For those with lots of nocturnal recall, what do you remember?

Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 2/3/16 1:04 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 2/3/16 1:04 PM

For those with lots of nocturnal recall, what do you remember?

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
Lately from various chitchats here and a resurgance of interest on my part, i've been working a bit more on dream and night time recall.  In the far past, I had a time period when I had very fragmented sleep and one result was that waking up suddenly out of various states made it easier to remember those states.  I was struck by how weird many things were.  Of course there were the more regular dreams but also experiences like there was more than one 'me' talking with me, and having consciousness of the thoughts of all the mes at once.  All the mes seemed similar so it was not a fragmented emotoins type of thing or anything and generally they would be just have a relaxed discussion about something having to do with me/us, but I could not later remember what exactly.  (this was long before I knew anything about Buddhism or the concept of not me) .   There were other experiences like some kind of electrocution thing would be done that was unpleasant yet important, hard to describe but it was not really a dream type experience but more of a deep sleep type thing like it was way down in there in the deep places.  Anyway various weirdness.  

Fast forward to now, most of my memory of the night now seems to be filled with somewhat boring dreams.  Like today, I was dreaming about tiny spiders under the cloths hamper, observing them and how to remove them, thought about and tried all diff ways, testing each to conclusion, pondering about them, etc.  Looking at when they were there and when they weren't.  I think the dream aspect of spiders and cloths hamper was mostly an allegory that my earch conscious mind is using for it to help remember as really it seemed to be about something more vague about myself and my life, things that don't easily translate to words or even earth concepts, like sometimes something about some spiders my mother left behind for instance.  So one could easily guess this was me pondering about my life.  Like for what seemed like an hour!  Just little details and variances.  (to my knowledge, my waking life cloths hamper does not have spiders..)

And other dreams have been like long adventure stories that I am aware that I am mostly writing even as I play in them, like an almost lucid state, for instance an adventure where I was trying to infiltrate this castle that had a bad guy that was trying to do some kind of bad taking over the world type of thing.  It would be like I woudl get in some kind of trap but then I would just say to myself, "but how about then the good guy finds a secret exit in the space time continuum and sneaks out a worm hole and ends up outside!" and then of course it would happen like I said, but yet other aspects like where I came out on the outside, might still surprise me (like I didn't write all of it after all).   So Ok, maybe such a dream could be easily construed to be an allegory for life and making your own path.  But the dream seemed to go on for like hours!  With me getting stuck in various traps, sometimes the same trap multiple times with different ways out and the consequences of each way also being explored.  Sometimes there would be a rewind to early parts of the dream and I would run through part of it a second time!

There have been a few times over the last week or so when I would be sort of lucid in a sort of sleep state remembering a bunch of dreams that I had that night and thinking something like, "Really, is this what I do all night, most of it is fairly boring!!!"  Plus there is kind of a sense that all that stuff I was doing in those 'dreams' is kind of a lot more like work than I would have expected (I guess I was under the assumption previously that sleep time was more fun?)   I am also noticing an obvious theme of testing and pondering multiple variant options and outcomes for each singular situation.  (kind of reminds me a tad of quantum theory)

So for those of you that remember larger swaths of your sleep time, what do you remember doing for all those hours?  What's it like?       
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Toph H, modified 8 Years ago at 2/5/16 11:23 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 2/5/16 11:23 AM

RE: For those with lots of nocturnal recall, what do you remember?

Posts: 18 Join Date: 2/5/13 Recent Posts
It depends on how aware I am during the sleep times as to what I'm doing.  I like to use it as additional time for meditation, so if I'm already within a dream, I'll exit, and go to a more "empty" canvas, a void, and meditate there.  Sometimes, I have a list of task to do, chores, etc.  maybe information searches, etc.  I mostly use is as an extension to daily life or daily life is an extension of dream life, they are intertwined. 

If I'm not very lucid, then my subconcious will bring up the neccesary elements to work on, if I don't get it within the dream, maybe I will get subtitles floating explaining what the dream images represent, or a third person narrorator(omni-voice) giving tips, etc.  I've experienced time dialation during dreaming, it can be discombolutaing, where such time passes during sleep, to awake when only moments pass by.  Sometimes I find it fun to fragment myself, and send each of the "me's" off, do different things, either toggle between all of me's like a tab bar on the computer or all at the same time. .....Yeah, I'm wierd, but have fun with it.  I'd say the craziest thing would be to mirror back to oneself, then create and infinite amount of me's in either direction, like a mirror reflecting a mirror, but with conciousness/dreamself, I think my brain hurt from that one, and was relieved to collapse back into a singular state.

I have a couple books of dream journalling, found it reinforces recall, also aids in information acquistion for comparison at a later date.  I'm familiar with the puzzle/trap aspect, those can be fun, and found the lessons learned to be aplicable toward daily life as well.  So I like to use dreams, dreaming, whatever, as an extension of learning about how I function mentally.

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