I’ve pondered about something.
I’ve never had a lucid dream really, but I’ve understood that a few things are different from the waked life, and more or less the same for every person:
-electric, unnatural stuff don’t work
-the sky is shimmering in all colours
-books changes
…and so on.
Am I totally wrong?
What is interesting in this, is that they’re the same for everybody. Perhaps Jung wasn’t totally wrong when he talked about the ‘collective unconsciousness’ (expression?). It seems like there is a suspicion against the modern things like electric light and even books.
And what about the sky? Is it reflecting the multicoloured earth?
I’ve personally had none of those things ever happen in any dream I can remember.
My dream signs are generally just way-out of place people doing way-out of place things. And also, the way I speak (both my tone and what I say) is generally incredible. I’m usually very reserved when I talk to people, or when I’m in public settings. But in my dreams, I basically wear my heart on my sleeve.
It’s true that there are some things which seem to be a common dreamsign. The light switch for example. However, given the highly suggestible nature of dreams, this dreamsign might very well be the result of an expectation you had about the working of light switches in dreams. You might have read irl on this forum that light switches doesn’t seem to work very properly in dreams. Without realizing it, you imprint this information in your subconsciousness. Later, when doing the test in a LD, the expectation pops out again and indeed… the light doesn’t work! Same thing with reading in LDs. LaBerge tells another nice example: he read about others who couldn’t say their own name in a LD. If they did, the whole dream collapsed and they woke up. LaBerge did the test: he said his name in his next LD… and nothing happened. This was basically because his motivation to disprove the theory was greater than the expectation that they were right after all.
So I don’t think these common dreamsigns prove anything about the collective unconsciousness. They merely reflect the strong influence of subconscious expectations and associations with waking life experiences.
Oh, yes, it could be in that way. Of course. The brain takes care of a lot of information, i assume, that we aren’t aware of. Sometimes, I forget that.
One of my nightmares is that the lights don’t work, don’t know why I have this nightmare as I’m not scared of the dark, I prefer it to light. So yeah that one about electric not working I get.
I’ve never looked at the sky.
Writing seems distorted and blurry in my dreams, and kinda hard to read. I’ve never noticed a change in the writing though.
Even if it was the collective unconscious, or just some unwittingly imprinted thing, how could you tell the difference on a general level? I think it applies to all of us on an individual scale. I personally sort of believe in the shared societal complexes thing, but i also believe in the unwitting conditioning by means of hearsay. The uniting concept between the two ideas is that they are in some way subconscious - awareness of the subconscious and its processes will help reveal the truth for each of us.
Personally, lightswitches and machines and the like have never worked right for me in dreams - before and after i actually knew what they were and did research.
As far as skies go, theyve always been stunning, the few times ive looked at them.
Writing and the like is only rarely messed up and awkward - all my life its always been quite legible in my dreams, though sometimes it is hard to ‘focus on’ like i was farsighted or something.
Other ideas: (throw out ideas on their subconscious meaning relative to the changing factor(s) in each if you want)
the general intelligence level of DC’s
the often theme of school and/or work
how driving never seems to work right
cant think of anything else that most others may share
Hmm it depends. For me dreams seem to act the way you expect them to. For example, in my normal dreams my car always runs fine. Everyone is different. I do not think I ever had a shimmering sky and in my lucid dreams I do a lot of flying. Now in my normal dreams things like relatives who are deceased tend to show up or, people that I do not know in real life are not only in my dreams but are my best friends etc. You will have to see what is unique about your dreams for yourself.
Lights usually don’t work that well for me. Sometimes I do manage to turn them on after a few tries. And this happened too before I found this forum. And usually in a FA after a nightmare
The sky - I seem to see planets/aliens or other interesting things in the sky.
And if I drive a car I end up crashing about 50% of the time. And then I wake up just before the impact.
[b][color=indigo]Yes, like when I’ve read about a particular type of dream, for example incestous dreams, dreams in cartoon form, dreams about ghosts, and I’ve never had one of these types of dreams but at the most a week after I have read about these dreams, I have one of my wn to share.
With all the different pieces of information gathered by your brain each day, it’s no wonder so many things we talk about on here are now common occurances.
With me it mainly depends on where in the day I think about things. Like typing something, I wouldn’t usually dream about typing something, but right now, I’m concentrating extra hard on what I’m typing, where my fingers are moving. I wouldn’t be surprised if I dream about this in the next two days. Of course since everybody speaks of writing being impossible to read in dreams, and I have never doubted this information which has come from so many different experts, the keyboard will most likely be wrong.[/color][/b]
I think the similar patterns have to do with the way our brains think. I can’t say for sure why our brains are able to make things like the sky different colors but keeps many colors the same. It is a mystery to me. But there is something in our heads that makes this happen. A instinct of some sort.
