Thread: symbols in dreams... understanding your dreams

hey!! i have been thinking a lot about this and it's still very much beyond me. it's like i create something and most of the time i don't even know what i created or how i created it.
well there are times of clarity, but often the clouds come back. sometimes it also seems as if it's either too simple or too complicated. i guess it is what is or so, but still there are a lot of aspects or so that confuse me.
i think i have had moments where i was really connected with my inner self and i thought i understood why i dreamt something and it was as if there was a sort of inconceivable connection with reality, what i experienced in that moment or in another moment. i dunno lol... it's a bit hard to explain. it's as if i do know myself very well, but at the same time not very much or at all lol... maybe it means that i need more balance, because the extremes are too strong or so.


from the feeling i would definately say this is true and i am trying to achieve that. and it's also like i get coincidences that sometimes seem like sometimes more and sometimes less vague signs or so. maybe it's like i have created a split personality and one part is waking up and another is falling asleep. well it's only speculation, but in the way how it's all seemingly symbollic etc etc ...it's a bit as if it's pointing towards that. my conclusion is that i think i simply have to care for and love myself more or better. because if i don't understand myself, who else is supposed to do that... lol... :shock:
maybe it also means something that i often forget my dreams very fast, but well sometimes the dreams are also very far out and weird.
i think in some way it could have to do with the concept of integration. what things i want to integrate in my being and what not. because i can tell that's where i seem to have some conflicts or so...

i wonder whether symbols in dreams always have to mean only one thing or can also mean many things. i was having the impression that almost anything that appears in a dream can be a symbol and point towards something else or so. and i am sure that when we pay attention to what's happening inside of ourselves, we are more likely to be able to understand ourselves better. also if we understand ourselves, i would say we can possibly understand ourselves and others better. i don't think i want to tell a specific dream right now, but maybe later.. however if someone else wants to do that, i guess that would be ok for sure. any thoughts or ideas or so???




peace

I think that images, imag-ination, symbols are far more anceint and primal than the invention of writing and numbers. I listened to a very interesting talk given by Jeremy Narby a few days ago---I would link this thread to it but I think you have to join him on Facebook to be able to access the video--and I did a little transcript from it, where he says:

Jeremy was told by the Indians—of how they got their knowledge about the plants and their healings—“Knowledge of the plants comes from the plants themselves”
Shamans take Ayahuasca…and speak with the essences or Mothers or spirits, which is common to all life forms, and are the sources of information. They said: Nature speaks to people in visions and dreams”
“Of course”, says Jeremy, “I didn’t take seriously what the Indians were telling me. It
couldn’t be true, because to assume there is verifiable information in your
hallucinations is the definition of psychosis. It was an epistemological impossibility”

Now listening to this talk has really inspired this deep exploration I am on at the moment which I may do a blog about, where I am looking for connections between things. But my questions begins 'what is imagination?' When you look up western definitions of 'imagination' and 'hallucination' you will find lots of presuppositions, and negative connotations. Such as 'it is all in the head' and 'it is fantasy' etcetc. So like Narby says, there is no understanding in modern belief that visions could be a source of intelligent information.

Everynight we sleep, and entes this land of images, of the imagination. Very rarely do we dream of talking or reading do we? The emphasis is images, and this is shared by mythology. I think that original mythology was more images than words, and images can have far more information than a word can, and can point to complex ambiguity.
So when you wonder:

i wonder whether symbols in dreams always have to mean only one thing or can also mean many things.

I think it is more so the latter. Reality is complex and every'thing' implies everything else, and the healing potential of visions is how they can relate this complexity.

Spontaneous visionary experience in our culture is called 'schizophrenia' and is classed as 'mental illness', but really it is the bodymind healing itself in a toxic matrix of language which is de-signed to oppress, and divide and rule. Hence the far deeper more primal visionary aspecs of ourselves are suppressed and these suppressed partts can erupt for some people, but because of the nature of our culture which fears this visionary realm people who go through this receive 'treatment' where their visions are forcibly suppressed with toxic drugs instead of their being intelligent and loving support for people going through these powerful states of self-healing.

hmm i agree with you man. there's so much hypocrisy, ignorance and nescience going on...
but it's no wonder if all that matters is money. we get reduced to numbers in a bad way and
our true beings are disregarded. it's like if you have money then anything else doesn't matter.
people should start to recognize how they destroy themselves and how they are becoming
monsters, because of that shit. i have also felt it within myself and it made me very sad.

i think it's like people start to think that there is no intelligence in nature and they think only
they are intelligent. and this is probably where they begin to split of from nature and form
split personalities etc etc...
it's ignorance towards reality, because the conception and perception of it become so limited.
what the worst kind of people do is to be ignorant and then ignore/deny that they were ignorant.
and yeah there's certainly not enough real love... it's often becoming so fake that it's not even
funny anymore... but yeah well then again maybe we can also be grateful for negative examples
and simply turn away from them.
i also think what indians tell us has a deeper truth in it than we are able to see. they can see it
easier like us because they live together with nature and are not trying to work against it.
we can actually learn a lot from them if we would only be willing to listen.
maybe it can be important to know that you are one with your thoughts in maybe a similar
way that you are one with your shadow... for example an idea is that you first need to
acknowledge that you have ill thoughts before you can change them.




peace

Yes we have been created a toxic-matrix-myth that has us believing we are robots whose brains produce consciousness, and this brain-produced-consciousness is confined to the brain. There is no nature out there that has consciousness too. So we are all confined units------ pushed into our little brains. What a horrible story to believe in isn't it?

So all 'out there', 'outside the brain' becomes basically dead material, even the animals and other species, seen as machines.

And now they are talking about Transhumanism which means we--as already-robots--we can be 'up-graded' by the ones-lording -it-over-nature's flashy technology. So the 'Man' now is supposedly 'our' saviour, where in their toxic-religious-myth which preceded the one we are in now the story was that a disembodied sky god (male of course) was going to come and be a saviour (of course some still believe this).

So it is clear to me that what these toxic-mythmakers do is just change the lingo with their supposedly different worldviews but their divide and rule strategy stays the same.

Their control-freak-magick is to keep us feeling divided from our bodies, sensuality, others, including all other species, and nature.

yeah man i agree totally with you. we can feel and as far as i can see a lot of the shit that they are trying to put on us is to try to make us forget that we feel. because for example politicians and the music industry and other industry fascists don't feel and they want us to be like them. and they even try to force that on us. it's so sad really... but then again i think for some times i also had lost my feeling and so i know what it's like. it's really terrible... probably the myths that you are talking about come from those fascist monsters. but yeah, why listen to them if they don't listen to us?? it doesn't make any sense.

i would say they are simply stupid and blind to play the "game" that they are playing. what i dislike most is that in very unpleasant ways what they do is tell us that we are not seeing what we are seeing and we are not feeling what we are feeling so they can go on doing what they do. it is only logical if you look at what's really going on and can have your own perspective. it's only fear manipulation. because fear is the greatest weapon... i think if you try to see the world with the eyes of a child you can see the truth.
what's going on is really twisted, because they are afraid of the truth, and hence they are afraid of us waking up. and i also think it's a lot about language and the potential for manipulation in that context. and hmm i am rather convinced that reincarnation is just simple logic, yet still missunderstood very much. life is a cycle and energy becomes reintegrated in more subtle ways that we may be aware of.

what we can do is to practice the ability to control our own thought process. and if we understand why we think something, we can change it. or in other words if we truly understand ourselves, then we can "willingly" change and transform. the idea is that thought is like a bridge between the unmanifested and manifested and hence it does matter what we think. i think this is what they don't want us to know and i also believe that they have studied that process in their retarded ways to manipulate what we manifest. there would be a great difference and that is that we can be our own masters instead of being slaves. in some sense i think it's about the aspect of oneness, because maybe it's not only about whether we are one, but how we are one.
hmm an interesting idea again from the movie "the matrix" that i posted a few times already in other threads is the scene when neo meets the architect he says that "the problem is choice".
the interesting thing about this is, is that there are many ways to understand this. for example symbollicallly it's interesting, because neo means "the new" and the architect means that what makes the things so to say and for the new supposedly the problem is that it can choose...or not choose?? the analogy to the real world could be that we often are bombarded with choices and don't know what to do or for example they try to hide other possible choices like that.
i hope you understand what i mean!



peace

Yes I understand. Actually a really powerful thing I have read was called The Power of Choice, by Drucilla French. When I first got online, I had only partial internet access via cable TV, but I discovered these excerpts of writings about how this mindset controls all forms of literature, and I was fasciated so I got in touch with her, and amazingly she kindly printed out her whole thesis and sent it to me!
I may have mentioned that 'choice' has in history been seen as 'heresy'---the very meaning of that term means 'to choose'. So that is how oppressive the Christian Church was, that it called any other alternative to their belief system heresy, and remember with this accusation came the threat of everlasting punishment in Hell! So just imagine the pressure of those times NOT to choose what you feel and think.

But now, in the world that claims to have got away from all that superstition because of Galileo and scientific method and humanism etc, it's made out this is the 'free world' which is exactly what Americans thought of their country. HOWEVER...in this phony free world, if you choose not to accept this warmongering, social darwinist, consumerist, violent, soulless wasteland you may be deemed 'mentally ill' and 'treated'. So in a way this is even WORSE than before because it is invasive. It will push toxic drugs into your system to manage you moods and so on.
yesterday in mainstream newspaper is an article titled '5 year olds suffering from depress8ion'. It was painful to read. it said that due to the problems of family life younger and younger children are suffering from 'mental health problems', and then we are 'reassured' that these little ones are in the 'care' of the 'mental health professionals'! This means they most likely will be stigmatized with mental illness and have their tender bodies invaded by their toxic drugs. So noone is safe from this insanity---like the Church matrix, this matrix is all-pervasive

i would say they are simply stupid and blind to play the "game" that they are playing. what i dislike most is that in very unpleasant ways what they do is tell us that we are not seeing what we are seeing and we are not feeling what we are feeling so they can go on doing what they do. it is only logical if you look at what's really going on and can have your own perspective. it's only fear manipulation. because fear is the greatest weapon... i think if you try to see the world with the eyes of a child you can see the truth.
what's going on is really twisted, because they are afraid of the truth, and hence they are afraid of us waking up. and i also think it's a lot about language and the potential for manipulation in that context. and hmm i am rather convinced that reincarnation is just simple logic, yet still missunderstood very much. life is a cycle and energy becomes reintegrated in more subtle ways that we may be aware of.

Yes orwell said it--how they try and make you think war is peace, ignorance is strength, slavery is freedom. The whole toxic game they play--the controlfreaks--is to mess with our minds and manipulate us to think what they want us to think. Edward Bernays --one of their spin doctors--bragged about this in his book Propaganda:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. [source]

But this begins in their enforced schooling system, and this myth of 'the irrational masses' which justifies to themselves their superior status for taking on this unelected role is again the toxic myths they follow.

And YES they are fearful of the child's vision, and sense, because every child has a direct way of being and seeing, etc, and so thats why they want to mould them as soon as they can walk so as to maintain this insane matrix. When we take psychedelics this helps us have the 'sense of a child' meaning that sense not manipulated by their psychological techniques of oppression, and this therefore explains there never-ending fear and war against them and those who choose to take them and choose to explore their consciousness and interrelationship with nature.

Originally Posted by zezt

But this begins in their enforced schooling system, and this myth of 'the irrational masses' which justifies to themselves their superior status for taking on this unelected role is again the toxic myths they follow.

have you read anything by john taylor gatto? he describes the processes and effects of mandatory schooling very well. it infinitely angers me that I was being subjected to 12 years of downright brainwashing, and that the same counts for virtually everybody else.
here's a good excerpt from gatto's writings: The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher, by John Taylor Gatto as I read his books I swore to myself that if I have children, I won't send them to school. nobody should be subject to this.

hmm as far as i can see all that means how ignorance,nescience and evil try to overtake, attack or break our consciousness. they want to impose their matrix or something like that on us. because it seems that they don't want us to be free. but i know we should be in control by ourselves.
i really think that waking up from a bad dream is the best analogy if it comes to toxic life situations that we have created by being unconscious or so etc etc... it's as if by being so unconscious we buy into the ego-dramas and games... if we really become conscious then the ignorance that we create by our own unconsciousness won't be able to survive.
and i also think that school is a part of how the system is working... the good thing is however, that we are together in school. if we know our true self then the system can't really change us. because the real truth is beyond the mind.
actually, i think language and how it can limit our understanding and perception of reality plays a relative big role... how thoughts can become compulsive like programs etc etc... it really seems as if at some point we don't use the mind anymore, but the mind begins to use us...
i just think our true nature and being is so beyond anything....



peace

Originally Posted by ararat

have you read anything by john taylor gatto? he describes the processes and effects of mandatory schooling very well. it infinitely angers me that I was being subjected to 12 years of downright brainwashing, and that the same counts for virtually everybody else.
here's a good excerpt from gatto's writings: The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher, by John Taylor Gatto as I read his books I swore to myself that if I have children, I won't send them to school. nobody should be subject to this.

Yes I have read a lot from Gatto. and there are also good videos about his work and where he is interviewed available at Youtube. I am SO glad he has done what he has done which is exposing the so-called 'education' system, and its roots etc

I HATED school from day one all the way through. it was like this dark cloud always there at the back of my mind. Sunday night blues. Going away on holoday and then it looming closer. I didn't let it ruin my holidays and weekends, but I resent me and zillions of other kids having their invaluable childhoods blighted by this evil crap!

Now it is true that some people will claim that schooldays were 'the best days of their lives'...well booly hoooo for them! For the ones it is hell for it IS hell, and I resent that. When your a child and have to go to school that is all you know. it is very like what I was talking about before--about the all-pervasiveness of the Church. For many people in those times reality=the church and it was literally unthinkable that there could be alternatives. That's how oppressive it was. And same is so about school, it takes children's lives over completely, and they don't realize that this is a constructed reality imposed on them by a soulless elite. They are not informed.
So that is same for adults, the more we're un-informed about the constructed reality which is the matrix oppressing us the more un-conscious we are of it and the more it has power over us. As said this matrix is so insidious that it invades our very being so we feel divided from our very body, sensuality, feelings, creativity. So come on---let us keep asking questions questions and exploring, because doing so is undoing what they are trying to maintain, control of our bodymind.

I didn't hate school too much, maybe in an unconscious awareness that it wouldn't change anything. however I remember my first few homeworks. the first one I did quite happily, coloring some rectangles and triangles and stuff like that, but it didn't take long until I lost patience with doing that every day, you still can see the holes that I hit into the desk with my pen

that church comparison is spot on.

ohhh i HATED HATED it with a vengeance.

I know Gatto says about how they train the kids. So for example, they may be into some activity, and suddenly a bell goes and they have to stop whatever they are doing and go to a next lesson

I see the same thing happening with adverts. In the UK we are used to having a some channels that don't have ads that cut up the flow of a programme. Some people in the States etc may not have that I don't know.

I love tennis, and until this year the tennis has been with the BBC which doesn't show ads, so you had a sense of flow. But the French Tennis Tournament has been taken over by a commercial channel, and so it gets chopped up. For example when the players go to sit down you get these fukin ads.

but not just that. On other channels you may be watching something VERY deep and dramatic and also about extremely sensitive subjects, but you will STILL get suddenly cut up with this awful advert(s) that totally assaults consciousness. That is how I feel it---assaulted. And you are supposed to suddenly stop that feeling, and whole world you were in with the drama and now be forcibly fucked with by this dodgy advert. Even the sound goes up when they come on.

But my point is that it is this same pattern where the flow of experience is being cut up via someone elses agenda. If you feel bad about it that IS you feeling bad about it.

reading that bell-thing was quite an epiphany. it explained so much! made me think how god-awful it is that kids are diagnosed with ADD or whatever and then get medicated with amphetamines, while all they ever needed was time alone in nature without the constant regime of so-called activities™ :crushed: it may or may not be as simple as that.

I feel your pain concerning the adverts. I like to watch the simpsons every now and then and it's the same story there. it is so crazy how little people notice advertising, or how little they seem to care about the whole thing. it's like people are throwing stones at their face and they don't say a word. in the lab where I work, everybody starts talking and blabbering if something stinks, or something gets dirty, but nobody seems to mind the stupid stupid stupid advertising in the radio, which is more akin to acoustic pollution. it is beyond me, and they wonder why I get grumpy when the radio is on.
and all the billboards everywhere... nobody seems to mind.

Originally Posted by ararat

reading that bell-thing was quite an epiphany. it explained so much! made me think how god-awful it is that kids are diagnosed with ADD or whatever and then get medicated with amphetamines, while all they ever needed was time alone in nature without the constant regime of so-called activities™ :crushed: it may or may not be as simple as that.

Well that is just it!! First we get enforced schooling which has a beginning--a history. Ask a cross section of people about 'enforced schooling' and they won't dig what you on about, because they are uniformed about it. They do not re-member--have forgotten the toxic roots. So this is a BIG CLUE how the matrix gets us isn't it. We forget the origins of our oppression. and then even our oppression, which means the weird thing that you can be oppressed and yet be un-aware your oppressed! Ever tried telling anyone that doesn't realize they're oppressed they're oppressed? They can become very hostile and call you all sorts. Gatto, as you may know, also gives us a history of how this self-policing happens. That the elite manufacturers of the matrix knowing that their policing of people would be too costly made it so that people police themselves and each other, hence if you try and point out to some people about the oppression they will try and police you, and force you to conform to 'normalcy' is is the very oppression.
So again, first we get the enforced schooling, and then get forced drugging of a child if for whatever reason s/he dopes not fit into this oppressive system of schooling which of itself harms the child! As Dr John Breeding explains what this does, he calls it a magic act:
Medicating Children w/ Psychiatric Drugs Part 1, Psychology John Breeding - YouTube

IE., he says that when it is decided by school and parents (often agreeing, or even desiring it) to drug a child who has so-called 'ADHD' that this is like a magic trick, because "poooof" just-like-that, all the real deal that needs being made aware of, and dealing with, like problematic homelife, the schooling system, and the culture all 'magically disappears' by blaming the child and then pretending the drug will sort out the 'problem' 'pooooooof', gone!! So for THEM it is as 'simple as that', but what they continue to do is further harm the child who is in their care.

I feel your pain concerning the adverts. I like to watch the simpsons every now and then and it's the same story there. it is so crazy how little people notice advertising, or how little they seem to care about the whole thing. it's like people are throwing stones at their face and they don't say a word. in the lab where I work, everybody starts talking and blabbering if something stinks, or something gets dirty, but nobody seems to mind the stupid stupid stupid advertising in the radio, which is more akin to acoustic pollution. it is beyond me, and they wonder why I get grumpy when the radio is on.
and all the billboards everywhere... nobody seems to mind.

Yes I am with you. I know how odd it feels to be aware of stuff like this and see others seemingly oblivious to it. I see that this is because they have literally become de-sensitized to what is being done to them, and adverts are the tip of an ice-berg. How many people for example just take it for granted that war and dropping bombs on innocent men women, and children is an accepted reality? And yet they do, and will look at you funny if you are against all that.

I am seeing in big televised events, like Football, especially, that in the half-time adverts, when they know millions of impressionable youths are going to be watching TV they push their videos like World of Warcraft which is making you feel you are one of the robotic macho soldiers shoooting, and bombing the fuck out of ANYTHING in your path.
I saw this some time ago, and in the video comes this text in big bold words "UNNERVINGLY BEAUTIFUL"...I was just disgusted and so complained to the adverting complaints board, and they made out they were taking it serious and sent me a bunch of letters over the weeks to claim how serious they were taking it, and then the inevitable final one saying that it actually WAS acceptable and they see no harm in pushing such material. So what you gonna do. The word IS insane, but they think they sane.

the emotional desensitization! when there are breaks in a (movie) on tv, there is this lapse in consciousness. ever been watching tv and the commercial comes on, but one doesn't even notice it until halfway through the commercial, or worse, several commercials?! the movie means nothing in the scheme of this. we see it, but it has an opposite effect than if we were to watch it without breaks every 7 minutes. on tv, the movie is merely the juicy thing on the end of the barbed hook. it is as was said, the commercials are louder than the fucking program itself! what it does is lower ones emotional guard by coaxing the average viewer into an emotionally open and vulnerable state. we give ourselves to the possibilities and complexities within the movie. then the movie breaks, and we continue pondering the ideas and possibilities of the story and before we can even realize we are being bombarded, yes, attacked, abused by these suggestively toxic requests, and by then it is too late; who knows what kind of conditioning has slipped through.

this and the constant flicker and changing of the screen, and "'we' still find it baffling" as to why society has become emotionally distanced and absent of any attention, awareness... the magician waves his hand one way while performing the illusion just out of casual view.

many people may not buy into the idea of magick or magic, but this black magic/k at it's finest.

just how fucked up is this world...

Here is a powerful example that may answer your question. I saw this last night and hope everyone here views this! Also please share it?

Scientific Racism: The Eugenics of Social Darwinism - YouTube

totally gonna watch this later

Also let me share this. I have been reading this interesting article here: ReVisioning Medicine: Imagining a New Medicine and Healing for All Beings « RUIN AND BEAUTY in which is mentioned this book about peoples dreams in Nazi Germany.

Now some years ago, I remember reading this really interesting info about how it was to be in Germany with the rise of the Nazi regime. How very slyly the evil began permeating everywhere. I was haunted by reading this because later I either forgot or lost the details of the book, and website I read about it. i SO wanted to remember because I wanted to compare those peoples experiences with what has happened to us post 9/11. Now in the above linked article is a book mentioned. At first I wondered if this was the book I was wanting to remember. I am not sure, but it sounds VERY interesting, I want to get it, and it is very much relevant to know about for this thread!

We are not free to live or to die the ways we wish. We do not have control over our own lives. We are forced to yield to authorities we do not know and may well not respect. Guilds of professionals and politicians, often beholden to the pharmaceutical, insurance and medical industries, make strategic economic decisions that will decide our fate. When you are prohibited from acting on behalf of your own life, you are living in a totalitarian system. Despite what we have been led to believe, totalitarianism is very subtle. It seeps into our bodies and minds like an invisible gas. Like radiation that we cannot detect without a specialized instrument, that enters our bones, distorts our cells. “You must. You must not.” Even those who ultimately impose the laws and create the conditions under which we live, are not aware of the full impact of their decisions, actions and their consequences. It is the way of those who presume, without asking, to alter our food supply, to pollute our land, to envelop us in a chemical and electromagnetic soup that threatens all of us, our children, human and non-human.
In The Third Reich of Dreams 1933 – 1939, Charlotte Beradt, who kept a diary of patient dreams in Germany during the rise of the Third Reich and smuggled it out of Germany in code, traces the ways in which the rising tide of fascism infected the unconscious lives of ordinary Germans, how people, according to one reviewer, are remade from the inside out by totalitarian regimes.

The Third Reich of dreams: The nightmares of a nation, 1933-1939

IMAGINE having to smuggle out reports about peoples dreams?! And this fits with the Nazis hatred for Modern art, especially Expressionism, where artists explored their dreams and 'unconscious' and expressed them in art form which the Nazis called "degenerate and pathological".

hmm i sometimes got the impression that often i was not really there anymore or so... and funnily enough a lot of the time i was experiencing my dreams not very actively. hmm i wonder whether this means that emotional/spiritual/mental violence can destroy more than we may think. and well i also recognized that it seemed there have been people who didn't want to let me be myself for seemingly rather obscure reasons from the feeling. well and i can see that now more clearly. it was as if their life would depend on me not believing in myself. and well.. wouldn't that be a way of how demons would behave??? it's very strange lol... maybe i should just watch out more for what i believe and what not. and really care for the inner child. it all makes sense now...



peace

people can oppress you in a myriad of ways. often they may not even be aware they are doing it!! And this is the case in many families, and a reason that this can send some people into deep distresses which then get labeled 'mental illness' by the culture.
In order to KNOW when you are being abused, even subtly, you have to dive into yourself and what is going on. Or else their abuse gets internalized and you start thinking about yourself what they do or what you think they do

DAYDREAMING

if we are talking about 'understanding dreams', what about daydreaming? This is something I am thinking about lately. I am aware how when in nature if you allow yourself to daydream you feel really deeply, ecstatically in fact.

I just had a look at the etymology of that term, cause I want to know roots of the terms I use, and found

daydream 1680s (n.), from day + dream. As a verb, attested from 1820. Related: Daydreamer; daydreaming. [source]

As you can see, it is a fairly 'new' term and not much is said about it, and it is also noteworthy that this term comes about in the beginnings of the so-called Enlightenment or 'Age of Reason', and this is where real pressure is imposed on children and people to fit into a mechanistic interpretation of reality where 'attentiveness' to facts, and rational modes of being would be very much pushed by the authorities.

I remember in school often being told off about daydreaming, and threats from the teacher to 'PAY ATTENTION!' and I see this as abuse which then becomes internalized into our adult life.

I have been witness to people being made to feel they have been damaged by psychedelics becase they have become more daydreamy! So that is accusation of brain damage, and/or 'mental illness'---so yet again is this oppressive insistence to NOT daydream and be efficient, productive, and attentive.

I found this article earlier today:

Why Daydreaming Isn’t a Waste of Time


Parents and teachers expend a lot of energy getting kids to pay attention, concentrate, and focus on the task in front of them. What adults don’t do, according to University of Southern California education professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, is teach children the value of the more diffuse mental activity that characterizes our inner lives: daydreaming, remembering, reflecting.

Yet this kind of introspection is crucial to our mental health, to our relationships, and to our emotional and moral development. And it promotes the skill parents and teachers care so much about: the capacity to focus on the world outside our heads.
Our brains have two operating systems, Immordino-Yang and her coauthors explain in an article to be published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. The first, which they call the “looking out system,” orients our attention to the external environment, allowing us to get stuff done. The other, which they term the “looking in system,” directs us inward, setting our thoughts
A lack of time to daydream may even hamper kids’ capacity to pay attention when they need to.

free to wander. By scanning the brains of study subjects asked simply to rest and relax, scientists have discovered that our minds are anything but inactive in these moments. Relieved of the obligation to pay attention to what’s going on around us, we engage instead with a rich internal environment: recalling the past, imagining the future, replaying recent interactions and sorting out our feelings. It’s when we engage our brains’ “looking in” mode, notes Immordino-Yang, that we make meaning out of the mass of experiences and information we encounter when we’re “looking out.”

Young people may have fewer opportunities to exercise the vital capacity of introspection. Immordino-Yang fingers two culprits: educational practices that demand constant attentiveness, even from young children, and a hyper-connected world that insistently draws attention away from the world inside. “If youths overuse social media, if they spend very little waking time free from the possibility that a text will interrupt them,” the authors write, “we would expect that these conditions might predispose youths toward focusing on the concrete, physical and immediate aspects of situation and self, with less inclination toward considering the abstract, longer-term, moral and emotional implications of their and others’ actions.”

Ironically, a lack of time to daydream may even hamper kids’ capacity to pay attention when they need to. The ability to become absorbed in our own thoughts is linked to our ability to focus intently on the world outside, research indicates. In one recent neuro-imaging study, for example, participants alternated periods of mental rest with periods of looking at images and listening to sounds. The more effectively the neural regions associated with “looking in” were activated during rest and deactivated while attending to the visual and auditory stimuli, the more engaged were the brain’s sensory cortices in response to sights and sounds.
Focus and concentration are essential, of course. But so are introspection and reflection, and Immordino-Yang and her colleagues recommend that adults help children find a balance between the two modes: by regularly unplugging our kids’ blinking, buzzing devices, and by providing time and space for a quieter, more inward kind of entertainment.-

[emphasis mine]

How many times are we seeing people out and about in nature, surrounded by the most wonderful sights and sounds and smells, and yet they are glues either by eye or ear to their precious mobile phones? What is that doing to us? WHY is that doing to us?


Now see this:

What’s the Difference Between Daydreaming and Meditating?
When daydreaming, you allow your mind to lead you on whatever tangents it wants. You may be fantasizing about your future or remembering a time in your past. In meditation, however, you keep a focused awareness in the present, and dismiss the tangent thoughts in your mind. That’s not to say you shouldn’t daydream. Daydreaming is a fantastic way to inspire yourself – just don’t do it while you’re meditating!

So what have we here? We have the same guilting process going on that one must "focus". But why isn't the 'present' just you daydreaming? Or weaving in and out of 'daydreaming' and 'attentiveness' without the pressure to focus. Get me?

I am just bringing this to your attention, because I personally do not 'try and focus', but just allow natural being.

It is quite funny, because modern culture doesn't know what either consciousness is nor what matter is, so any demand to 'focus' is quite ironical because focus on 'WHAT'? Life is complete mystery lol

So what have we here? We have the same guilting process going on that one must "focus". But why isn't the 'present' just you daydreaming? Or weaving in and out of 'daydreaming' and 'attentiveness' without the pressure to focus. Get me?

I am just bringing this to your attention, because I personally do not 'try and focus', but just allow natural being.

It is quite funny, because modern culture doesn't know what either consciousness is nor what matter is, so any demand to 'focus' is quite ironical because focus on 'WHAT'? Life is complete mystery lol

that is a rather interesting point there. because one really can do nothing but be in the present! haha! on the other hand, i do find a certain personal value in being aware that i am daydreaming as opposed to simply wandering in my mind for a half hour, then coming to and realizing that nothing can be remembered from that whole half hour. but who am i to say? perhaps the whole idea is to be so enveloped in the whole thing that one is so relaxed that they don't recall much of it at all. but doesn't that sounds like daydreaming? hahaha

could meditation=daydreaming? keep in mind, this is not fantasizing or thinking about what one wants to, but just letting nature take it's course, which of course could be just that! haha. im feeling the pull of getting the thought loops here. the whole concept is very cyclical.

really, overall i think that it is important that one enjoys themselves while they meditate, what goes on beyond that is very subjective and very personal.