're interested because it's completely natural and a topic that frequently occupies our thoughts.   Like eating, working, going to school, or any other regular activity, it makes sense that we would occasionally have dreams about sex.

     Dreams that arouse us in a sexual way during sleep or influence our thoughts upon awakening to be about sex may not even seem to have sexually related content.  Sometimes those titillating dreams may be about objects, people, or situations that are not sexual by nature.  For example we may dream about being in a place that seems to have nothing to do with sex, but in the dream or as we awaken we may feel sexually charged. I won't attempt to address these types of dreams in this post as they are probably very specific to the individual dreamer and not necessarily easy to decipher.

      Actual sex dreams are typically much easier to understand.  Often these are merely wish fulfillment dreams.  We may dream about an actual person that we know, a celebrity, or an imaginary person who somehow fulfills certain dream parameters of sexual desire.  The person may not necessarily be a person we would be attracted to in waking life, but we can probably come up with another person in our lives with whom we can relate to the dream role.  Essentially the wish fulfillment dream is the same as the sexual fantasy we might have in waking life, but at times with unexpected players in the fantasy role.

       Other sex dreams may have more to do with power.  This may reflect an interest to have power over another person whether it be a specific actual person or a fabrication that is symbolic.  Sex can often be equated with power.  We may want to dominate others or feel the need to be dominated or pampered.  These feelings may be manifested in dreams of sexual activity or something that creates a sexual desire within us.

        Some sex dreams or nightmares may cause us to be afraid or sad.  The fear of rape, abandonment, or humiliation may be an extension of our concerns in waking life.  These thoughts might reflect memories of our own experiences or those we have heard about.   If any of these things have been weighing upon us then we might experience dreams or nightmares about them.

         The best dreams are the ones that are interesting and exciting--the ones from which we awaken feeling happy, confident, or hopeful.  Pleasant sex dreams can do that for us.  Even if the dream fantasy sex partner is one that cause you to feel uncomfortable or disgusted thinking about in a sexual way, don't be overly upset.  If the dream was a positive experience then there is more than likely an important positive message being delivered in the dream.  And the dream may actually have nothing to do with sex.  Instead the sexual imagery and feelings may symbolize something unrelated to sex.

         When you have a pleasant sex dream you should try to discern what the symbolism is.  Try to pinpoint who the players are and why they are in the dream.   Attempt to understand what the dream activities, the settings, and the atmosphere mean to you.  If you are comfortable with the dream that you have had then the dream message can lift you up and carry you through the day.

         Do you remember having any sex dreams?   Do you enjoy them or do they make you uncomfortable?  What dream symbols would you associate with positive sex dreams?   Care to relate any interesting dream experiences of a sexual nature?

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Dream Town

Bishop--Dream Town
Photo by  Chris DellaMea at coalcampusa.com

         Nearly a month has passed since my last post here as my wife and I took a three week road trip across the United States.   That trip included over 6000 miles in ten full days of driving with some visiting family between stretches of travel.  There was still plenty of time for sleep and that meant plenty of dreams and fodder for future dreams.  Traveling is an amazing way of filling one's memory banks with visual stimuli that can inspire dream imagery.

         A phenomena that has lingered and haunted my thoughts occurred on Sunday July 28th after visiting my son in the remote local of Pocahontas, Virginia.  This is Appalachia coal mining country.  Many of the mines have shut down and now the communities seem to be trapped in another time.  I was mesmerized by what I saw there.   And we were somewhat lost as I tried to find my way back to the highway that would continue us on our trip.

         At one point after traveling on an amazingly twisting mountain road we emerged into a community that immediately caught my attention.  It could have been a town from dreams that I have had.  Large older houses lined the highway and continued down a couple of side streets.  The community seemed like a ghost town though there were obviously people living there.  In fact numbers of them could be seen in yards or on front porches.  But an aura of eeriness prevailed.  If I had seen this in a dream I would have accepted it as perfectly normal.   It was not a dream, but later my memory of what I saw here seemed much like dream memory.

        Since I was somewhat "lost" and a bit anxious to be on my way, and more importantly, get some lunch for us two now famished sojourners, I rushed through the place.  However I was haunted by what I had seen.  I wanted to know what that strange "dream town" was.   I told my wife that I surmised that it had been an old mining town since all of the large houses were similar in construction and laid out in what appeared to be a carefully planned community.  For the rest of that day's journey my thoughts continued to return to the Dream Town.

        At the motel that evening I tried to research the town on the internet, but to no avail.  I was tired from the day's travels and gave up the search.  The place nagged my thoughts for the next two weeks.  Then with the help of Google maps I found it.  The street view Google function confirmed that the community that we had passed through was the community of Bishop which sits partly in West Virginia and partly in Virginia. As I had surmised, Bishop had once been a busy coal community with most of the houses having been built in the 1930's.   The current inhabitants were most likely what remained of the former coal mining families.  The area is apparently quite impoverished.

       The town of Bishop has been stuck in my memory since we passed through it.  I haven't dreamed about it yet as far as I am aware, but it reminds me of a place that I have dreamed about in the past.  That's probably what struck me about the place.  It all seemed so familiar to me.

        Have you ever been in a place or situation that you feel as though you've dreamed about before?   Do the places in your dreams that you don't recognize actually exist beyond your realm of experience?

       

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