Dreams and recurrent themes...

[camwyn]

I've never had what most people would call a recurring dream. I understand that some people have the same dream twice or more, that they get to know the dream or at least to recognise it. I've never had that happen; at most, I've had the occasional repetition of a fragment of a dream, but there's always something changed. For instance, I've had the Running Away From Something Menacing dream. But it's never been the same menace twice, nor has it been through the same landscape, nor has it ended the same way. For the most part it ends one of two ways: I outpace the menace a little and hide before it can catch up, at which point it overshoots me, or else I not only manage to get away from it but I double back on it and impress it sufficiently that it offers to tell me something or let me in on its purpose or secret. The recent Agent Smith and the fountain drawing on the River of Languages dream is not much different from this - I outpaced the Agent in ways he didn't expect and almost accomplished my task, but the fact that I had thrown my cup of water from the World Ocean into the wrong part of the fountain had nothing to do with him. I'd outdone him and gotten away, which is the important part. I've had a lot of repetitive anxiety elements in the past, the most common being Oh No My Contact Lenses Are Ruined!, Dear God What's Happening To My Teeth, Why Am I Getting My Exam Grades In This Setting / How Did I Do So Damn Poorly, and I Don't Remember Ever Seeing THAT Light Up On The Dashboard Before.

Anyway, last night I hit one of my most common repetitive non-anxiety dream elements. I had to get somewhere relatively quickly, and was less than pleased with how fast ordinary jogging was getting me there. I thought hmm, the street is a bit sloped; perhaps I could move more quickly if I were able to use my hands as well as my feet? And just like that, I found that I was, indeed, capable of running remarkably quickly by doing so on all fours. A few people gave me very odd looks, but for the most part they weren't paying that much attention, and I didn't really care. Sure, I was only barely touching the ground with my fingertips to get the extra boost of speed, but it was enough to make a difference. I was wondering why I hadn't thought to try it like that before when I woke up.

Other people have the Dream Where I Can Fly. I've only had that dream after reading about lucid dreaming and deliberately trying to do so for a week or two at a stretch. On the other hand, the Running On All Fours dream occurs several times a year - maybe even several times a quarter. Most of the time there isn't anyone else around in the dream. Occasionally there is; I remember it happening once when I was at college, and I dreamed I had to get to class quickly so I opted to run on all fours despite funny looks. Thinking too hard about the mechanics of the situation screws it up - in one such dream I was trying to run down my own street and doing very well until a neighbour's jeering child asked how I was doing it. As I tried to memorize the leg / arm sequence, I got tangled up in my own limbs and fell down. For the most part I think the gait is a canter or something close to it, as it's far more fluid than a trot and I don't think there's the leap element one finds in a full gallop. It's still quite fast, though. I'm reasonably sure it's accomplished digitigrade, too, since for the most part I feel my fingers against the ground rather than my full hands. Not sure about the feet, though.

I'm not sure what the imagery of such a dream is meant to represent. I have been told that the Flying Dream bespeaks a great deal of self confidence and that the Teeth Dream generally indicates self-esteem issues. I know full well that the Contact Lens Dream and the Car Dream are anxiety dreams, since I have them when I'm under stress. I don't generally have the Naked In Public dream, or at least I haven't since high school, so perhaps they have replaced that as a sort of culturally appropriate anxiety dream... but the all fours thing has me wondering. I never change shape in my dreams, and believe me there have been times when I've tried. It's me as a human running on all fours, fast as a racing dog or perhaps some sort of horse. Perhaps there is some kind of meaning there, but blimey if I know what it is. My mother once suggested that it might be some kind of representation of an urge to be more back-to-nature, or something. Perhaps. I don't know. I spent most of yesterday cleaning the house and learning to knit on double pointed needles, and before that I was very anxious about work, since I spent most of Friday in a horrifically stressed-out situation and lost my temper more than once with people despite the fact that I was in the wrong. I don't know if the dream comes out of that, since I wasn't trying to run away from anything - in fact I was trying to get something done that was either work or school related, and had to be done quickly. Who knows? I will freely admit that on occasion I wonder whether such a dream might not get an interesting interpretation from practitioners of the shamanic arts, but who hasn't allowed themselves speculations of such significance?

Comments

[ahmeemee.livejournal.com]

I used to have the flying dream often as well; sometimes I'd clue in that it's a dream in the middle and then I got to do cool stuff. Someone told me it's a desire for more freedom or something like that.

[camwyn]

What always got me about the flying dream is that I did it Douglas Adams-style. That is, I'd throw myself at the ground and miss. Once - just once - I started running at speed and pushed off very hard with one foot, then failed to bring the other one down, but generally when I have the flying dream it's me tripping or diving for the ground, then being distracted enough not to hit the ground. I read the Hitchhikers books years ago; I suppose I liked that element enough to incorporate into my subconscious as something plausible.

[logicalpsycho.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think that dreams are just reflections of the goings-on in your life. I was thinking about lesbians this weekend due to various conversations for the last three days and dreamt about Ellen Degeneres, for crying out loud...

[camwyn]

For a lot of dreams, I'm inclined to agree. The Running Away From Agent Smith dream, for instance, was composed heavily of the prior week's movie experiences combined with a Mage: The Ascension supplement I'd been reading. My nightmares, on the other hand, rarely incorporate anything even remotely recent. They tend to draw on stuff that had been disturbing me while awake and that had passed from my mind. I tend to feel that most of those only crop up once some part of my mind feels relatively safe dealing with the subject matter. In high school one of my teachers insisted on showing the class some really graphic photographs of aborted foetuses, which is generally the kind of thing that I would sooner gnaw off my own arm than look at; the images didn't come up in dreams until a month or more after the fact. 9/11 imagery didn't come up in my dreams until several months afterwards, if that. Less disturbing material can crop up much sooner, sometimes as quickly as the night after I read or see or think about it. I expect it's just what my brain feels safe in rummaging through, or something like that.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Hm, well, the one time I had that kind of dream myself was when I was trying like hell to get recognized and picked up by a magical teacher; a friend and I had been dropped off in a hellandgone part of town and had to navigate, without maps or knowledge of where we were, back to school. Over the course of the run, we lost more and more of our conscious egos, and were running on all fours just like that. Eventually we wound up trundling down to, well, Hell (not Hel) with the help of our teacher/guide, and it got properly dream-surreal after that.

In that sense, I think the act of running on all fours was supposed to signify a loss of ego/self/identity as human, the act of allowing other portions of the self to arise, be they magical, be they whatever. If I were going to get into modern Asatru soul-jargon on the subject, I'd mention the fetch, the fylgja, the portion of the soul that is usually animal-shaped, can be sent out to do things, and can be used as an alternate form by your friendly neighborhood seidh (consciousness-altering magic) worker (I have barely glossed over the jargon words here, but I figured you didn't want a lengthy essay).

But that's me.

I've always felt that the best interpreter of any dream is the dreamer; if this is how you go faster over places, then that is what it means; the intent of speed, the joy of velocity. Yeah, it's not normal, but you know it -- and when you're called on it it's the Centipede's Dilemma and you crash. Perhaps it's that you know you can kick ass and so far and fast, so you do, but if someone wonders too much at your process, it's a tangle of limbs from there?

From the point of view that had me nattering amiably about fetches and abnegation of the ego, it could be that there's an Irish wolfhound or summat in there trying to get out (but not, I think, a wolf; you're too long-limbed for that, and would be more so in the gait you describe).

Apply as big a grain of salt as you like to any of the above; I'm just free-associating here.

-- Lorrie, who won't say she practices shamanic arts, but will go out one remove and say she does shamanistic things now and again.

[camwyn]

I don't know if it's so much that I'm going faster, although that's certainly part of it. It's that the all-fours locomotion seems a lot more practical, as if it's key to getting something important done. There's somewhere I have to be or something I have to carry in most of these dreams. People seeing it are trouble, since iti's not something I particularly want them to see, or even know about. Perhaps it's that I don't want them asking how I do it, for fear of being tangled up - I don't know.

As for the fetch thing, I wouldn't be overly surprised if that were the case. Definitely not a wolf, though. Aside from a reflexive allergy to anything that reeks so strongly of my most common RPG in college (Werewolf) or, erm, the common tendencies of fluffy newagers (let's face it, silver wolves and ravens of whatever colour figure fairly large in such things), I've generally felt that any fetch, totem, or other animal kinship probably involves the domestic canines. That, or possibly something like Lycaon pictus, but that's more wishful thinking than based on any kind of real similarities.

[jubie.livejournal.com]

Flying Dream: Check.
Anxiety Dream: Check.
Running away from a giant chicken with glowing red eyes, sharp claws on its feet and a huge spikey red comb on top of its head: Hell freakin' check.

My second greatest fear are giant chickens with glowing red eyes. My greatest fear are clowns. Creepy mofos.

[camwyn]

Oddly enough, I don't think I've ever had the Seemingly Ordinary Object Blown Up To Horrific Proportions nightmare. I mean, yeah, I know that some people have nightmares about deer breaking into the house and devouring their hands (my sister for one), or about being chased by a giant carrot or chicken or whatever, but I can't remember that ever happening to me. I have the Oh Dear God Not My Car Noooooo nightmare, or nightmares where I'm stranded somewhere far from home and can't contact anyone I know or find out what the hell's going on. And once I had a nightmare where I was stuck working the counter at my local drugstore and they wouldn't let me out for the bathroom, or for Federally mandated break or lunch time, or ANYTHING - but that wasn't a proper dream. It came in the layer of sleep that feels like being awake, but where you can't move or speak or do anything and time seems to last forever while you're busy being paralyzed. I know the heavily repetitive single-element dreams are supposed to come from deeper sleep than REM; maybe that's where the You Can't Leave Your Post nightmare came from. Dunno.

[ahmeemee.livejournal.com]

I had a nightmare about being attacked by rabid squirrels with glowing red eyes last year. Needless to say, I am now terrified of squirrels.

[jubie.livejournal.com]

I knew there was something evil about squirrels. It's just not right, for ever one that become roadkill, I think four more reproduce to take its place.

Re-occuring dreams

[unsigned.livejournal.com]

..way back when I was young, soon after I had a surgery, I kept having this reoccuring dream.

I would be walking along a pier on the ocean, near Pt. Magu in California, minding my own business when for whatever reason I would suddenly be plunged over the rail and hit the water.

This scared me, for reasons that relate back to the surgery, and I would wake up immediately, usually just as I hit the water.

This kept happening over, and over and over and over again on a fairly regular basis. Then one night, I got annoyed by it, or perhaps I was just stubborn, I dont' really remember, but i do remember recognizing it as a dream at that point. And so I let myself hit the water, and I wanted to see where this thing was taking me, what the big 'fear' was behind it.

And all I did was continue to sink, surrounded by blue waters and bubbles. The sinking went on and on and on, until I once again became annoyed by it, woke up, and then went back to sleep.

I never had the dream again. Ever. Of course, this also started my whole lucid dreaming trip. Where I can usually recognize a dream, and begin to exert some control over it.

Re: Re-occuring dreams

[camwyn]

Yeah, I understand that kind of thing is common as a means of defusing recurring dreams. That's why I've always been just a bit amused by the Something Chasing Me dreams. The books and other source material talk about turning around to face the thing doing the chasing as if it were some Great and Significant turning point in psychological development. I've always just stepped out of the way and watched it go by - or caught up with it and gotten it to teach me secrets.

Re: Re-occuring dreams

[unsigned.livejournal.com]

I always got a little more violent when things started chasing me. I wasn't content to sit and watch them pass me by. I wanted to know who/what they were and why the hell they were chasing me, and then putting a stop to it one way or another.

Of course, I tend to think this lead me off into a completely different area of dream exploration, and probably forced my subconscious to be a bit more ..imaginative, or horrid, whichever depending onw what's attempting to be relayed to me.