DreamUnit.net :: English

Awareness of the dream requires a certain room for that awareness, a freedom from being occupied with all kinds of emotional or intellectual issues. Not being attached. I think that the post yesterday about inner peace gives a number of signs that might predict whether a person could have lucid dreams.

The freedom of attachments may also show up in the content of the dream, in many ways: perhaps less aggression and more a generally upbeat mood, more reflective thinking, a higher consistency of the story of the dream, perhaps more fantastic elements, or a use of different (sensory) channels of information, perhaps even the disappearance of visual elements all together, just to name a few things. I’m sure that with a little brainstorming, you could create a long list of items that might occur more frequently with dreams of frequent lucid dreamers.

Photo by Montana Raven

Many years ago somebody posted “some signs and symptoms of inner peace” to the internet. I never knew who the author was, until Saskia Davis submitted a comment to this post, explaining that she is in fact the author.

I wonder whether people who naturally have lucid dreams frequently, have these signs and symptoms more often than non lucid dreamers. Here are the signs:

1. A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.
2. An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
3. A loss of interest in judging other people.
4. A loss of interest in judging self.
5. A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
6. A loss of interest in conflict.
7. A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom.)
8. Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
9. Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
10. Frequent attacks of smiling.
11. An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
12. An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.

Dreamers United follows the format of a web log, or blog for short. Typically that means there is one main page that is frequently updated, and that there’s a newsfeed for those who like to follow multiple blogs through a newsreader like Bloglines.

I know of a several other dream blogs, all of them communities sharing dreams. Here they are:

- Abatons. Best appreciated through a newsfeed.
- Community of Dreams, hosted at LiveJournal, which has special addresses for the newsfeeds, in this case here. Unfortunately, the avatar pictures don’t show up at Bloglines.
- Dream Tribe, also easier to keep up with through the newsfeed.

Oh, and in case you missed it, Dreamers United has a newsfeed too.

You may have heard about the Senoi inspired hope to use dreams to create a nicer world. Mind you, the real Senoi people - or the Temiar - likely had and have different dream practices. Perhaps we should never use the words Senoi and dreams together again, but I have a question. If you look at the Western approach to dreaming, it is very personal, psychological, and somehow only appealing to very few people. Whereas the Senoi fantasy went far beyond that, and suggested that everyone discusses dreams on a regular basis, in a way that improves social relationships, and even the way society is organized.

Did anyone patent this idea already? Just joking. This all goes back at least three decades, and stories supposedly about the Senoi still turn up occasionally. Unfortunately, nothing much was ever done with these ideals. I’m not aware that anyone every tried to directly connect dreaming to group building and social action, although the World Dreams Peace Bridge comes close. Is there more we can do in this area?

For some background information, see G. William Domhoff, Senoi Dream Theory: Myth, Scientific Method, and the Dreamwork Movement. I got my own doubts after reading Marina Roseman’s book Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest (1991), that shows that the Temiar have a radically different view of the world. The picture comes from the Temiar website.

I dreamt about this last night. I read about it in Anthony Shafton’s book Dream-Singers, a few weeks ago. He describes how African Americans use dreams for numbers gambling. Although they may do it less than they used to. What I found interesting is that it only works with dreams of others. Which means that gambling motivates people to share dreams. They may not be much interested in the dreams themselves, but it still helps to create a setting in which dream sharing becomes common.

I’ve heard that Italians do the same. I tried to learn more about it, but I don’t know that many Italians. Do Italians need dreams of others as well? And, if African Americans and Italians use dreams for gambling, couldn’t there be many more people who do this?

Dreams often reflect important issues. Think of motives, interests, talents, but also current challenges or unresolved issues. People who frequently tell each other their dreams, show a lot of themselves this way. There are no false sentiments, no intellectual pretensions, or any other smoke screens, it all stays real. I think that this is special.

In a social sense there is relatively little experience with dream groups. I suspect that dreams are useful for resolving conflicts, because they can quickly point to the real issues, in a way that shows to all parties what really is at stake. Dreams are also very good for creative inspiration, which means there could be more fun social applications as well.

The picture comes from the Glasson Murray Group.

Juhani Kääriäinen, a Finn living in Sweden, has indexed 1000 of his dreams. He waits for his dream images to emerge in our daytime world, and some of them do.

Read more about the Kilodream project…

In the Dutch edition the subject of visualisation and regeneration came up. I mentioned having read about children being able to regenerate lost finger tops, but until now I never checked for sources.

I consulted with Google. Well… it seems possible. Here are some links, look for more with Google, and especially scholar.google.com for scientific publications:

- “[…] in the very young, a certain amount of regeneration occurs to compensate for lost tissue”, Med J Aust. 1979 Dec 1;2(11):580-2
- Possibly an adult? Case report: “the distal phalanx generated to give an excellent functional result”, J Hand Surg [Br]. 1993 Apr;18(2):230-3
- Torture on monkeys. “The new structures were cosmetically pleasing as in the human instances”, Anat Embryol (Berl). 1987;177(1):29-36.

Visualisation not even needed.

Sometimes I like to see life as a dream. I’m at day 8 of general fatigue, an ongoing fever, occasional loud coughing, throat pains, slightly burning eyes, my nose has gone from bleeding to stuffed to running, and my head feels stuffed. For a complete picture, throw in a strong uneasy feeling in the bones at especially day 4.

The symbol I understand best is the raised temperature. During the last week, I’ve become more and more angrier, while at the same time my fever seemed to get worse and worse. It didn’t help that I couldn’t figure out what I could be so angry about. But, in the evening of day 7 I realized that I have a few axes to grind with doctors and other authorities who have been fighting me while I was sick. After that insight, I had the best night of sleep so far.

Illness can be seen as expressing or releasing emotions that can not be expressed otherwise. Which makes me wonder. Two years ago I went through a period of releasing anger too. That concerned anger about the apparent injustice of having been ill with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for so long, and the many years of my life that I lost. That time it didn’t require fever, I directly experienced that anger for two whole weeks, and was very aware of where it came from. Clearly, this time around, there’s more at stake than only bottled up aggression.

Years ago I first heard about a Russian doctor who was said to have written a book about using dreams to diagnose. The last week I came accross to a reference to another Russian doctor, being doctor V. Nikolaevich Kasatkin. Supposedly he used dreams for “early diagnosis of severe diseases like cancer, tuberculosis, appendicitis, etc“. Unfortunately, I’m not aware of translations of this report.

I found some other doctors on the internet. See Dieter Kroener (German) and Jean-Michel Crabbé (French). I hope that these two gentlemen will soon write a blog about their experiences with dreams.

Denmark will soon have a dreamer’s association too. Here’s the message from Anders Vogt, on behalf of the initiative group:

We are a group of danes who are establishing a danish “branch” of ASD called “Danish Association for the Study of Dreams” or “Foreningen for studiet af Drømme”. Our first general meeting is going to be held in Copenhagen in February. Anyone who is interested is welcome. You can read the (Danish language) invitation on our web site http://www.ffsd.dk/ or you write to mail@ffsd.dk if you have any questions or would like to join the association.

In the early years of the internet I created the Healing Dreams website, telling about my health problems and my dreams. It hasn’t been updated for a long time. My health has improved, and as a reflection of that I moved on to a new website called Alquinte. However, the interest remains.

I would like to know how dreams can help with physical problems. According to some people all work with dreams is healing, if only on the psychological level. That’s nice, but at what point can dreams become physically healing? Examples of physical dream healing exist, although these usually concern relatively benign afflictions. Having had a chronic and seriously dibilating illness myself - with still some way to go - in the end I’d say I would like to learn more about the healing potential for serious illnesses.

Blame Siggi (one of the translaters). He suggested I could use this blog for one of my own pet interests. More later.

Test your dreaming skills with the Remote Viewing Challenge of Saturday December 4th (or later depending on where you live). Somebody in the world will be at a certain location. Your challenge is to sketch and/or describe that location. You can do this with the help of a dream, of through Remote Viewing while awake.

More information is available at the Bulletin Board of the IASD. Good luck everyone!

The photo on the left is the art museum of Groningen (the Netherlands), the target of November. The best viewing was submitted by Sherri, and described in very few keywords: Object - Paintings, Building - Museum, Site - Exibit.

Welcome Agnes, welcome Asia! An Asian edition of Dreamers United is being started at this moment. There is a huge interest in dreams in Asia, but - quoting Agnes from an email - “we look at dreams differently, I mean we don’t ask existential questions for our dreams“. Whereas I want to emphasize that dreams are much more than imagery needing interpretation, I suppose that for now interpretation will be the main angle for the Asian blog.

Knowing Agnes from the Psi Angels, I’m happy she joins in with her own edition of Dreamers United. I expect this will become very interesting.

Slowly this blog is getting shape. I’ve added a contact form linked as something to say? under the other heading in the links block. In a perfect world without spammers, I would of course just give you my email address.

Dreamers United is open to all kinds of contributions that fit in with the overall mission. Take a look at the contact form for a few suggestions. If you want to tell something on the blog, let me know. I can put something up on request, or give you direct access by upgrading your registration.