photo by doctony
Have you heard of dream studies? Worldwide there are several institutes and Universities (in Canada, Japan, Germany, USA to name a few) where researchers examine people’s dreams. If you want to join the studies, there are huge dream data bases online allowing you to search and analyze.
1181 dreamers were interviewed by Canadian researchers in Montreal who compared these results with the relevant studies of other dream bank: 80% dream regularly of pursuit, 76% often have dreams with sexual context, 73% report about regular flight/fall dreams.
Other frequent themes of dreams are violence, circumvention (missed the plain or train), exams or death of dear people. Interestingly these results overlap with the similar study from Japan in 1956, says Professor Tore Nielsen from “Dream And Nightmare Laboratory” in Montreal. Obviously culture does not matter much in this regard!
The most mysterious dreams are “flying-dreams”: why do we dream of something we never actually do? Nobody knows why we dream of flying but there are some suggestions like for example, it`s an echo of an evolutionary choice to fly or to walk which people did not take; some mystical explanation goes for flying as a collective symbol of a soul (a bird serves as a soul-symbol in many cultures).
Women dream differently! Not a big surprise but still remarkable – women dream much less violence. German researches from Mannheim evaluated thousands of interviews in 1956 -2000 and found out that today women dream about their jobs as seldom as in the fifties (men often dream about situations connected with work); they have more often sad dreams, and a very special female scenario is a disastrous wedding!
The worst nightmare ever A huge number of people report about the same type of nightmare: as if an evil spirit or some negative power sits on the chest blocking the breathing, even after the person wakes up he/she has a difficulty to breath. Canadian researchers in Waterloo University collected about 28 000 dreams of that kind!
Political differences Is there any connection between political preferences and dreams? An American psychiatrist Kelly Bulkeley of “Dream Study Program” of the Kennedy University in USA found a curious correlationRepublicans often dream nightmares being themselves victims of violence and pursuit; the dreams of democrats are often weird, surreal, and illogical. A highly strange sign: women sympathizing with the right-wing dream often about becoming unwillingly pregnant.
Children’s dreams differ from adults? Children – contrary to the common view – do not have more nightmares than the adults. Small children behave passive in their dreams, witnessing the things happen. Only at the school age children become pro-active in their dreams. Some interesting gender differences: small girls report about their dream-talks with girl-friends and boys – about playing ball. But no matter a girl or a boy, children often dream about animals.
Article in “PM Fragen und Antworten”, reviewed and translated by axinia
axinia
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1000 petals by axinia 
Interesting Axinia, In India there is a huge history and prominence to Dreams. Dreams have been studied exhaustively for ages and quite a number of reference we have in history about dreams and their significance.
Thanks, Suresh! Would be great if you could post on it!! – looking forward to a marvelous article in your great style..
I have also heard that nightmares are connected to the condition of the Muladhara chakra (the first energy centre in the human body responsible for some organs and also such a quality as innocence), i.e. if our Muladhara is not balanced, if there are some cathces on it, we get nightmares. So, it is not a surprise that children have fewer nightmares.
that’s a really interesting point!
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What amazes me about dreams is it gives you genuine experiences that you have never actually had before. I have never been to a sea shore, but have actually experienced the waves swell and crash on the rocks. That makes me wonder if my conscious is really my own…does consciousness have individuality.
Touching the unconscious…
Like ‘coming in & then out of a communication tunnel’.
Attention, I guess, the magic word. Our awareness needs to go beyond the mind!
The magnificent ‘doctony’ photo above, the Taal volcano in Manila, part of the Pacific ring of fire! excellent choice✿(◠‿◠)
As the scientist impacts the observed subject, what are those scientists dreams observing other dreaming?
In a world with plenty of open eye sleeping people assuming to collect the inner butterfly’s and pin them down in little boxes, might miss the inner complex message as much as the collective perception one.
The “drema-part” of collective unconsiousness is a vast subject, and I wonder if we ever will be able to understand it.
The phenomenon of flying in dreams can explained by the bird ansceccoors fo people, but what fascinates me really is that when i fly in a dream it is always a certain movement, it feels so physical and it is not like firds are flying, it’s different. I also sometimes dance in the air, like a balerina. And it feels very natural, familiar…
May be when we are not born we are angels flying around? 🙂
I’ve recently watched the movie ‘Inception’…dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream framework. i
numerous hints in the film about the importance of forgiving our projections (the people and situations the egoic mind uses to keep us in the dream of separation and duality); our kindnesses and shared interests are the totems that awaken us with a gentle “kick” out of the addiction to unconscious guilt
the power of forgiving our ourselves, our family members, our fellow citizens, political leaders….Knowing the Self and owning one’s projections.
Unless this is done, the burden of unconscious negative emotions (e.g. fear, guilt, anger, etc.) will continue to suck your psychic energy, preventing you from functioning and thriving.
…the burden of unconscious negative emotions (e.g. fear, guilt, anger, etc.) will continue to suck your psychic energy, preventing you from functioning and thriving.
I’m sorry, Mirel, but the emotions you describe as unconscious and “negative” such as fear, guilt, anger etc. are all very essential human emotions. Why, they are even present in animals and are absolutely essential for their survival and evolution. They may SOUND “negative” but they are very essential and key to human evolution and indeed, to human survival itself, just like the emotions that SOUND “positive”.
Only a dead, lifeless stone will be completely devoid of emotion. Both positive and negative emotions are equally required for all higher organisms, humanoids included. We need to learn how to deal with them in a positive manner (EVEN the negative ones), and not get rid of them.
🙂
I don’t like the idea of the so-called “dream studies” and I’m never going to sign up to put my dreams on that database 😐
What’s there to study about dreams 😕 If it were about studying the neuro-chemical physio-psychological processes which lead to dream formation in the mind while sleeping, then it’s a worthy field of scientific study enabling us to understand how things function.
But if “dream studies” is going to be more like “dream analysis”, “dream forecasting”, “dream decoding” etc. then it’s nothing but yet another field of pseudo-scientific trash such as astrology, numerology, tarot reading, tea leaf reading and the like. Such things and their practitioners try and try hard to pass them off as “scientific” in order to gain some acceptability and lure hordes and hordes of gullible people willing to believe in such things.
Dreaming is very, very similar to bubble-dwelling! 😉 The main differences between what I normally refer to as “bubble-dwelling” and “dreaming” is that dreaming is involuntary, unconscious and occurs while sleeping while bubble-dwelling is a voluntary and conscious process that bubble-dwellers engage in while being wide awake. In that respect, bubble-dwelling is even more similar to what people call as day-dreaming! 😀
There is only one difference between bubble-dwellers and day-dreamers. Day-dreamers know that they are escaping the reality of existence by choosing to let their minds dwell in the bubbles they create. Their bubbles easily burst when they come out of the day-dreaming state that they have temporarily subjected themselves to.
Bubble-dwellers, on the other hand, simply refuse to acknowledge this plain and simple fact. Instead, they trap themselves deeper and deeper in their fragile and flimsy bubbles by believing that the bubble state is the real state of existence while the actual reality of existence becomes a supposed “illusion” 😯 By doing so, they become permanent bubble-dwellers and get themselves terribly trapped and enclosed by the bubbles they create for themselves 😦
Getting back to dreaming, I agree that the most common nightmare mentioned here (“evil spirit” trying to cause suffocation by sitting on the chest) is actually correct! I’ve heard it at least a couple of times before. As someone who has had quite a few nasty nightmares myself, it did strike me as an unusual nightmare to have at that time. Only now I get to understand that it’s a very common and nasty nightmare that people experience.
Obviously culture does not matter much in this regard!
I agree! 🙂 The very fact that peoples from different “cultures”, varying from the highly civilised ones to the absolutely uncouth, filthy, barbaric ones get to experience similar dreams further proves the point that dreaming is a neuro-chemical physio-psychological process that takes place in the brain while sleeping. By extending this logic, even higher animals with well developed, complex brains (such as mammals and birds) may experience dreams while sleeping! Who knows, that cute cat sleeping next to the fireplace/room-heater might actually be existing in dreamland, having developed wings and hunting down birds in the air, all the while thinking how foolish those lowly humans must be to believe that they are the only species who can dream! 😀
Seriously, I wish scientists get to solve the mystery behind the processes that cause dreams in the mind as soon as possible. I know for a fact that medicines (especially, but not limited to, psychotic medications) can artificially cause significant alterations in the frequency and intensity of dreams and nightmares. It’s just like some of those notorious narcotic and psychotropic drugs artificially causing people to experience the so-called “highs” where the reality of existence becomes a mere “illusion” when viewed from the imaginary bubble state that the substances induce in the mind.
Dream states and bubble-dwelling are inextricably linked whichever way one looks at it.
🙂
Fantastic subject . One of my all time favourite curiosities . Does anyone know any good books with explanations of dreams? Did Carl Jung write one? I believe flying dreams surely must have to do with one’s Spirit , perhaps when we fly it means going beyond , rising above the material world entrapments?
if I am not mistaken, you wrote once that ‘at a mental level sometimes things appear not to have a solution or simply we can’t see it ,and we go round and round within our mind. As if beneath a clouded sky or immersed in those very clouds, we can’t see the sun or the clear blue sky above them; the clear blue sky of unlimited possibilities , freedom and Joy.’ 😉
i always feel from my own experience that indeed while sleeping, attention starts moving, passing through the left channel of past,
conditionings & emotions into the brain, hence we confront things which are connected with subconscious.
like Axinia underlined above, this is surely a vast subject….
regarding Jung, ‘Dreams’ and ‘Dreams, Memories and Reflections’ may be of interest
thank you dear, I indeed wrote something like that earlier, nice that you remember!
and thanks for the tip on Jung, he was a great dream reader.
Axinina, having experienced levitation of my big but ( a kundalini “side effect” I guess!), I would not limit our potential to the “not possible”day light option of flying.but is it connected to my epigenetic impacted by passionate flyers& glider pilot parents?.
My view on dream “interpretation” is more impacted by a “gestalt” vision, not imposing “one” symbolic meaning, but curious of the individual imagery.
WE are the dream speaking in metaphor’s.Fantastic reality poetry, isn’t it?