Odd backpacking dreams (why? because it's a bit slow)

[sparky]

One theory that I like is that the universe is built in our perceptions....and dreams act as a sort of calibration to proper human perception. To "dial in the signal" so to speak. Just make sure you tune into the right channel! Like breathing or our heart beating, its an automatic response. Without dreaming, you go crazy, and eventually die.

Are dreams just the opposite of objective reality? If so which is more real? Is light more real than dark? Death more real than life?

Diving too deep into what is real, and what is not real is not really a good idea. That is probably how you end up in a padded room!!

No matter what you feel, our imaginations influence and is manifested in objective reality, and objective reality influences and manifests in our imaginations as well. I think this interaction is interesting.

[Jimr]

One theory that I like is that the universe is built in our perceptions

I not only like that idea, I believe it. I hold that our experience, hence, our universe is an out-picturing of the content of our consciousness. In other word, believing is seeing, not the other way around. Everything is an idea within consciousness. There's really nothing out there. Reality (heavy word) is merely a set of ideas each of us hold close to the core of our being ("being" used as a verb).

It's interesting to ponder dreams. They're sort of a microcosm of the creative principle that everything material is an idea within THE consciousness out-pictured as form. Our mind creates a bubble of time and space that only exists as an idea and perception of our sub-conscious. In that dream bubble of space and time, matter is formed, thoughts and ideas, action, feelings are triggered. Our experience is no less real in the dream than it is in our waking experience. Usually quite a bit odder from an awaken perspective, but no less real. It sort of adds a different twist on "created in HIS own image". Maybe imagination would be a more meaningful term, or not.

I've been to Tehipite Valley many, many, many times and felt the struggle to get there; the grandeur of the valley opening up before my eyes, etc. in the dream reality. This year, I get to have those experiences in the TV of the waking reality.

Disclaimer:
I haven't been smoking/drinking anything and I'm not off my meds and the above is the opinion of the poster and does not necessarily reflect the views of HST or any government agency, its agents or the POTUS

[oldranger]

Whoa!

This thread is getting way too deep for me! I guess I must be simple minded or something. Getting back to the original post. I don't know if I have ever had a dream about backpacking per se but I did have the one about returning to Roaring River and finding cars there. I recently dreamt that I had written an article about backpacking and I gave it to Maverick to review and he wrote back that I was full of sh!t.

Finally I had one dream while backpacking that is permanently etched in my mind. After "dropping out" in 1980 I embarked on a 3 week trip from Tuolumne Meadows to Hetch Hetchy in September of that year. Around day 9 after 5 days in a row of mostly off trail travel and seeing no one I was camped at Arndt Lake (unfortunately no fish). That night I dreamt I saw a naked woman the next day. Next
A.M. as I was ambling down Kerrick Canyon a stunningly attractive naked young woman did, indeed, pop out of a tent next to the trail. Not yet the brazen old fart I turned into I shyly turned away and continued on down the trail.

Mike

[sparky]

Sorry for the tangent, but I like this type of stuff

Jimr I agree somewhat, except the notion that there is nothing really out there. Nothing and something coexist, but we probably agree that what is out there is so far beyond our waking perception, we can't even imagine it. We can experience it, you just can't walk away with a definition, because it has no background to define it....it is all things and non things at once. Sort of like past, and future define time, but the NOW will never be pinned down. It cant be defined as it has no opposite.

You ever notice sometimes time flys by, and sometimes it moves slow? Your perception defines what it is and what it isn't, yet it is the eternal now that cannot possibly be defined.

Mike, dreams become reality and reality becomes dreams. Saying all that....you hit the nail right on the head without even realizing it.

This thread is getting way too deep for me!

The answer to everything is there is no answer. bleah!

[Jimr]

I like this stuff too.

Let's put it this way, "there's nothing really out there that is as we perceive it to be". The deeper we look into what appears material, the more apparent nothing we see".

Sort of like past, and future define time, but the NOW will never be pinned down.

It's ineffable. All of it. Like the hand pointing at the moon and everybody studying the hand. We use our five material senses and try to use them to get our head around an immaterial sense of being. It's like using a sledge hammer to saw a piece of wood. Wrong tool.

To me, NOW is all there is and it is eternal and outside of time. Eternal not meaning a very long time with seemingly no beginning and no end. NOW, always NOW is all there is. Outside of time and always present. The past is merely a story regarding nows gone by and does not exist except as an idea in the now. The future doesn't exist and never did. It is a projection of past stories into the future as an idea of what could be, but still, just another story in the now.

And even now, 10 people will read this and there will be 10 different understandings of what is said.

Rajneesh once said something akin to this. "I have a thought (meaning an understanding in a spiritual sense) and I come back and 90% is lost. Then, I put it into words, and 90% of that is lost. Then, you hear it, and 90% of that is lost......so why do I talk?

[East Side Hiker]

My backpcking dreams always are of the Ionian Basin and Evolution Valley. I dream about the granite and the lack of vegetation and my dog eating my lunch while I meditated on the Enchanted Gorge.