Guys wtf are dreams?

>Are they a window into the unconscious?
Of course. Once I started understanding mine this became appearent. My dreams even used 'subconscious' to describe themself sometimes.

>What about dream analysis are there any legit books about understanding your dreams?
A lot of dreams use a private language of symbols that are very personal. One of my dreams used the religion of Islam to represent something dissoaciated with me, because it's such a foreign thing to me. It said 'this is like Islam, it's nothing like you'

As a result you can't get a dream dictionary which tells you what each symbol means. What you can do is learn the general theory and patterns by which symbols operate. You can also learn symbols that are very common, what Jung would say are part of the collective uncoscious. For instance that water represents the unconscious. Or how to recognize the anima or shadow when they appear.

I found Man and his Symbols useful for this. I have not read dreams.

I'm on the last chapter of dreams, its a tough read not much fun but being aware of the symbols and direction structure enhances the experience

get a dream diary making it routine helps most, look up lucid dreaming. You'll spend 1/3 of your life asleep might as well put your unconscious to work while you do.

some dreams are reminiscent of the psychedelic experience I even had a "waking up moment" before waking up, recently been seeing myself in mirrors within the dream

when you start getting dreams that are trying to warn you of something look up Warrior King Magician Lover

I've seen something I'd describe almost the same way several times in my dreams. Each time I'm also in a dense, evil forest, and it's guarding the exit.

>Guys wtf are dreams?
God's pranks.

more than psychedelic experiences i think dreams look like delirant expieriences like the once you might get from salvia or high fever, sleep deprivation, light form of psychosis. sleep supplements who work on serotonin ime tend to give more order to dreams just like lsd makes the world seem more structured, in a very forced pattern

Often it creates a story around a feeling
f.e. i once had a dream where i killed someone in a metro and i thought 'fuck now im going to jail' and i felt that realisation i fucked up.
The same feeling was present in another dream where i came to a class totally unprepared for an important exam.

>when you start getting dreams that are trying to warn you of something look up Warrior King Magician Lover

Why.

Is this book good or is it just a meme? I read up about it a bit and it sounds like it could be legit but it also sounds like it could be retarded

Here’s what is apparent;

-Some dreams are clearly meaningful. They are directly about things you’ve experienced, and involve people you know, or are about events you’ve experienced or are anticipating.

-Dreams have the capacity to integrate in physical stimulation. We’ve all experienced the sound of our alarm being integrated into a dream before realizing what we are hearing. Experiments indicate that sensation on our skin can also be integrated in on some circumstances. In this context dreams could be thought of as a mechanism to enable us to stay asleep while experiencing disturbances.

-We also have dreams which actually wake us from sleep (nightmares) so dreams aren’t exclusively to keep us asleep.

All these facts are acknowledged by Freud. He postulates that all dreams have some sort of meaning, or rather, all dreams are built of things in people’s memories, and thus contain some information about the minds of people who experience the dreams.

Freud tells us that universal dream symbol dictionaries are impossible to construct, because it’s not any particular thing that means anything, but the relationship of different things in the dream content in relation to the individual’s own history which create meaningful content.

The most common theory of dreams today is just that dreams are random neural firings, strung together by our brains interpretation after the fact. This isn’t actually incompatible with Freud broadest notions, if you say that the firing isn’t totally random, but actually has some rough pattern. The degree to which it’s random would explain why our dreams aren’t straightforward but instead have a difference between its manifest content and its latent content.

Frankly how Freud’s notion of therapy ends up treating dreams or association as a sort of ink blot image, who’s goal is to try to encourage the patient to reflect on their own mind, motivations, traumas, and so on.

If you read The Interpretation of Dreams I find nothing that a materialist minded, science oriented person would strenuously object to. There is a lot you can object to in Freud’s own practice, and his methodologies, but while I wouldn’t say Freud is ‘correct’, I don’t think he can be as easily dismissed as some would suggest.

I believe dreams are very underrated:

1. I go to bed angry as hell at something like housemates making noise or family member acting like an idiot. I dream about fighting someone and absolutely using all my energy to stay alive. I wake up relatively peaceful.

2. I dream about desiring a woman and wanting to fuck her. She becomes undressed and I'm ready to penetrate. However the closer I get to sticking my dick inside her the more she starts to turn into a random object, and the more surreal the dreamworld becomes, until I end up waking up just as my dick is about to touch "her". I wake up desiring a girlfriend and renew my pursuit of finding one, i.e. my brain knows that letting me fuck girls in my dreams will discourage me from pursuing penetration IRL.

3. I join a soccer team and am eager to impress. I play alright but still I think all the time about improving my skills. I dream about running extremely slowly on a soccer pitch, falling over often and barely able to kick the ball. I am extremely embarrassed and frustrated. I wake up even more prepared to focus on not moving slowly or miss-kicking a ball in IRL.

4. I worry both about being too weak to defend myself (e.g. against a pack of niggers) and also against the weight of the world's expectations. I dream about being attacked by a stranger and only being able to throw slow, ineffective punches (which obviously miss the target because they're so slow) while barely protecting myself against the stranger's more powerful punches. I wake up more concentrated on aiming punches properly if need be, and also more prepared to aggressively secure my situation against an overwhelming world.
Etc.

Symbolically dreams are very informative and allow you to appreciate your past and your actions by interpreting what things in a dream (e.g. a river, a fairground) represent as well what your journey to and from these places represents in that context. Without going into details, I experienced a very lengthy dream last year which basically summarized my entire life until that point and the "journey" I had been on and after interpreting it that way (subjective of course, so open for any interpretation) I felt a sense of detached calmness about my life despite my many failings. Dreams are "wise" in that sense because they don't provide a clear answer, as they could do simply by writing it out on a piece of paper and having us dream of reading it.

Dreams are also a great training simulator to prepare one for the real world by introducing fears into the brain and by encouraging the brain to prepare itself (subconsciously) for fights etc. I imagine the reason animals dream (e.g. dogs running) is that they are training themselves for pursuing prey and for outrunning larger predators. I think this is the reason children dream far more vividly than adults, as their impressions become systemized in their brains and their subconscious works behind the scenes to identify and mitigate potential threats.

>Freud tells us that universal dream symbol dictionaries are impossible to construct, because it’s not any particular thing that means anything, but the relationship of different things in the dream content in relation to the individual’s own history which create meaningful content.

This is definitely true. My sister has a 400+ page book about dream symbolism and it's fucking garbage. Dreams are so subjective that personally I feel intense tabboo-like anxiety when I consider writing them out online as if it somehow spiritually wrong. I know some cultures which have a tradition of ingesting psychoactive drugs (Iboga etc) also say there is a curse on whoever has such an experience and tells others about it. I think there's something to it, if only my own paranoia.

I'm unsure of the value of sleep paralysis however.

In my first year at university I experienced it every night for several weeks. It really concerned me to the point where I didn't want to sleep. Every night I would wake up in my bed inside a dream, and perhaps half the time I'd know I was dreaming and knew what would happen next. I either kept my eyes shut and waited it out, or I had to find some "trigger" to remind me I was dreaming so that I'd wake up, these triggers being a mirror on my desk which I knew wouldn't show my reflection, or a lightswitch which wouldn't work etc. Very scary stuff. I also knew that opening the door of my room, which I felt compelled to do despite my hands moving slowly, would result in a dark shadowy figure standing on the other side rushing and attacking me. Once or twice this figure was the Muslim guy who lived in the room next door, and in one dream he rushed in pinned me down and said in a frenzied voice "you shouldn't swear, there are girls in this building!". I never have sleep paralysis any more but I may take the time at some point to work out why I did experience it then.

>yfw every thread on Veeky Forums is bad
>99% of posters write like they’re unemployable in any writing related activity
>every single open ended thread is filled with either people regurgitating text books and graduate professors or just riffing off their 10th grade level consciousness
>it will never get better
>fluid intelligence is dropping like an anvil off a building in every single western nation especially uk and us
>no one notices how all the posts have the same syntax, diction and vocabulary
>coherent explication of one’s ideas isn’t possible anymore because of sensitivity and political polarization
>memes exacerbate all of these issues by giving users rote response cop-outs that are esoteric and thus allow for one to feel accomplished in thought without having thought anything
>the subtle apperception of reality that schelling, goethe, spengler talked about has died in the species
>our race will fall beneath the waves of time without leaving a single trace
>there are actual pedophiles and jew world order conspiracy theorists openly tolerated by the mods
REALLY MAKES YOU THINK

>women in my life
aw lucky

Carl Jung repeatedly stated that he believed dreams were not bound by the constrictions of time and that the future, though hazy and nearly indistinguishable, could be glimpsed through them.
I've had similar experiences of and have a view of dreams very similar to his.

subconscious is so wise man

Dreams are your waking brain listening to and being spoken to by your unconscious. (You) are not what you thought.

Almost every single dream I have is me fighting people to the death. In another dream, I fall through the floor into the basement and am surrounded by demonic entities while suspended, unable to move. Not sure what they mean.

Criticism - solution = whine
This is a bad post.

this is how tech, vc and entertainment industry people think. just look at that internalized judeo-protestant nihilism, marvelous. and it'll all end with both cultures being wiped from the place of the earth, all the kids with nebula fire in their eyes, giant neuroptic feeds hooked into their visual cortices watching murder simulation suites 24/7 while they're ground into sludge writing maintenance code for the smart hive. I like the use of arithmetic to convey that the value in need is not being provided by the order. We NEEd solutions AND criticism. If not, we're not buying sorry. We'd rather not see the issue if we can't replace the faulty machinery. That's business minded, market oriented stuff. You'll learn about it if you ever leave your NEET hovel

I don't agree with your pessimism. The internet makes the situation seem worse than it is, because you are exposed to so many retards that you start believing that everything is falling down. It's the "invasion of imbeciles" as Eco called it. And memes (in the form of propaganda, commonplaces and whatnot) have always existed and have always tainted any kind of discourse, but I agree that they might be dangerous when coupled with the increasingly important hyperreality of the internet. Did you notice how your post follows the same old scheme of the "wall of greentext that depicts an apocalyptic situation", by the way? Pretty funny.

Latent brain activity. Your brain naturally constructs an "experience", if it, especially the parts responsible for directing the rest of the body, are inactive. Then the perception relates to reality less and less. Content for dreams are drawn from chaotic (complicated) brain activity, recent (or recently considered, for example: you spent a long time deliberating on a major past event in your life) memories, and stimuli that you are not aware you are taking in (as you're asleep). Basically, it's just a side-effect of what your brain naturally and automatically does.

And it’s this sort of think that underlies a lot of conflict between Freud and Jung. Freud maintains that all “symbols” in dreams are symbolic of things in the individuals life, and the if there are commonalities among large numbers of people it’s either deriving from experiences common in that society (worrying about employment for example) or biological phenomena (the experience of birth or something), while Jung wanted to suggest there was a lot more universals, relating to his ‘collective Unconscious’

When you mention ‘the value’ I’m not sure if you are referring to a sort of adaptive, evolutionary value, but sleep paralysis is almost certainly not adaptive, it’s a sort of “spandrel”, and accidental side effect.

Sleep paralysis makes a lot of sense when you are asleep, so you don’t act out your dreams. Without it we put ourselves at serious risk of doing possibly harmful things in the night. So the body errs on the side of more paralysis, rather than less.

so cringey of Jung. Freud's theories are much more likely to be true

>Who are "tech, vc and entertainment industry people" and why am I like them?
>If I'm reading the third sentence properly, I agree with the notion that we're reaching a dangerous levels of degraded cognition due to the endless entertainment provisions.
>Citing arithmetic without providing any arithmetic does not qualify as a proposed solution and "the order" is not a force that can be charged with providing beneficial services. They exist to trade services for wealth.
> Determining that I must be a regressive manchild because I criticized your inarticulate rambling is an unsubstantiated and inaccurate conclusion.

This wall of text is nearly incomprehensible. I strongly suggest writing/storytelling classes if articulating these thoughts is really that important.
This is a bad post, as well.

Sleeping is boring.
Creativity emerges from subconsciousness (all of the mind is, in actuality, "one").
The subconscious is remains awake, and, "you" got nothing else to do. And so you dream.
This doesn't really say what the why of any one specific dream is.

i rarely dream anymore. which according to freud is a good thing. but i kinda miss it.

Is it possible that all my dreams are easy to interpret (at least for me,) and that my dreams lack symbolism?

They’re all very straightforward. I feel like shit and I want to die, and I like watching combat footage - I dream about fighting. I feel grief over losing someone - I dream about him/her. I feel bad over a break up - I dream about breaking up. I’m nostalgic - I dream about my childhood friends, places, etc.
Once I spent a few days looking at Outrun-influenced art for a project, and a break up was on my mind - We break up on familiar streets covered in neon.
I can sometimes predict what I’m going to dream and I try to “make myself dream” of specific things by thinking about them before I go to sleep.
I’ve never understood dream-symbolism because of this, there’s not much left to analyze.

What did Europeans traditionally believe dreams were? Pre-Freud, pre-Jung, etc. Is there an opposing school of thought?

generally, my dreams involve the situations from the tv shows I currently watch, mixed with my waifu. those dreams are very repetitive, but they are not real dreams: it is just what I imagine before sleeping, then they carry on a bit on their own...
Sometimes, I dream of something bad happening to me and then i wake up.
Fortunately, I rarely dreams and I do not care about them

I do not dream anymore. I suppose I must either be some soulless man with no subconscious or I havent fallen asleep properly for decades.
id wager they saw them as meaningful visions of some regard. Ill be astonished if there werent some witches or wise women who claimed to understand them, in fact, i bet there still are.

>99% of posters write like they’re unemployable in any writing related activity
Because people are writing on a fucking image board on the internet not applying for a job you fuckwit

>>no one notices how all the posts have the same syntax, diction and vocabulary
>no one notices how all the posts are written in the same language using common prose
wtf do you expect you mongoloid? Youre on a laotian esoteric mysticism appreciation website and a relatively slow board of said website - people are going to be of a similar character.
>>coherent explication of one’s ideas isn’t possible anymore because of sensitivity and political polarization
No, youre just a buffoon who falls for bait or is himself too sensitive.
>>there are actual pedophiles and jew world order conspiracy theorists openly tolerated by the mods
and this makes me think youre the sensitive one. If youre going to dismiss the 'jew world order conspiracy theorists' out of hand then youre the culprit here. If theyre making an argument in good faith (which they may well not be) then respond in good faith and either logic will win out or one side is obstinate. There can be no denying the preponderance of jews in influential positions and poo-pooing concerns people may have will only inflame them.
>>the subtle apperception of reality that schelling, goethe, spengler talked about has died in the species
Do you believe its died in you? Do you ever suppose that more than 1% of the world's population honestly appreciated spengler at any given time? The vast majority of people (even ignoring africa, south america and india) are mere simpletons content to drink, fuck and do nothing. Youre looking back on history (and i too despise modernity but am not so blind) and looking only at the highest areas. People have not changed so fundamentally - they are always a symptom of their times and the society set by the elite.

I don't know what Freud might say about dreams, but for the past 7 years I've had nothing but dreams that come to reality, though at a much later date. For instance, in the 7th grade, I had a dream I was in a small classroom with people I didn't know that had a lot of wind circulation in the room, and I had rested my head and arms on a school desk. I was feeling kinda hazey in the dream and unable to think clearly, though in the back of my mind I was continously wondering "where am I? what is this place?". Flash forward to 11th grade, I was in a new school and it's the end of the term. Being sort of sleep deprived, I took a nap, and instantly I felt de ja vu.
There's been similar instances that have occurred to me over the past few years, where I recollect dreams from when I was a child that now have became a reality, as well as this strange reoccurring dream that thankfully stopped a few years ago, I think about 2 years exactly.

>le I don't dream maymay
Everyone dreams, you just aren't remembering your dreams.

I once had a dream that I was laying awake in my bed, and suddenly felt like I was dying. I had this overwhelming thought in the back of my head saying "I'm dying. I'm waking up." I could feel myself waking up, and the closer I got to being awake I was the closer I was to dying and the more it hurt. In my dream I was staring at the ceiling, and when I fully woke up it happened with a snap, like just before you hit the ground or whatever in a dream, opened my eyes and was in the exact same spot on my bed as in my dream.

>literature board

My thoughts on dreams are that they are only meaningful if you actually act upon what you learn from them. A lot of people seem to talk about dreams as if they are all either meaningful or pointless. If you make a conscious effort to learn from your dreams and try to understand what the experience meant to you then you can find some meaning in them.

For example i had a dream once that i was on a plane and the pilot was a year younger than me, and i felt bad that someone younger than me already had a good, successful job. This was a reflection of what i was going through at the time, since i was constantly worrying if i was behind in life. Turns out my situation wasn't so bad, but comparing myself to a person that only existed in my dream actually helped me realise that i should work harder.

There's a million things to be extrapolated from your dreams, it's all about whether or not you actually think about them enough to learn anything "meaningful".