Hard lessons I've learned from dreams

If you need to give a presentation, the first step is to find some clothes and put them on.

You are enrolled in a class right now.  You don't know it, but you are. There is a test soon.

If you ever, ever dream  that you have to pee in the dream and are heading towards a bathroom to relieve yourself, you better wake yourself up RIGHT NOW.

If you ever dream that you woke up, you have plenty of time, and its ok to turn off your alarm and go back to sleep, you better wake yourself up RIGHT NOW.

If you ever find yourself in a fight-or-flight situation, and you decide to fight, your arms will suddenly become weak and noodle-like.

If you ever find yourself in a fight-or-flight situation, and you decide to flee, your legs will suddenly become weak and noodle-like.

If you find yourself about to engage in sex with a stunningly beautiful partner, you will abruptly wake up.

If you dream you are kissing a dog, and you sleep with a dog...wake up!

Hahahaha yes.  Good points all.

so little time so much to do

The people you've made up on the spot and known for milliseconds have rich backstories and meaningful internal lives.  They evoke the most complex philosophical truths with their words.

The people you've known your whole life can only stare blankly or utter brief, incoherent phrases.

There once was a man from Peru,
who dreamt he was eating his shoe.  
He woke up at night,
with a terrible fright,
to find out his dream had come true.

If you dream you are eating your shoe, you better wake yourself up RIGHT NOW.

My closet isnt a safe place to hide in an alien invasion. Even with a plastic sword.

Dreaming about studying is not a substitute for actually studying.  Even if everything seems so clear and simple when the alarm goes off to get up early to study more before your final exam...  

The real book is never anywhere near as good as the book my subconscious writes to fill in the gap when I fall asleep reading.

Greg Martin wrote:

If you dream you are eating your shoe, you better wake yourself up RIGHT NOW.

LOL that is a HARD lesson indeed!

Catie George wrote:My closet isnt a safe place to hide in an alien invasion. Even with a plastic sword.

YESSS that is one of my most frightening nightmares ever.  Only it was evil versions of the Justice league of America.  My heroes tuned rogue.  Wonder Woman found me.

Apparently there is only one lesson in my life to learn and that is "make sure you have the plane ticket/visa/valid passport/official paperwork before you get to the gate at the airport". Literally half of my dreams are some variation of this.
(The others are mostly "make sure you use the bathroom before getting on the train/plane/boat/spaceship/submarine/camel caravan/etc")

If you need one last calculus class in your last semester of college in order to graduate and start your dream job, you should probably go to at least some of the classes and not forget about it altogether until the morning of the final.

Oh, you reminded me! Me, my family, all my pets, and all of my stuff have been forced to move back into my old college dorm along with a couple of freshman roommates. The reasons why are unclear.

Artie Scott wrote:If you dream you are kissing a dog, and you sleep with a dog...wake up!

Artie, what's wrong with a little kiss? No tongues of course since the dog will always win :)

On a similar, yet more disturbing note, we used to have a Great Dane that somehow could get her tongue into our mouths lightning-fast from several inches away while we were talking to her. We learned really quick that when she got that certain look on her face to back up out of tongue reach, or clamp our mouths shut really tight. We still don't know how she did it. I do miss that old girl.

On a really good night I can fly, and wear ten thousand league footwear.
On a really bad night malevolence personified sits in a dark corner of my room and whispers of hopelessness and doom.
On a really good night, my heroic efforts spring from joy.......never need.
On a really bad night the voice of evil fades with prayer for the people around me.

My closet is filled with a fantastic array of ordinance, aliens dream of keeping me from my closet!

On the nights I dream of making love to the most stunning woman in the world, I wake up and pursue the dream.

Bill Haynes wrote:On a really good night I can fly, and wear ten thousand league footwear.

I was hoping someone would mention flying!  That's a whole 'nother level.  

One big lesson I've learned from my dreams is that you can fall off a cliff and hit the ground...then wake up from it. It's not a dream that I enjoyed though.

I've learned that the universe, and the uncanny and completely unschooled ability of my mind to create confusing images and metaphors to describe and depict it, is indescribably more complicated than I could possibly imagine... and yet I have to believe it because my dreams exist in a reality unto themselves that thankfully only I can have direct access to.

I saw a herd of shetland pony-sized unicorns in a pristine forest meadow.  I felt that favor was coming my way for weeks!  

I've seen myself die several times.   It caused me to pay attention, and be very cautious about my doings for a few days.

I've had a malevolent being paralyze me and tell me that I was under their control.  This caused me to question spirtiual guidance from unproven sources.

I was taught how to fly as a child.  I learned a lot from that crazy cool witch.

I've flown numerous times.  But I can't seem to do it any old time I want, dammit.

I've danced in a sea of rainbow colours with unbounded Love.  Who doesn't want to do that!!!

For a few years, I had a repeated dream theme that I was a revolutionary escaping an Owellian nightmare, and then I got busy in life actually trying to stop it.

Artie Scott wrote:If you dream you are kissing a dog, and you sleep with a dog...wake up!

Sometimes it is just best not to know...

That important rite of passage in your dreaming career: the first time that, in the middle of a dream, you become aware that you're just dreaming.

My epiphany came when I was five years old and is still clear in my memory 61 years later. I was outside playing with our dachshund Pete, and he magically levitated up and over a huge lilac bush. My tiny brain analyzed the possible explanations and came to the obvious conclusion -- it's a dream and until I wake up, anything goes. 'Course, when you're five years old, the concept of anything goes is pretty limited. Except for that hideous kid in the "It's a Good Life" episode of "Twilight Zone", but hey, he was six years old.
It's a Good Life

Lucid dreaming!  It's so cool.  I was taught to keep a dream journal, which prepares your mind to remember the dreams.  When you are doing that consistently, then begin practicing ways you could have turned that dream into something you wanted to do.  Then you also need to practice a dream cue.  Some symbol, word, or totem that when you notice the signs that you're dreaming, you invoke that cue to tell yourself that you're dreaming.  Then at that point you can take control of the dream.  I was able to do it a few times.  It was a very cool experience.  But it also turns off whatever messages your mind was trying to raise to you, if any (that is a particularly controversial area.)

If you happen to be near a tall cliff, or on a roof, or a high building, you are about to fly.
If you are flying, you are about to plummet.
If you are plummeting, you are about to have a transition so bizarre it would even make Fritz the Cat confused.

If you often dream of falling, it's probably a wise thing to make sure there's nothing next to the bed that would hurt, to land on (like the heels on those cowboy boots, or your kid's tonka truck!)- better yet, throw some extra pillows or cushions there - unless of course, you often wake during the night, to pee...

I don't recall ever falling onto a Tonka truck, but the soles of my feet have never recovered from LEGOs.

Rob Lineberger wrote:

Bill Haynes wrote:On a really good night I can fly, and wear ten thousand league footwear.

I was hoping someone would mention flying!  That's a whole 'nother level.  

And when you do fly on the rarest occasions, avoid  hurtling headlong into a large tree at top speed. It doesn’t hurt but it wakes you up and you won’t be able to fly again for months.

My dreams are more fun than my reality.
The hardest lesson I have had to learn is things in your hands in your dreams are not there when you wake up.  :(
Cool things I have bought, things from dumpsters, good books... I wake up, look at my hands and Well FOO! I wanted that!!
Last night it was fabric quilting panels, but they were the size of a quilt, and they were the background for you to applique things to. I had a watery ocean background panel, a backer fabric that matched well, and several fabrics with cool fish and sea life I was going to applique all over it. Well FOO!!
And I buy antique jewelry, china and tools a lot. Well FOO! That matched my set! Or matched that outfit! Or looked useful!
Well FOO!!

:D

Sorry about all the FOO.  I can relate.

I have also learned a hard lesson from dreams.  Let's say you're having anxious dreams near the end of your sleep about how late it's getting. Surely work is half over by now. The train has left without you. You missed your croquet match hours ago. You drag yourself out of bed and toss on some clothes to find that the rooster isn't due to crow for two hours yet, but here you are half dressed in the dark.

Naturally, if you dream that work went really well, you had a great train trip, or you won your croquet match, then you've overslept.

Dinosaurs are not pets.

When stressed, your dreams are trying to tell you what to do next.  You have to listen and trust. Then make some moves.

Dinosaurs? pets? I am sudden very curious about your dreams.

If you dream that somebody did something unforgivable/erotic/absurd to you, and you see them the next day and get all flushed and angry/turned on/inappropriately amused, it's usually not a good idea to tell them about the dream you had about them.

Roberto pokachinni wrote:I've learned that the universe, and the uncanny and completely unschooled ability of my mind to create confusing images and metaphors to describe and depict it, is indescribably more complicated than I could possibly imagine... and yet I have to believe it because my dreams exist in a reality unto themselves that thankfully only I can have direct access to.

Exactly. Images so fantastic, people so interesting and lovable and sceneries so beautiful that leave a yearning for those places. Sometimes those dreams or rather their memory stay with me for years.

@Pearl: I know that disappointment as well! I discover a lipstick (I usually don't wear makeup) that makes me so unbelievably pretty! How come I never discrovered this before? And similar things...
You certainly know Coleridge's poem:
What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in you hand
Ah, what then?

Apart from the coming late, being dressed only partly, flying, being followed by murderers etc. there is one big topic for my cruellest nightmares:
Either in an accident or because it "had to be done" to protect family, I kill a person. I try to hide the body and wreck my brain how I can do that so that absolutely never and under no circumstances anybody could ever find that body. Tantalizing.
Lesson: Never kill a person, and if there is an accident, go to the police and don't ruin your future life.

I SWEAR I woke up in the middle of the night last night to see black hair reaching downward towards me from the gaps in the ceiling boards over my head.  I looked away then back up and it was gone.  Amazing how much I was sure that I was awake.  Fortunately I never have dreams like that, other than last night.  Time to move or maybe just stop watching horror movies in the run up to Halloween!

(I haven't been watching the Grudge, but this is the closest thing I can find....I love long dark hair, but this was not a good dream!)

Anita Martin wrote:
Either in an accident or because it "had to be done" to protect family, I kill a person. I try to hide the body and wreck my brain how I can do that so that absolutely never and under no circumstances anybody could ever find that body. Tantalizing.
Lesson: Never kill a person, and if there is an accident, go to the police and don't ruin your future life.

I'm sorry you have this skillset.  But if I ever do a dream murder and need to escape the dream police now I know who to turn to.

Greg Martin wrote:I SWEAR I woke up in the middle of the night last night to see black hair reaching downward towards me from the gaps in the ceiling boards over my head.  I looked away then back up and it was gone.

That was me.  Just checking in!  Sorry I spooked ya.

Just want to reinforce some things.  Last night I kept dreaming over an over again that I had to pee, and every time I was like, I don't have to pee, I just peed.  But I did it anyway because I know the consequences.  Every time I lay back down I started dreaming about how is is still a half hour before my alarm so its ok to get a little more sleep.  And then I picked up where I left off in my dream about a woman I know and I doing inappropriate/erotic things.

It turns out that last night my power went out and my alarm conked out.  So what I thought was early morning was afternoon.  Six hours later than I'd planned.  So I really did have to pee all those times.  And my dream was lying about the time.  And I did see my friend on facebook and felt like I should mention all the things but realized that would be an error.  It's like my mind is testing these lessons just to spite me.

This thread reminds me, when I was in college I had these kinda disturbing consecutive dreams that picked up where the night before left off. Not repeating dreams, but continuing.

I was in a really crummy relationship and I was swimming long distances almost every night to burn off stress (I think I was at the point in college where I switched areas and was in a lot of real dog work classes while I was working a lot on the side). I would work out to exhaustion late at night, take a shower, stumble home and go to sleep, and then in my dream I would be back in the locker room where the people in that dream world were waiting for me, for us to go do things in that realm. The same world as my daytime one, but sinister (political dictatorship, and I was in the resistance, stealthily carrying out sabotage, looming danger all the time). They were huge, long, detailed dreams that took place where I was living and going to school. I dreaded going to sleep, because I would always wake up exhausted right as the shock troops started banging down the door, or just as I was running away.
Because I went to a pretty big school, I saw lots of unknown people every day and I often found myself doing double-takes because these people were in the dreams. Often they would be acting "suspicious" and I found myself wondering if there was crossover between the two worlds, or if maybe I was losing my mind. It got really scary.

Looking back it is so obvious- the guy I was dating was a very controlling jerkbag and I was dreaming about escaping. The dreams only stopped when I cut him out of my life, and to be honest that decision was probably BECAUSE of the dreams, which pushed me to the edge. So, uh, thanks dream comrades, because things really did get better immediately, and these resistance dreams stopped.

Tereza Okava wrote:

Looking back it is so obvious- the guy I was dating was a very controlling jerkbag and I was dreaming about escaping. The dreams only stopped when I cut him out of my life, and to be honest that decision was probably BECAUSE of the dreams, which pushed me to the edge. So, uh, thanks dream comrades, because things really did get better immediately, and these resistance dreams stopped.

That is terrible and amazing.  That you got the warning, understood it, and heeded it.  I don't know you but I'm proud of you nevertheless.