Dreams in Times of the Highly Weird

[Joe Hillshoist]

I used to have ww3 dreams. Pretty mucch from the time I was old enough to know about nukes to the end of the cold war, tho they chilled after about 15.

i always survived and had to deal with the aftermath.

I actually think one of these dreams may have been about 911.

It was rushing around the streets of some city with a couple of tall skyscrapers on fire and everyone panicking. Nothing else just chaos on a sreet.

That was an 80s dream too.

So I assumed it was one of those ww3 ones, till that day 5 and a half years ago.

Two thers that stand out are these:

A good friend died of cancer in his early 20s.

The night he died I dreamt I saw his car driving down the street past where I lived in Richmond, the dream was perfect for a change in that it was like waking no weird dream bits.

Till the car went by with no one driving and his mum looking out the back window at me with tears streaming down her face. very upset.

I was out of contact with him at that time, hadn't seen him for at least 5 or 6 months. He was in remission last I saw of him.

That was on a saturday night, and I had forgotten by the morning.

Till tuesday. I was dreaming I was in the house I lived in at the time and just woke up, so I thought I had really woken up. A bunch of friends were in the front room spinning out. It was a housemates room - they shouldn't have been there. And the compass felt like it was out by 90 degrees, ie N was actually W. They were pointing outside but didn';t want to leave the house.

Outside the sky looked like it did in that pic on Jeff's Red Sky post on the blog.

There were people there and they were all panicking. Its the end of the world, there is a nuclear missile on the way. we have abt 30 seconds left.

At this pioint I shat myself, cos I thought I was actually awake. In any previous nuke dream I knew I was dreaming on some level, even tho it was so real to experience. my guts went to ice and I felt really pissed off that this was it. This was a couple of years after the Wall came down in Berlin. So I also felt incredibly ripped off. I thought that rubbish had passed.

We saw the missile coming in, in fact it was a bit like the last scene in "Smoke em if you got em."

I turned seeing as I was gonna die, I thought, I wonder iof I can race the explosion to the end of the street?

Turned around and took off.

I alomost beat it. A few metres short it caught me, and as I felt my legs start to incinerate the phone went and I woke up.

It was mum, and from the tone of her voice I knew something was up. I immediately thought my bro, or Dad had died.

When she told me about Sean, my friend, and how he had died on Satiurday night, my first feeing was relief for my brother and Dad. Only a split second of, it before I realised that he was dead. And I never fely guilty about that. But definitely sad. The funeral was that day or the next.

As I hung up the phone, I thought about the dream I had about his mum on Saturday night.

As far as I knew he was fine. So why did I dream about his mum the night he died?

I spose that was one of them things that helped convince me about dreams being more complicated and strange than the accepted dogma about them would suggest. That was 15 years ago this year actually.

[anothershamus]

Yeah I've been having some really crazy dreams. Showing up to burning man with a suitcase full of casual street clothes no water, no tent, no food, hanging out at the pyramids with THREE women getting all freaky. Very vivid and I thought I was really there. Been off the booze since the 1st. really helps focus the brain worms. (see related post)

[erosoplier]

Joe, do you remember the dream interpreter on jjj back when Angela Katterns did the morning slot? I forget her name, but she wasn't that bad - she lasted quite a while, which says something on its own. And there's no one out there like her today, which says someting about how out of touch we are with things today. I remember sitting in a class at uni after someone had related a dream - a blatant "questioning-authority" dream writ large - when the lecturer (teaching a course on psychoanalysis, mind you) informed us that "dreams are just meaningless junk - it's what your brain does at night to unwind, there's no need to try to get anything out of them or even remember them, just dreaming them is enough." Knowing looks shot back and forth across the room - we knew his dream could be interpreted, and we knew this in large part due to the assistance of the jjj dream lady (or maybe just a general Jungian/archetypes approach to dreams), but it wasn't worth the effort/risk of trying to convince the lecturer of this.

Anyway, I'm on my third glass of wine, so I'm well prepared to say a few more things about dreams. The dreams you are willing to share in a forum like this are generally "writ-large" dreams - they are more "archetypal" - they have a broader social relevance which makes it appropriate to share in an open-ish forum. But they are always personal, of course. And dreams like these use truisms as a basic unit. anothershamus, your dream barely needs any interpreting, except I'd really like to know what getting all freaky with 3 other girls involved...oh hang on, I think I know now (...no wonder they were strong enough to make you change your routine behaviour a bit!).

Sunny. What did Jung say? Every character in one's dreams does in some way represent you-the-dreamer? You are in some respect every character in your dreams. You are a product of your entire family. You are the only person for certain who represents your mother in the here-and-now. All the wisdom and knowing of your entire family is contained in what you are today. You dream of the characters of your family, but it's really about what they've made you, not about them themselves. (Unless, of course, it turns out it is about them themselves!).

One odd idea that I try to keep in mind is Freud's dictum that dreams use symbols in order to keep the dreamer asleep. Some of the things your mind wishes to deal with would, quite simply, wake you from your sleep if you thought about them in straight-forward terms, so your mind disguises them. Simple as that, according to Freud. So a lot of the time the disguises are silly, flippant, ridiculous...but necessary in order to keep you sleeping. (I'm sure most upon hearing this, if like me, will be truly astounded by what "disguises" the mind will choose to put up with so as to avoid being awoken from sleep!)

The rest of your dream also barely needs interpreting Sunny - is that big jet the US forces coming to grief? All the while, sensible person that you are, you are initially getting your house in order (your house now, not the house of your childhood - the order of the house of your childhood helps you know how to order your life today), but when shit happens you are ready to start dealing with new dangerous situations as they arise. It doesn't mean that US forces are going to come to grief, it just means that you are concerned about that possibility.

I'm most comfortable talking about dreams in terms of them being some kind of re-capping of the day's events in the mind of the dreamer, but I've heard enough stories, like Joe's about the death of his friend, to know that some weird shit goes on. I'll leave it to someone else to say a few things about those kind of dreams.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Yeah erosoplier i do. but I can't for the life of me think of here name. She was good tho.

There is something about dreamig that is odd, and something that reflects what is going on in you at the time. Dunno where, if at all, that they cross over.

I used to have those dreams of being chased, by a massive red eyed werewolf, as a kid. they stopped when one night I turned around to face it. I didn't give a fuck anymore and was sick of running. I don't think that dream needs any interpretation, and even if there was a further reality beyond "just a dream" its kind of irrelevent, cos I took what I really needed from it.

Eroso, did you know that the original concept of the dreamtime was actually a bit of a mistranslation. the word that was used is a root word that means eternity and dreaming. And its original context was "the eternal" but they were problems in translation. Interesting the way those two concepts are linked.

Also reminds me of T McKenna, and his insistance that the only quantum states we were really exposed to were dreaming and hallucinating. Maybe not the only states, but ... I forget it was something like that.

I have had some truly weird dreams over the years, not cos of the content, but the possible implications.

Were you at Monash btw?

[sunny]

erosoplier, you interpretation fits with what I've been thinking, tho I think the big jet is more representative of the Ship of State as opposed to just troops, exemplified by the fact that I'm at "home" in the dream.

And you are right- I have been trying to "get my house in order" to better deal with the coming chaos, as well as thinking of ways to survive it once we are in the thick of things. My dream presented to me a solution of sorts. Perhaps I should buy a farm in my childhood nest, plant a garden, raise some chickens and cows, and hopefully, wait the whole thing out in relative peace.

[erosoplier]

You're up late Joe!

I can't say that I'm up to speed with the dreamtime. I think I remember you mentioning this before - that the dreamtime is "now," not "back then" - is that what you're saying? It's an idea worth pondering.

I went to ANU - I've just arrived back in Canberra today actually, house-sitting for two weeks. And I've got the McKenna boys "The Invisible Landscape" for holiday reading. I've only ever read "Food of the Gods" in the past. I hope the former is as stimulating as the latter was.

[erosoplier]

Sunny. That's the really annoying thing about dreams - even when you manage to glean a whole lot of meaning out of them, you still may not be sure whether they're giving you actual advice on what to do! I can certainly think of worse places to end up than on your own farm though.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Way to late.

I was gonna watch rage but it turned out they had 5 and a half hours of Fuucking madonna, well only a bit was the actual madonna sex thing. So I did a "Dark side of the Rainbow" thing.

I have been up real late lately.

I completely stopped choofing the other day, just for a break, and it definitely plays with your sleeping habits. But I am hopefully back at work on Monday, or at least this week, so it'll be back to 7 am starts.

I was at the indig college at scu in Lismore and thats where I got the exposure to alot of the dreamtime ideas and how the culture works.

It fits with other ideas I have come across, even as some form of Invisible Landscape. Songlines and all that goes with them.

I have pages and pages of course notes, but no scanner and not the heart to type chunks out, or I have already had more than a few links to back the ideas up.

Its not so much now, as always here. It happens not so much in the landscape we observe, but in a mythical one that is superimposed over it, or even makes up the foundations.

Canberra.... were you there for the fires?

I actually have some old family friends fromm Canberra, one's a geologist and seismologist, the other a steel drum player from Trinidad.

A good mate went there too.

Its bloody cold tho. Spent a week at ADFA back in87, The army and Air Force were head hunting me believe it or not. I did the selection process that year. Faled the psyche test.

they said come back when you learn how to tke orders. That was 20 years ago this year....

I am so glad that never happened.

back to the Invisible Landscape.

Thats a dense, heavy book. Well worth the read. I dunno how much still stacks up in ref to todays scientific understanding, probably a bit, but its v interesting all the same. but a slog.

Can't wait to hear your thoughts.

No wild dreams last night tho, just one of a giant cow in the paddock. A neighbour had a bull that size once, got out, we locked it up in here, got out again and killed another neighbours prize bull. That happened a couple of years ago and hasn't remotely been on my mind lately.

Maybe thats what your lecturer had in mind when he wrote off dreams. that sort of nothing dream that sometimes seems to be a recycling of images. I dunno dreams are weird.

[marykmusic]

Dreams are all kinds of things, including weird.

The "Invisible Landscape" is a potent idea; we can use it to describe waking daydreams as well. I believe it's like other dimensions which are here, where we are, in the Now, and yet not-here.

For example, the Tuatha de Dannaan were inhabitants of Ireland when the Celts from Spain arrived... and won the sturggle for the territory. But not really, because the Tuatha merely retreated into another dimension, sometimes visible and audible to the new inhabitants, but usually not. Except, of course, at sacred springs and places like that. They have come down in modern legends as the Little People, or Faerie, or whatever. They also inhabit people's dreams.

Because I no longer "believe" in linear time, but feel that it's all Now, and yet also subscribe to reincarnation... this is explained by calling it "parallel lives." Sometimes I get in touch with another piece of my soul, and teach, and learn, and participate. This is most prevalent while sleeping, and yet it isn't really a dream to me.

I've also learned to travel like this while awake, on demand and/or need. What happens to my other "selves" happens to me as well.

Some people learn about astral traveling, which is also much different than a dream, despite it happening while asleep. This is a big part, I think, of what many call "lucid dreaming."

There is truly a large subject here, and we've only begun to scratch the surface. Write on! --MaryK

[Jeff]

I had one about 10 nights ago that shook me awake.

I'd fallen asleep in my office/spare bedroom, and was dreaming something I don't recall. But that dream was suddenly interrupted by a brief and vivid impression of a large, dark figure seemingly wearing a white mask (or perhaps it was an impassive and very pale face) enter the room rapidly and rather robotically. I immediately forced myself awake.

It was the abruptness of it - the where the hell did that come from? - that was so disturbing.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Jeff my wife had a similar thing happen, tho it was more of either a robotic critter, or one that had a bit of tech on it. Ever heard that cyberpunk saying, where someone iss described as a gargoyle?

Ie someone who has so much tech on them that they are almost a cyborg.

The sens eshe got was very similar to yours, although the figure was not dark with the white face, it was all pale.

I had a sense of presence in the room, and robotic is a good description of it.

As I started to explain that I had this weird thing happen the other night, he interrupted. He spoke in a tone I rarely hear from him. He was serious and steady and and sounded 1000 years old.

"When that happens this is what you do:

Get back into your body and wake up. Gather your power and Get angry. And direct it at whats attacking you. Don't hold back."

Thats my fathers advice, from here:



About a quarter down the page.

Did the impression carry over once you were awake? Did the presence still feel like it was there?

Even there in your minds eye, but not in the room?

Edit -. Dads advice was in realtion to a different event, Ang's thing happened within 6 months of that other event. (Which is described on the link)

[erosoplier]

Funny how often the most vivid dreams will come from cat naps. Sometimes I find I'll get tired at an inappropriate time of day and nod off and be dreaming wildly within minutes - almost as if the whole point of the exercise was to have the dream, not to get a few minutes sleep.


Joe, I wasn't in Canberra for the fires. My brother was - he lost his workplace, and a friend lost his house. Canberra will never be the same - they aren't going to grow the 100's of acres of plantation radiata/Monterey pine back in the affected areas. May not be dinki di Straylian, but they made Canberra unique, and visually pleasing - now there's only brown grass covering hill and dale.

[Jeff]

Did the impression carry over once you were awake? Did the presence still feel like it was there?

Even there in your minds eye, but not in the room?

I wouldn't say so. I was half expecting it to, it had been so vivid, but as soon as I awoke the sense of presence was gone. The image stayed with me, but only as memory.

That's good advice from your father.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Dad's advice is pretty good, Jeff.

He has had an amazing life.

The strangest thing about that little gem is that was the second time I had heard it.

It was in relation to a sleep paralysis/abduction thing that happened to me 10 years ago this coming June Solstice.

As it started I heard him telling me the exact same thing, only I was just drifting off to sleep. So he is also telepathic.

He used exactly the same words and tone of voice in a dream, or whatever it was, then repeated it to me on the phone when I rang to tell him about it in the days following.

When he was young he grew up in Fiji, which has a big Indian population. As a child he was a priest in a temple, not a priest like we understand it, but he used to trance or fit and become possessed by various spirits or Hindu divinities. people would consult with him about it, i think older priests ran the joint, he still lived at home on his folks cane farm.

He only told me this in the last couple of years. But its something I want to know more about. Doesn't talk about it much tho. he is very sceptical about those things when talking to others, tho he obviously believes in them. but if you can't measure it, its hard to make meaningful statements about it to others.

[luv2dive]

Hello all. I've been reading Jeff's blog and this forum for several years, but have not posted until now.

I had a very strange dream about a year after I met my present husband. We had been taking diving lessons, and I dreamed we were on the ocean, taking some time between dives on a raft. A mist was surrounding us, and we could not see far from the raft. Suddenly the mist thinned and I saw my ex-husband "standing" in the mist, seeming to have touble standing, and in obvious distress. He reached out his arm towards me, and I heard him call out my name very clearly and loudly. It went through me like a bolt of lightening, and I immediately woke up, startled. The dream was unlike any other I remember, and left me very puzzled as to what it meant.

I spoke with his sister several weeks later, and heard that while he was cutting a tree with a chainsaw, the tree twisted on the stump, falling badly and breaking his leg severely. The night of my dream, he was in the hospital, sedated, waiting to receive surgery the next morning to reassemble his leg. That totally blew my mind.

I truly believe that his dreaming spirit had called out to my dreaming spirit and somehow, that night, he found me.

Truly spooky.