As far as the dram goes, very similar imagery, I also remember a fortification and a river crossing?

Tim, what’s realy messing with my head here is that I’ve had an almost identical dream. And weirder, before coming here, I was reading an account of the murder of the Prince of Serbia, and it did feature a gypsy woman. So there’s my shudder for the day.

or maybe the “feminine” is just sort of working better for you right now, in terms of your problem-solving and even your “online stuff”. i mean you said it yourself that you’re going through one of those important realization/information synthesis times… sometimes the only way to really reap the fruits of your labor is to kind of sit back and be very yin and intuitive about it.. it seems like right now you’re grokking, rather than strictly cataloging.

edwardson.. i believe that interest in one’s own dreams can be a very healthy thing. dreams are amazing visual and emotional maps of our psyches. my dreams are often FUN and really beautiful. when my subconscious delivers an emotion-rich and visually stunning “episode”, i enjoy it. i don’t generally keep a dream journal though. i guess my point is that it really varies from person to person, just as much as the dreams themselves vary. what doesn’t work for you may be a brilliant tool of introspection for the next guy.

Shattered faith

The scientist purported that there ain’t no purpose
and the theologian told me that it’s all been designed
and I’m trying to maintain objectivity
The world won’t illuminate what really matters
and I’m an imperfect modal/moral meaning extractor
processing the complexity
Born of the Earth (Are we blind?)
We weren’t given a choice (There’s no way)
What about free will? (What we have)
Do we have a voice? (Is shattered faith)
See them run in place (Here and now)
in the human rat race (No reward)
So much dead weight (No debate) to our disgrace (Accept your fate)
Life begins when you accept your fate
Paralysis from forces raging out of control until
my confidence and will are at an all-time low
Just directionless wandering
Eternal life, eternal truth, eternal secrets
Isolated hopes and hypotheses just
Leave me feeling so hungry
Born of the Earth (Are we blind?)
We weren’t given a choice (There’s no way)
What about free will? (What we have)
Do we have a voice? (Is shattered faith)
See them run in place (Here and now)
in the human rat race (No reward)
So much dead weight (No debate) to our disgrace (Accept your fate)
Life begins when you accept your fate
Right or wrong,
the main criterion is what you do and not what you say
The roads you take, the friends you make and those you throw away
The method is a simple synthesis of the past and present state
You never lose if the path you choose is one you can easily navigate
I had a dream, light and carefree
But now there’s doubt and gravity
But I won’t run in place (Are we blind?) in the human rat race (There’s no way)
I can set the pace (What we have) and accept my fate (Is shattered faith)
Shattered faith (Here and now)
Shattered faith (No reward)
the part of me (No debate) I can’t erase (Accept your fate)

The brain child of Bad Religion, Greg Graffin, is our kind of guy. It appears he also finds dreams and their meanings to be important whilst maintaining the kind of logical sanity that only a materialist PhD of Zoology can faithfully wield before the gaze of the obsessively materialistically faithful.

JK: this is freakin awesome

Remember, the only thing anybody really takes seriously around Tim’s joint is the ability to be fascinated.

I am a materialist and an atheist. But I am also vigilantly open minded.

All I can say is, you only believe you have “woken up”. And perhaps you really have — whatever “waking up” means. But it does not ethically necessitate that you must stir the rest of us from our naps. We’ll arrive at your level of eureka soon enough, but in our own time.

Personally, I’ve always hated it when people drone on and on about their dreams. Yet this does not mean that dreams have ceased to exist or are no longer important in the understanding of what transcendency mortal humans are capable of imagining. As a long time self-defined “materialist”, I’m beginning to understand this. Does that mean I have woken up as well? Who decides who is awake? How does one know when he is?