GENIUS FORUMS

I would like to understand your interpretation of dreams?

Do you remember your dreams, are they in colour, do you lucid dream, Is there a greater meaning to dreams????

Ignorance- I think is a form of containment that keeps me grounded or sane.

I'm not satisfied with my niche. Yet, each time I make progress I become mildly satisfied and therefore create/or uncover errors...

non-existent insanity=sanity...??

...

I read somewhere: "Philosophy is an end to itself" (Meaning(?) of that sort, I'm not sure if my recollection is accurate)

What does that mean?

It brings to mind, whats the point then?

Is that a conclusion that a truly 'enlightened' person would arrive at?

Here's another: Can one see inside a brick?

When I break a brick in half, am I seeing the inside of a brick or just another side?

Is the point to make a point?

The essence of philosophy, what is it? I don't know, so I ask?
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Can anyone follow my reasoning, explain?? What do you think the purpose of these questions are to me, or is it really just to yourself?

MindExpansion wrote:I would like to understand your interpretation of dreams?

Sometimes they are just regurgitations of what your waking life is, and other times they process problems symbolically. One way to get an idea of what they might mean is to look to see if there is a pattern to the themes. Lately all of mine have been no-win situations.

MindExpansion wrote:Do you remember your dreams,

Yes, but due to PTSD I don't dream very often. Part of the condition is it alters the sleep cycle. If I don't write down my dreams immediately after awakening, I often forget them - but I remember the nightmares and the really bad dreams.

MindExpansion wrote:are they in colour,

They are in color, if I get bitten or something I feel the pain - and the pain is often enough to wake me up and for the first moments I am awake, I will still feel the pain but it will quickly go away as soon as I realize where I am, then I fall back asleep and the dream picks up where it left off and it will hurt again.

The other night I had a nightmare that my mother and I were in a wooden rowboat with some man trying to steer it with a long pole. There were a whole bunch of waterspouts (that's what tornadoes are called when they happen in the water) coming at us. The dock was only about 5 feet behind us, but the man thought it would be better to try to steer through the waterspouts, so he pushed the boat further into the inlet. My mother has been dead for 17 years, but in the dream I could see her as clearly as ever - every pore on her face, everything. One of the waterspouts was about to hit the boat, and I felt the boat dipping down, and I awoke just as the spray from the waterspout started hitting me, stinging on my face, but just hitting hard on my arms.

I almost never smell anything in my dreams - but that is the only sensation that I lack there. I rarely eat in my dreams, but when I do, I taste the food. Everything is usually very realistic.

MindExpansion wrote:do you lucid dream,

I was able to do that when I was 17, but after my best suicide attempt, I lost the ability. In exchange, I got these really vivid dreams. Before that attempt, I did not have sensation in my dreams, and that was my cue that I was dreaming. If I pinched myself and it didn't hurt, I was dreaming, and I took full control of my dreams. It was terrible though, because nothing happened unless I made it happen. There are so many tiny movements in even getting a person to walk that I could not concentrate on everything well enough to make it all look natural.

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As for the rest of your posts above, your thoughts got a bit incoherent. I could see several points, but there was no flow to your thought process.
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I remember stories, but never images. I don't know how much sense they make. I think it's mostly just brain thingies going off oddly.


Also, I was talking to some people a few weeks back and we all found that technology often fails to work, if it is present at all. This from people who spend a large portion of our lives on the computer either for fun or just for work.

ME,

Do you remember your dreams,

Yes, 90% of the times; from which, 30% is as bits and pieces.

are they in colour,

Yes, 30% of the times, vivid colors. Others in shades or hues of either grayish, or bluish, or brownish, or a mixture thereoff.

do you lucid dream,

If you mean that do I KNOW that I am dreaming while dreaming, then yes. 80% of the times.

In my experience, there are two point of visual perspectives for the one that is dreaming. One is where one can see ones own self as an actor playing a part in the scene. The other one is as one looks out normally when awake, and sees all others but not himself.

It is mostly in the former point of visual perspective (P1) that one can know that it is a dream. But it is possible through (P2) also, it depends on how used to one is in knowing that it is a dream, through (P1).

If one falls into a cold running river (as in perspective 2) he will feel the cold and wake up gasping for air, just as one feels when actually falling into icy cold waters. (Memory plays a big part).

If (P1) then the feeling may or may not happen, or may be not so intense that one wakes up; it depends on IF one is fully aware that it is a dream, or is subconsciously aware, that reduces the intensity of feeling.

However, if one really knows, it will not affect him; but if he doesn’t, that is even subconsciously; then he too will gasp and “feel” it, irrelevant of the perspective.

Is there a greater meaning to dreams????

No, they are exactly what they are, in comparison to what one can logically consider an otherwise coherent continuity in and of any particular memory of an "I".

Dreams never ever hold a sensible logical continuity from one to another, hence, the only “awake” state that can be considered as “awake” is the one that holds coherent and logically sensible continuity each time one wakes up; irrelevant of one claiming that THIS AWAKE state may well be a dream, because I can never be aware of any other sensible or logical continuity other than the one that makes logical sense to me when awake; and that is this one; the buck stops here.

And if there is some other reality that I really belong to, I will see to it THEN; that is, if and when I find a logical continuity in that. Until then, this is it.

Thinking that this “awake” state may well be a dream, necessarily ends up in regress, because that other state COULD also be a dream, and so on… ad infinitum. Personally, I do not rely on COULD’S, but rather on what IS, logically speaking.

(Percentages are rough estimations, so please don’t start calling me on that)

Elizabeth Isabelle wrote:As for the rest of your posts above, your thoughts got a bit incoherent. I could see several points, but there was no flow to your thought process.

Same here.

ME,

"Philosophy is an end to itself"

What I can interpret this as is…

Philosophy (as in questioning existence as a whole, reasoning.) is the only means that one can reach certainty without relying on any other means other than logical analytical thinking; hence an end in its self.

One also thinks on what thinking itself is, and in knowing so, comes an end to its own means.

I don’t really know though; it is just an attempt to what I think that might mean.

I could see several points, but there was no flow to your thought process.

So, in order for one to gain understanding in the what and why of my written work, I must explore every thought process that had occured and show evidence, in respect to my conclusions or questions? That would require a lot more time and effort. I thought people of such brilliance are capable of filling the blanks.

Most be the reason for miscommunication and confusion.

How do you personally view shamans?

I ask, only because I OD'd by ingesting the plant, Datura, widely know for it's strong, dreamlike, dellirium effects into the spiritual world. One my consider this honesty to be an explanation of my odd, seemingly incoherent answers/questions and ideas. Such an assumption would be false. I have had medical tests done, to which I had passed, without any negative results.

Do shamans gain valuable insight or are they fools (I tend to agree with the latter, but I have little experience to base my answers on, thank you)?
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In contemplation of your answers past/present, I have stumbed upon the ultimate question: Were do I fit in intellectually?





I ask only, because I feel like a lone wolf.

Curious?

O.k that it! From now on, I will proof-read everything before submitting.

Please mind the errors in spelling/grammar, thanks.

MindExpansion wrote:
So, in order for one to gain understanding in the what and why of my written work, I must explore every thought process that had occured and show evidence, in respect to my conclusions or questions? That would require a lot more time and effort.

Well, yes. Frankly. You must be intelligable to communicate, which is the point of a message board...

And besides, exploring your thoughts rather than just babbling them is what will actually help you. Anyone can have a million and one thoughts in a night. Breadth is not a substitute for depth.

I thought people of such brilliance are capable of filling the blanks.

You're yet to demonstrate that we should want to.
It's sort of like word association so far...


I don't mean to be rude or mean, but I really think you need to write these things you're writing here in MSWord and then when you sober up/sleep/whatever other mindaltering thing you're doing try to form coherent thoughts before you post.

Your right, as always...Do you ever get tired of being on top!

I always need to think back, so I can understand why I wrote something a certain way...

Exploration of thought -Now that is interesting!

Thanks Katy!!

I could see several points, but there was no flow to your thought process.

I don't understand what you mean?

MindExpansion wrote:

I could see several points, but there was no flow to your thought process.

I don't understand what you mean?

I mean, you started off talking about dreams, and then you threw in a point about the relationship between ignorance and sanity but did not relate that to the original questions about dreams. You then went on to another seemingly unrelated topic about your level of satisfaction with your niche (without specifying what your niche is) and did not relate your niche or your satisfaction to either of the previous topics. You then bounced back to talking about sanity. Your next post included two unrelated topics about philosophy, and neither related to any of the points in your previous post.

In order for a writing to have flow, it must start with one topic, and whatever point that is brought up must be demonstrated how it relates to the point immediately preceding it. In order for it to have good flow, it should all relate to the same topic. Often the threads here get derailed and go off onto different topics, but at least people try to relate their posts to the previous material, and keep their points in their posts sequential and demonstrate how each point they make relates.
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O.k thanks for the thorough explanation...I'm really not that
dumb Elizabeth, but then, why would I ask that and why would I write the above?

I guess I wanted whoever was reading the thread to answer my questions seperately and try to figure out the meaning...Sort of like a riddle...It can be interpreted in different ways.

Why do dreams happen?

ME,

Do shamans gain valuable insight or are they fools (I tend to agree with the latter, but I have little experience to base my answers on, thank you)?

I ask, only because I OD'd by ingesting the plant, Datura,

Why do you ingest intoxicating plants or drugs when you tend to agree that it might not necessarily lead to valuable insights?

In my opinion; the intoxication that drugs induce are no different or can be stronger than concentrated meditations, or the whirling of the dervishes, or those hours of meditative chants of Buddhist monks. There are more than one ways to experience such spiritual phenomena, and I for one can say that neither of those methods is necessarily required to experience such a phenomena.

All that is really required is to have a strong sense of conviction to achieve an understanding, and that strength comes from having a very strong emotional urge to find truth.

Meditations or whirling or chanting have far more less side-effects than drugs, which actually impairs the capacity of making logical sense of a spiritual phenomena if at all experienced even through ingesting drugs.

So start thinking logically first; and keep a body healthy to retain a healthy and a coherent mind.

Why do dreams happen?

Because we are conscious beings, that have a higher capacity of retaining memory, in comparison to a monkey. And scientific tests have shown that monkeys and chimps also do dream to a certain extent.

When the conscious is relatively switched off the subconscious runs free, the images are not ordered and controled to the normal degree, however I believe you are still a bit conscious ( which is why you can remember and "feel" in the dream ). You only have partial access to the rational and hence you are confronted by the irrational, the Dream World, the closet of memories, hopes, fears, and since the subconscious absorbs the most important and pressing matters that affect you in your environment these matters feature heavily when the sunconscious is "thinking for you", or, more creepily, thinking for itself and for its own survivial. Anyway, my dreams are terrifying and they are sort of warnings and important perceptions of the subconscious. I trust my dreams, and they reveal to me which relationships are dangerous or useless. Sometimes if I see someone walking away from me in a dream I know that that person does not like me or understand me and that I must "stay away". My subconscious seems to reveal things to me that IT has picked up that I did NOT pick up.