Misc: Open Microphone

[Eagle1]

This post is a conglomeration of various misc. topics from the old DreamScape called "Open Microphone." If you have a question or comment that doesn't fall into any other category, feel free to drop it here as a reply OR feel free to start your own thread! Thank you.


This DreamScape is called “Open Mic” and allows guests to ask questions, comment to each other, hypothesize about the future….anything you want. The only rule is to be kind and courteous to your fellow dreamers. Ask and/or comment anything you wish.

To keep this cleaner, if your idea or question is new to the forum, please begin a new thread by not replying to anyone else’s posts (i.e., post in the formal “Leave a Reply” box at the bottom.) Conversely, if your question relates to someone else’s idea, then reply to that thread instead.

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Open Microphone — 10 Comments

Elyse on May 21, 2014 at 2:23 pm said: Edit

I feel a bit ignorant reading through all of these dreams. I’ve learned a lot from this site, but I’ve read a lot of things I don’t really understand. Like vibrating. When someone is talking about vibrating, what does that mean? Is that something I’m supposed to do? If so, how do I go about doing something like that?

Also, concerning meditation- Several months ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and was able to close my eyes and relax. I can honestly say I was thinking of nothing. I started feeling/seeing what looked like a tunnel and colored smoke swirled around me as I went through it. I was absolutely awake and it was very nice. The colored smoke would change colors from time to time and were mainly green, purple, and blue. Every once in a while they would sort of explode in little bursts. I thought maybe I could have control over it and tried hard to make pink appear (My favorite color) and after some time a tiny pop of pink DID appear, but I don’t think I had any control over it. I was sucked out of whatever I was doing when my cat jumped on me. I have tried and tried to do this again, but with NO luck. I told my husband what I had done… because I thought it was kinda weird… and of course he looked at me like I was nuts.

Was this meditation or was this something else?
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ndcadmin on May 21, 2014 at 3:26 pm said: Edit

I welcome any other comments here, because were are getting into what could be considered very subjective experiences. Elyse, your questions are very good ones. Until our site populates more and more material like this to fill in the gaps, you can probably expect to see a lot of holes in the topics we discuss, and the holes can be filled by these types of questions…so thank you!

First off, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of different meditative practices from the various spiritual and cultural traditions the world over. First, let’s cover vibrating. When the inner essence, or soul, or higher self, or astral body, or etheric body, or whatever you want to call it begins to separate from the physical body, many people report that the physical body feels like it is vibrating. Some have apparently “proven” that the body actually does vibrate, but others insist that it merely feels like it is vibrating. Either way, it is not something that should be forced upon yourself. Rather it is a natural manifestation of the process. There are many processes that transit this state of vibration, including astral projection, out of body experiences, some lucid dreaming, and even some forms of meditation.

Your experience of “thinking of nothing” is a state that many people actually attempt to achieve in some forms of meditation. Mindfulness meditation does not necessarily TRY to achieve it, but after much practice, this is exactly what will inevitably happen. The mind is naturally very active, and to try and shut the thoughts down purposefully, particularly in the very young stages, can be somewhat problematic. But when thoughts are automatically conditioned and tamed, your blissful experience is a natural by-product of a lack of thoughts.

One important thing to remember, though, is that we never accomplish (never say never, right?)…never accomplish meditation specifically just to have these experiences. This will inevitably cause frustration in yourself when it doesn’t pan out. Then, after a few times of failure, you quit because you can’t get back to the purple smoke (incidentally, Elyse, the colors you saw were the highest colors of spiritual progression…green, blue, indigo, violet). Your experience was actually fairly common, and proves you can achieve these blissful states without the use of psychedelic drugs (fasting and spiritual preparation are very good ways to do this).

So, many books and websites have written on this very topic. I know I haven’t answered your questions to completion, but this post will be a work in progress. I’m sure there are many more people here than can add to this conversation. So, thank you for starting it!
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Cassie on May 21, 2014 at 5:04 pm said: Edit

I would like to know about different substances, legal and illegal that people use to enhance the dreams. I’ve heard many times not to take anything because that will diminish the experience but I seem to find differently and I’m curious to hear from others about their altered states.
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ndcadmin on May 21, 2014 at 5:13 pm said: Edit

Thank you for the comment, Cassie. We’re actually exploring this very question in it’s own dedicated DreamScape called “Ingesting for Dreams.” Please check that one out, and if anyone has more ideas, please give your two cents over there. I know there’s not a lot of information there, yet, but hopefully more people will toss in their experiences.

New users, if you have questions or comments about substances and their effects on dreaming, they go over in the “Ingesting for Dreams” DreamScape. That you.
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sherriann on May 26, 2014 at 9:33 pm said: Edit

I have a question. *L* I noticed people posting dreams they had maybe two, five or even ten years ago and am wondering what effect, if any, this would have on the DreamBot future predictions or would this be considered ‘at the right place at the right time’, so to speak.
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ndcadmin on May 26, 2014 at 10:16 pm said: Edit

I can always rely on Sherriann to ask the very important questions! I grappled with this very issue, and resolved it with the following considerations. The first thing that came to my mind is exactly what you brought up in your question. People are submitting these old dreams at this time because they either consciously feel the dream is about to unfold or because they unconsciously know that this is exactly the right time to submit it. Now, of course, the analytical people will want something more concrete than this answer, and so I went a bit further. I spent a couple of weeks running two different bots: 1) the series included the new DreamBase dreams (i.e. the “old” dreams that you mentioned) and 2) the same series except it excluded any and all DreamBase dreams altogether. There was never a difference. Here’s the deal…our current DreamBase dreams constitute such a tiny portion of the overall dream content that is matters very little whether the dreams are on time or not. The same concept applies to “Documented Cases” (for those who aren’t familiar, these dreams are precognitive dreams that have already come true)…there are such a small sample of these dreams that it simply doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of the DreamBot runs.

Another consideration for this question is that a lot of these “old” dreams are coming in from people who just found the site, which are still trickling in from the Coast to Coast audience. The last couple of weeks since that radio show was quite unique in that lots of new dreamers entered the database and wanted to catch up with their old dreams. I don’t consider this to be an on-going activity, or at least with the volume we saw since that show. There will always be new people coming in, but probably not at the alarming rate that we saw recently. Therefore, the amount of old dreams coming in will probably be a rather low amount going forward when compared to weeks past. This will keep the “old” dreams at a regularly low rate as to remain “watered down” compared to the vast collective dream content.

One final note here is the long-term aspect of the DreamBot runs. In the distant future, we’ll have magnitudes more dreams coming in daily, but eventually, I’ll have created a new community-level database where I can determine exactly which dreams are to be counted and which ones to be ignored. Of course, right now, I’m at least able to prevent Project August dreams from being analyzed by the daily DreamBot, and vice versa when it comes time to analyze the PA dreams. They are totally separate. In the future, I’ll also separate “Documented Cases” from the dreams that haven’t come true yet.

Great question, Sherriann! If anyone has more concerns, please shout them out. I’m hoping this process isn’t too mysterious, because on my end it’s rather straightforward.
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Julie on June 10, 2014 at 5:59 am said: Edit

Hello,

I have a question about the time between dreaming and being fully awake.

3 times in the past 3 months or so (I don’t keep a log) something happened just before I was fully awake. I was thinking “I wonder what time it is” and I turned my head toward my bedside table and looked at my cell phone. I have a flip type cell phone that you have physically open to see the screen. When I looked at the phone I could see the screen inside the phone & I could see the time. The phone itself looked cloudy, like it was not a physical object and yet I could still see the numbers of the time. When I turned on my bedside light and opened the phone it was the same time that I had seen through the phone without my having to open it.

I would appreciate it if someone would know if there is a name for this?
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ndcadmin on June 10, 2014 at 8:58 am said: Edit

Others are welcome to chime in here, but my personal experience with dreams seems to at least be relevant or it might actually be the same concept. Basically, there’s an obvious awareness of the “real world” while one is dreaming. Sometimes I consider this dream telepathy and sometimes it might actually qualify as an out of body experience.

I think you’ll find my dream very related (and I actually ask the same question you did). It’s here: http://nationaldreamcenter.com/wp/2014/0...m-is-this/

This got me researching more into the topic, and there’s actually been some recent studies on the subject. This study recognizes our ability to telepathically dream: http://nationaldreamcenter.com/wp/2014/0...-new-data/

But the more I see the word telepathic in studies, makes me believe our dream phenomenon is technically something else (but still related). I personally think it’s more of an “out of body” experience, where our essence/core/soul/spirit takes excursions while we sleep. You look around on the web for more on this, but could be the real explanation of how you saw the actual time and how I saw the refrigerator contents fall.

Interestingly, all these dreamy type memories all seem to be somewhat hazy and hard to remember. Now, of course, these vivid accounts are easier to remember than the standard run-of-the-mill dream, but in general out-of-body memories are sometimes difficult to remember, just like regular dreams, astral projection, and some remote viewing. The brain is processing it’s environment at a low brainwave state, and when you wake up the brain is operating at a significantly different wavelength, making those old memories somewhat difficult to remember.

There’s probably several books on this topic, but I haven’t actively looked for those. Great question, though!

Warmly,
Chris
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Julie on June 10, 2014 at 7:20 pm said: Edit

Hello Chris,

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I read your account of what happened when you were 8. It made me smile. Good to know there are others out there in the world having similar experiences.

Over the years I’ve had a few of these. The one that still stands out in my memory happened about 17 years ago. I was married at the time. My husband (now my Ex) had gone to a bar with other men from his job for a guys night out. He said it was a neighborhood bar. I had no problem with it and was glad he was having his bonding night out with the guys.

That night I dreamed that he and his friends were not at the neighborhood bar, they are at a strip bar. In the dream I saw everything in the place. It was a nasty raunchy low class place.

I woke up before he came home. When he came home I confronted him with it and he accused me of following him. LOL. When I told him that I dreamed it and described the inside of the place he was even more upset. He thought I had followed him and was lurking in the back of the strip club that night. LOL.

Again, thanks a bunch for the reply,

Julie
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