A skeptic's dillema

[Valvilis]

Are you psychic? Of course not, you're an atheist. But I am a little. Recently, my gift of prophesy has been increasingly developing itself in my dreams. The first night it was nothing more than me dreaming about waking up, talking to my mom and hten making eggs and toast. Problem was, we had no eggs in the waking world - or so I thought. When I woke up, my mom was putting away groceries. She never buys eggs, we don't eat them, but I asked anyway, and sure enough - despite not really being sure why she did it, she bought eggs. I ate them... with toast.

Simple enough, right? A fanciful grocery coincidence. But that was only day one. Since then I've been remembering what seems like it should be all my dreaming for the night. Whatever percent it is, it's way more than I have been. Some have been lucid to varying degrees as well. A little research told me that most people dream in black and white, short duration dreams and often don't remember any of it. Mine are always in color, often very long and quite cinimatic.

But now I'm starting to have dreams with actual implications. The availibility of eggs or whether I'm going to have a chance meeting woth a girl I know are one thing, they require no precaution or change of action on my part. But last night I had a dream, a particularly clear and detailed dream about someone I know's intentions of betraying me. The ardent skeptic, I'm willing to attribute all the priors to coinicidence and psychological influence. But this last one weirded me out. I really like her, but I do recognize the potential in her to do something like that. Perhaps another psychological influence, a christmas gift from my subconcious on matters I'd rather ignore for selfish reasons. But as to why everything got so sharp, so quick... it's just creepy.

Anyway, thought I'd share.

[ebonywnd]

My dreams are often detailed, colored, and long in duration. I've had similar experiences where my dreams eerily seem to indicate future events. Doesn't mean a thing. I am willing to believe that your subconscious process things your conscious can't remember, makes linkages in your mind from things half heard throughout the course of the day. Nothing supernatural, just perhaps intuition. Maybe, since you can see this person betraying you, you are subconsciously afraid it mught happen...so on and so forth.

Unless you don't believe in the subconscious, and so it's obviously paranormal instead.

[FishBait]

i agree with laura except i'll add another part that seems to be true a lot for me, i don't remember most of my dreams but if i see something during the day like in your example eggs i would then remember it as being from my dream, so maybe you dream a lot of things then happen to remember the parts that seem to come true, i've actually read some of freud's thoughts on dream analysis as part of a psych class i took and my take on the last dream about a girl betraying you is that yes it could mean what laura said about you think she might or it could mean something completely different, dreams often operate on symbolism so maybe this girl symbolizes a larger thing or group of people or something that already has betrayed you, and because i used freud there most be something about sex in there

[Atsuko73]

I thought I would take this opportunity to tell a funny anecdote. Well....actually it's just another of Renee's poorly told stories...anywho... I once played the game Secret of Evermore, and became stuck on a simple puzzle in the game. I spent days trying to find the solution on my own, but finally gave up and asked a fellow geek. Turns out, I had dreamt that I had tried the correct solution, but it didn't work! It may not seem weird now, but it's strange to be absolutely sure you did something in the waking world and then later realize it was a dream.
"val" - wishful thinking my friend. Sounds like a case of the subconscious being smarter than you are. Score one for the subconscious!!

[Atsuko73]

I find it hilarious that when I was reading this thread, the advertisement for "learn lucid dreaming" was displayed. I mean, I know how the advertising works, so it's not that "ironic," but still......meh.

[Valvilis]

Ha! That will teach you to respond to old threads. She betrayed me... weeks ago. While similarly themed to what was provided in the dream, it was different enough for me to pass it off on the basis that everyone constantly screws everyone else over all the time. Yet similar enough for me to continue my fanciful delusions of quasi-jedi-ism. So to all you nay-sayers, I say... maybe.

[Atsuko73]

I really just wanted to tell my secret of evermore story... ;D

[Valvilis]

That game was pretty alright. I was very skeptical at first, but I grew to really like the dog. It was no Secret of Mana, but nothing is!