Do dreams matter?

[Gormur]

Have any of you ever had a dream where it is so vivid and long that it plays out like a movie and you recall everything when you wake up? I just woke up from such a dream..and everything in it seemed completely sideways and abstract, but it made perfect sense when I woke up and realized the symbolism behind everything in my dream.

The gist of the dream is that I was living sometime in the future and seeing how my life would be depending on the path I took..this path was a little disturbing at times, but I knew everyone in my dream, we hung out and talked in great detail about many things, except we were all noticeably about 10 years older. All of the locations were different, however..and I could see an aura coming from every living thing (sometimes it was good, sometimes bad, sometimes creepy). This aura is hard to explain to a lot of people...it has a lot to do with intuition and being in-tune with everything going on around you. Anyhow, especially after an acid trip, I notice my intuition rise to an incredible level to where I am often finishing sentences of other people (either verbally or in my mind), even ones that I may have just met that moment... and after dreams like this one, it seems like my intuition is also much higher usually for some days afterwards.

Does anyone else write down their dreams? I usually don't recall my dreams, but maybe once a month or so I will have a very vivid or lucid dream that will make complete sense..and will write down every detail I recall when I wake up...there is always a lot of symbolism in them and I sometimes learn quite a bit about my ego and own feelings, and really put my life into perspective...like what goals I should strive towards and often I'm confronted and must deal with issues within my dreams, then play them out in real life. It is like I'm learning from someone else, but in reality I suppose it is just my higher conscious mind (I seem more conscious in dreams than in reality many times) telling me these things..because when I'm awake, there is the body load to deal with and feeling trapped in the physical realm which somehow hinders my consciousness to a degree where I cannot think clearly/rationally, but base everything on some past even...

Now, when I'm under the influence of sth (LSD), I can think more clearly because it is just like the feeling of being in this type of higher consciousness dreamworld, except that I'm actually VERY alert, more physically able (body feels light or weightless, like in a dream), and psychologically in tune with myself and everyone around me. Any anxiety, personal hang-ups, ego/attitude, or petty inhibitions (not valid ones) go out the window in this state of mind..like if one were deep in a trance and in tune with everything..all tension melts away, all problems have a clear solution...humbled by the complexity of the universe, my ego is silenced..and I'm now able to lead a productive meaningful existence instead of a destructive and pointless one.

I'm not very familiar with transcendental meditation or how monks reach this state...but I have met quite a few people who have done LSD (only once or twice, in some cases) and had this kind of revelation about themselves and the world around them, like a re-birth..many of them were atheists but are now spiritual or Buddhists. And I'm greatly intrigued by this connection. Obviously LSD chemically-alters certain neurotransmitters in the brain, so that is something physically evident to explain this feeling of revelation or re-birth. But what about practising meditation? Does it alter some part of the brain in, say, devout monks who practice it daily..or is it merely placebo? I wonder if there are any conclusive studies on this.

Peace.

[darkina]

I love it how it went from dreams to LSD

I have been wondering about dreams myself lately but I have no idea. I rarely remember dreams, and I mean one every several months - when I do, it's mostly about men I have deep feelings for.
My friends used to write down their dreams when we were at school, but since I don't remember them.. I once had a very significant one and wrote it down and that's probably why I still remember it so many years later.

So what you're basically saying is, you are wondering if a dream alters something in the mind, like LSD does chemically, and wondering if regular meditation does also? Like the dream made something click and so for a few days you're more, say, lucid, and you think that maybe meditation does that permanently if it's a constant practice?
Just trying to see if I understood the point of this post

Well I have no idea about either of these things, although I have recently wondered about meditation because sometimes I would like to "abandon" my mind and I wonder if meditation would be a good idea, except that I am very reluctant about those practices so they don't work for me because of course I am not trying hard enough...

[Trapy]

Well I have no idea about either of these things, although I have recently wondered about meditation because sometimes I would like to "abandon" my mind and I wonder if meditation would be a good idea, except that I am very reluctant about those practices so they don't work for me because of course I am not trying hard enough...

Don't bother with meditation, well, that's coming from me. do it if you like . Some people like Gomur use that LSD to loose themselves, fall into a trance and get deep experiences. And it's not your not trying hard enough, you just have to accept it and believe in it, even with a few dozen pounds of salt.

I just need to feel like i loose myself. And no I have never tried LSD, and don't plan on it. Music helps, before-hand. music while trying to put myself in that state just distracts me . For me, it's music that makes you question, think and remember things from long ago. Yours might be different.

Then you just have to give up control. I imagine (eyes closed and lying in bed...) bashing my head against a pipe, edge or something fairly blunt. Then falling backwards into the floor and going unconscious. That helps get you relaxed. Then just thinking about the imagery in the music you heard, the thoughts of the lyrics or the themes that went through your head. don't think hard, try to let it just flow over you.

I've had some fairly high-octane dreams doing that. I'm sure it's more of digging up dirt from the past that I had left buried (very good times, or life changing events), or fears of the future to make it vivid, but it's how you pull them up that push a dream into an experience.

[Gormur]

So what you're basically saying is, you are wondering if a dream alters something in the mind, like LSD does chemically, and wondering if regular meditation does also? Like the dream made something click and so for a few days you're more, say, lucid, and you think that maybe meditation does that permanently if it's a constant practice?
Just trying to see if I understood the point of this post

Yep, except for the dream part. I don't think dreams alter anything in the mind in and of themselves..temporarily in the moment they could bring out certain emotional responses, but for a parmanent chemical alteration of the parts of the brain dealing with consciousness, I would guess that it takes actual meditation-like or self-hypnosis techniques to reach alternate states of consciousness and frequent daily practise of them to change the chemistry in a significant way -- aside from taking chemical substances, which automatically put you into those states without any conscious effort on your part... I find when doing yoga or meditating while on LSD is absolutely incredible..I can feel every sensation in my body tingle like electricity, something like my chakras opening up and energy centers emiting warmth and a flow of blissful energy running through my entire body. I have even had something like out-of-body experiences on sth else called DXM where I viewed my body sitting there in a trance state while my higher consciousness (the actual me) is somewhere else in the room.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience

Well I have no idea about either of these things, although I have recently wondered about meditation because sometimes I would like to "abandon" my mind and I wonder if meditation would be a good idea, except that I am very reluctant about those practices so they don't work for me because of course I am not trying hard enough...

Drinking alcohol will make you abandon your mind/senses. LSD does the exact opposite while at the same time silencing the ego of the person. This experience is referred to as ego-death and many people also experience depersonalization during this state as well (who am I?).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization

(Wikipedia describes depersonalization in a negative light, but for some, it doesn't induce negative reactions and rarely does it produce permanent disorders).

I wonder if I could reach a state of higher consciousness without drugs..it'd be interesting as an experiment at least. I do qigong breathing exercises quite a bit, which basically just help me to focus my energy in one place and slow my heart rate to reduce a bit of tension or anxiety..I've tried qigong meditation as well and attempted to go into a trance state (sober) for about an hour before, but finally lost focus and somehow fell asleep because I was so physically relaxed and my mind decided to go on vacation too. To be able to combine focus and relaxation seems difficult for me..it's like I need stimulation of sth to help me out. Anyhow, I'll give it a shot early in the morning (maybe around 4am)..should be a good time.

[darkina]

Well I have no idea about either of these things, although I have recently wondered about meditation because sometimes I would like to "abandon" my mind and I wonder if meditation would be a good idea, except that I am very reluctant about those practices so they don't work for me because of course I am not trying hard enough...

Don't bother with meditation, well, that's coming from me. do it if you like . Some people like Gomur use that LSD to loose themselves, fall into a trance and get deep experiences. And it's not your not trying hard enough, you just have to accept it and believe in it, even with a few dozen pounds of salt.

Well yes that was the point, I am not able to accept it and believe it so it doesn't work. I might try with music, there's some songs that I say give me inner peace...

And on Gormur's post. For me relaxation is close to impossible. For the same reasons as meditation, scepticism. And well I don't understand how I can let go of my body while thinking of my body... like focusing on breathing and all that jazz makes me even more tense. I went to a relaxation kind of class and I didn't expect it to involve that (it wasn't called relaxation) and I kind of freaked out (silently) about lying on the floor with strangers and having to relax... it just made me really really rigid...and like 30 seconds into it, a guy fell asleep and started snoring!!! And it shocked me so much, I was just trying to look for a way to pretend I wasn't feeling that bad but of course it didn't work, so it shocked me how it could work immediately for someone. Of course it wasn't the first experience for this guy, so I thought maybe I should stick to it but it would have been such a huge effort...
The woman who held the class was saying that she uses similar things at the meditation class, and that make me sooo want to leave the room lol.

[Hoogstwaarschijnlijk]

We have had a dream topic before, if you read there you will see that you are not the only one who writes very vivedly. I only write my dreams down when they have been very weird and I think I can write a story about it. Dreams have a lot of symbolic things and quite often things happen that you could never possibly think about yourself, so they are nice stuff to write about