Pondering on some dreams I've had.

[Ironhold]

I've reached my requisite midlife crisis, and as part of it I'm looking back on some things. 

This includes a pair of dreams that have quite stuck with me. 

Now, I can have very vivid dreams when I do dream. It's been a thing since childhood. In some instances, what I dream about sticks with me for a while even after I wake up, and a few remain in my mind for a very long time afterword.

Given everything that's going on, two dreams I had in the past keep coming back to mind. 

For one of the dreams, I had just done a delivery route and then raced home to watch Conference. For obvious reasons, I was nodding off during that day's sessions. While asleep I was still able to hear one session where the speaker (I don't recall who) was talking about how everyone had a place in this world. Well, in the dream I was listening to this talk on the radio while driving down a road that my brain created. Once I heard that part of the talk, it came to me that "My place is that I have no place." Basically, I was not meant to have any sort of fixed place or position so that I could move between what I needed to move between - be it social groups or even entire cities - as easily as possible; the trade-off was that I would have no safe harbor I could take shelter in when things got bad. In the dream, this realization caused me to be so distracted I missed a turn and had to U-turn to get back to it. 

For the other dream, I'm lying in bed and I know that somehow, this is the end for me, that I'm actually dying in the dream. Even though I'm in my real-life bed in my real-life bedroom, the only companionship I have is a couple of vultures... who are speaking with human voices. My last mortal act was to explain that they - the vultures - had been taken care of before I died in the dream. 

Ever since I've had them, I've had a feeling that they were premonitions of some kind as to how my life was going to be and how it would eventually conclude. 

Has anyone else here ever had a feeling like this from something you've dreamt? 

[NeuroTypical]

Dreams are cool.  I used to have incredibly vivid, incredibly impactful dreams all the time.  It was like dreaming in pure convicted emotion.  One dream involved Jupiter leaving it's orbit and coming to say hi.   We were standing out in an open field, with the entire sky totally dominated from horizon to horizon by Jupiter.  It was obvious this was the end of all life on earth.  I was with my family.   For some reason the approach of Jupiter caused a radical change in Earth gravity, and everything collapsed at once.  I heard the most incredibly detailed sound of this happening possible.  I now know what it sounds like to have every house, car, fence, bridge, and blade of grass instantaneously crush itself down into the Earth because gravity had exponentially increased in a heartbeat.   As I stood there with my family, it was amazing to watch our house flatten like a pancake.  The dream ended with the realization that we were in the house when it happened, but our spirits were ok, and together, there on the other end of the field.

Out of the hundreds or thousands of incredibly impactful dreams I've had, I'm thinking only one could qualify as a vision given by the Lord.  I have to be light on the specifics, but the dream was about some relatives were doing as we all went through some difficult times.  I believe the Lord gave me insight into how they were feeling, and some understanding of the spirit that was in the room running the show.  The dream helped me understand and love them, while also confirming that my wife and I had made the correct decision regarding the difficult times. 

[zil2]

I too have vivid dreams sometimes - especially if I eat chocolate during the last half of the day - which is one reason I decline to give up chocolate!   I don't think any of them have been revelatory, but they are often quite long, detailed, and sometimes very complex.  When I'm lucky, I can remember them long enough to think about them.  I have a few "still images" from dreams in my head.

I don't believe I've ever had the same dream twice, but a recurring theme comes up often in my dreams: I'm in a place I know¹, headed for some destination I know how to reach, and on the way, physical reality changes such that I can no longer get to my destination.  For example, in one of these dreams, I was going through the BYU bookstore¹.  I had to get to the second floor.  At first, the stairs went up to a landing and turned 90 degrees to the right.  But as I reached the landing, the part that turned 90 degrees to the right was gone. The staircase had turned into an inverted V shape, with a landing at the top.  My only option was to go back, or continue straight ahead and go down the other side of the V...  There was no way to get to the second floor.  (And no purpose at all to the staircase - it went nowhere.)

¹Most often, in the dream, I know I'm in (for example) the home where I grew up, but it looks nothing like it really looked.  This happens more times than not: places where I've lived or worked, church buildings, BYU campus, Moscow (Russia), Salt Lake county, etc. - you name it, I've dreamed it where I knew right where I was, but in the dream it looked significantly different from waking reality.

Another interesting thing I realized only a few years ago, is that my brother, who has been confined to a wheelchair since around the year 2000, is never in a wheelchair in my dreams.  If he's present, he's walking.  I think I never noted it because in the dream, it always seems like things are how they should be (and we haven't lived in the same state since he became confined to the wheelchair, so I suppose him walking is my norm).

In what may have been my most complex dream, I was helping police to solve some mystery.  I can no longer remember details, but I remember working through bunches of paper files, finding clues, organizing them and rushing off to tell someone what I'd discovered. There was a full-blown plot and everything.  It could have been a 2-hour movie.  I may have noted that one in my journal - something about a missing woman and a murdered woman and I had connected the two cases...

Thankfully, I've only had maybe 5, if that many, nightmares in my entire life. I can only remember a single image from one of those nightmares, and a vague notion of what it was about.  The instant I woke, it had me praying and seeking a little image of Christ that I had near my bed.  The others are long gone.

[mikbone]

19 minutes ago, zil2 said:

 

I too have vivid dreams sometimes - especially if I eat chocolate during the last half of the day - which is one reason I decline to give up chocolate!

 

So do you eat most of your chocolate before or after mid-day?

Indian food does it for me.  And I have vivid bizzare dreams.  Nothing that I would share as I might get labeled as a psychopath etc.  

I have had visions though - inspired daydream images.

I would never call any of my dreams inspired.

Although I do consider myself a visionary man

[zil2]

21 minutes ago, mikbone said:

So do you eat most of your chocolate before or after mid-day?

If I have chocolate at all, it's after lunch and / or dinner.  The closer to bedtime I have it, the more likely I am to have vivid dreams (or so it seems - I haven't actually collected data to prove this, it's just my perception).

[Carborendum]

53 minutes ago, zil2 said:

If I have chocolate at all, it's after lunch and / or dinner.  The closer to bedtime I have it, the more likely I am to have vivid dreams (or so it seems - I haven't actually collected data to prove this, it's just my perception).

Those must be magic chocolates.  

[Still_Small_Voice]

I had a dream recently that I hope never comes to pass.  Someone I know got cancer and he got very sick and weak quickly.  I think he died in the dream.

Here is to hoping this is just one of those bizarre random dreams that my mind conjured up that has no basis for future events.

[NeuroTypical]

Well, I'm ok with someone having a dream like that, if in that dream, I am in my '90's or something.   

Your post reminds me that I once dreamt my own death.   I dreamed that I had a massive sneeze so hard that it lifted me off my feet and I landed head first on the tile floor and cracked my skull.  At the funeral everyone was trying not to laugh, and my buddy's eulogy was something to the tune of "he died as he lived, oozing infectious humor, the kind that made everyone around him just have to laugh".

The setting for the dream was in 1994-ish at the place I used to work.  It didn't come true.

[mordorbund]

7 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

It didn't come true.

It’s because they were all clapping instead of laughing isn’t it. ‘90’s kids were so mean…

[mirkwood]

On 9/30/2024 at 6:27 PM, mordorbund said:

It’s because they were all clapping instead of laughing isn’t it. ‘90’s kids were so mean…

lol...you should have seen us in the 80's...