Mortal Mist
General Dreaming => General Dream Discussion and Experiences => : Contratonics January 13, 2020, 04:08:36 AM
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Not sure how much discussion this will spark, but I'm having another sleepless night and want to turn my attention to something productive. Maybe this can be a jumping off point for some collaborative musings.
Recurring dreams might be defined by anything from beat-for-beat replayings of dreamed events to a common theme acting as a focal point across otherwise distinct scenarios. A dream "about" looking in the mirror and watching your teeth fall out and another dream "about" getting into a fight and having your teeth kicked out may or may not be called examples of a "recurring dream" depending on who you ask. Even people who agree on a yea or nay might come to their conclusions for different reasons.
I take note of recurring themes, symbols and scenarios - that's the meat of basic dreamsign identification after all - but I've never found much use in describing a dream as recurring in my own dreamwork or practice of lucidity. I have, however, found a lot of use in describing dream characters, and trying to identify sets of common traits that seem to carry over across different dreams that make certain figures iconic and recognizable. I've gotten much more careful over the years when describing a DC as a familiar recurring character, mostly because being too loose about it ruins the utility these descriptions provide to begin with, but when I do choose to assign a name to a DC it's not intended as a definitive statement about a distinct entity who persists across dreams.
A recent example that helps illustrate the process is Lovushka (http://mortalmist.com/forum/index.php?topic=10779.msg169518#msg169518). I've recorded a few dreams over many years featuring - in broad strokes:
-A pale vampire woman who I encounter trapped or encased in something (the stone walls of the Convection Quarry, a cereal box, a stone sarcophagus)
-Freed by some action I take (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not)
-Unintended consequences or concerns resulting from her being freed, though importantly nothing outright harmful or malicious (disturbing the Kobold's peace and getting him mad at me for breaking his mine, haunting my apartment with annoying spooky voices and poltergeist activity, ect.)
-Further demands or requests for assistance as if being responsible for freeing her marks me as a servant in her eyes (Extra clothing and a personal escort out of the Quarry, further stages of freedom to be released from the apartment, mock blood rituals and culinary services...)
-Her hijinks are not necessarily the primary focus of the dream (Exploring the quarry and gaining the Kobold's trust / access to his tools were in one example. Trying to find something to eat in my understocked pantry was in the second. The most recent dream on the 4th is the only outlier I know of here)
Calling the various examples of these themes and characteristics different instances of the same character is a bit arbitrary but I think it's useful enough as a symbolic reference, so I came up with a name that ties these symbols together in a way I can remember and evaluate easily when they come up. My first recorded dream featuring her was in high school, and I was learning russian at the time. Lovushka is a romanization of the word ловушка which refers to a trap or a set-up. Maybe not the most flattering epithet in the world, but I've never had one of these dreams without feeling a bit annoyed or put-upon.
Some recurring figures do have names that were and are used in dreams as direct reference to the same "person," Iris & Gerio, Vigil and Tellus are a few examples. Some others are never named but have their own little continuity like the Kobold - who is always the stocky draconic creature that exists in the Convection Quarry carving out hunks of stone and making things out of it. Many, however, are the result of a process like the one I went through to describe Lovushka.
The question I'm aiming all of this toward is whether you all have developed any personal idiosyncrasies like this as part of working out dreamsigns, helping with dream interpretation, ect. I've talked to other people who do things like keep track of what they've eaten during the week and compare that to the content of their dreams, like the Sweet Dreams are Made of Cheese thread on a broader scale. Another who found that animals they see that belong to different climates they've lived in lead them to interpret very different meanings in otherwise very similar dreams like a filter that colors all the other surrounding symbols. Any examples like that?
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This is good topic and I will keep an eye out for recurring dcs. The only ones recently have been family, which doesn't really help. I suppose the only other recurring dcs that frequent my dreams have been extra terrestrials. I think I will have to develop a different relationship or view of them to figure out what they really want in my dreams, besides terrorizing me or my loved ones.