So I have this whole idea about how the way dreams work is that it’s like your subconscious mind is playing Pictionary with you. I posted about it before, and here’s a reference from that post:
- And I think in some way, dreaming is like playing Pictionary with yourself, but on a much more elaborate scale. Like you have this other part of your mind, maybe call it the subconscious, which is really quickly putting together all these dream events, images, characters, feelings and situations, because this part of your mind isn’t able to use words & linear thinking in the same way as your conscious/rational/ego mind. (Or else it just doesn’t want to, and it likes to be elaborate, poetic and confusing - which seems very likely).
On that note, I think I’m getting close to reaching a place where I can “win every game,” so to speak. Like, while I’m in dreams now, I’ll recognize various things, and where they were drawn from and multiple overlapping layers of what my subconscious means by them. And the way I’ve gotten to this point is by setting up a sort of feedback loop with my dreams. Any time I remember stuff from them, I’ll write it down and research various connotations and permutations of things in the dream. I think it’s also good NOT to look at “dream symbolism” type sites, or at least not to get too caught up in what they say. They try to give you “hard” answers of A=B, which is not how dreams work. It’s much better to build up a web of associations, and feed them all back into your mind.
Regularly sketching out things from dreams helps me a lot too. As does sitting around and just writing a lot of free association. Kind of getting accustomed to opening that valve and letting it flow, unedited. Also, while I’m at it, here is the drawing of that lantern/holy-grail/valis object from my dreams last night.
Also, I think its important to load up your mind with a wide variety of different types of imagery for it to make use of when it’s trying to communicate things back to you in dreams. Like if your life is really boring, there’s only so much that your subconscious can say back to you using ordinary every day objects. It’s almost like hieroglyphs. Except instead of “Falcon … falcon … crescent moon… snake,” you’ll get something like: “Office chair … couch … Paris Hilton … Honda Accord.” With that as your basic vocabulary you’re going to severly limit the ability of your subconscious mind to express itself. Expand the vocabulary, familiarize yourself with it, and then see what kind of craziness comes together in your head. It’s well worth it.
- END -
ASSOCIATED CONTENT @TMBCHR (Auto-Generated)
