Question of the Day | 10/16/2009 4:00 am

What is your recurring dream? Why do you think you keep having it?

Join Joan Ganz Cooney, Liz Smith and Candice Bergen in replaying your dreams …

Candice Bergen | 10/16/2009 12:00 am

Candice Bergen's Liftoff

Now, the recurring dream … is, in my case, flying. And I love this dream. Because it’s not in the least flashy when I do it. It’s very casual and I don’t fly terribly high. Two to four stories usually. And it’s easy peasy. I just start flapping my arms and … presto, I have liftoff and it is a perfect moment. I hate waking up from that one.

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Joan Ganz Cooney | 10/16/2009 12:00 am

Joan Ganz Cooney’s Dream Mansion

Several nights a month, I dream we have bought a mansion on the North Shore that was owned in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s by a prominent older couple related to my roommate. All kinds of famous people gathered there on weekends and the owners were very hospitable to me, asking me for many weekends. In the dream, I am always concerned about the condition of the place. I’m always trying to get up to the third floor where the help used to sleep to see if it can be used for overflow guests. And I’m always trying to figure out how much work is needed to modernize the bathrooms and other parts of the house. I have no idea why I keep buying that mansion and walking through it. In its glory days, it had 12 servants running it. Just what I’ve always wanted … a lot of houseguests and many in help.

4 Comments

Liz Smith | 10/16/2009 12:00 am

Liz Smith Doesn't Need Freud to Interpret

Going onstage to act in a play or getting up to speak and having a memory failure or no idea of what I am to do or say … This is a really ordinary dream that I suppose just speaks to inner insecurities. And I have it all the time because it forces me to PREPARE better and not to live out the nightmare of the dream. This is a recurring dream that is the equivalent to being nagged by one’s parents. It is also recurring because it scares me and improves me and causes me to give up taking so many chances.

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I have a vivid recurring dream where my cat jumps up on my bed, runs around the perimeter three times, and finally settles into a puddle next to my head, purring loudly.

This cat died five years ago, of old age and deteriorating health. I rescued him when he was a kitten, and we had over 17 happy years together. I am aware in the dream that he is dead, but I am thrilled to have him back. Actually, it seems very real, not like a dream at all.

I think he is protesting the new coop rule in my building—no one is allowed to have pets unless they were already there before the rule came into effect. I believe he is telling me to move.

By kermie b on 10/16/2009 3:38 am

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Kermie,

I would not dismiss the old cat just wanting to spend time with you. The new rules for the coop have no impact on him, and the dream space is the easiest space for the worlds to connect. Three’s have a bit of magic too them, and I think maybe he did too. Just my thoughts.

By Linda Myers on 10/16/2009 11:34 am

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Linda—Yes, I agree. He was the world’s best cat (no offense to other cats—but he really was) and can never be forgotten. In the dreams he is a healthy kitten, full of joy and magic.

By kermie b on 10/16/2009 4:58 pm

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I love cats, and have a huge black one named Chelah that never gets too far away. Animals are great at coming back. I lost both of my big dogs within 30 days of each other, 2 days after the oldest one and last, died I heard barking on the back porch like they always did during the night, and went to shut them up - then it hit me that they had left. Just thier way of letting me know they were okay, and close.

By Linda Myers on 10/16/2009 6:15 pm

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There seems a correlation between wonderful romantic dreams and sleeping on high-thread-count sheets. . and so I have given myself permission to sleep between sheets of pure luxury. There is nothing like waking up with a smile on your face. :-)

Another thing I have noticed - and perhaps we all have - is that, in our dreams, we always remain quite young. Why is that I wonder?? (But I’ll take it!!!)

Besides the romantic dreams - and no, I am not going to divulge them but just know they are beyond good - those that have recurred over and over are always the same and always in color: bright sunshine, blue blue skies, and me in a parka walking on turquoise ice with walls of frozen-in icebergs towering like skyscrapers on either side, colored in that pale blue, stretched endlessly ahead. To me, I guess I am being given a glimpse of the heaven as I believe it to be.

I must admit both sensual dreams and glimpses of heaven both have appeal. What I do notice that the dreams of blue icy heaven are coming more often - which may foretell something I am not ready for - so I am upping the thread-count of my sheets (and adding a wonderful duvet) with the hope that those unforgettable dreams that the sheets seems to give me will swing back to what used to be the norm. They will be time for cathedrals in ice, I think, when I am 90 or thereabouts.

Maybe even later …

By joan larsen on 10/16/2009 6:13 am

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Some people use meditation or various methods to reach transistional or altered states, you connnect more with the heirarchy energy through the energy you feel from finer things being slept on during the process. Stepping into the betwixt and between of your highest thoughts. I wouldn’t worry too much about it being a future vision of any immediate time or not of your choosing. If you ever see a triangle appear with the side looking L shaped, then you might have a decision to make. Otherwise I would just enjoy the ability to touch into your own higher level of energy during the dream space.

By Linda Myers on 10/16/2009 12:37 pm

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My recurring dream is that I am in a very old, large house and that I wander from room to room to room, looking at various small antique items, many of which look familiar to me. In some dreams, my husband is with me and we are commenting on the various antiques and all through the dream, I have this overwhelming feeling of wanting these items for my own. I covet each one and feel anxious wondering how I can buy them or secret them into my pockets somehow. Would love to know what it all means.

By Grace OMalley on 10/16/2009 8:20 am

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Dreams of retrieving, in this case antiques - represents past aspects of yourself, picking them up and bringing them into the space you are now. Some of those parts might include parts of your life with your husband and some do not. But with a knowing that you are an old soul, waundering the rooms of your existence. Even though you don’t physically have them in hand when the dream is over, there is still a part of you that feels more rested and relaxed from the dream. A knowing that each antique part retrieved is a plus in your life now. Just my thoughts.

By Linda Myers on 10/16/2009 11:46 am

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Wowowow Linda! Thanx you for taking the time to reply and for sharing your interesting observation. I don’t usually post on here, but the topic caught my attention and since I have this dream quite often, I decided to post. The one part I disagree on is the feeling more rested and relaxed. In fact, when I awaken from such a dream, I feel sad and confused and wish more than anything I could close my eyes and go back to that house and keep looking at all of those wonderful old things. In addition, all through the dream, it’s as if I know where the next room leads to or what will be inside that room when I go into it. Dreams are funny things aren’t they? Thank you again for taking the time to reply. It really made my day.

By Grace OMalley on 10/16/2009 12:41 pm

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Your welcome! Even wanting to return, you find the journey comforting.

By Linda Myers on 10/16/2009 12:48 pm

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I have reoccurring dreams where I am maneuvering through one maze or another. It could be in a mall, vacant building with tons of rooms, an old house, etc….the dreams are always me going through twists and turns in search of something, but I never know what?

I guess the simple interpretation is in someone I am confused and searching for an answer to a complicated question. Not sure….

By Belinda Joy on 10/16/2009 8:26 am

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Study, walk, understand your labyrith. You are not confused as much as being a part of many complex paths of your own thinking and design, if there could be four of you taking on the tasks you create it would make your life and thinking easier. Everything you pass in your life creates new thoughts of direction. The problem is we become programmed to think we have to choose a path of direction rather than allowing and accepting many paths of our own diversity to come through. Just my thoughts.

By Linda Myers on 10/16/2009 12:03 pm

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I don’t think I can be described as a great dreamer, not in my sleep at any rate, but the dream you describe Belinda Joy is very much like the kind I experience rather often. I dream that I am walking intending to return to where I started. I’m quite confident I know my way back even though the immediate surroundings are completely foreign to me. I am sure of where I’m going because there are always clear reference points, such as a church steeple, a water tower, a very high building or a very recognizable tree on a high hill. However. even though I am heading in the right direction, I pass through terrible areas that are completely foreign to me and I never seem to get to the reference point I recognize. There is always some obstacle that pops-up, forcing me to change direction. Each time bringing me through areas worse than the terrible previous ones, and in trying to get around whatever is in my way, or obstructs my accepted path, I continually get side-tracked and completely loose the proper direction to my destination. It’s a terrible dream, and. to make matters worse, often while I am dreaming, I am conscious that it is only a dream and I shouldn’t worry because even though in my horrible dream I know and accept that I will certainly end up completely lost, I will awaken and the frightening situation will end. Then, for a while after I actually awaken, in real life, I lie there trying to figure out where I went wrong…but happy as can be the dilemma is ended. The experience stays with me a long time that particular day. I don’t like it at all !
I don’t know what to make of it. Even my dear mother, God bless her soul, with her famous “dream book“, would have been hard-fetched to make head or tail out of this one.

By Lauriate Roly on 10/16/2009 5:33 pm

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Dreams many times take us into paralles, being very conscious to where we are at, knowing we are dreaming but still being part of a unknown reality also. Not really out of body but quantrum in a sense. I have had dreams before where I knew I was dreaming and typing and when I woke up, what I had wrote was on my computer screen and I could see it, yet knew I had not consciously been typing. Parts of our unknown psyche seeming to do some crossing between what we consider is real and not real, and in the process just leaving us with a feeling of being disturbed or scared of what has happened. My grandson has been writing about these processes since he was little, calling them dimension jumpers. Accept them for what they are, without the fear. At times, even during your awake time aspects of what you have seen and expereinced could cross your path such as being lost or unknown markers in life, see those as an observer rather than precognitive in teaching you different ways to look at your life and the decisions you make, they are informative in bringing new choices of direction or changing behaviors in life to a better level or understanding. Your guidance is the absolute tool bringing you the dreams with an awareness of how they cross your dimensions of thinking. Your a traveler that stretches out into that outer layer of consciousness.

By Linda Myers on 10/18/2009 7:41 am

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Linda Myers - Thank you so much for your analysis of my recurring dream. It sounds a little complicated but I accept your obviously experienced interpretation. It is far more intricate than the simple explanations that my mother would give me out of her famous, “dream book”. I will learn from your impressions, and I thank you for your kind attention.

By the way, if you, or any of my WOW friends, in the dreams you have, should ever notice a poor lost wandering soul, would you please stop me and help me out. You will easily recognize me because you’ll always hear me singing my song, “Show me the way to go home”.

By Lauriate Roly on 10/18/2009 1:28 pm