By Kim Hornsby (Guest Blogger)
Dreams can be freaky. Just the thought
of going off somewhere with strangers while you sleep is enough to
keep anyone awake. Anyone or anything can enter your dream life to
attack or torment. Conversely, you can do anything within a dream, be
anyone you want. Wouldn’t it be FAN-Freaking-TASTIC to just set an
order for a dream about your favorite movie star or a tropical
vacation and then go to sleep knowing it would be your REM
entertainment?
Some believe you can. Some experts
think that dreams are nothing but your pesky hindbrain’s need for
stimulation while the body has gone to sleep. During REM (Rapid Eye
Movement or Deep Sleep) messages are sent to the front brain to keep
active and those messages link up with your memories and feelings to
concoct a dream. Here’s a funny example: In a study, dreamers who
wore red colored glasses before sleep had dreams that involved the
color red. Taking this further, I’m wondering if I went to sleep
with photos of Hugh Jackman taped to my eyeballs...
If you were hoping that dreams were
more mysterious, read on. Something truly freaky is coming. First
though, just know that not everyone believes that your dream
themes stem from sexual frustrations. Even Freud. Many scientists
who’ve analyzed dreams have no explanations or interpretations but
most agree that if you’re being chased, it probably means you’re
afraid of something in waking life.
There is a whole, huge dream dictionary
online where you can retrieve specifics but again, no one knows for
sure what a dream means. Some common themes such as public nudity,
losing teeth, and flying, continue to baffle even the best
psychiatrists. I think we can all agree if you dream you have gone to
a PTA meeting stark-naked, you have repressed insecurities and
feelings of not being well liked by your peers. Can we move on to
less obvious ideas now?
Flying is supposedly linked to sexual
feelings but I disagree. I’d like to agree because I dream of
flying all the time and I’m damned good at it. An expert, in fact. 'Nuff said.
My recurring dream theme is about
entering a house with rooms, and doors, and connections to more rooms
that never seem to end. Often the top floor is haunted by something
evil, the wind swirling around ominously, spirits taunting me to
climb the stairs etc. Sometimes I must rescue something up there.
Once it was my mother who’d recently died. She was a tiny owl and I
set her free out a window. But usually I avoid the top floor knowing
that it is the worst form of evil there is and the likelihood of
getting out is not good. I don’t even venture to the floor just
below it in case something grabs me. According to dream sites, the
house is me, my mind, and the attic is supposed to be my intellect.
So what I get from this is: I’m afraid to be intelligent. Is that
what you got too? In real life, I am not a cerebral Rhodes scholar
type person whose thirst for knowledge drives me to distraction. I’m
a people person (I like to say, cheerfully). So maybe my hindbrain
wants more and my front brain thinks it’s a bad idea to get too
smart. I don’t know.
Lucid dreams are when you know you’re
dreaming within your dream. Ever done that? I remember as early as
five years old having a dream about my kindergarten teacher throwing
me down the stairs (don’t ask) and me saying to her that it was
fine that she was about to send me flying because it was only a
dream.
Then, there are things called W.I.L.D.
dreams and I’m not talking about meeting the guy from Castle and
the guy from Magic Mike in a huge bed waiting for you. Wake Induced
Lucid Dreams are the holy grail of lucid dreaming. It’s a method of
going from fully awake to a lucid dream of vivid proportions.
Supposedly it takes a ton of practice and very few can do it. This is
where ordering your dream might kick in nicely.
Here’s the freaky part I was telling
you about. There is such a thing as a precognitive dream where you
dream something that comes true. Now this idea is completely
unexplainable in scientific terms and not well received by anyone who
tends to think logically. However, Mark Twain once had a vivid
precognitive dream showing his beloved brother in a coffin with an
arrangement of roses on his chest, only to have it come true within
the month. His brother was killed in a tugboat explosion and ended up
in a coffin exactly like the one in the dream, right down to the one
red rose in the midst of all the white roses. Charles Dickens had two
supernatural experiences involving dreams. Once, his dead father
visited him in a dream and Charles awoke to find him sitting on the
edge of his bed. The second time, he dreamed of his sister in law
who’d recently died. He’d loved her in real life and had several
dreams of meeting her in his dreams. After one such dream, he awoke
to see her apparition floating in his bedroom, eventually
disappearing through the room’s ceiling. I did not know this when I
wrote The Dream Jumper’s Promise but found this very interesting.
If you read my book, you’ll see why.
In that novel I take the idea of lucid
dreaming and W.I.L.D. dreaming one step further to a level where you
are able to share dreams with another person. I honestly thought I
made this up but it turns out there is such a thing as a shared
dream. And it turns out there is a movie called "Inception" about this
too. When I saw the ad for that movie a few years ago, I was angry
that they’d somehow stolen my idea but I finished editing the book
and eventually published anyways. I’m glad I did because there are
many differences in how the writer of "Inception" and I approach dream
jumping. For one, my jumper doesn’t intravenously squirt anything
into his veins. He enters the dream through a psychic connection,
matching his breathing to his subject’s. Luckily Jamey Dunn (my
hero) is a moral person and would never jump into someone’s dream
to swindle a Fortune 500 business man.
In The Dream Jumper’s Promise, Jamey
and his former love Tina, (who has just lost her husband) share
dreams to try to find out what happened the day the husband went
surfing and never returned. I wanted to call it a paranormal theme
but there are no vampires or shape shifters. Then I wanted to call it
romantic suspense but it’s got this para aspect. Maybe someday
Amazon Kindle will have a category within paranormal called Dream
Jumping.
During the time you are in REM at
night, you are dreaming, whether you remember them or not. If you are
woken during REM, you are more likely to remember your dream. Try
this idea by setting an alarm clock. You could be rewarded by
remembering one about your favorite movie actor. Or be given the plot
to your next book. As Freud said, ‘Dreams are the royal road to the
unconscious.”
Sweet Dreams.
Do you have freaky dreams? Ever dreamed
something and then it came true? Had a recurring? Do tell!
About Kim
Kim is an avid
dreamer, both asleep and awake. Writing novels was a dream for her
and now she has two published. The Dream Jumper’s Promise
and Necessary Detour. She once taught scuba off Maui, swam
with dolphins on a regular basis and sang professionally. Now she
raises children, wears mismatched socks to the grocery store and
writes books in Seattle.
Kim loves to hear from her readers and
has a special fondness for 5 Stars.
Kim
Hornsby
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