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.

With the new online questionnaire we would like to find out whether you have used (one of) your lucid dreams for a particular purpose, for example to change nightmares into more pleasant dreams, to learn a sport, solve a problem, etc. Please feel free to name a different use you have found for your lucid dreams.

To the Klartraum site

On March 17, 2006 Professor Detlev von Uslar will celebrate his 80th birthday. I would like to use this occasion to introduce him here, because he examined the theme of dreaming intensively and thoroughly. Read more…

Hi, I am Victor Spoormaker and I am currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at the department of Clinical Psychology at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. My research focuses on lucid dreaming as a treatment for recurrent nightmares and the relationship of nightmares with other sleep and psychological disturbances. Moreover, I study in which way dreams can be creative (e.g incubated, lucid, and daydreams).

Read more…

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…