Help interpret my dream... please?

[FastTadpole]

I've always thought that certain phases of sleep like REM were a state where you're reorganizing, archiving and interpreting experience and thoughts. Assuming that, you could conclude your dream state was derived in some way by your conscious, subconscious and everything in between - internal and external.



Here is a hypothesis of what dreams really are, as analyzed by a team of computer scientists at he University of Memphis.

Quote:Dream Amnesia

Introspection suggests that dreaming is a conscious activity, and that idea is supported by the waking-type EEG patterns that typically accompany REM sleep. Yet perhaps all of us have experienced awakening from a dream and only remembering its very last portion, if any of it at all. This phenomenon is referred to as dream amnesia. Neuroscientist Paul Adams theorizes that both slow wave sleep and REM sleep are required for the offline updating of two distinct thalamocortical circuits during learning (consolidation of DM) (Cox & Adams 2000). Updating one of the circuits requires activity provided by the random auto-associations of dreaming, while the other needs the relative quiet of deep sleep. Thus the imaginary contents of dreams would play no useful role in DM; they are not to be learned. The IDA model suggests that during sleep, just as motor activity is suppressed, so also is the function detailed in Step 5, whereby conscious contents are stored in TEM. Hobson and Stickgold have suggested a neural mechanism for this phenomenon in terms of cholinergic activity during REM sleep (1994). Thus the only memory available for the recall of a dream is the small capacity WM, resulting in dream amnesia. The limited capacity of WM would yield a memory only of the final small portion of the dream. The rapid decay of WM would account for no memory of the dream at all after a slow awakening.

Full in depth thesis on the role of consciousness in memory: http://www.brains-minds-media.org/archive/150

[Armilus]

I think first you are processing and organizing information and all other impressions you gathered during the day, and then older events, depends on how much you got resolved so far. Sometimes this process can be very fast, events may flash before your eyes and you somehow absorb and organize information in emotionally detached state -- i experienced this multiple times before i woke up, so it was perhaps something else. Then you are free to dream about anything you want, sometimes you visit places which feel like another reality and you are involved with people and events over there. Prophetic dreams and visions are even rarer, but they can occur as well. Dreams like that are a bit different, feeling is different and when you wake up you know it was something special and not just another dream. It can be highly symbolic, you may even see symbols or creatures you never saw before, and only weeks later you discover their true meaning.

Best time for lucid dreaming is after initial "event processing" dream. I'd say after 3-4 hours of sleep at least. Some people prefer to set the alarm clock for that time, and then go back to bed. This is very hard for me, because after i wake up i stay awake. Perhaps 100+ mg of magnesium or Melatonin (time-release if possible) could help with that. Vitamin B6 is also good for dreams in general, it makes them more vivid and enhances dream recall. Vitamin B12 makes them more colorful. It is important to have relatively noise-free environment (machines are ok, if you are used to them), so dreams are not influenced or interrupted by external events.

[IanPotter]

As has been noted, this dream could mean anything or nothing, so anything I say could easily be BS and I attach no weight to it whatsoever.

Fortunately, you'll recognize if what I'm saying is nonsense easily enough, so I don't see the harm in offering you a positive interpretation. I'm going to assume you are a male, but it probably doesn't matter.

Let's consider the five most obvious elements seperately:

1 The Child
2 The House
3 The Fire
4 The Dog
5 The Dog Handler

The Child
Vulnerability. Dependency. Is it possible that the child represents your childhood innocence? He's trapped in the house. He might be there because it's where he feels secure, but that security is increasingly being challenged in what appears to be an unequivocal, fundamental and permanent way. He's scared, but he called for help and it came - and he's going to be OK once he gets out of the house. Born again, you might say.

The House
Security. Foundations. Refuge. The house might represent the child's understanding of the world. It was a small world and you were always destined to outgrow it, but until yesterday it was safe, secure and comforting. It was everything you thought you knew. As a 22 yr old Concen veteran I'd guess you've learned a whole lot in a short time, but that has not been without cost. Maybe your dream is showing you that in an allegorical form. Your new house will be bigger and better.

The Fire
Finality. Cleansing. New beginnings. Unbeknown to the child the house was poorly-built (built on lies and within a system designed to decieve you) and it's turned out to be highly fragile and flammable, rather than the solid refuge it appeared until now. You weren't to know that, but right now the house is burning down. Your childhood understanding of the world is being/has been destroyed - and there's no going back. It's OK. It's a cycle.

The Dog
Loyalty. Trust. Could it be representative of be the bridge, the connection, the love, between the child and the dog handler? Your adolescent self if you will. It's nose helps it seek things out - and like the dog handler it appears to be a fine and brave individual. Could this be junebug0000 the researcher: the junebug0000 that inadvertently set the house on fire with all that rooting around? If so, congratulations; you're doing a great job.

The Dog Handler
The calm, rational man in charge. Saviour. Do you think it might be indicative that he does not have to rely on the house for his sense of security and confidence? See how he doesn't even recognise the house - and yet he clearly seems at ease, even though he chooses to exist in the outside world. He's what the child needs to become. What the child became. What's more, he's comes to the house fully armed with tools the child doesn't have, ie he's brave and he operates a trained dog. Seems obvious you made it out OK to me.

Could it be that your dream marks a major stage in your ongoing transition from caterpillar to butterfly?

If so, be aware that you have many layers of skin. The rest will be shed much more easily, because it's just more of the same - but it will take time.

---

PS: Under my avatar on the tracker I used to use the line "Dictators, saviours, refugees".

It's taken from something greater which has always had the deepest significance to me and I feel bound to include it here. I'm not sure it would have made much sense to ME at twenty-two, but you guys are different these days:

...The angels live inside me, I can feel them smile;
their presence strokes and soothes the tempest in my mind
and their love can heal the wounds that I have wrought.
They watch me as I go to fall;
well, I know I shall be caught
while the angels live.

How can I be free?
How can I get help?
Am I really me?
Am I someone else?

But stalking in my cloisters hang the acolytes of gloom
and Death's Head throws his cloak into the corner of my room
and I am doomed.
But laughing in my courtyard play the pranksters of my youth
and solemn, waiting Old Man in the gables of the roof:
he tells me truth.

And I, too, live inside me and very often don't know who I am;
I know I'm not a hero;well, I hope that I'm not damned.
I'm just a man, and killers, angels, all are these,
dictators, saviours, refugees in war and peace
as long as Man lives...

I'm just a man, and killers, angels, all are these:
dictators, saviours, refugees.

Excerpt from Man-ERG, written by Peter Hammill, circa 1971.

Seems highly appropriate to me, but that might be because I'm crazy...

[FastTadpole]

Armilus Wrote:Best time for lucid dreaming is after initial "event processing" dream. I'd say after 3-4 hours of sleep at least. Some people prefer to set the alarm clock for that time, and then go back to bed.

A lot of cultures including North Americans from the 1900s, Native Americans, Europeans, Indians, Chinese and Ancient Egyptians - probably more if we look into, woke from slumber at about that point to gaze at the stars or relax and reflect in a waking state.

It's not often stated now but that seems to be the ideal sleep pattern, it is for me. I do that myself; three to five hour sleep sessions than waking for an hour or three than back to bed unless I'm burnt out then it's the 6-9 hour coma that most modern people conform to because of the structure of status quo society.

I be curious to learn what animal sleep patterns are like? Do they experience REM sleep and/or brain activity that indicates a dream state?

Here's your answer from a 2001 MIT study on animal dreaming.

Animals have complex dreams, MIT researcher proves
Study may advance understanding of human learning and memory.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2001/dreaming.html

[Shinobi]

This lands a place nicely in education & learning

Great thread.

[mexika]

you probably played with matches when you were young and your dog went for help and you didi not see it around for support. Then your mom spanked you real hard that it traumatized you for life..... :>