The Sheila Variations

Wow. My condolences, friend.

I recall your saying in a post from a few weeks back that you were doing yoga and meditation. Back when I was training Buddhism seriously, there was a period during which I was having really crazy nightmares all the time. It was explained to me that this was a process of purification, that the meditation practice was cleaning out my mind, and that just as when you clean a swimming pool the debris rises to the surface, so the garbage in my mind was manifesting in the form of weird dreams. As I continued practicing, eventually the nightmares went away.

For whatever that observation is worth...

Sending you my affectionate thoughts. :)

About 20 years ago, right after my father died, I had a TERRIBLE experience where, in the middle of an otherwise normal dream, I entered a room where my father's open coffin lay, and my father's corpse spoke to me.

I woke in a sweat, and angry. I told myself to never, ever, use my father in such a cheap way again.

I guess I got the message. Never happened again.

Can you tell things to your subconsious? I don't know....

Hurm. I had a parade of mildly unpleasant dreams last night (so did my youngest son Gavin, I think), but nothing like you describe.

This too shall pass.

Take care of yourself you.

Dan - thanks. I actually thought I have been taking care of myself - but the subconscious obviously has a different opinion.

Au contraire, Red. You ARE taking care of yourself through your self-induced dreamwork. Can't beat the price either, at least compared to formal headshrinking.

I keep a tiny, digital voice recorder on my pillow so I can immediately record every rememberted dream for later analysis.

I concur with Bud. I don't see what the subconscious dredges up as garbage. In fact, it's almost always gold. We may not like it, hence it is (by us) snuck in while we sleep. And, since I don't know Rob at all, and I'm not even remotely close to being a licensed therapist, let me analyze him on your blog. You may have shut down an extremely important aspect of your psychic life when you ordered yourself to forbid using the powerful image of your father in your dreams. What you saw as cheap may have been very rich indeed. Now imagine me saying that with a full beard and a tweed jacket in a smug and somewhat condescending tone. And I apologize.

David -

Thanks for your email, dear friend.

I will, like you requested, write down the dream so you can have a look at it and tell me what you think. I just can't do it today - I need to forget it today. It was that awful.

You know, it's really weird. But reading all this I just remembered that I dreamed last night that two of my brothers had died in helicopter crash.

No wonder I had pushed it out of my (conscious) mind.

bernard - wow. yup, no wonder.

this one woke me up - which makes me wonder what I'm dreaming when I don't wake up?? I so rarely remember my dreams.

I hope you're feeling better. Nightmares suck.

I rarely have them, or even remember my dreams, but the few I have had were not pleasant.

There are nightmares from years ago that I still remember in exact detail, so bad and vivid were they. That feeling of being battered by your subconscious and feeling resentful towards it is very familiar. "Betrayed", as you put it -- that's it exactly!

Ugh, I hope you're feeling better. Sometimes it really takes a couple of days to shake off a sucker like that.

I had a dream, forgot what happened, but my husband did something that pissed me off...and the whole next day I was still pissed at him,even though I knew it was just a stupid dream, I was still pissy about it.

ZP -

I rarely remember my dreams myself ... I used to. And sometimes they were fantastical, beautiful, inspirational ... I miss THOSE dreams ... but nightmares like the one last night? I never want to have one again. I haven't been normal all day because of it.