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A very un settling Dream

A few years ago I had two very reoccurring dreams. In one dream I was driving a car at night very fast down a winding, twisting road and it was very foggy. I could barely see past the front of the car and yet I kept going faster and trying to anticipate the next turn. The what I could barely see vanished. I was still driving at top speed but could not see anything at all. Felt very scarred the whole time.

In the other dream it was also at night, very dark and I was outside and trying to run in a murky field. I could barely move my legs because it felt like I had lead boots on that weighed 50 pounds each. That one also left me feeling scarred.

I really believe our dreams are telling us something about ourselves and our present state. At the time of those dreams I was working night's at 12 hours a night for 13 years (I did a total of 15 years on nights) and had just about reached the end...mentally. I made great money, but it was like "so what." I was looking for another job, couldn't find one and felt trapped. I wasn't "living" Monday through Friday because I had no time to do anything but work and sleep and when the weekend rolled around all I did was run in an attempt to get done what needed tending to. Felt like I was in no man's land. Use to tell people "if I had the time to even open the case and look at my bass, I did good." It was that bad.

Now it's good. I was laid off this past December 4th and started working again on August 4th. I'm on days working 40 hours a week and my take home pay is what I was getting per week on unemployment after taxes. I couldn't be happier. I'm in for some lean times ahead but the payoff is I now have the time to smell the roses. I start work at 7, get out at 3:30 and am home by 4:15 at the latest. I'm 61 and am SO DONE with working my life away. It's just not worth it and that's what my two dreams were telling me....I was trying to get out of the dark at top speed and no matter how fast I tried to run I wasn't going to get out.

Your dream is trying to tell you something and I firmly believe that. Hope you figure out what it is.


Just read this one. See my previous post. You got it before I wrote it!

The only thing I would add is the lead boots. Once again, sleep paralysis is the main suspect.
 
^ Good suggestions. You sound like you know your stuff. Are you a professional?

No. Just a lifetime of trying to understand people and a lot of experience listening to them.

Ok, slightly disingenuous. An adolescence spent trying to get girls into bed. Listening and talking was just a means to an end. It became a lifetime's hobby. I still have great, deep, meaningful conversations with women. I generally end up being a really good friend. Sadly, it's not a great way to get them into bed. Looking like Brad Pitt seems to be the key, but I can't afford the surgery.
 
The night before last, I dreamed that aliens were enslaving people by using hand-held tazer-like devices to turn them into mindless automatons. It was somehow my job to stop them, but they were converting people faster than I could intervene. I woke up feeling exhausted.

I interpret this to mean that I am in serious need of a vacation.
 
i've always had vivid nightmares , even as a child .
some i remember clearly and could tell you all the slightest details , including smells and sounds .
the most recent , and most horrifying to me , was about my young son , whom i love very much .

i remember driving in an old truck , with my wife sitting next to me and she was in a panic and screaming .
my little son came floating up next to me , outside my window .
he had fangs , wild glowing eyes and was crying { i could see his tears ...}
i remember lashing out and punching him thru the open window .
he suddenly appeared on my wife's side window and began trying to crawl in .
i kicked at him and he fell away , never to be seen again .


my wife woke me up and said i had punched her on the arm , and that i had been crying .
i sat up and cried some more ...
:(
Obviously you think your son is a flying vampire monster of some sort. He probably really isn't but maybe you should take some precautions, buy some wooden stakes, silver crosses and load up on garlic. Just in case.
 
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I don't know if dreams have a meaning or if they are trying to tell us something but they sure can be enlightening. I have had my share of crazy dreams but the craziest one and very vivid! was about a high school friend of mine, we were at our high school and I had him on my arms, he was dying, then something came and it had a human face but as my friend got worse and closer to die the face of this thing got uglier and uglier, it is the death I thought. The more my friend was closer to die the more horrific the face was, the more it looked like the face of death - to me at least. I started to scream at it, the more a screamed the more human the face would become and the better my friend would get, until my friend breathed again, death face became human and it left. After that I realized the death knows me, it knows my face, but I also know her and know her face, but here is the thing, I only remember its death face, not the human one, so to recognize it somebody must be close to die and maybe next time, that somebody will be me.
 
I have had some scary dreams in my day, mostly when I was a kid I'd have re occurring nightmares. Scary stuff in some very twisted stuff but a few months ago I had a very different and very un settling dream.

I was sleeping away and not sure what part of the sleep cycle I was in but I was aware that I was sleeping so maybe I was coming too. It was more like a dark scene with a conversation with someone or something I don't think was me or my sub conscious but who knows maybe it was.

This voice comes at me and says very clearly, "I am going to show you what it's like to be dead" I did not speak back really it was more like I thought back, "How can you do that" and it came back I will show you while you are still alive here in this dream but it will be exactly like being dead. That is not verbatim, that's the jist as best I can recall.

Then it was like here, and I was then shown what it was like and It's not good or at least if that is what it's like it is totally void, no thought, no light, no feeling, just nothing and not only nothing but nothing forever. The best comparative I can compare it to is being under for an operation only there is no waking up. NO waking up and no redemption. Not to put a religious word to the feeling but as a descriptive. Then I woke up and I must say it really shook me to the core. Since then I only told my wife. I really don't like to think about it but some time has passed. I do believe in an afterlife but that dream made me question my views on that.


I wonder what the hell that dream was all about. Anyone else have a real tripper like this?

The obvious interpretation is that you are worried about death. Welcome to the human race.

As for where the image comes from? You tell me. But here are a couple of other things to think about. Have you ever seen (or read the book) A Christmas Carol? Remember the ghost of Christmas future?

Dickens didn't have a monopoly on the psycopomp. [...literally meaning the "guide of souls")[1] are creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife. (Wikipedia)] The Egyptians had them 3500 years ago and they are commonplace in afterlife literature. Perhaps this is a very common image throughout the world and your mind is doing what hundreds of millions of others have done.

Have you ever had an operation under general anaesthetic? If so, was it a shock to realise just how easily your conciseness can be snuffed out? How easily you could have died?


"I do believe in an afterlife but that dream made me question my views on that."
Or is it the other way around? Is your dream is reflecting your feelings? Perhaps the doubt is already there.
 
I think the most disturbing dream I've had was of my son. My first born. I dreamt I just got home from work and went over to his bassinet to see him, he wasn't there. I asked my wife where he was and she said, Oh he isn't there ... I guess he's gone ... hmm ... and she went on with whatever she was doing, unfazed. My in laws where sitting on the couch so I asked them ... my father in law told me to shut up he couldn't hear the TV ... and my mother in law said "what do you want from me" maybe you should have been here instead of work ... I was going nuts trying to find him and no one would help me. I could feel the anxiety building in my chest and jolted awake in a cold sweat ... He was crying ... most beautiful sound I ever heard.

He's in his 20's now and all my nightmares are of him never leaving home ... go figure.

This one is easy. Anxious about a new baby. Feeling stressed because you have to work to make money, but you should be looking after your son. All triggered by your baby crying.

This is another case of cause and effect getting mixed up. I suspect that you weren't dreaming bad dreams until your son started crying.

Look at what you have written. It's basically two parts. The first part is recognising that your son needs attention, and it's your responsibility. Feeling a little out of your depth perhaps? Everyone you ask doesn't care and it's all down to you.

The second bit is simply the waking up. "I could feel the anxiety building in my chest and jolted awake..." Doubtless you then got out of bed to see what was wrong.

The external stimuli (here a baby crying) gets incorporated into your dream world. Your mind interprets that in a way that reflects your feelings (in this case stress, responsibility, worry). Then you wake up and the bad dream goes away.
 
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The obvious interpretation is that you are worried about death. Welcome to the human race.

As for where the image comes from? You tell me. But here are a couple of other things to think about. Have you ever seen (or read the book) A Christmas Carol? Remember the ghost of Christmas future?

Dickens didn't have a monopoly on the psycopomp. [...literally meaning the "guide of souls")[1] are creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife. (Wikipedia)] The Egyptians had them 3500 years ago and they are commonplace in afterlife literature. Perhaps this is a very common image throughout the world and your mind is doing what hundreds of millions of others have done.

Have you ever had an operation under general anaesthetic? If so, was it a shock to realise just how easily your conciseness can be snuffed out? How easily you could have died?


"I do believe in an afterlife but that dream made me question my views on that."
Or is it the other way around? Is your dream is reflecting your feelings? Perhaps the doubt is already there.

Death and the after life or lack of was the furthest thing from my mind the morning I had the dream. It was like an un wanted knock on the door. I had only been out once when I had my wisdom teeth pulled. They do a count and then you are waking up wondering why they have not done the surgery yet LOL (they had, but there is no perception of time when you are out and I bet when dead too.) I still believe that we retain some sort of consciousness after death. For me it was something trying to shake my beliefs for some reason.
 
i've always had vivid nightmares , even as a child .
some i remember clearly and could tell you all the slightest details , including smells and sounds .
the most recent , and most horrifying to me , was about my young son , whom i love very much .

i remember driving in an old truck , with my wife sitting next to me and she was in a panic and screaming .
my little son came floating up next to me , outside my window .
he had fangs , wild glowing eyes and was crying { i could see his tears ...}
i remember lashing out and punching him thru the open window .
he suddenly appeared on my wife's side window and began trying to crawl in .
i kicked at him and he fell away , never to be seen again .


my wife woke me up and said i had punched her on the arm , and that i had been crying .
i sat up and cried some more ...
:(

Can't say much about this one without knowing a lot about your personal life. But the specific image? Have you ever watched the film Salem's Lot? Remember the boy floating outside the window, scraping against the glass? I certainly do! I haven't seen that film in decades, but that scene is burned into my mind. Perhaps that is the initial inspiration for the image.

As for what it is about. As I said, I would need to know a lot about you, but I notice you mention "my little son..." Once again, some sort of anxiety about being a father? Or maybe you didn't feel that you could get emotionally close to him? There is certainly a strong sense of fear and separation.
 
Death and the after life or lack of was the furthest thing from my mind the morning I had the dream. It was like an un wanted knock on the door. I had only been out once when I had my wisdom teeth pulled. They do a count and then you are waking up wondering why they have not done the surgery yet LOL (they had, but there is no perception of time when you are out and I bet when dead too.) I still believe that we retain some sort of consciousness after death. For me it was something trying to shake my beliefs for some reason.

I won't make any further comments on this one.

But I will make one observation for you to ponder. In two separate posts you have mentioned your doubt about your beliefs. This is clearly an important underlying theme. Perhaps you need to spend some time going through what you truly believe in. I can't have that conversation with you via posts on a website but here is something for you to think about.

"I still believe that we retain some sort of consciousness after death"
Really? Truly? I'm sure you want to believe in an afterlife. But do you feel calm, matter of fact relaxed about it? "Yes! of course I play bass!" [reaches for bass] "Here, let me show you" [thinks "This is going to be fun"]

Could you be as effortlessly certain if I substituted the concept of 'belief in afterlife' into the above scenario? Going on the words that you have typed, you sound more agnostic than certain.

As with all of these posts, only you can know what you really feel. It's over to you to have that, possibly scary conversation with yourself about what you truly believe, rather than what you want to believe. Good luck, and I hope you find what you are looking for.

And if you think that what I have written above is total drivel, completely off the mark, barking up the wrong tree etc. fine. I have said in several posts, I need to know you to understand you. I can't know you from a website. I'm just telling you what I see from what you have posted
 
I often dream of flying or floating would be a better description. Sometimes I am horizontal and sometimes I am vertical but I am always effortlessly moving through the air. I like those dreams.

Swimming.You can "fly" horizontally or vertically. I had dreams of flying when I was a kid. I was also swimming for several hours a week.

Not deep or meaningful, but fun.
 
I won't make any further comments on this one.

But I will make one observation for you to ponder. In two separate posts you have mentioned your doubt about your beliefs. This is clearly an important underlying theme. Perhaps you need to spend some time going through what you truly believe in. I can't have that conversation with you via posts on a website but here is something for you to think about.

"I still believe that we retain some sort of consciousness after death"
Really? Truly? I'm sure you want to believe in an afterlife. But do you feel calm, matter of fact relaxed about it? "Yes! of course I play bass!" [reaches for bass] "Here, let me show you" [thinks "This is going to be fun"]

Could you be as effortlessly certain if I substituted the concept of 'belief in afterlife' into the above scenario? Going on the words that you have typed, you sound more agnostic than certain.

As with all of these posts, only you can know what you really feel. It's over to you to have that, possibly scary conversation with yourself about what you truly believe, rather than what you want to believe. Good luck, and I hope you find what you are looking for.

And if you think that what I have written above is total drivel, completely off the mark, barking up the wrong tree etc. fine. I have said in several posts, I need to know you to understand you. I can't know you from a website. I'm just telling you what I see from what you have posted


I am not looking for anything but don't consider your post Drivel. And religion has ZERO to do with any afterlife or lack of in my book. I don't know in what form or consciousness we live on but am certain we do in some way. Energy never dies it just recycles or flows into another direction.
 
i've always had vivid nightmares , even as a child .
some i remember clearly and could tell you all the slightest details , including smells and sounds .
the most recent , and most horrifying to me , was about my young son , whom i love very much .

i remember driving in an old truck , with my wife sitting next to me and she was in a panic and screaming .
my little son came floating up next to me , outside my window .
he had fangs , wild glowing eyes and was crying { i could see his tears ...}
i remember lashing out and punching him thru the open window .
he suddenly appeared on my wife's side window and began trying to crawl in .
i kicked at him and he fell away , never to be seen again .


my wife woke me up and said i had punched her on the arm , and that i had been crying .
i sat up and cried some more ...
:(

During sleep, most people (and animals) experience sleep paralysis. If you don't you will possibly end up sleepwalking, or sleep fighting, or sleep [insert activity here]. Years ago I saw this clip on a documentary



I suspect that, as previously suggested, you had sleep apnoea, or possibly just had your face down in the pillow. As you woke up, you were still under the influence of sleep paralysis. Hence the dream.

As for the long haired girl? Well, only you can answer that one. But you are not the first to associate the two.



Being serious, your mind throws up mostly images of the last few days, but mangled together in the surreal way that only dreams can do. Why did you dream of being chased by a pig with an axe? Because a few days ago you watched The Shining ("Here's Johnny!"), and tonight you watched a documentary about the use of growth promoters in farming. You thought "Wow, that's a big pig!" Your mind conflates the two...

Sorry everyone. Most of the images in dreams are not that meaningful. Not all of the images, just most of the images. That's the problem with interpreting dreams. There isn't a simple formula.

1) It helps a lot if you know the person. They trust you and you know enough about them to understand their hopes and fears.

2) Instead of worrying about the fine detail of the images, ask "How did you feel?". The mind throws up images that match the feeling. The images are not often a literal interpretation of circumstance. Interpret the images in the light of their response, and what you know about them.

You dream that you are trapped in a room. Then you see a door. You walk through the door, but find on the other side, yet another door, but that one is locked. You turn around and the first door is now locked.

What does it mean?

"How did you feel?"
"Well, trapped. I wasn't being chased by anything. I just wanted to escape but couldn't"

In this case, because I know you well, you have been telling me about your frustration with your current job, and the difficulty of getting even an interview. You can't pay off your mortgage etc. Possibly the dream reflects how you feel about your life.

Notice that

a) the images have nothing to do with job interviews.

b) I am taking plausible guesses at the reason based on knowing you and what you have been talking about. A different person having the same dream will probably have a different driver for those images, and I would take a different guess based upon what I know about them. Perhaps for someone else, the dream is all about exam stress, or moving house.

c) I am not saying "This is what your dream means". I have not been reading the books that say "If you dream about snakes, it is about fear of sex" or some other b#@£%&*t. I am suggesting interpretations to you, and getting you to make the connections. It's your dream after all!

That's why you have to trust me. Perhaps the dreams are telling you something that you don't quite want to admit to yourself. Actually, deep down, you are not as confident as you seem, but you don't want to admit it? Dreams can sometimes tell you rather personal stuff that you don't want anyone (including yourself) to know about.

As for why you "always have bad dreams".

You don't.

Most of the dreams you have don't wake you up because they are not bad dreams. The really scary ones seem to wake you up (I personally think this is a get-out mechanism on the part of the brain. This is really scary, wake up! Make it stop!). Also they are bad dreams so they tend to stick in the mind better than the surreal "I was swimming in the ocean when my knees caught fire" type of dreams.

You know I said above that images are not often a literal interpretation of circumstance? With the dreams about death, and being scared of death, I struggle to find any alternative explanation other than, well, perhaps you're scared of death? You have reached that age when you realise that you are closer to the grave than the cradle, and it's not a nice feeling. Sorry, but it happens to us all.


^ Good suggestions. You sound like you know your stuff. Are you a professional?

Exactly my thoughts, that was a good post.
 
My dreams are fairly strange, much of the time.
One time I was with Bruce Springsteen, and we were going to Tijuana. The road there was a dirt road along a fence line, and Tom Petty came zooming up. He was a little remote control race car with a bobble-head Tom Petty head on it. He played a few bars from Free Falling. We asked him which way or something and he pointed toward a burned out building. He said he didn't want to go and zoomed away. So Bruce and I climbed down and down and down through the building, to get to Tijuana. I can't remember if we got there or not.

Another time I was in what I call The City. In this case there was the City of Death on one side, and the City of Life on the other. There is no bridge between them, and a river divides them. I wanted to cross, and the river looked very shallow, so I started to wade across. But the farther out I went, the deeper the water got, until I thought I would be washed away, so I turned back. As I went back to shore, the river got shallower and the waters all receded. I looked down at the bottom, and what looked like stones were all little objects, and it dawned on me that those were all the things people had tried to take across with them. But ultimately, one could not take anything across.

Another time I was on the other side. They showed me all around, including the place where you leave. It was the this big thing that looked like a weird Eastern European monument, and it just pointed upward. It was centered in what otherwise looked like an airport. So when you left, you just went out there someplace.

I dreamt I was in a medieval war, a mask which told me secrets (they were weird, too), and once that I was stuck in a machine that turned turned people into galaxies. It told me that basically it was there to erase my old soul and send me back to the cosmos, where I belonged. I was a kid when I had the dream, tho, and it freaked me out because I didn't want to get sucked out into the cosmos.

I had one where I was in The City, living in an abandoned office building which had been taken over by miscreants and weirdos. My kind of people. The lobby had been converted into a 24 hour bar and the offices were flophouse dormitory rooms. However, we had developed a way to get down to the bottom floor without taking so many stairs. One just leaned backward out the window and fell out. In order to avoid injury, you just really relaxed a lot and you were fine. The best part was when I demonstrated that instead of having to take the stairs back up, I could fly back up. Oh, the jealousy.

I wish I was making this up, but I'm not. That's what happens when I close my eyes at night. Actually, being asleep is way more fun than being awake for me. If I could just move into my dream world, I would.
 
My dreams are fairly strange, much of the time.
One time I was with Bruce Springsteen, and we were going to Tijuana. The road there was a dirt road along a fence line, and Tom Petty came zooming up. He was a little remote control race car with a bobble-head Tom Petty head on it. He played a few bars from Free Falling. We asked him which way or something and he pointed toward a burned out building. He said he didn't want to go and zoomed away. So Bruce and I climbed down and down and down through the building, to get to Tijuana. I can't remember if we got there or not.

Another time I was in what I call The City. In this case there was the City of Death on one side, and the City of Life on the other. There is no bridge between them, and a river divides them. I wanted to cross, and the river looked very shallow, so I started to wade across. But the farther out I went, the deeper the water got, until I thought I would be washed away, so I turned back. As I went back to shore, the river got shallower and the waters all receded. I looked down at the bottom, and what looked like stones were all little objects, and it dawned on me that those were all the things people had tried to take across with them. But ultimately, one could not take anything across.

Another time I was on the other side. They showed me all around, including the place where you leave. It was the this big thing that looked like a weird Eastern European monument, and it just pointed upward. It was centered in what otherwise looked like an airport. So when you left, you just went out there someplace.

I dreamt I was in a medieval war, a mask which told me secrets (they were weird, too), and once that I was stuck in a machine that turned turned people into galaxies. It told me that basically it was there to erase my old soul and send me back to the cosmos, where I belonged. I was a kid when I had the dream, tho, and it freaked me out because I didn't want to get sucked out into the cosmos.

I had one where I was in The City, living in an abandoned office building which had been taken over by miscreants and weirdos. My kind of people. The lobby had been converted into a 24 hour bar and the offices were flophouse dormitory rooms. However, we had developed a way to get down to the bottom floor without taking so many stairs. One just leaned backward out the window and fell out. In order to avoid injury, you just really relaxed a lot and you were fine. The best part was when I demonstrated that instead of having to take the stairs back up, I could fly back up. Oh, the jealousy.

I wish I was making this up, but I'm not. That's what happens when I close my eyes at night. Actually, being asleep is way more fun than being awake for me. If I could just move into my dream world, I would.

The first and last of these dreams don't appear to give much insight into your psyche. They seem to be simple "mash up" type of dreams. Images of travelling along roads, remotely controlled cars, music, buildings, flying, all jumbled up into the psychedelic mess of the dreams that we are all so familiar with. You have dreams like this pretty much every night but forget all about them because you don't wake up at the right time.

The other dreams are more interesting.

This is the point when you would tell me about your second dream ("Another time I was in what I call The City.") and I would ask "How did you feel?"
You would then tell me the emotional context. "I felt scared", or "I felt lost", or "I felt strangely calm" or ...
I would then take that reply as my signpost and reflect the emotion back to you. "Did you feel lost because you didn't know where you were, or because you didn't know where you were going. You didn't know what was on the other side?" (for example).

Without that context, as with some of the other dreams, all I can do is look at the words that you use and take (hopefully) good guesses.

With your second dream, I think the progression goes something like this.

However you imagine The City, at the time of this dream it is very nebulous as a concept. You don't actually know what it looks like on the other side. (detail which is added in later dreams?). In your dream, you want to cross the river, but because you can't imagine exactly what it looks like, you can't cross.* There is no imagined geography to walk into so your mind finds a way out. In this case, you just turn around and walk back to the part of The City that you have created in your mind.

As for the stones turning into possessions? Well, it does seem to be a rather literal interpretation of the phrase "You can't take it with you when you go". Does that phrase have a great meaning to you? Does it sum up how you feel after buying stuff, then looking at all of the stuff you have and feeling that non of it gives your life any meaning? (Note: this is just a different way of asking "How did you feel").

Alternatively, it could just be one of those transitions that happen in dreams. You look at the rocks and your mind wants a bit more meaning so suddenly, they're "things". The fact that they are things that could not be taken across by anyone does seem significant.

I won't go into any detail about the other dreams (look at how much I have written about just one of them!). Looking at the dreams as a whole, I get a sense of disquiet about your existence. "What's it all about", "why are we here", possibly that feeling of "Cosmic loneliness".And yes, once again I am asking "How did you feel". All very human and normal by the way. I don't have any objective evidence for this, but from the conversations I have had, a reasonable percentage of people have these kinds of feelings at some point. For some of us, it never really goes away.

Feel free to tell me that I am writing b@~~£&!t. Without being there, this is a one sided, imagined conversation, which may be very very wrong.

* Not being able to dream things you have not seen or experienced is an old observation. The Marquis d'Hervey tried to jump of a tall building in one of his lucid dreams. Everything was fine until he got to the point of impact when "within a minute, he was back on the ground, unscathed". Having never experienced falling and hitting the ground in such a way, it was impossible for him to dream of the moment of impact. He just fell, then was suddenly on the ground, but no impact.
 
Doesn't the fact that you can describe it at all mean that you consciously experienced it, and it wasn't an absolute void, at least not in your mind? Is it possible to experience "no thought" and be able to share the feeling?

Just asking out of curiosity.

This. ^ ^ ^

Rest assured (pun intended) that in reality, a dead person buried under the ground has no consciousness and therefore cannot experience the dreadful feelings that you had in your dream. I was just a bad dream. Many people have them from time to time; sometimes unsettling dreams can be linked to diet or even environmental factors!