Dream interpretation is akin to astrology. It's specific enough that you feel it pertains to you but broad enough that it will pertain to anybody. It's like a cold reading where you tell the patsy, *ahem* customer what they want to hear without them realizing that they told you everything you're “reading” or “predicting”.

People are so gullible. :)

Of course there are general themes in dreams that are easily understood. For me it's usually that I'm looking for something. Last night I dreamt I was looking everywhere for my dufflebags and pack. When I awoke I knew it meant that I wished I was deploying with my old unit and that I felt I had lost something when I had to take my discharge.

kyupol

I just had a dream of taking a golf club to Scrooge McDuck's head during a bicycle race.

Bicycle
To dream that you are riding a bicycle, signifies your desires to attain a balance in your life. You need to balance work and pleasure in order to succeed in your current undertakings. If you have difficulties riding the bicycle, then it suggests that you are experiencing anxieties about making it on your own.

Race
To dream that you are in a race, signifies that others are envious of your achievements and want it for themselves. If you win the race, then it denotes that you will overcome your competitors. Alternatively, this dream may also be an indication for you to slow down or take a different coarse in life. Often this dream can reveal your competitive nature and how you tend to measure yourself against others.

Golf
To dream that you are playing or watching golf, signifies pleasant indulgences. It may also indicate that you are idling and wasting time. Alternatively, the dream symbolizes your individual accomplishments and your drive to succeed.

Dream definitions are usually bogus, or too broad. They give either a close-minded literal meaning, which doesn't sound like a dream at all, or dont center it around any single belief.

In other words, they're a walking talking fallacy. Dreams are based on the person, diagnosing it without prior knowledge of the individual is like saying just because someone coughs they have a cold.

CoyoteLongshot
You know there are people who actually make money telling other people what their dreams mean? Am I the only one who doesn't think this is a very valid profession? I suppose if people are willing to pay for it…

Hey! It's more valid than those bloody cartoonists! All they do is sit on their butts watching anime and drawing! lol!

A lot of professions could be considered really useless depending on who you are and what you value.

The only dreams I've ever had that I would say could be reasonably interpreted are nightmares. But that's because for me they're usually a sort of subconscious flashback. Those dreams seem pretty self-explanatory, but I see people reading into them all the time, and it usually seems like they're trying to find some deeper meaning than, “At some point you saw something nasty and your brain brought it back up for whatever reason.”

For that matter, I'm still not sure how they assign a value to the things like kyupol posted. How exactly did they go about deciding that a bicycle signifies a desire for balance? Shouldn't the person who had the dream know if that was right, considering it would be a reflection of their own emotions and human beings tend to recognize their own feelings when they're named? Maybe it just means I'm looking forward to next weeks bike race instead.

kyupol

I just had a dream of taking a golf club to Scrooge McDuck's head during a bicycle race.

Bicycle
To dream that you are riding a bicycle, signifies your desires to attain a balance in your life. You need to balance work and pleasure in order to succeed in your current undertakings. If you have difficulties riding the bicycle, then it suggests that you are experiencing anxieties about making it on your own.

Race
To dream that you are in a race, signifies that others are envious of your achievements and want it for themselves. If you win the race, then it denotes that you will overcome your competitors. Alternatively, this dream may also be an indication for you to slow down or take a different coarse in life. Often this dream can reveal your competitive nature and how you tend to measure yourself against others.

Golf
To dream that you are playing or watching golf, signifies pleasant indulgences. It may also indicate that you are idling and wasting time. Alternatively, the dream symbolizes your individual accomplishments and your drive to succeed.

I demand you explain Scrooge McDuck.

I have an insanely annoying dream where I think I'm actually awake. I dream myself getting up, switching off my alarm and having a cigarette (my morning ritual), which means I stay asleep, thinking I'm awake, therefore oversleeping.

Bloody annoying.

Lygo
I have an insanely annoying dream where I think I'm actually awake. I dream myself getting up, switching off my alarm and having a cigarette (my morning ritual), which means I stay asleep, thinking I'm awake, therefore oversleeping.

Bloody annoying.

It's a lot better than dreaming that you just woke up, and any action you took resulted in you falling off a very high cliff only to “wake up” again before hitting the rocks…

ozoneocean had one of the best answers.

Sometimes therapists use dreams to better understand how some people process things through their subconcious (trauma, life experiences)

I love dreaming…they're so beautiful. Even the nightmares.
I heard somewhere lots of people can't dream in color. I'm not sure if that's true. Sometimes I'll dream in black and white but there will still be a splash of color somewhere. (usually red) Some of the most amazing music I've heard in my dreams. Sometimes I wish I could recreate it all…even if no one else enjoyed it.

A few times I've been able to control my dreams..but I find that rather dull. I just prefer it to unfold on it's own.

Am I the only one who often get injuries in real life from dreaming? =\

That's what I've been wondering for a while now, especially this morning.

I had an dream this morning in which I discovered that there was some sort of secret using fake priests. Those priests weren't really human, but some type of cyborg.. anyway they were trying to hide something huge and massive under this building, which oddly enough wasn't an church at all. They were doing a poor job of keeping it secret, though as seeing everyone in the area knew that they weren't really priests, and that they were hiding something down there. They just didn't know what it was.

I had cast an invisibility spell on myself and sneaked into the building and were going down to the basement where I hoped to get a glimpse of that something that they were trying so hard to hide. Just simply because I was so damn curious as to see what it was. It turned out to be some kind of huge, throbbing fleshy machine which was giving birth to those cyborgs.

I felt oddly disappointed at discovering that all they were hiding was the location of their manufacturing plant. But at the time my spell wore off, and everyone was able to see me! So the cyborg priests started chasing me, thinking that I was some kind of sabotage set out to destroy them. I was climbing up this ladder which would had given me an quick exit to the surface outside the building, but one of them grabbed my leg and started twisting it so hard that it actually hurt.

I woke up to this severe pain in my leg, and afterward I had difficulty walking on my right leg (the leg that got injured).

Those dreams are usually very entertaining and exciting to me, but I do hate it when I get an dream-related injury like that… :p

dreams can be a beautiful team

Aurora Moon
I woke up to this severe pain in my leg, and afterward I had difficulty walking on my right leg (the leg that got injured).

Those dreams are usually very entertaining and exciting to me, but I do hate it when I get an dream-related injury like that… :p

It's just as likely that the position you were sleeping in was causing the injury, and the dream just incorporated the pain into what was happening instead of waking you up. So in actuality the injury caused the dream, not the other way around.

Kind of like when your alarm clock, instead of waking you, becomes a siren or other noise in your dream. You don't wake up later thinking that your dream caused the alarm to go off, do you? ;)

Am I the only one who often get injuries in real life from dreaming? =\

Some possible explanations:

a) It hurt because you believed it to be real. Pain is sometimes affected by the belief of its existence. In martial arts training, the instructor sometimes yells “THERE IS NO PAIN!!!” or “NO PAIN NO GAIN!!!” or “WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE THE BODY CAN ACHIEVE!!!” when you're showing signs of feeling pain.

b) Dreams could be your astral body travelling to another reality (past life? future? parallel world? a reality you created? could be anything) . Not really sure about that since I dont remember doing any astral travelling. Maybe I did. Because one time I had a dream in where I was a rebel soldier who is fighting enemies who could become invisible and move so fast. In the end, I was cornered and captured in a wooden straw house. I was slammed on the ground, and a gun was pointed at the back of my right ear. When I woke up, the exact same spot where the gun was pointed was painful and turning red.

Then again, that could be just me sleeping on one side and the weight of my head has caused the pain in the ear.


But that dream of yours could have been a symbolic message.

Check this site out for possible dream interpretations:
http://www.dreammoods.com/

I agree with Fenn. Occam's razor, kyupol.

happy dreams are happy. bad dreams are the devil trying to steal your soul through your pillow.

I've always adored dreams, because when they weren't giving me ideas to play out with toys as a small child, or just entertaining me while I sleep, they were(and are) giving me ideas to write out for later.

Dream interpretation, as a profession, could go either way in terms of bunk. People who try to do a cold reading and charge obscene amounts of money are just trying to scam you. People who actually have some level of understanding of psychology and a good grasp of symbols, can actually help someone interpret their dreams. I don't believe in charging money for it, though.

I feel that dreams are basically the result of the subconscious communicating with the conscious. Either it's just a data dump, or subconscious problems we're not working out/facing consciously, or an active problem that our subconscious understands and our conscious doesn't. Since the subconscious can't really communicate in words(hence why many people have problems reading in dreams), it uses pictures, movies, symbols, existing people, etc to convey a message. The conscious mind then has to try and figure out what the heck the subconscious is talking about. XD

Fenn

Aurora Moon
I woke up to this severe pain in my leg, and afterward I had difficulty walking on my right leg (the leg that got injured).

Those dreams are usually very entertaining and exciting to me, but I do hate it when I get an dream-related injury like that… :p

It's just as likely that the position you were sleeping in was causing the injury, and the dream just incorporated the pain into what was happening instead of waking you up. So in actuality the injury caused the dream, not the other way around.

Kind of like when your alarm clock, instead of waking you, becomes a siren or other noise in your dream. You don't wake up later thinking that your dream caused the alarm to go off, do you? ;)

I know that, but that's the thing. I was sleeping in an normal position…. one that couldn't had caused any possible injury to my leg. I was basically sleeping flat on my back that night, and my legs were positioned normally too as well. Unless I somehow flexed my leg muscle at the wrong moment before I woke up, I don't see how I could had subconsciously caused my own injury.

I've even got cuts on my own body before, that was too deep to be simple scratches when I woke up. and there would be no sharp objects in my bedroom at all that could had caused those cuts.

But apparently this is an phenomena that have happened to others too. on a different message-board there was this woman who'd get reoccurring dreams about an man standing at the end of her bed with fishhooks, and then putting the fishhooks into her feet. She'd wake up to find those red holes and such in her feet…. and no way to explain those injuries at all. A male there also had something similar happen too.

I've been considering setting up an camera to record my movements in my sleep though. Just a way to figure out how my dream-related injuries may have happened, and how to stop them. If I'm really the one who's somehow causing this to myself in my sleep, I suppose I could find an psychiatrist who deals with sleep problems. But if I don't find anything that could explain those injuries, then I don't know what I'd do. :-\

oh well.

kyupol
But that dream of yours could have been a symbolic message.

Check this site out for possible dream interpretations:
http://www.dreammoods.com/

those theories of yours are intersting as always, Kyupol. :)

But to be honest, I've never put much faith in those dream interpeation sites.

After all, so many certain symbols and other things means different things to different people. Like how crows are an sign of evil or bad luck in some cultures, while in others they're a sign of good luck.

Even Black cats means different things to people, depending on how superitous or they were raised.

But to humor you.. .I gave this site an shot.

That site doesn't even have all of the elements of the dreams. For instance, they don't even have anything for Cyborgs.

dreamsite
Priest
To see a priest in your dream, signifies spiritual needs, regulation, religious belief and guidance. It also symbolizes chastity and abstinence. You may view sexuality as immoral. To see a dictatorial or condemning priest in your dream, signifies unyielding authority and over-protectiveness.

Yeah, but there was the fact that those Cyborgs weren't really preachers or priests… they were just dressed like them. if that interperation is for “true” priests which may appear in dreams, does the fact that Cyborgs pretending to be priests mean the oppsiste?

dreamsite
Machinery
To see machinery in your dream, suggests that you are going about your way without much thought. You are making decisions without thinking it through. You need to get out of your boring pattern. Alternatively, it indicates that your self-image or a relationship may be in need of repair.

Hmm. intersting…

Dreamsite
Magic
To perform or dream of magic, suggests that you need to look at things from a different view or approach problems from a new angle in order to successfully move forward.

Hmmm. I've always dreamed of magic and performed magical spells for a good majority of my life. I've simply always believed this was just because I was an fantasy/ video game geek. and I've always felt that my life was just fine, and I've been pretty sasfiated with everying in my life. I don't really have that many problems in life. So somehow I just don't agree with this…

“I'm Being Chased”
Chase dreams often stem from feelings of anxiety in your walking life. The way we respond to anxiety and pressure in real life is typically manifested as a chase dream. Running is an instinctive response to physical threats in our environment. Often in these dream scenarios, you are being pursued by some attacker, who wants to hurt or possibly kill you. You are running away, hiding, or trying to outwit your pursuer. Chase dreams may represent your way of coping with fears, stress or various situations in your waking life. Instead of confronting the situation, you are running away and avoiding it.?Ask yourself who is the one chasing you and you may gain some understanding and insight on the source of your fears and pressure.

The pursuer or attacker who is chasing you in your dream may also represent a part of yourself. Your own feelings of anger, jealousy, fear, and possibly love, can assume the appearance of threatening figure. You may be projecting these feelings onto the unknown chaser. Next time you have a chase dream, turn around and confront your pursuer. Ask them why they are chasing you.?

One may be consumed by their own anger, jealousy, love, or self-destructive behavior. For example, you may be drinking too much or exhibiting open hostility toward others around you. You may subconsciously be threatened by these actions which have been jeopardizing your relationships and/or career. Your dreams are a way of calling attention to these self-destructive actions.

A more direct analysis of chase dreams is the fear of being attacked. Such dreams are more common among women than men, who may feel physically vulnerable in the urban environment. These dreams are inspired by fears of violence and sexual assault in which we are so over-exposed from the media. The violence that the media portrays magnifies our fears and how at risk we all are.?

Well, in the dream I wasn't really scared… just more like: “Whoops, they found me out!”. Also, I don't think the Cyborgs actually wanted to harm anybody… they were just simply protecting their spawning grounds it seems. Does that factor into the whole “chase” theory up there? :P

I had a dream about dating the hottest girl in my school a few weeks ago, unfortunatly it was only a dream =(

The body twists/turns and moves in all sorts of ways while sleeping and you can cramp up a muscle without realizing it at all. You can wake up fine and dandy, your feet hit the ground and you strained something while sleeping. Numerous sleep studies have proven this stuff. Having done some research on hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations and related phenomena you'd be surprised what one does that can cause physical injury during sleep. (Alien abduction, Old Hag, Dark people, etc)

As I may have said before I have been killed numerous times in my dreams and then instantly was a different character seeing my own death, or the dream just fading out as my consciousness would and ending. (often the pull back into my living room as the credits roll on the TV)

I once had an extremely vivid dream down to complete sensory immersion (sight, sound, smell, touch and taste) which ended with me getting killed. I felt everything as the bullet smashed through my glasses and through my eye, I fell into the wet, cold snow and felt the blood seeping away. (all the while also smelling the diesel exhaust and feeling the heat of the M1 tank I had been walking behind and my long-johns getting wet through my wet weather pants, it was vivid) I woke up with pain in one eye. I had been sleeping with my fist curled near my eye.

bravo1102
The body twists/turns and moves in all sorts of ways while sleeping and you can cramp up a muscle without realizing it at all.

So thats why i always wake up in pain D=

Yeah. doesn't explain the cuts I sometimes get on my body, though. =\

too deep to be simple stratches, but not deep enough to be serious. my fingernails may be long and sharp, but they're not THAT long or THAT sharp.

that's what I have the most issues with out of my sleeping pattern problems. Sometimes when my mom sees those marks, she wonders if I'm a cutter. Which is something I would NEVER do.

I never wake with unexplained injury. If I do have a bruise or something I can easily find things around the bed that I would have bumped while I slept.

When I get injured IN a dream though, and wake with severe pain from it, there IS no external cause, and even though the pain of the injury might be very bad, it soon dies away because it has no cause reality in my body apart from the memory in my mind.

It's interesting though that you CAN feel things like pain so strongly when the cause is just the mind alone, and you can still retain it after waking for a short time… Sometimes longer, but then only as a very dull, strange, but mild sensation. The body/mind connection is stronger than we sometimes give it credit.

Aurora Moon
Yeah. doesn't explain the cuts I sometimes get on my body, though. =\

too deep to be simple stratches, but not deep enough to be serious. my fingernails may be long and sharp, but they're not THAT long or THAT sharp.

that's what I have the most issues with out of my sleeping pattern problems. Sometimes when my mom sees those marks, she wonders if I'm a cutter. Which is something I would NEVER do.

Do you have a brass bed or any exposed metal surfaces on you frame or box spring? I have gashed myself severely while asleep on the bed frame.

There is also what ozone mentioned. The body can create bruises and even cuts (the stigmata phenomenon) with blood psychosomatically. You would also be surprised how deep and severely you can cut youself with seemingly dull fingernails. I cut and file mine (I build models, they get in the way) and I have still cut myself as severely as I can with a sharp X-Acto #11 blade.

Then you could also have been abducted by aliens. ;)

Aurora Moon
Yeah. doesn't explain the cuts I sometimes get on my body, though. =\

too deep to be simple stratches, but not deep enough to be serious. my fingernails may be long and sharp, but they're not THAT long or THAT sharp.

that's what I have the most issues with out of my sleeping pattern problems. Sometimes when my mom sees those marks, she wonders if I'm a cutter. Which is something I would NEVER do.

There could be mundane explanations like what ozone and bravo pointed out.

But you can't really rule out that it was caused by an external force. Maybe you were attacked by entities that are not of this world. Demon? Gray alien? Reptoid? Ghost? Psychic attack? It could be anything. God knows.

If I were you I'd try to find the local exorcist/shaman.

It's interesting though that you CAN feel things like pain so strongly when the cause is just the mind alone,

Reminds me of watching a movie with the 3-d glasses. I watched journey to the center of the earth (the brendan fraser movie) and I literally ducked when that trilobyte appeared to be poking its tentacles out of the screen.

Illusion can play with your mind. Another example is when I used to get so into the game when I play Counter-Strike: Source. I sometimes literally jump to the side when trying to dodge. As well as move my head down or up or sideways. As if doing that can give me a closer view of whats on the other side of the wall.

Perhaps this reality is just a matrix? And everything else is illusion? What is truth then?

Is infinite love the only truth while everything else is illusion? :)

bravo1102

Aurora Moon
Yeah. doesn't explain the cuts I sometimes get on my body, though. =\

too deep to be simple stratches, but not deep enough to be serious. my fingernails may be long and sharp, but they're not THAT long or THAT sharp.

that's what I have the most issues with out of my sleeping pattern problems. Sometimes when my mom sees those marks, she wonders if I'm a cutter. Which is something I would NEVER do.

Do you have a brass bed or any exposed metal surfaces on you frame or box spring? I have gashed myself severely while asleep on the bed frame.

There is also what ozone mentioned. The body can create bruises and even cuts (the stigmata phenomenon) with blood psychosomatically. You would also be surprised how deep and severely you can cut youself with seemingly dull fingernails. I cut and file mine (I build models, they get in the way) and I have still cut myself as severely as I can with a sharp X-Acto #11 blade.

Then you could also have been abducted by aliens. ;)

nope, I don't. in fact it's just a simple wood frame bed holding a large, queen sized soft mattress. no metal springs, as I don't like those kinds. I don't even have a headboard or or anything.. it's basically simple in design.

But yeah I suppose you guys are right. still you have to admit that it's a little bit freaky. For instance… you'd think that I'd wake up the moment I make the first deep stratch on my body. After all, at the first sign of any pain I should wake up. But apparently I'll sleep all night, and find more than one stratch on my body. :P

Aurora Moon
Am I the only one who often get injuries in real life from dreaming? =\

Once while out camping and playing airsoft I had a dream in which I was part of a rifle squad working their way through an apartment which was basically my mind replaying through the days game just with a different building in the scenario. While we advancing up a small grassy slope in back of the building, I felt a sharp stabbing pain like I had been shot and I woke up. It turned out that I had rolled over onto my knife which I left unfolded in one of my thigh pouches and my mind put it into the dream just as I was waking up.

Someone
There could be mundane explanations like what ozone and bravo pointed out.

But you can't really rule out that it was caused by an external force. Maybe you were attacked by entities that are not of this world. Demon? Gray alien? Reptoid? Ghost? Psychic attack? It could be anything. God knows.

If I were you I'd try to find the local exorcist/shaman.

GREMLINS DID 9/11