Your most powerful dream

[boomerang]

Dissection's proposal for dream experimentation has me wondering just where some of us might have been in our dreams and what it might mean. Dreams have been much discussed here in the past. I would like to pose a simple and straightforward question.

What is the most powerful single dream you have had in your lifetime?

FWIW:

I am hiking or trekking with a small group over parched dry earth and small hills. Much like the landscape of certain parts of Nevada. It is twilight. We crest a hill to view a horizon lit from behind by a blueish white light much the color of mercury vapor night lights.

At the horizon are four symmetrical mountains. Atop each mountain is a black monolith, or door perhaps.
In the center of each door is a keyhole, shining forth a dazzling pure white light.

Never before or since have I had a dream so lasting in memory. Feelings afterward were of awe and curiosity, with an inexplicable sense that I had glimpsed something I need to understand.

Oh well...hope the forum doesn't find this downright boring. But this particular dream left a conscious impression on me unlike any other.

 

[manxman]

Flying over my house, arms out-stretched, looking down at, and into the chimney pots.

Stuck with me for 45yrs +.

 

[Pigsinzen]

I'm watching an older version of myself from across a canal in an area resembling the Florida Everglades. This version of myself is facing toward an oncoming swarm of locusts. I awoke with a high fever & this dream has stayed with me since childhood.

 

[Pegusta]

Probably the dreams that had pre cognitive aspects to them. Hard to explain but pretty fascinating to experience. Mostly absurd and seemingly trivial in nature. Had one though that (probably?) dealt with 9/11, which was disturbing to say the least. Happened some time before the event. Saw myself standing in a skyscraper looking at an identical building with its windows blown out enveloped in fire and smoke, thousands of pieces of paper in the air. But the most troubling part of it was the feeling of utter dread so deep and so profoundly disturbing. I think that quite a few people experienced weird dreams or synchronistic things like that in relation to that event.

 

[hecticXx]

to this day my post powerful, well not really a dream, but still, i "sleep experience" i guess, was the good old classic case of sleep paralysis. i was about 14 when it happened and for the longest thought i was attacked by a demon, lol, until i found out what it was by a friend.

 

[Ian]

The most vivid dream I ever had by far...

In the dream I was at work in one of our antenna fields. A colleague had a helium balloon, not a partly one, a huge one, though not with a basket to stand in, but a one-person parachute harness (do such things exist?). He showed me how to use the controls and I went up a few hundred feet, and was fascinated at seeing all the detail of our acres antenna equipment laid out below and the buildings, roads, cars beyond.

Then I decided it would be great to take some radio communications gear with me and see what ranges I could get with contacts, so I came down. I got the 'walkie-talkie' and went back up, but soon got preoccupied again at the fantastic scenes below at a great height! That was vivid and unforgettable.

The scary bit... in the dream I had not noticed that I was drifting backwards, when I turned to look where I was going, all I could see was the coastline far, far below and I was drifting out over the ocean...

I've tried to analyse this. I was about 20 and finding myself getting emotionally involved with someone three years younger than me, and who would not have reciprocated the feelings had they known. I'm assuming this was a warning: "What the ***k are you playing at! This is going to end horridly if you continue!" type dream. I took heed...

Ian

 

[SoCalGNX]

I have had a lot of dreams that were informative and precognitive. As a child, I had a recurring dream about a couple in Medieval times. They were out in a field, near the ocean and he was on a horse. I met this same horse in this life.

 

[Burnt State]

I have had a lot of dreams that were informative and precognitive. As a child, I had a recurring dream about a couple in Medieval times. They were out in a field, near the ocean and he was on a horse. I met this same horse in this life.

How did you know it was the same horse?

I'm very interested in precognitive dreams which are frequently reported in relation to disasters and murders for example, but then we never talk at all about all the dreams we have where there is no synchronistic link whatsoever. Do you think we draw lines between distant points in time and label it precognition because of the power of the dream's effect on us and the perceived similarities or is time not what we think?

I often wonder if it is even possible to create a statistical analysis to explore such possibilities given the billions of images that have been dreamed. Certainly some of them will by chance have links, but do they mean anything at all?

 

[Burnt State]

Sleep paralysis ended for me over twenty years ago when I was woken up once by the person lying beside me in bed. That was the first time a sleep paralysis incident ended that way - I felt like I had been rescued by an angel.

All my other sleep paralysis dreams are still vivid in my mind - all featured strange lifeforms, abduction scenarios, or "strangers" in my room, shadowy figures tying me down. Reality breaks in these dreams which for me often produced dreams within dreams and always ended with me shuttling in the air down hallways at increasingly faster and faster speeds about to crash into a closed door at the end of the hall but never reaching it. This flight/crash imagery would loop and loop until I could finally recognize that the moaning sound that was getting louder and louder in my ear, washing out my frantic dream screams, was my paralysed body trying to scream but could not - mouth sealed. And then I woke up.

I'm sure glad those are over and done with.

 

[SoCalGNX]

How did you know it was the same horse?

By it's body size and markings. I think that dream analysis is too subjective to fall into statistical analysis but who knows. You might be interested in looking at Betty Bethard's various books on dreams. She classifies them into different categories such as clearinghouse dreams (ones that are made up out of spare parts leftover from the previous day).

A dream that is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read - The Talmud.

 

[Pigsinzen]

I have only had one instance of sleep paralysis that I can recall & the entity in the room was a garden variety "grey" alien. I suppose I'd classify it as my most powerful dream as an adult. In this dream, my entire bedroom environment was different and in retrospect was similar to my parents bedroom as I remember it from my childhood. Including the 1970's era waterbed. During the dream this entity was at the foot of the bed and I felt the sensation of being sucked or pulled by an unseen force toward it. This sensation was familiar to me as I'd experienced the sensation of being sucked toward someone in a few old dreams starring another recurring character, (the yellow raincoat man). The yellow raincoat man reminded me of the old "spy versus spy" Mad Magazine characters but with a human face and build. He would chase me through the woods or around the house & no matter how fast I'd run I couldn't escape his pull as if I was on the event horizon of a black hole. Finally I'd wake up terrified and confused but happy it was "just a dream".

 

[Burnt State]

You might be interested in looking at Betty Bethard's various books on dreams. She classifies them into different categories such as clearinghouse dreams (ones that are made up out of spare parts leftover from the previous day).

A dream that is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read - The Talmud.

I love that Talmudic quote. Dream retelling is a good way to start the morning around the family breakfast table.

I'm finding my dreams invariably deal with the leftover parts from the last decade. The default brain network appears to be a great personal experience image recycler.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

I don't have such a single powerful dream per se but I thought I'd mention that lately I've really been trying to increase my chances of causing lucid dreams. I think I've had only 2 spontaneously happen in my whole lifetime, so I've been researching all the accepted/recommended ways to increase the likelihood of having one.
Everyone who seems to be an authority on lucid dreaming agrees the No.1 thing to do is to have a dream diary, something which I'd always considered a good idea but had never actually done. Not only does keeping such a diary help you remember things you otherwise would not- into the next day etc but actually I've found that I've written something at 6am and found by evening that same day, I remember almost nothing! It's pretty insane, all the dreams we 'waste' in such a fashion.

BTW it only took a couple of days to realise it is much better to use the voice record function on a phone, as it is far less hassle and in those sleepy moments, you hardly even have to have your eyes open! Brucie bonus!

The idea overall with the dream diary is that by committing to keeping one, you are already engaging the brain long-term with the whole idea of dreaming, which is fundamental to lucid dreaming. On top of that, there are certain things that will occur and reoccur in our dreams that can be categorised to further refine our understanding of our own dreams.

For instance, the form of objects can be strange, like super-sized wheels or very high buildings. There is also context, such as dead people being alive in our dreams, or your own house on a pacific island, instead of it's real location. There are more but to be short, if we identify these things in our dreams, which the waking mind would see as incongroous but the dreaming mind lets slide, we can 'program' ourselves to question our dreaming/not dreaming state regularly.

So regularly in fact that it becomes such a routine we start to actually question the same thing while we dream. One only needs to think of this question while dreaming for the dreaming brain to go, 'shit! this must be a dream!' And from then in that same dream, you can control what happens to a huge degree.

Any other lucid dreamers here?

 

[Burnt State]

I wonder why there are some people whose lucid dream capacity is persistent where every dream is a personal night in the holodeck. And what correlation is there in the waking world for that cohort? Lucidity in dreams for me has happened maybe only three times and each time I got so excited about it in the dream that I woke up.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

I wonder why there are some people whose lucid dream capacity is persistent where every dream is a personal night in the holodeck. And what correlation is there in the waking world for that cohort? Lucidity in dreams for me has happened maybe only three times and each time I got so excited about it in the dream that I woke up.

Excellent point Burnt and actually, much of the 'training' I am trying to put myself through is exactly to hopefully counter that excitement. People often report that the initial excitement of realising they are suddenly lucid, actually causes them to wake up. So, there are certain meditative techniques designed to keep the excitement levels down, to train oneself to be thinking 'ok I am dreaming and it's all cool, it's all ok, no need for excitement' and suchlike.

There is the initial 'getting lucid' challenge, and after that is the challenge of staying lucid and staying asleep dreaming once lucid. I think it is a worthy goal to strive for.

 

[ALPHA ROMEO UNIFORM]

Lucid dreams could be a glimpse into the demensional which we seek which maybe hold collections of memories of past lives . Like fear which injects your body full adrenalin which could cause images which some folks suggest abductions. Oddly, the skeptics suggest sleep praliyisis which is tend to agree sometimes is a possibility in other cases differ and question such judgment when physical interactions from lucid dreams (human or animals) don't asnwer this argument so easy and pressures, heat, cold can have a impact on the surrounding area for example, room,field, rainforest or urban surroundings. Also other eyewitness can see individuals a sleep and can have similar lucid dreams .