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Mindstream question
Carlita
Bastian please! Save us!United States Veteran
in Mindfulness
I looked it up. No luck.
Would you define our mindstream or consciousnesss behind our thoughts the same as what thoughts embedded in our dreams? For example, our thoughts would be, say, buying food at the store. When we sleep, we dream about the store. Is our awareness of our dream of going to the store our mindstream (an action made an imprint in our dreams)
If that makes sense, or is there another way to relate the definition to if not our dream state?
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This may help.
A Buddhist approach to dreams.
This may help too
It is often heard from Buddhist teachers, that this life is nothing more than a dream and awakening no different in either case. Because, reality is made up of an infinite number of different possible perspectives and we each have but one – our own. So, one perspective divided by an infinite number of different possible perspectives = illusion.”
“The whole life is a succession of dreams. My ambition is to be a conscious dreamer, that is all.”
Swami Vivekananda
I was reading earlier about conscious, subconsciousness, and unconsciousness and had a eureka moment. I read it as our consciousness brings in awareness of stimili (say sense consciousness). The subconscious stores it and a lot of which we are not mindful just do on a automatic basis. When something hits our subconscious strong (say abuse) it makes imprints in our unconconscious mind.
I assume dreams happen in the subsconscious level. If that be the case, I relate consciousness like the river and the banks the subconscious. The mind stream (rather than water; play on words) is continuuos and the illusion is that our subconscious is what defines our sense perceptions of our consciousness. However, Im assuming in Buddhism mind stream is referred to as the unconscious.
If all this makes sense and is correct when we go through rebirth our unconscious goes onto another living being. Maybe dreams are somewhat looking into how our unconscious interprets the stored information in our subconscious mind. If so, we could probably not only see insight of our unconscious mind by insight meditations and dreams. Probably start with breathing meditation first to look into the subconscious. Then graduate to insight meditation to see how what is stored is related to our universal mind and also a way of what may will continue pass physical death.
This is assuming dreams look into our subconscious mind correct enough to understand the meaning of our unconscious interpretations and experiences held in the unconscious mind.
Shrugs.
There are a lot of 'If's' and assumptions there...
Interesting, but meditate on it.
Bear in mind also, that the subconscious is hidden for a reason.
Don't attach too much significance to it....
I personally have enough on my plate dealing with the waking world to overly concern myself with attaching too much significance to the sleeping one.
I hope you liked the links....
My approach to dreams has always been that they are unimportant junk. Finding meaning in them feels like wringing sweat from a shirt and wondering what you can use it for. It already did its work, let it go.
I think dreams can have a place. Not so much for attaching secret meanings to untapped parts of ourselves but more so just for looking at the mind. Do you ever wake up in a bad mood and have no reason for it? Because I am used to tracking my dreams, I have largely found that to be a result of my mind's reactions to dreams. Understanding that makes it easier to recognize the tricks our minds play into believing we are justified in feeling a certain way because of a person or event that "made" us feel that way. But it doesn't have to be that way.
For example, I woke up in a bit of an irritated mood this morning. For no reason. Then shortly after I realized my poor mood was attached to a dream I had right before I woke in which cookies were left out and the furniture was covered in mouse poop. My irritation was to the people who left the cookies out, even though the event never happened. Once I realized that, I realized how silly it was to have feelings about it. But how often do we do exactly that about things we do encounter? Where we let things upset us even though the actual impact on us is nothing or very minimal?
It would help, I guess, if I remembered them. I think, out of 100 nights, say, I remember about 3. So I don't like to ascribe moods to sleep issues. If I'm crabby in the morning, I don't seek the reason or justification. I just come out of it, because otherwise I will suffer. And so will others.
That’s interesting. I’ve recently been keeping a dream journal, and the feeling I get is that dreams are an expression of the underlying energy of your spirit. It’s like emotion and music, the two are linked. But to try to assign meaning to it is difficult, beyond seeing some obvious themes.
Yeah. Twice I read good holocaust books Sara's Key and Shindler's List. I had nightmares literally every time I read at night. I can set my clock to it. I had to space out my readinga because of it and read during the mornings. My brother almost got me arrested and I had handcuffs on me and all. Had dreams about police for a month.
So now, since I know things I experience awake is also in my dreams, I pay more attention. Had a dream I actually drowned in the swimming pool full of people. Just before I died, I felt peace between the panic and death. Make me wonder if that three second peace is the same when someone is dying awake. Its a good meditation subject for death and impermence.
As for mind stream, if the dreams are in our subconscious, then they wouldnt continue after death. If its in our unconscious, I assume it would based on some Buddhist traditions. I still havent connected the two.
Interesting, though.
In matters I find confusing or without an apparent answer, I always ask myself:
"How conducive is this to improving my practice, right Now?"
"What does this situation hold that can advance my progress, in this moment?"
Answering these questions first and foremost will determine my continued mulling.
There is no better place than Here.
There is no better time, than Now.
Read Dhamma books at night.
Better sleep patterns will follow.
I would imagine....
"I once dreamed I was a Butterfly, flying high up in the sky
But when I awoke I found this dream to be... just another lie
For things as they are, are not quite what they seem
Living in a make-believe world of just another dream"
You obviously don't dream that much, let alone remembering dreams or having lucid dreams. That kind of comment from someone that dreams would be considered averse. From someone that doesn't dream it sounds condescending and unhelpful.
It would have been more helpful to word it as "what I can use it for. It already did its work for me so I let it go".
I know it's your place and all but it's a big deal to some of us. At least to myself it's something I struggle with almost daily.
I have often mentioned that our mind generates thoughts very much in the same way that our stomach segregates gastric juices.
It is its function and it does it non-stop.
Therefore the idea of monkey mind.
We flit from one thought to another, and our impressionable senses constantly translate thoughts into feelings and get us triggered to react or respond.
During the day, the filter of our conscious mind more or less keeps monkey mind under a leash.
More so, as with the practice of meditation, we train our mind to be more selective on which storyline deserves attention and following through, and which thought is pure unconscious garbage.
Left to its own devices during the sleeping phase, we are bombarded by unconscious residual lint.
As we have discussed in other conversations, the unconscious mind would be the seat of alaya or store consciousness, the place of our karmic seeds.
Dreams could be interesting ways to connect with our deeper stirrings, our unconscious narratives, our past conditioning.
But in my opinion, it is what we choose to do, our volitional thinking beyond the urges of our unconscious patterning that counts more, since it generates skillful or unskilful actions which may perpetuate or not the cycle of dukkha.
I am not a butterfly lobster?
Curiouser and curiouser ...
I once dreamt I was awake ... and I was.
Here to for help ?
I think when you are awake what you see is something your brain "composed" from sense data and thought neurons. So vision we only see some wavelengths of light that our sense organs can "see".
In sleep the brain can also "compose" things with the same brain cells/neurons although in sleep there is no sense data (signals from nerves).
I once dreamt that in order to awaken, I had to stop dreaming
I think it depends on the kind of dream. There are some dreams where our actions are beyond our control as if we are a character in a movie we ourselves are watching. There are some dreams where we have control but don't know we are dreaming and some dreams where we are in control and know we are dreaming.
I think karma moved by intent would happen for the latter two but not the first I mentioned.
I had one 2 weeks ago about being chased by a bear. It was the second kind where I have free will but don't know I'm dreaming. I was running through the snow and the bear was about 200 meters away and gaining at my 5 o'clock (behind and to my right). At about 10 o'clock was a park full of children, 8 o'clock had a lookout point with a shabby fence and at 1 o'clock there was a very dense patch of trees so tightly spaced that the bear simply wouldn't fit.
My best bet to lose the bear was to go for the trees but that would leave the park vulnerable so I headed for the cliff with the wimpy fence.
I ended up getting away without having to send the bear off the cliff but when my options appeared the first thing I thought of was to head for the trees and this is what disturbs me about the dream. That option, the first I thought of would have put those kids in danger.
Now, there were no kids and no bear and so it may seem like it is pointless to think about but I didn't know it was a dream at the time. That I could even think of sacrificing those kids to save my skin scares me.
Ever wake up to find yourself dreaming more than once in the same dream?
I can sometimes recall dreams. I've had lucid dreams. Rarely have I had ones where there is a "plot" like I hear some folks describe; they tend to ramble more than have a point.
Generally I've found I recall them less over the years. Perhaps because I care about them so little that I don't put any effort into remembering them anymore. Perhaps because I've figured out things that cause me to have weird dreams or have less deep sleep and have cut back on those things (especially watching TV or playing video games late in the evening, or watching movies that stress me out). Or perhaps because I'm generally so skeptical of dreams that when they irritate me I typically either wake up or (less frequently) realize it's a dream and take them over and change them (and then inevitably wake up when I change it too much).
I admit I have no idea how being disrespectful of dreaming translates to disrespect of the folks who have issues with it. Like, I compared it to sweating, but I know folks can have sweat disorders, and I have no idea how that connects to me not caring about dreaming (or sweating).
Actually, I seldom remember my dreams, @David.
I dream vivid and complex dreams the few times I am able to go to bed early and sleep at least six hours in a row.
But that does not often happen...
Or you just never had to endure problematic dreaming like some of us have since we were toddlers. My first real lucid dream didn't happen until I was about 16 and until then, nights were not much fun at all.
Looking on it now I probably read more into it than was there but it sounded flippant like you figured it simply shouldn't be an issue and it's been an issue for me since I before I can remember. Literally. It would have been nice if someone got me help for it back when I was a kid but life is life.
Sorry if I over-reacted (I do tend to do that).
The first one I remember where I seemed to wake up more than once I was about 6 years old and was being chased by bees. I woke up and felt relieved. Then I went to my window and outside were millions of bees in the shape of a giant bee. Just hovering there waiting for me. I woke up screaming.
Nothing there to explore I guess. It's not like it plagued me for years or anything, hey wait.
Wish I knew more about the brain, without studying. The same cells makes dreams sound like hallusinations. I don't remember my dreams anymore, but the older ones I remember had the quality of vivid memories, except two, which were more vivid than waking reality.