Welcome to General Chat - GAW Community Area
This General Chat area started off as a place for people to talk about things that are off topic, however it has quickly evolved into a community and has become an intergral part of the GAW experience for many of us.
Based on it's evolving needs and plenty of user feedback, we are trying to bring some order and institute some rules. Please make sure you read these rules and participate in the spirit of this community.
Rules for General Chat
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Be respectful to each other. This is of utmost importance, and comments may be removed if deemed not respectful.
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Personal anecdotes, puzzles, cute pics/clips - everything welcome
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Feel free to give feedback as these rules are expected to keep evoloving
In short, imagine this thread to be a local community hall where we all gather and chat daily. Please be respectful to others in the same way
I am particularly fond of a certain framework for explaining dreams that I came across about 10 years back.
There are 3 types of dreams.
Dreams that are spiritual inspiration, stimulated and created so that you learn or realize something. A message from the Spirit. (Some nightmares may be oppression from a dark spiritual entity, also.)
Dreams that are simply the mind processing and working through all the input of the day. Dog dreams. No particular meaning, just proceedings of the different ideas, experiences, and connections, being processed (an important function of sleep).
Dreams that are one's subconscious (aka unconscious) mind attempting to communicate with your conscious mind. A message from yourself, to inform you and ideally guide you.
Re: the conscious and unconscious mind (Category 3 dreams)
The unconscious mind is like an 8-year old child. There is no critical thinking there. Also, it speaks in symbols - symbology is the language it uses to communicate.
One of the key functions of the unconscious mind is to store and hold information and data (experiences, etc) that the conscious mind is not ready to process properly. Thus, an experience (emotion, thought, etc) that occurred at a young age which the non-critical thinking young mind (pre-8 years of age-ish) was not ready or capable of processing (because it is too complex, too painful, etc) is stored in the unconscious mind, which will later bring it up again and again so that your conscious mind can deal with it.
That's the reason why you have, for example, the same thing occurring again and again until you realize, "oh, that's what that means" etc.
Thus, in the third category dream, your unconscious might speak to you in symbols. Once you learn the language of the unconscious mind, then those dreams and their contents can be seen as meaningful communications from yourself to yourself, and you can begin to apply interpretations.
E.g. Ever have dreams about flying or floating? What does that mean? What is the unconscious mind attempting to express? In some cases, it may be a statement about how free you feel or don't feel in your personal life, etc.