Fragment wrote: Mon Jun 30, 2025 4:24 pm
That sounds fun.
I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Next step is to practice lucid dreaming so you have more control over what happens in the elementary school.
I'm not that interested in lucid dreaming, personally. I want to believe that the people I interact with are real. I've had dreams where I thought I was lucid but I'm not sure I truly was.
The concept of dreams fascinate me and I wish people took them seriously. I don't believe in hope much, I'm not someone who can really choose to be optimistic. People's lives can go very badly, there is nothing that can't happen to you (in terms of conceivable harm); you can get cancer or some bizarre, rare or excruciatingly painful chronic disease, you can be stabbed or shot and spend the rest of your life as a paraplegic (from accidents too), your loved ones can suffer and die, you can become paralyzed, you can be tortured in the most gruesome ways, you can be homeless, there are a million and one different things that can completely and irreversibly destroy your quality of life and not a single guaranteed source of happiness (you can or will lose your youth, your attractiveness, your cognitive ability, your health, your wealth, your friends, etc.) but dreams are like the one 'break' that nature gives us. For as long as you are alive, there is the possibility that you will have a sweet dream (the old woman can be young again, the crippled boy can fly, the blind can see; if they lost their vision after around 5, etc.). I want to hold on to that intellectually but it doesn't mean a lot to me emotionally, especially with the mood I'm in today and most of the time, because a) our memories of our dreams tend to be vague (I think it's because our capacity to pay attention is diminished so that information doesn't transmit well into long-term memory) even though I'm convinced that they feel fully real when they're actually occurring and b) even though I enjoy most of my dreams the really beautiful ones are rare and they are almost never, if ever, near exactly what I would want them to be.
The possibility of a sweet dream and our ability to fantasize are really all that virtually everyone has to hold on to (damage to certain parts of the brain can make dreaming impossible, I'm not sure if there are more than two documented cases of that happening to people though. People who claim to not dream probably just forget them, which sucks because without the memory of having dreamt it seems meaningless to look forward to. Birds and non-human mammals can likely dream, there's even evidence that spiders can dream). One of the great existential truths of life is that a) animals have desires, b) the frustration of desire is painful, c) nature is not set up in a way that guarantees the fulfillment of our desires so d) the only foolproof means we have to at least semi-satisfy some of our desires is via fantasy (this only applies to rational agents), and even then there will be anhedonic days or pain that makes taking pleasure in anything impossible. The other thing, for me, is that any pain I could possibly experience in life helps to clarify that everyone's/only happiness/pain is inherently good/bad and that clarity minimizes some of the ambiguity in life (although there are other uncertainties and confusion that I'm stuck with. Today is a nasty closure-seeking day on a particular philosophical issue, for example, or I guess what's mostly left now is deciding whether or not I need to edit something in my book or if the wording is fine, there are/often other issues though).
"Niiicee... Dreams like these are awesome. I'm always blown away by how powerful emotions and feelings are in dreams - I still remember the few dreams I've had about LG's over the years."
It's interesting you mention this because according to what I've read, the limbic system (the 'emotional brain') is *physically not capable* of being as active when we're awake as it can be when we're dreaming (activity in parts of the prefrontal cortex are reduced when we dream and the limbic system is more active, increased activity in the prefrontal cortex apparently decreases activity in the limbic system and vice versa. I think this is why master lucid dreamers often advise you to suppress or avoid intense emotion one way or the other because it interferes with lucidity). So it seems to me that all other factors being equal, you couldn't be as happy in your waking life as you *could* be in a dream. Another thing to consider is that reduced rationality/activity in the prefrontal cortex means a reduced ability to recognize ambiguity (which is why we don't question bizarre dream logic, we don't recognize contradictions, or have expectations about how reality must be or notice incongruities. If I'm not mistaken, when people are in love they also have reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex and that makes them less critical/judgmental of their partners. I think being critical, looking for what's wrong, interferes with enjoying life; even though it's obviously necessary in our waking lives).
I was really looking forward to replies to my 'the dreams you wish you had' thread. I would give anything to have a dream that resembled one of the two I mentioned. Lately I've been really interested in the idea of a story (novel, short story, movie; I suppose a short story would be most realistic considering how long dreams last) patterned after a dream because it's something we could really experience. If you watch a science fiction or fantasy movie with complicated plots that require characters having a certain degree of rationality you know that you'll never experience living in their reality but if it's patterned after a dream, that's something you might really experience. Magical realism might cover some of what I have in mind although I'm not really interested in 'literary' fiction and the elitism that comes with that.
Sorry for the long response to a simple post but dreams fascinate me (again, because they are factually the only hope for happiness so many people around the globe have). I have to say, I really hate the idea of dreams as 'symbols' or that dreams have 'meaning' (the authority that people speak with when it comes to what they think your sub-conscious is trying to tell you but also-why can't dreams be valuable because they're fun, because they're a source of joy and excitement and euphoria, why does it have to be about 'growth' and 'learning about yourself' and 'addressing underlying mental health issues' etc. ?).
May all minds have sweet dreams.
I'm happy to hear you found such peace and contentment in your most sacred place. The only place we can truly be ourselves 
