What are dreams?

[E]

I had a dream that i see somebody thats a alien out the window its like they say i have to jump but i cant so they throw me on my bed i end up falling off my bed after that anyway i try to scream as hard as i can AND I CANT SCREAM THE ALIENS END UP COMING and another dream is that there is a alien ship in the window i say oh no not again and another one. i had this morning is that i couldnt see myself and then i couldnt wake up the dream was still there thats the end of my presentation thanks are you still getting annoyed plz dont get annoyed hop on pop what the hell Da-Sha-Vu i said hop on pop this morning OMG IM BEING HYPNOTIZED HELP IM GETTING MONKEYIZED!

[..::Tina::..]

Rofl monkeyized?!?
Do all your dreams have aliens in them? All my dreams have me in them tehe

[E]

Ang i'm on graffiticreator best be a good site, or expect a poke :p

Dreams are kewl!

OMG thats what i used for habpics banner Dreams Are Kewl!
As far back as recorded history and probably further, dreams have been employed for guidance and healing. The dream temples of ancient Greece are a classic example where the ill would perform a sacred ritual and sleep in a specialized healing temple. The Greek god Asklepios would often appear in a visionary dream, perform a symbolic operation, and the seeker would awaken healed or having received guidance. Closer to home, many native American tribes such as the Ojibwa of the Great Lakes, have expanded their use of incubation beyond healing. Young adults would embark upon a dream or vision quest into the wilderness as a rite of passage into adulthood and would fast and pray until the anticipated dream was received. Blessed by the dream with guidance or revelations about latent personal talents, the youths would return to the tribe with the responsibility to apply and share their gifts for the benefit of the community.

The process of incubation is the basis for all the applications that follow. Although perhaps a forgotten art in our culture, it is innate and neither esoteric nor difficult, and often operates automatically as we fall asleep with a problem in mind. How often have you heard a friend with a pending decision, problem or question say, "Let me sleep on it"?

To consciously incubate a dream, simply hold your question or problem clearly in mind as you prepare for sleep. Then ask (rather than command) yourself to have and clearly remember a dream which reveals the answer as either an insight, an actual experience, or both. In the morning, record any dreams or thoughts which you have upon waking for later reflection. The answer may be obvious or may not be immediately apparent, but trust that the process is working and try to put any insights you get into practice. This last step often involves drawing upon courage and self-discipline to face personal fears and/or overcome present personal limitations, but is important, as explained by the following ****ogy: if you ask someone for a gift and they grant your wish, they won't be overly impressed or nearly as generous next time if you lose, ignore or forget about it, so try to maintain a grateful appreciation for having received such guidance and it will likely promote further insight and future success.

"After learning about dream incubation, I suggested to myself to have a healing dream since I'd been feeling drained of energy for some time and had a bad cold coming on, which is unusual for me. I dreamt that the pores of my legs opened and ugly leeches oozed out. I awoke feeling much better. I never did find out exactly what it represented, but it sure worked." (M.S., Palo Alto, CA)

"I'm a triathlete. After an important, upsetting race where I biked and ran well below my capability, I decided to incubate a dream about it. After a week of focusing, I remembered this dream: 'I'm with my coach discussing how I was so tight and cramped during the race. He suggests regular sports massages for the racing season and says he knows a guy who could do it.' When I awoke and phoned him, he confirmed the dream and connected me with his massage therapist. A few weeks later I won my first major race, becoming the New England Long Course Champion. Two weeks after that, I qualified for the World Championships in Hawaii." (R.C., Montreal, QC)

"A new relationship came into my life, except that communication suddenly broke off for a few days, so I asked for guidance from my dream as to whether this relationship would be healthy for me. That night, I dreamt I was trying to talk to my new boyfriend on the phone. The connection kept getting cut off his because his end of the line was made of many small bits of phone wire poorly patched together. The dream confirmed my feeling that keeping good communication with this new partner might prove difficult. On top of that, he even told me when he finally called a few days later that he wasn't yet ready to be close to anyone." (S.L., Montreal, QC)

Resolving Nightmares, Anxiety Dreams & Recurring Dreams
Almost everyone has experienced one or more dreams that contain anxiety or outright fear. These experiences can be quite traumatic or become recurrent. For some, unpleasant dreams or nightmares repeat in actual content. For others, the content may change while the theme remains the same, such as scenes of falling, or of being pursued or attacked, of being late or unprepared for class, a presentation or an exam. Some people even dream of being stuck in slow motion and unable to move, or of being naked in public, to name a few common themes. Research has shown that most recurring dreams are described as being unpleasant. Furthermore, many dream theories converge in their view that this type of experience is associated with lack of progress by the dreamer to recognize and solve related conflicts in life.

Fear of nightmares from early in life, or other anxieties or misguided beliefs about dreams and the unconscious can block dream recall, but this can usually be overcome by learning about the useful nature of dreams and by recognizing that many nightmares, like a bitter but quite necessary medicine, represent opportunities for healing and insight, and can warn of psychological imbalances that we need to remedy, or of current behaviors or decisions which may soon become detrimental unless we change them, as exemplified in this dream by Stanford University pioneer sleep researcher Dr. William Dement:

"Some years ago I was a heavy cigarette smoker, up to two packs a day. Then one night I had an exceptionally vivid and realistic dream in which I had inoperable cancer of the lung. I remember as though it were yesterday looking at the ominous shadow in my chest X-ray and realizing that the entire right lung was infiltrated. I experienced the incredible anguish of knowing my life was soon to end, that I would never see my children grow up, and that none of this would ever have happened if I had quit cigarettes when I first learned of their carcinogenic potential. I will never forget the surprise, joy, and exquisite relief of waking up. I felt I was reborn. Needless to say, the experience was sufficient to induce the immediate cessation of my cigarette habit."

Fortunately, there exist treatments for nightmares that do not involve medication and which have shown to be remarkably effective. Some of the most effective techniques presently being used in psychotherapy include voice dialogue work, dream lucidity, guided imagery, dream rehearsal.

Dream lucidity is a subject of current research with doctors at Montreal's Sacré Coeur Hospital Dream and Nightmare Laboratory. The lucid dreaming approach for resolving nightmares is demonstrated the following typical integration dream:

"After many recurring nightmares where I'm pursued by some terrifying figure, I learned of lucid dreaming and had the following dream: I'm in a frantic car chase with the pursuer right behind me. Swerving into a lot, I bolt out of the car and run with him hot on my heels. Suddenly, the scene seems familiar and I realize that I'm dreaming, though the parking lot and trees still seem more real than ever. Drawing upon every ounce of courage that I have, I swirl to face my pursuer, repeating to myself that it's only a dream. Still afraid, I scream at him, "You can't hurt me!" He stops, looking surprised. For the first time I see his beautiful, loving eyes. "Hurt You?" he says. "I don't want to hurt you. I've been running after you all this time to tell you that I love you!" With that, he holds out his hands, and as I touch them, he dissolves into me. I awake filled with energy, feeling great for days. The nightmare never returned." (M.R.,San Jose,CA)

A Rich Source of Creativity
Dreams have long proven themselves to be storehouses of creativity and may in fact be the well from which imagination springs. With dream incubation and the new opportunities presented by lucid dreaming, artists, musicians, dancers, sculptors, and inventors are able to dive deep into the source of inspiration and explore the vast reaches of their own creative potential by meeting face to face with the unconscious. The increased clarity and directable nature of the lucid state often enables the dreamer to return awake laden with creative insights.

A few example dream-inspired works are The Beatles' well-known hit "Yesterday", Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous poem "Kubla Khan", Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". Other artists who credit dreams as a source of inspiration include composers Sting, Peter Gabriel, Robert Palmer, Mozart, and Beethoven, poet-painter William Blake, painter Paul Klee, and screenwriters Judith Guest and Ingmar Bergman, to mention but a few.

A Valuable Problem-Solving Tool
The tale is now famous of how, after an embarrassing slump, golfer Jack Nicklaus claims to have solved a problem with his golf swing within a dream, which subsequently improved his game by ten strokes -- overnight! There are undoubtedly plenty more undocumented examples spread over history, but some well-documented ones include the dream-inspired experiment and resulting discovery of the chemical mediation of nerve impulses by Otto Leowi, which won him a Nobel prize, Elias Howe's discovery of the sewing machine, many of Thomas Edison's inventions and Friedrich Kekulé's discovery of the structure of the benzene ring from a hypnagogic dream where he saw a snake swallowing it's tail. Said an excited Kekulé to his colleagues, "Let us learn to dream!"

Physical & Professional Skill Rehearsal
Young children, especially babies, s??nd??or

[MENTAL NUTTER]

Hey discontact, did u get that all out of a text book? But really, dreams are just pictures from life or fantasy fromed together to make a mini movie. In other words (this will just some it all up) dreams are movies.

so, in a....strange way of saying it, your mind is a huge cinema with tons of movies (your dreams) and every night, when ur a sleep, u go to the 'mind cinema', buy a ticket (u might dream this bit, lol) and watch a movie (dream).

Then when that movie is over, u will wake up. This may have confused you more, but, it's something to read.

[:.bEx.:]

i like dreaming.....u get to get ya own back on ppl u hate without getin in trouble..one problem though...when u wake up dare still alive argh!

[..::Tina::..]

Hey discontact, did u get that all out of a text book? But really, dreams are just pictures from life or fantasy fromed together to make a mini movie. In other words (this will just some it all up) dreams are movies.

so, in a....strange way of saying it, your mind is a huge cinema with tons of movies (your dreams) and every night, when ur a sleep, u go to the 'mind cinema', buy a ticket (u might dream this bit, lol) and watch a movie (dream).

Then when that movie is over, u will wake up. This may have confused you more, but, it's something to read.

Lolz that's funny :p but I get it. And when someone wakes you up in the middle of the dream it's like you leaving in the middle of the movie. Or someone throwing popcorn at the screen.
Bex I totally agree with you. Revenge!!

[Jesus-Egg]

This might sound strange, but i've never had a proper nightmare before that's been really scary, but i have had some really wierd dreams.

I had this really wierd dream that i'll never forget about 4 years ago not long after xmas. Firstly this dream was strange, because normally when you dream, it's one main story, but this dream was 5 completely different stories joined together. I won't go into much detail, but in the first part, it was my best friend's birthday, and i forgot the present. In the next part, it was like some computer game where i was trying to get Homer Simpsons out of prison. Next, i was at school, and there were these two large buildings with these robotic elephants in. In the fourth part, I got lost in this huge shoe shop, and in the final part, it was sports day at school, and we were doing this game with a catapult and spaghetti.

Wierd :s

Note: this was a real dream!

[..::Tina::..]

This might sound strange, but i've never had a proper nightmare before that's been really scary, but i have had some really wierd dreams.

I had this really wierd dream that i'll never forget about 4 years ago not long after xmas. Firstly this dream was strange, because normally when you dream, it's one main story, but this dream was 5 completely different stories joined together. I won't go into much detail, but in the first part, it was my best friend's birthday, and i forgot the present. In the next part, it was like some computer game where i was trying to get Homer Simpsons out of prison. Next, i was at school, and there were these two large buildings with these robotic elephants in. In the fourth part, I got lost in this huge shoe shop, and in the final part, it was sports day at school, and we were doing this game with a catapult and spaghetti.

Wierd :s

Note: this was a real dream!

Oh I get that. Lots. Practically every night
I had a dream that my mum dyed my carpet bright blue and I went to the window, and then turned around and it turned out it was just a towel :s
And you thought you have weird dreams

[Jane]

When I wake up in the morning after having a dream ( you know when you wake up but you can't be bothered to get up so you keep your eyes closed and try to go back to sleep :p ) I often carry on dreaming, although I'm awake. Anyone else do that?

P.s If someone's already said this I couldn't be bothered reading all the pages :p

[Jacko2kn3]

I attempt to go back to sleep, and imagine my dream, but I cannot go back to sleep, ever. If I wake up at 2am I'm up from 2am, or at least awake.

Also, I cannot be bothered reading through all the posts either