Another Night of Dreams

[Craig Maciolek]

I don't mean to bother people with this, and let me know if I should stop, but I like sharing and last night I had three dreams that baffled me because I don't exactly see how they fit into the context of my life. I have lots of dreams that immediately make sense when I wake up, but sometimes - like this morning - I just scratch my head. Normally, I will jot down a few notes when I wake up from dreams, but last night I wasn't in the mind to pay attention until I thought about it all in the morning... So I only remember two of them.

The first, I was in a standard community of people doing normal community things shopping through a market place, getting coffee and whatnot. Then, there was this sense that there was something important to do and certain people in the community who were aware of this sense started moving together in loose formation. I had this sense of just going with the flow not really certain of what was going on, but simply following the feeling. We entered an old building and a large room that had a very old feel to it. As we filed through this room there was a call for people to help neatly stack a huge pile of gold, and being a helping type of guy, I went over to offer a hand. As I approached the pile, I noticed MY two bars of gold that I was holding, and at first I tried to help while holding onto my two bars of gold, but that wasn't working so I put my gold down in order to help better. Shortly after putting MY bars down sudden awareness made me reacted by looking up to see the guards that I had not noticed before, in the old style WWII uniforms, looking at me and I immediately realized that it was a gambit. The guard looked at me and I saw in his eyes that if I tried to grab my gold back they would shoot me for trying to steal from them. Still having that sense of something important and not really being all that concerned about gold, I let it go and moved on. In the next room there was "store" where people were looking through the shelves to get what they needed for the journey. But, since it was only a feeling and no one really knew what to expect people were looking at the basics, however, I like many others didn't have any money... fortunately this "store" had cheap and free things available, except all the free things were used and dirty... in the dream I took an old used and dirty toothbrush because that was all that was available for free. In the next room was nicer things for sale and the people who didn't loose their all their money at the stack, happy to find things for sale that were not disgusting, happily gave all their money to get these nice things. This first dream ended with me standing at the door to the next room and looking through the window. It was a cafeteria with people sitting down and trying to eat the food given to them. Guards were walking the aisles with overt authority, and the people were gagging the food and drink down that I knew was poisoned. My last though before waking up was..."I really don't want to follow this feeling into there."

The second dream started with me floating down through the clouds. I had a sense of having made an escape and I had to keep going to get away. There was another person with me and we were hooked into a parachute and rigging that I didn't fully understand. All I was aware of was that it was working fine. The person with started getting agitated and we started to argue about what to do. There was some fighting and the floating turned more into falling. To me, the fight was about how to work the parachute. Neither of us knew for sure and I was willing to experiment a little, but the other person was being more bold and certain. I decided to let him do what he was going to do and try to counteract his actions a little to stabilize the descent. It was touch and go, but we landed hard on a ledge of a huge cliff; could not see the top or bottom of it and we were trapped there. We were still connected in the parachute rigging and the other person was still fighting for control. After a little while of me simply trying to be still and firm on the little ledge against the fighting of the other person he finally got fed up or something and cut himself free from the rigging and jumped off the ledge without a parachute. I immediately realized that he didn't know about the parachute at all... he only knew that he was tied to me... he was never fighting to control the parachute at all. After he left, I had a chance to look around and saw something that looked like a little foot path, but I couldn't see where it went. It didn't look like it went all that far. I thought about it for a moment and decided that even though I wasn't sure how the parachute worked, I was still connected to it and was all alone now. So, the dream ended with me jumping off the ledge with the awareness that I would learn how it worked on the way down.

I don't remember the third dream. These nights of dreaming leave me exhausted; I think it is because dream time is light sleep, not very restful, and by the third dream I don't stay in that light sleep too long and am too tired to remember much.

Have a good day,
Craig

[michellepetkus]

Hi Craig,

Well if I was to hazard a guess I would say the first dream is a well being dream. An evaluation on how you handle helping others out. Do you sacrifice your health and well being to do it? Money isn't necessarily important but if it hinders your ability to provide healthful things for yourself then you may be overly sacrificing your own well being. I would say take a look to see if you are guilting yourself with some predisposed thinking that you are "suppose" to put everyone else's stuff ahead of yours. Though it is noble and it doesn't seem to bother you, the feelings of obligation my lead you into unhealthy situations (conversations) but you can at least be safe in the knowledge that you know enough to stay away when things get toxic.

The second dream to me seems to be an exercise in understanding control dramas more. People who use control dramas do so because they need to know exactly how things work and where things are going. They are so wrapped up in that need that they actually wind up putting themselves in more peril. They try to control us thinking it will control the situation. You on the other hand have gotten a handle on trusting life. You know there will always be a parachute to get you safely where you want to go.

Ultimately I think this dream seems to indicate you are doing really well. People with control dramas are not and I can see very clearly how that is a very good insight. And one I can definitely apply to my hangup. I can definitely see a tendency of wanting the other drivers to drive how I want them to drive. I have actually been focusing on trust on another issue in my life but it looks like it can apply here too. It's definitely a new way for me to try to approach life. If we can all learn to trust life will go much smoother for us. Definitely a sage message.

Very interesting dreams though I do wonder why you are waking up so tired. Do you wake up a lot during the night. If you do you could be missing out on the deep part of the cycle. A full cycle is 1 and a 1/2 hours. If you wake up every hour on the hour then you are not getting the much needed deep sleep that helps restore and heal the body. Or it could just be that you need to stop dreaming of jumping off cliffs.

I have to tell you a funny one I had a little while back. To cut to the chase I was driving down a road and decided at the last minute to make a right turn only I decided too late and drove myself right off a cliff some place that looked like the grand canyon. Panic immediately swept over me and I thought to myself well that's that, it's all over now and then stopped and looked around and thought how pretty the scenery looked. I woke up before I crashed into a ball of flames but I also woke up laughing a bit about the whole thing. You're not suppose to be looking around gazing at the scenery when you are falling to your death. You are suppose to be screaming all the way down.

Love
Michelle

[Craig Maciolek]

Hello Michelle,

Your insights have helped me see a bigger picture indeed. It is funny how we sometimes miss certain elements until we hear from someone else. I just wish I remembered the last dream. As I have said before, I have always had tons of dreams, but it wasn't until after a friend of mine showed me Tarot Cards that I started seeing these nights with three dreams as the same as doing a three card past, present, and future thing. I don't know if it was always that way, or if in my own understanding of such a structure that my mind simply started to structure the dreams on it's own. Kind of like words and grammar; we have to choose to give words structure so they can hold more meaning. Anyway, I can now see that these dreams, at least from my perspective, hold a bigger picture of a process that I am going through than what I was looking for.

As far as why I am tired, I certainly sleep enough, I just don't think I spend much in the deeper, more restful, part of the sleep cycle. Also, two nights I was awaken by what I call a Boom Dream (that's a link). Something I was able to find out was shortly after the earthquake in Colorado. Yes, I know it sounds crazy, but I have had plenty of experience with these thing now, and while I have always had these, it was the experience with the one told in the story on the other side of that link that made start paying attention more closely. The event has to occur when I am in light sleep mode and it has create an emotional reaction; that is what causes the boom in my head. Most of the time it is nothing more than the equivalent to someone dropping a book on the floor in another room of the house, but the one from the night of the Chinese earthquake was like a bomb in my head. Unfortunately, earthquakes and such are the easiest to confirm a relationship to because the times are readily available. I know I have had such Boom Dreams at the same general times as terrorist attacks in other countries, but they never make the exact time available so I can never be perfectly certain. At any rate, most people don't believe any of this so I just roll with it on my own.

Sounds to me like you dream of driving off a cliff was you, at some higher level, choosing to change. Choosing not to follow the road that is laid out before you anymore and accepting that reality is what we make of it. When I was younger, I had a dream over and over again of being shot to death in an amusement park. Over an over again, I would be doing one thing or another in an amusement park when I would be riddled with bullets from some unseen snipers. Each time I had the dream, I would wake up terrified before I died. But, each time I had the dream I became less and less afraid of it. The dreams stopped when I allowed myself to die in the dream and nothing happened. was maybe 12 or 13 at that time.

Anyway, I don't know if any of this made sense, but thank for the insight.
Craig

[michellepetkus]

Hi Craig,

Ah, you know I don't think I caught the whole Tarot card thing at first but yeah I can see how the two dreams would represent past and present respectfully. It would have indeed been interesting to see what that third dream had to offer but if it is important you will have another one.

Hmm, I never hear of Boom dreams. It sounds like you are in tune with the earth. There have been a few minor earthquakes here in Chicago, or at least they were felt here but I never noticed or ever dreamed about them. Well the next time you have one get yourself out of bed and into a door way for crying out loud.

Hmm, I didn't really look at my dream that way. It kind of felt like a mistake or warning. I needed to watch my rash choices or pay the consequences type of thing. Maybe by stopping and smelling the roses. Well regardless I am now trying to smell more roses and trying to make a leap of faith and trust life so maybe the dream was a bit two fold.

Boy that was some crazy dream to be having as a child. I don't know that I have ever died in a dream. I didn't think it was possible. You do have some very vivid dreams.

Love
Michelle

[Craig Maciolek]

Hello Michelle,

It is my experience that the boom dream are not a connection to the earth, or earthquakes specifically, but instead the intense emotional energy of the people just after such an event. I have had them where the occur just after, or what I can surmise as being just after from the information available, a bomb exploding in a market place. I see it as part of the whole empathic shebang. From my nutty perspective at least... and yes, I have very vivid dreams. I have always found it interesting that there are people who try to control their dreams - speaking of control dramas - I don't know why I would want to.

Have fun,
Craig

[Craig Maciolek]

For your interest. I wrote this a while back...

Imagine a cave about three hundred thousand years ago. In that cave dwelt a pack of prehistoric hominids. Now, these early hominids didn’t have any formal language, but they did communicate; they used grunts and other primitive sounds to communicate their needs. This simple communication evolved by repetition of shared experiences. For example, when a certain male in the pack got horny he made a certain grunt as he set out to fulfill his need. Eventually, everyone in the pack learned what that grunt meant and responded according to their own needs. And, as time passed, mimicry of successful behavior established in that pack that certain grunt to mean horny. How the system works is that the sound wave travels from the mouth of one individual and into the ear of another. The individual that hears the sound reacts to the memory, which is a mental image, making a sound/image pairing, of what that sound meant in the past.

Today, I would argue that most people have the ability to receive and transmit emotional energy, but in terms of emotional communication we are no more advanced than those early hominids. We are capable of transmitting the energy, but only when it is evoke by a direct need. People in our lives will transmit an emotion and we will react to it… over time we develop a memory of the feeling of that energy, which is also mental image – an emotion/image pairing. From my perspective, It is mostly these images that are our dreams. When we fall asleep in front of a television set, our brains try to make sense of the sounds coming into our ears and give us very weird dreams. So too, our dreams are our brains trying to make sense of emotional energy that it is receiving. Sometimes the signal is strong and sometimes the signal is weak. But, more confusingly, sometimes the signal is our own and sometimes it is from someone else.

What makes it difficult is that the mental images we all have are from experiences, and all of our experiences are different. So, if a lawyer has a dream where they are standing naked in front of all their colleagues, we could guess that they were feeling insecure and unprepared. But, if a stripper had that same dream it wouldn’t mean the same thing. However, there are many people who recognize the naked in front of colleagues dream and that is because of the fact we are living in the same cave and have very similar experiences.

So, the long and short of my perspective here is, if we ever wanted to begin communicating more effectively with emotional energy, people would have to parse through their mental images that they know are associated to emotional energy(e.g. dreams) and begin to develop and understanding of the emotional energy/ mental image pairs that we had in common with others. That is, to figure out which emotions evoke what mental images for me, and then find people who share the same understanding. Now, there will never be two people who share all the same emotion/image pairs, so it must start with just the few that some people can find in common.