One of the things I’ve noticed happening a lot more often are my vivid dreams.
They’re quite spectacular at times with a story line, with characters, wonderful scenes and beautiful colours (I have no idea why some say we dream in black and white. I dream in colours). At times, I look forward to going to bed because I never know who I will encounter in my dreams or what I’ll get up to.
To me, the best moment is that moment you put your book down, fluff up your pillow, switch off the lamp and settle, close your eyes and drift off. It’s similar to going through a dark doorway and not knowing where you’ll emerge or what you’re going to see. Every night, there’s a new movie to be part of and you never know how it’s going to pan out.
My dreams are chances to relive moments of my life in completely new ways.
I never dream something as it happened for real. Sometimes I’d like to but no matter how much I will myself to go back to certain times and places and relive the moments as they played out for real in my life, I can never get to them. Unfortunately those scenes stay rooted in my mind during waking hours but as I age, some of my memories tend to fade.
Thankfully dreams are there as a back up option to serve up our memories in different ways so they’re not entirely lost in our lives. What we lose with age, the smells, the colour, the emotions, the desires, the feelings, in our day memories all get served up again in our night dreams.
The brain is fascinating as it twists and turns those real moments and scenes and serves it up to me in new and exciting, sometimes confusing and frightening ways. On the whole though, if I get up restfully and in a positive mood, I know the dreams were good.
But geez, it’s so nice to see my old friends again. Friends who I have had lost contact with, friends who have passed away, childhood friends, ex-partners, colleagues and crushes – they’re all there in my dreams playing in different story lines. In some ways, it’s my chance to redeem the wrongs, explain myself to them and a chance to do or say what should have been done in real life.
Last night, in one of my dreams (I had a few), I had heard that all my friends were playing in a movie that was filmed nearby. I went to the movie set and saw that filming was in progress. From standing behind I noticed all my friends some current and many now long lost or departed in the most spectacular costumes of 19th century America. Men in vests, pants and boots and my female friends with their hair piled high and in beautiful satin billowing dresses and ribbons. They were doing a court scene and the people sitting watching them turned to me to wave. Afterwards in a break, they all came to me and there was a lot of laughter. I embraced my long lost friends. They all looked fabulous and I told them so. Everyone was happy, chatty as we gathered around the buffet tables laden with delicious cakes and biscuits.
One even asked if I wanted to play a role there but I had to play a mother. I laughed and roared, “well then! Id really be acting then!” It was so nice to see everyone in their black, grey, red costumes. After a while I left them and they went back to the scene.
I don’t believe dreams foretell the future or anything like that. I think there’s a scientific explanation behind it all such as the brain offloading all the information it must have processed over the course of my life and it comes out in gobbledygook. How my body is feeling (whether I’m healthy, relaxed, comfortable) signifies how I’ll dream and sleep that night. If I’m stressed, worried or anxious it will mean my dreams will also be that way. The only thing they mean for me is to look after my state of mind.
One of the things I do in life is to take in scenes. When something big is happening in my life, when I’m going through a moment I never want to forget, I will myself to take in the scene. I focus on my surroundings, I see the colours, the layout, the people in the scene, the person. I drill down to everything in that scene with laser focus. The smells, the feel of the wind on my skin, what I’m wearing, the texture of the clothes onto my skin. I think about my thoughts. It’s as if I go into some meditative state just sucking in everything about that scene.
Why?
I want to relive it in my dreams. I know that I’ll never be there again for real in my real life but it will come to me in my dreams for the rest of my life at times unknown. I can never will these times to happen. I don’t lay there thinking, “can I go back to XYZ in 2018?”
Maybe in some way, I’d like to think my vivid dreams are all those moments I took in the scenes now being served up to me – hence the spectacular colours and details.
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