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REM Sleep (Other) by mystic enoch When I close my eyes
I begin to have
dreams.
They glorify,
mystify,
sometimes even terrify
me.
But they have a deeper meaning.
Coming from the depths of my soul
their only goal
is to make me better.
Though I don't understand
their ultimate plan.
Each morning I arise
with a great repose
refreshed with each lesson learned.
enoch2
Up the ladder:
Soft Speak; Hard Emotion
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Meditations on a Human Skeleton in a Museum
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Arithmetic Mean: 6.142857
Posted: March 19, 2006 9:30 AM PST; Last modified: March 19, 2006 9:30 AM PSTWeighted score: 5.3073616 Overall Rank: 3649 Comments:
[7]
Ranger @ 62.252.32.15
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19-Mar-06/9:58 AM
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Reply
Interesting concept, and not as maudlin as many 'dream' poems.
When I was a kid I suffered from Night Terrors aka Sleep Terror Disorder aka Pavor Nocturnus. It is probably the most intense and scary kind of nightmare known to man and it doesn't go away after you wake up for another 10 or 20 minutes. Sometimes it helped if I went pee. So now I choose to do most of my dreaming while I'm awake and most of my peeing while I'm asleep.
I guess dreams really do want to make my life better.
Life would be so much more boring without you, ALChemy!
Don't forget Dovina and Zodiac's bickering. If watching those to drive each other nuts doesn't make life worthwhile then I don't know what does.
You may be young Ranger, but you trump us in many areas with your wisdom.
I do wish your entertainment to continue. Where is my adoring adversary anyway? I have the perfect answer for him, regardless of his question.
I don't know. Juneau?
As long as the Numbers in Heaven conversation continues, I'm not here.
Apparently we crossed the line somewhere. If so I appologize. Now will you please come out and play?
The line is where you start talking about God and love unironically. You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
You mean how if you peel back the layers of hoopla about love you've got nothing but a chemical cocktail and if you peel back the layers of hoopla about God you've got nothing but a space filler for the things you don't know? Personally I like a little hoopla in my life, It spices it up a little. Did you know after about 7 or 8 years couples tend to stop being in love. You may wake up one day soon and realize I'm not in love with her anymore and not have any good reason why or she may do the same with you. So a logical person would start packing their bags around year 7.
No, I mean if you peel back the layers you've got nothing. That doesn't mean I didn't wake up at 5 this morning to make my wife's capuccino and bath the way she likes them. There is no useful or interesting discussion about love or God except interesting trivia and theatre of the absurd. That's what I mean.
What is absurd is why you are even ewith your wife. We fall in love and stay in love to have children and populate the earth. We live with our lovers to have another worker in the home. There's many logical reasons for why we have lovers, none of which involve making a perfect capuccino and running a bath for them. Admit it, you're a romantic, you make more of love than what it really is. So what's so terrible about making more of life than what it really is? Any talk of love, god and art that doesn't involve scientific fact is trivial and obsurd. But who on this site doesn't get romantic about at least one of the three.
Yeah, I just answered this on the other thread, but I'd rather answer it again here. The other thread gives me a headache now.
I believe in happiness - or, rather, the potential for and value of happiness. My wife makes me happy. I believe seeking healthy kinds of happiness is the most worthwhile thing you can do. Yes, I use words like "love" to describe my relationship with my wife, and who knows, I might even continue to be with her someday even if my time with her stops being happy, and maybe that will be love. I also desire to make my wife happy (which also happens to make me happy), and not totally in some mutual exchange-of-happiness way, so maybe that's love. It's all rather wishy-washy and personal, which is why it's stupid to talk about. Talking about it doesn't make either of us have more or less of it. I don't "make more of life" because I don't believe life has base status to "make more of". I make more of my life than most people. I make more of my life than the base assumption about what you're supposed to make of life held by most people. But I imagine that's not what you're talking about.
Happiness is wishy-washy. Most emotions are. Happiness is mostly being ignorant to all the bad things. Narrow it down as much as you want, it's still about what you believe in your heart is good and right and if logic applies to it then well that's a big bonus.
No it's not. If I say "I'm happy right now" (and I am) then yes, I could be ignorant of bad things in the world or my own life. I could be going insane. Someone could have secretly filled my office with odorless laughing gas. I could be unreasonably happy on finding out that my microwave corndog got cooked all the way through. If I'm halfway self-aware, though, I AM in all of those cases irreducibly, unassailably happy.
Yes, if I say "I'm happy because of the corndog" or "I'm always going to be happy" or "all is well in the world" or "if the number of good things I know is greater than the number of bad things, I should be happy" or "happiness is the most important thing in the world," then I'm going to be talking crap. That's not what I'm talking about, though. I'm talking about feeling happy.
The only way you can say you're happy and not be talking crap is if you can prove it. As far as I know you might be lying. Yes you feel happy and that's what happiness is right? A chemical reaction triggering certain brain and body activity. It has no more significance than that. But for someone who believes there is nothing for him after death, why should you worry about anything beyond your own life?
Yes, but that's what I'm saying. A chemical reaction making you happy still leaves you, well, happy. Yes, it's just a brain reaction, even under the best circumstances. So?
If you mean why should I worry about anything beyond my own life like my wife's happiness, well, that's the clincher. On the most basic level, I worry about my wife's happiness because she makes me happy and I want to protect my arrangement with her. Is there more level? Maybe! Who cares? If you mean why am I not just a nihilist and fuckall -- well, just because I'm interested in my own happiness on earth and don't believe a God is keeping score to let me in heaven, that doesn't mean I have to fuck up other people's lives. My personal experience is fucking up people's lives doesn't make me very happy, and that they have a right to be happy as much as I do, to say nothing of the possibility that my fucking up their lives will cause them to kill me or something. It's all very social-contracty, you see?
P.S. -- EVERYONE'S GIFT
Hilda: We shall not go to heaven, and even if we were both to go, we would have no eyes to see each other, no hands to touch each other. In heaven, there is no time for anything but God... Here you are: a little flesh, worn-out, rough, miserableâa life, a wretched life. It is this flesh and this life I love. We can only love on Earth, and against Godâs will... When people love each other they become invisible to God. - Sartre, "The Devil and the Good Lord"
Are you sure Dovina didn't write this?
You have us backwards. Dovina would never. I would.
"Wow, you're starting to sound like Amanda. I wonder what you think god is."
I don't see sounding like Amanda. I thought she took issue with me on the same topic last week. God is two things, which is why your conversation on the other page goes around in circles - because you won't make any distinction between the two. The first God is whatever God out of the set of all possibilities for God actually exists. This set includes 0, infinity, and a turnip, among infinite other things. The second God is people's idea of God. People's idea of God is like hearing you got a St Crispin's Day present from an unknown admirer and spending all your time between now and St Crispin's Day trying to guess what it is. The odds that you're going to guess it correctly are virtually nil (hint: it's an infinite number of antique shoehorns arranged in a particular order, but good luck guessing anyway!), so basically whatever you guess, you're going to be in for a surprise, anyway. This even goes for people who guess that God's infinite, or who base their ideas of God on mystical faith-experiences, because the reality of infinity is naturally going to be a big surprise, too. In the meantime, all you're going to have done is annoy all your friends speculating on the 1/10000000000000000 chance that you guess the right present - when, as far as I can tell, you'd get the present anyway even if you guessed wrong.
I was more refering to the insistant stile, how he already seems to know what heaven's like.
"I was more refering to the insistant stile, how he already seems to know what heaven's like."
She. And it's Absurdism, which is assuming that God is exactly like the God of the Old AND New Testaments, which is the only reasonable way of handling God in literature.
It sounded like Dovina to me. Must we even argue something based my first impression.
Actually I was comparing your comment to Amanda's "love is" comment(it's somewhere in the mess of comment under Dovina's Numbers in Heaven). So God's just a romantic notion like many peoples idea of love and art. Yep that pretty much was the point I was making. It just seems like we all pretty much have romantic notions about one thing or another, maybe you have romantic notions about your wife for instance. So I hope you wouldn't think anything less of me if I choose to hang on to the notion that god exists.
"So God's just a romantic notion"
No. Consider it this way: There is the possibility of alien life. Any specific idea about what alien life is (say, on Star Trek) is a romantic notion. ACTUAL alien life may be anything or nothing -- superintelligent floating gasclouds, rock-dumb microbes, something we wouldn't even technically consider "alive", nothing. ACTUAL alien life is not at all affected by people's ideas that aliens are supposed to look like Star Trek or whatever. The actuality of alien life is not a romantic notion. People have for centuries now tried to make educated guesses about what aliens look like. Mostly people guess that aliens look like something on earth, which is absurd of course. The best educated guess is that there is the possibility that aliens exist, which is not a romantic notion.
So you're quite open to the possibilty of God existing. Thank you, that's quite refreshing to hear from you. Or is comparing aliens and God just as fruitless as the apples and oranges comparison of God and love?
Yes, I'm open to the possibility of God existing. I'm open to the possibility of all kinds of things existing.
The next question is, what qualities need to be present in order for you, AlChemy to call something "God" or "a god"? In other words, suppose there is a computer floating in space which is programmed to randomly produce different arrangements of matter of any mass or size - from where or according to what rules is immaterial. After a trillion years the computer destroys them and creates another arrangement. Obviously, given infinite cycles, one of those arrangements will eventually be our physical universe, with the conditions necessary for life to start on this planet. All randomly; ninety-nine times out of one hundred it just produces a huge mess, most likely. Is the computer God? Suppose, for another example, a computer floating in space is programmed to randomly cause one physical law to be broken for a short duration anywhere in the universe. Suppose the computer produces one of these law-breakings every milisecond. Again, it decides where the law is to be broken, what law, and for how long totally at random. Given the size of space, obviously law-breakings don't occur in the vicinity of Earth very often, but since the computer is RANDOMLY selecting places, there is the possibility that any number of law-breakings can happen on Earth in, say, one century. On Earth, it happens that law-breakings have taken the form of people levitating, objects transmogrify, or people return from the dead. Is the computer a God? Suppose again that all human beings are actually, for whatever reason, implanted by a scientist with electrodes to make them believe that they're humans living on earth when they are, in fact, immortal Zorgonians living on the planet Zorgon. The scientist's experiment calls for a subject to be disconnected from the electrodes and returned to normal Zorgonian life whenever it "dies" in its fantasy-earth. Is Zorgon heaven? Is the scientist God? If you've answered no -- and hint: you should -- then universe-creation, life-creation, miracle-causing, maker-and-controller-of-human-existence, and keeper-of-the-afterlife are not the qualities that mean "God" to you. So what IS the defining thing or things? To paraphrase -=Dark_Angel=-, how do you know "God" when you see him?
Yet another so called absurd God comparison. Certainly God could be a computer. In Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question." The story spans the entire existence of the universe, and the plot reveals the existence of God. In the near future, man has invented a super computer known as a Multivac. The computer is asked if entropy (the winding down or loss of energy in the universe) can be reversed. The computer says that not enough data is available. The story progresses many eons and through the years, the computers evolve along with man, and at each stage, it is asked if entropy can be reversed, and the answer always comes back that there is not enough data at that time. In the final stage, human kind has evolved into one mind free of body, and co-exists with the computer which exists in hyperspace. As the universe come to an end and man fades out, the computer discovers how to reverse entropy, and says "Let there be light.
To D.A.'s question: I'll know the same way you know you love your wife.
Oh, well if it's in an Isaac Asimov story... I still wouldn't say that's God.
"I'll know the same way you know you love your wife." Because He makes you happy?
Pumpkin Pie makes me happy but I didn't marry it. So stop bullshitting me already.
I love pumpkin pie. Marriage is something you do to one person you presumably love, not the thing you do to everything you love. Who's bullshitting whom?
I don't love pumpkin pie. I don't spend sleepless nights thinking about pumpkin pie, I've never thought about sticking my dick in pumpkin pie(OK maybe once but I was young and curious). I see you changed happy to love. You seem to have trouble seperating the two. Marriage calls for a certain kind of love but not necessarily a certain sorce of happiness.
"I see you changed happy to love."
I'm not sure I did, but I'd like it back to happy now -- which, as I've said, is knowable and irreducible, while love is apparently everything from what you do to your wife to what you do to pie. My marriage literally calls for a certain happiness. It doesn't call for a certain kind of love, so I guess you don't know everything about marriages, do you, Al?
I guess your marriage could be based on brother/sister love. You are from the south after all. I said a certain SOURCE of happiness although I misspelled it the first time. As far as knowing everything about marraige goes, nobody does, not even you. I expect no more love poems written by you on this site, just happy poems.
For the sake of specificity, here are the relevant parts of my wedding ceremony:
"zodiac/mrs zodiac, do you wish to always strive to understand mrs zodiac/zodiac; to want to learn more about him/her; to make decisions with him/her and compromise when necessary; to evaluate your life together on a daily basis; and to communicate fully and fearlessly, even if it seems easier not to do so? zodiac/mrs zodiac: We do. And do you both wish to journey into your future together, to be friends and lovers [in the physical sense], to be concerned for each otherâs happiness, to join each otherâs laughter with your own, to make things together, and to trust that your relationship will handle the challenges that you will face? both: we do. This is the understanding you have been creating ever since the first days of your relationship. Youâve never been bound to it by anything stronger than your own daily choices, and you never should, for no legal contract will be as strong as your honest desire."
Wow.
I see why you choose to stay out of the conversation. But because Ranger, Dovina and me have a little different approach to love and such things I think the conversation I had with them was certainly not absurd at least in our minds. I see now that it's an obsurd conversation to have with you based on your philosophy and I appologize for the waste of time I caused you. But you at least kissed her at the end, right?
Well, crap, I'm never against wasting time. I love wasting.
And of course I kissed her.
A flash: AlChemy dies and finds himself standing before a bright bright light.
"God?" AlChemy says. "No," says the light, "I'm just the computer. But, hey," its light grows brighter and, somehow, more interested, "do YOU have any ideas about God? Because we're all wondering about him here, too..."
A flash: Zodiac sees the girl of his dreams.
My true love! He says. "No," she says and rips off her disguise, "I'm the tickle monster and I've come to make you happy".
My wife is, in fact, the tickle monster.
T.M.I.
"Suppose there is a computer...is the computer God?"
No, whoever programmed the computer is God. For the computer to be, there must have first been an intelligent designer.
aliens are mentioned in the bible. In genesis. In a famous biblical painting,I don't remeber the name of it,if you look closely you will see a UFO in it. In ancient eygpt(bad spelling)they are said to had the light bulb. How do you think they were able to see in those deep dark tunnels in the pyramids? A torch would have caused a lot of smoke without ventilation. There is some much that is not being told to the public. I do belive in god thats for sure. With all of these different translations of the bible I'm sure there is stuff being left out. The original bible was written in greek and hebrew. King james was british. My personal religon is made up of some of the stuff that I read,what I was taught, and what I've seen in life experiences of mine and other people. Thats my truth but I an an open-minded person because there is alot of room for error. I'm not being angry with anyone right now I just had to say my piece.
"aliens are mentioned in the bible." -- Well, that clinches it.
"In genesis." -- You mean giants, not aliens. Or you mean in Ezekiel. "In a famous biblical painting,I don't remeber the name of it,if you look closely you will see a UFO in it." -- It's da Vinci, and not biblical, and it's not exactly like the painting was done by Moses or something. "In ancient eygpt(bad spelling)they are said to had the light bulb." -- Said by whom? You? "How do you think they were able to see in those deep dark tunnels in the pyramids? A torch would have caused a lot of smoke without ventilation." -- Arabs breathe a lot of smoke. You should try riding on an Egyptian bus with the windows all up. "There is some much that is not being told to the public." -- By the Egyptians? "I do belive in god thats for sure." - That's nice. He believes in you, too. "all of these different translations of the bible I'm sure there is stuff being left out." -- We may never know whether Moses preferred strappy sandals or loafers, for one! "The original bible was written in greek and hebrew." -- Hey! You actually said something almost true! "King james was british." -- And again! So close to true! But he was Scottish! "My personal religon is made up" -- Cool! "Thats my truth but I an an open-minded person because there is alot of room for error." -- I bet you're not going to be very open-minded about this! "I'm not being angry with anyone right now I just had to say my piece." -- Thanks, but this is our conversation.
Zodiac, 'Scottish' is also 'British'. As in 'part of the British Isles'. Be polite.
He was hardly considered the 'local boy' at the time, as I recall.
So? Charlie the First wasn't over popular, we killed him and forced his son into exile, then when we realised that our 'local boy' Cromwell really wasn't all that great we suddenly decided that we wanted Charles II back in the adoring arms of Glorious Britain. We're fickle sods like that.
Is this the von Daniken theory? With the two-thousand year-old batteries and all? I never did get round to reading that, I probably should.
And yes, I agree that Scripture is unlikely to be an entirely accurate representation of the original covenant - although I'm bound to be hit by plenty of Divine Translation believers. Having said that, there is a lot more to be said for taking the Story of Creation at least semi-literally than first appears.
Sorry, but I can't see dreams having goals or plans. And I hardly think "refreshed" is descriptive of how I feel about all my dreams.
Your dreams are always trying to tell you something. Your dreams is your unconscious mind talking. Maybe you should invest in a dream book. Keep it by your bedside. But it does make a great conversation piece for the coffee table.
I'm surprised to find myself saying this, but I have a book of dream interpretations and once, upon having the most abstract dream ever, I looked up the meaning of it and though 'what a pile of bollocks'. And hey presto - the next day, it happened. Spooky?
When I was a teenager,an aunt turned me on to dreams having meaning. She would use me as a good luck charm when it came to playing the lottery. And she would always win something. She never did say how much. Now I don't hear people talking about that kind of thing by word of mouth. But I still belive in it.
It's in the bible. They made a Broadway musical about it. Most people I tell my dreams to try to interpret them.
PS. Promise me you'll never criticize anyone for anything they believe even if what they believe contradicts what you believe.
I've very open-minded person because there is room for error.
That already puts you way ahead of most of us.
The bits of information you pick up during the day. The bits that the brain does not devote much processing space to because they are so pointless. That's dreams. What the hell is this unconscious mind you have that talks. Are you possessed.
So you don't believe in the unconscious mind? Or Freud's idea that human beings place all their repressed fantasies, unexceptable desires and traumas there?
What about Dr. Carl Jung's idea that the unconscious isn't merely a receptacle for unresolved phsychological messes but that the unconscious is what rules our lives. A refuge of the Divine. A cosmos with an order and creativity of its own? Dreams are not at all pointless. They tell you everything you wish wasn't true about yourself. And they give insight about the true nature of existence. What's the most recent strange dream you can remember?
Tell me WHAT you dreamed, not how you felt about it. The poetry is in the details. Feelings alone are boring. If i see aperson crying I might feel sympathy for their sadness but I can't feel empathy or relate to their experience intil they tell me WHAT happened.
For the last year or so the only things I can even journal about are dreams. I have no conscious creativity anymore. But my dreams are filled with myth and imagery. Like you my dreams have helped to heal me, but when I write a poem about it I tell what happened in the dream (See Signal of Goodbye http://poemranker.com/poem-details.jsp?i
god'swife! You're back! No conscious creativity? As I recall, your last post wasn't exactly shoddy - and besides, you always have something useful to say. Good to see you again, and I hope your imagination fires back up to standard!
>>I have no conscious creativity anymore<<
Please. Your off-the-cuff comments are more creative and thoughtful than many poems posted here that draw popular-vote nines and tens on a monotonously regular basis. To wit (with some liberties): The unconscious mind? Repressed fantasies, unacceptable desires and traumas, a receptacle for messes, the unresolved psychological kind that rules lives. A refuge for the Divine, with a cosmic order and creativity of its own, dreams are not pointless; they tell all you wish weren't true about yourself, your nature, existence--- those recent strange dreams you remember. Write it down, break lines, don't worry so much about it. Here's hoping you find your way back.
Some people don't read books or hear stuff about dreams having meaning. I can't argue with them. I just try to express what I know about the subject and see if they have an open mind. I don't claim to know everything. What I've seen is just a piece of whats out there. Everyone has their own knowledge on things. It doesn't mean its untrue. Everyone has their own truths. I belive in my source and it was not a fairy tale. This is an interesting talk.
A new movement started in third-century China, called symbolic alchemy. Alchemists started giving up the poisonous chemicals they'd been prescribing in the conscious world, and began applying symbols for them in a kinder etherial world, a kind of dream world. What are the symbols in your dreams?
I don't feel comfortable talking about my dreams because of their subject matter. But some of them do seem real. Like I'm really there living it. I have not done any looking into their meaning because my aunt is long gone. I need to do that on my own to get to the bottom of it.
I see what you are saying. A sneek peek of my dream life would have made the poem more interesting. Thanks for the advice.
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