What do you make of dreams that don't make sense one bit...is it your subconscious fighting with your conscience (if you are conscious when sleeping that is); regressions of some sort...?

All I know is the majority of my dreams are just plain crazy.

If a dream were crazy, I'd actually be motivated to think about what it means.

I thought I'd do some Jungian dream analysis on myself, so I started trying to remember my dreams.

Turns out, they're all the same: I'm at some job in some place with some low grade anxiety because I'm incompetent.

So much for my hero's journey.

The most interesting theory of dreams I’ve read is that they provide your brain with “out of training” data so it doesn’t over-fit to your lived experiences. So your brain stays open to the possibility that completely unexpected things could happen.

I had a dream about a rescue shelter for hot dogs. Like you could adopt one. They even had little pages on their web site and everything.

I watched a video on Paul McCartney as a bassist and video on Yeti.
That night I dreamed of Paul in pigtails singing to a yeti.

I forget them after 5 minutes.

dreams that don't make sense one bit.

Nearly all dreams are this kind, at least after you wake up and switch on your rational mind.

There have been dreams that have been made of perfectly sensible things, but have been so ludicrous in combination that I have woken up laughing.

... but usually I enjoy looking at signs with writing on them because they never stay the same when I look away and look back.

I don't think dreams necessarily have meaning. They /can/ be about things you've been thinking about or stressing about. But I think their internal logic means little. I've had some which were total nonsense. I suspect it's more valuable to look at the emotions which were being experienced during the dream than the plot itself.

I recall reading somewhere that the emotions in dreams are more important (and correlative to real life), thus what to focus on rather than the facts.

Dreams are the brain firing neurons in memory circuits without running the parts that correlate your mind's contents or try to keep things coherent. This strengthens and reïnforces memories by essentially exercising the neurons, but having them fire without the safeguards naturally leads to chaotic and bizarre perceptions.

I’m at some job in some place with some low grade anxiety because I’m incompetent.

All of us except in reality, from what I've seen on here, lol

Funny you mention...most of my dreams are about past work as well combined with some "psychedelic tremors" I call 'em

Weiner dogs he he...

Now that would be a sight...Paul looking like Pepe Longstocking...

I started a dream journal for right after I woke up. It started with a few words, "I think I was underwater" but aftter a few weeks I'd be writing 10-20 pages every morning. 5 minutes of remembering your dreams is a really good place to start.

What are the tremors like? Do they have a pattern?

I used to do the same but after a few years I got bored.

Reading volume 12 of Jung's work, he talks about alchemy and dream analysis. He focuses on the dreams of one person in particular, but I can't shake the feeling his analysand is putting him on the entire time.

Jung is smart but also pretty damn credulous.

Maybe flash would be a better word...instance mixed in with past life experience I dreamt of.

Don't know if I agree with being credulous...I mean they were based on his scientific studies no..?

There's lots of theories in this thread, and out there in general, but it's worth noting nobody actually knows.

That's the answer to most brain questions. We've been trained to think information is just a duckduckgo away, but there still are some unknowns in science.

Nice one! That sounds amazing, or funny, or something.

I noticed my dreams get more hectic and urgent if I have to pee. If I get up, relive the bladder and then go back to sleep it's sweet dreams again.

But I wish I could remember my dreams better. I wake up convinced I could write a banger of a novel some days. But they're gone so quickly from my reckoning. The brain is such a weird thing.

Well put...

He was extremely well read, but I wouldn't class him a scientific thinker, and most of his followers are even woolier-headed.

The idea of "a collective consciousness" is often interpreted as more than a metaphor, but as a real entity that the mind is somehow accessing.