more weird dreams
Feb. 8th, 2004 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anotheranonHere's a strange one:
I was living in a kind of multi-story apartment/dormitory complex. The floors were strangely staggered, as if it weren't built at the same time, the upper stories overhanging the lower ones in a haphazard way. I think the entire building(s?) was built into the side of a cliff. The wood was worn and maybe even rotting, but it was stable enough for me to sleep on a mattress on my front stoop, which hung over into empty space.
The weather was cool and rainy. I had Kisia, my little blue cat with me, and strangely I wasn't worried about her accidentally jumping off the front stoop (the real Kisia isn't allowed outside).
The air got cooler and I realized that it was time to move the mattress inside for the winter. My dormitory was one room but extremely well organized, with everything in it's place. Very simple: I had an attached bathroom with shower, a small closet, a cup, bowl, and spoon, and a bench upon which my sewing machine and sewing box sat (natch).
The paint was chipped and badly needed repainting. So I did paint it; it was curiously like painting a dollhouse - I stood outside the doorway and the interior seemed so much smaller, and I finished the job in a few brushstrokes.
While it was drying I took Kisia up to the roof. There was a large central area with dormitories identical to mine set all around it, again, all uneven. I was going to let her play in the central area but there were two large dogs chasing each other and I was afraid to let her out.
I guess the dream in itself isn't that unusual, what made it exceptional was the vividness of everything. I could feel the damp, cool air, and smell the vegetation growing and rotting in the forest (I think it was a forest). The grain of the wood of the dormitories was very clear, and the chipped paint was very detailed - I even remember the color, a sort of faded baby blue.
Through all this, I think I was a guy. Nothing in the dream really obviously pointed this out, but I just get the mental image of myself as wearing an old t shirt and shorts and one of those knotted leather strap necklaces that seem so popular for guys now. I also think I needed to shave.
Strange..
I was living in a kind of multi-story apartment/dormitory complex. The floors were strangely staggered, as if it weren't built at the same time, the upper stories overhanging the lower ones in a haphazard way. I think the entire building(s?) was built into the side of a cliff. The wood was worn and maybe even rotting, but it was stable enough for me to sleep on a mattress on my front stoop, which hung over into empty space.
The weather was cool and rainy. I had Kisia, my little blue cat with me, and strangely I wasn't worried about her accidentally jumping off the front stoop (the real Kisia isn't allowed outside).
The air got cooler and I realized that it was time to move the mattress inside for the winter. My dormitory was one room but extremely well organized, with everything in it's place. Very simple: I had an attached bathroom with shower, a small closet, a cup, bowl, and spoon, and a bench upon which my sewing machine and sewing box sat (natch).
The paint was chipped and badly needed repainting. So I did paint it; it was curiously like painting a dollhouse - I stood outside the doorway and the interior seemed so much smaller, and I finished the job in a few brushstrokes.
While it was drying I took Kisia up to the roof. There was a large central area with dormitories identical to mine set all around it, again, all uneven. I was going to let her play in the central area but there were two large dogs chasing each other and I was afraid to let her out.
I guess the dream in itself isn't that unusual, what made it exceptional was the vividness of everything. I could feel the damp, cool air, and smell the vegetation growing and rotting in the forest (I think it was a forest). The grain of the wood of the dormitories was very clear, and the chipped paint was very detailed - I even remember the color, a sort of faded baby blue.
Through all this, I think I was a guy. Nothing in the dream really obviously pointed this out, but I just get the mental image of myself as wearing an old t shirt and shorts and one of those knotted leather strap necklaces that seem so popular for guys now. I also think I needed to shave.
Strange..
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-08 11:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-08 11:56 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-08 04:26 pm (UTC)If this is a past life, I wonder WHAT it is a past life of, exactly? Where are their cool rainforests with wooden dorms on cliffs? (Seattle?)
Later in the day I remembered another detail - I was wearing a wide metal ring on my left index finger. It had a rough (i.e. not shiny and polished) look to it, somewhere between silver and cold with stars and other stylized carvings in it.
Physics, my dear
Date: 2004-02-08 04:59 pm (UTC)The Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05422a.htm has some disagreements with the law, being that souls are considered to originate from God, and when people die, the soul returns to God, therefore the energy of the soul pops in and out of existence without disturbing the balance of energy in the universe.
However, it is possible to see the validity of the Law of the Conservation of Energy if we follow the teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism, (and the Greeks) because to then the soul is circular in nature. Mankind doesn't pop in and out of existence, but winds like thread through the fabric of material reality. Like a stitch in fabric, on the top of the fabric you can see the stitch. When the stitch goes underneath, you can't see it, but it is still there.
This circularity is called Reincarnation, of course. As a soul, a spiritual entity, you are here to learn lessons of your choosing to improve the quality and quantity of your energy. But the term "here" should only refer to material existence, and there is no possible argument that the terms of material existence need to occur on this planet. The materiality of the universe exists as a physical point in time, but energy exists outside of time and space.
Your memory, or dream, could have been a message reminding you of a previous life, a previous existence, or whatever previous use of your energy you wish to call the moment. The question is not "is it true"; the question should be then, is "What do the symbols in the dream mean? What am I trying to remind myself? What am I trying to teach myself?"
Re: Physics, my dear
Date: 2004-02-08 06:35 pm (UTC)Now that is a very interesting analogy, Semmie, very nice. ;) Reincarnation does seem more and more reasonable to me as I grow older, because Heaven always struck me as a resting place, a nice spot to visit for awhile before heading back out into the ratrace of life and the karmic wheel. I mean, really, are we supposed to spend ALL of eternity sitting on clouds and singing? Seems like a pointless existance to me - -
I have vivd dreams, and at times they do feel like I'm peeking in on some other life - - past or alternate, I couldn't say. Like Allison, I'm open to the possibility, though. As far as the appearance of the building, well even our present waking world is represented in odd ways when we dream, so why would a past life dream be an different? I dream my house is a huge, confusing mansion at times, so perhaps Allison's dormitory is just the closest analog her subconsious could come up with. :) (have to admit, the warm weather sleeping arrangement sounds very familiar, but then a lot of cultures with no AC tend to sleep on rooftops and other sheltered spots outside the house in the summer)
I'm not inclined to read too much into my dream where I was Spiderman, though - - ;)
On the brain/soul connection, reincarnation, etc.
Date: 2004-02-08 06:36 pm (UTC)On the one hand, thoughts and emotion are undeniably a physical, biological function. This fact hit home with me when I first started taking anti-depressant medications, and noticing that they really did make a difference. Our minds and bodies are unquestionably linked to each other, and illness in one afflicts the whole.
Having said that...
I do often wonder that if there IS a soul, how much of it is "me" and how much of it is just biology? Assuming something persists after physical death, can the "soul" still be said to have a recognizable identity, given that it's free of the amino acids and neurotransmitters that inform the body it formerly inhabited? Or does that energy just become part of a greater energy, without individuation? Perhaps the latter, as most of us don't remember any former lives.
Or do we just stop? Logically, scientifically, this makes the most sense - until you bring the conservation of energy into it. Frankly, I don't know that I like the idea that we just stop, though I can't imagine we suffer much if that is the case.
Re: past lives: there is the matter of people who know quantifiable facts of people who have lived before them, but it's never been definitely established that they weren't just remembering something they heard or saw on tv somewhere. I don't rule it out completely though, if only because I kind of like the idea that I get a do-over on some things.
Re: my dream: I just don't know. Sometimes my dreams are so vivid I do wonder about past lives, and I've even entertained the idea of possible out of body experiences (again, if you believe in those).
I do record whatever dreams I remember in detail because at the very least, I figure it's my mind doing some overtime, trying to tell me something. I like to read this one as emphasizing the pleasures of a simple life, at least so far.
Re: On the brain/soul connection, reincarnation, etc.
Date: 2004-02-08 06:50 pm (UTC)I believe that sometimes dreams are no more then our minds cleaning out the cobwebs.
Char....who also believes messages are sent to us by our bodies and our brains during sleep such as the recent dreams where the laundry was complaining and the house was bitching about how dirty she had let it become.
Re: On the brain/soul connection, reincarnation, etc.
Date: 2004-02-08 07:08 pm (UTC)No, what made the dream unusual was 1) the incredible shrinking room 2) that I was a guy and 3) the incredible damp. Usually physical sensations aren't very clear in my dreams but in this one it was crystal clear - everything was cool and wet, even the air, even indoors - like after a late winter/early spring rain.
Re: On the brain/soul connection, reincarnation, etc.
Date: 2004-02-12 05:53 pm (UTC)Re: soul-energy. I believe in the individuation that the Egyptians developed:
The Ka: the double of ourselves which inhabits our body, our spirit, the impersonal life force
The Ba: the personality, the individuality of a person. (Death forces the Ba and the Ka apart. In brain-dead bodies, the Ka inhabits the body while the Ba has left.)
The Akh: made of the Ka and Ba when they are integrated after a person fully dies into what we think of as a "soul"
The Ren: the true name of a man -- after their secret naming ceremonies, people in Egypt went through their entire lives with a nickname so that no one would have power over them by knowing their real names
The Khaibit or Shewet: the shadow of a man -- the unconscious mind -- and entity of great power and capable of great speed.
These are all different parts of ourselves, and in this incarnation or embodyment, I think the Ka is stable and transfers from lifetime to lifetime, but the Ba is only for *this* lifetime. I hate to be cheezy and refer back to the Egyptians so lightly, but their entire culture was focused on the next life, and they did manage to figure a few nifty things things out in their 4000 years of civilization. :)
Re: On the brain/soul connection, reincarnation, etc.
Date: 2004-02-13 05:17 am (UTC)Re: the Egyptian division of the soul/energy: I seem to remember reading something about this before; certainly about the funerary practices designed to ease the Ka's voyage to the afterlife. It's a tidy, sensible theory, I suppose, to divide one's individual personality from the more general energy that animates a living body.
Very interesting... :)
Re: Physics, my dear
Date: 2004-02-09 01:33 am (UTC)an interesting similarity to math, sinus and cosinus and π = 360 degree: Cos(φ) = sin(φ + π/2) where we repeatedly crosses 0 swinging back and forth from (-1) to (1).
if I remember correctly that is ;)
Re: Physics, my dear
Date: 2004-02-12 05:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-08 11:54 pm (UTC)