Even learning more about lucid dreams still leaves me perplexed. In a recent dream, I accidentally opened the door of my washing machine halfway through the cycle. It was like a broken dam wall. Along with masses of water flooding my kitchen came a brightly feathered parrot and a giant seahorse. I have had questions about dreams since childhood. Why do I dream what I dream? Sometimes it is easy to interpret a dream and link it to an experience or a discussion I had. However, many of my dreams baffle me. I can’t understand how my brain could even put such strange thoughts in my subconscious mind. That’s where our dreams come from, right? I don’t know about other people, but I certainly seem to have no control over my subconscious mind.
Lucid Dreaming
Some of my dreams do make sense. I can understand the ones that deal with issues that form part of my daily life like my blog writing. Those are often lucid dreams in which I am aware that it is only a dream. I have control over what happens in the dream, and often find myself writing blogs in my sleep. All the time, I am aware that it is a dream, and that it will be gone when I wake up. Trying to find a way to save that blog in a “dream cloud” forms part of the dream. How cool will it be if I can write in my sleep and download it onto my PC in the morning. I haven’t been able to figure that one out yet.
Interrupted Dreams
I was always under the impression that it is natural to wake up halfway through a dream, go to the loo, go back to bed, and continue the dream from where it stopped when I woke up. Of course, this makes my blog writing in my dreams even more efficient — and my inability to use those blogs all the more frustrating. I have learned that this ability to stop and start dreams is typical for lucid dreamers.
Problem Solving Skills
There are also are those dreams that follow days of watching true crime on TV. Yes, I agree with Amy Tallmadge, who recently posted a blog about women loving to watch true crime. Fortunately, those are not nightmares because, in my dreams, I am always part of the detective team and not the victim. That brings me to another bit of useless information that I came across while learning more about lucid dreaming. Researchers have apparently determined that the problem-solving skills of lucid dreamers are above average, making me a smart dream-crime investigator.
My dreams are not common
Although there seems to be an overall lack of understanding of the purpose and content of dreams, they have been popular topics in religious, philosophical, and scientific circles for centuries. There is also no shortage of people and websites offering to interpret our dreams; however, none of mine ever feature on the lists of most common dreams.
Traveling the World
My dreams even take me on trips to other continents! A recent dream took me and my entire family, including the dogs, on a two-day road trip from our home in South-Africa to the United States. This one made sense because it probably originated from my subconscious concerns about conditions in our country.
Like most other people, I have those crazy dreams that often keep me guessing for days. So, here’s the question: Where, oh where in my subconscious mind did the multicolored parrot and the giant, sweet-faced seahorse come from that escaped from my washing machine when I accidentally opened it?
