Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Author Topic: Why do family members and I have the same dreams.  (Read 53797 times)

Tamo

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 2
    • View Profile
Why do family members and I have the same dreams.
« on: July 15, 2011, 06:56:13 PM »
I'm trying to find out why I have the same dream as family members. There are times one of my sisters, myself and my dad all have the same dream, and we often wake up at the exact same time.  Recently my daughter and I have started having the same or similar dreams.

Tony Crisp

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3419
    • View Profile
    • Dreamhawk.com
Re: Why do family members and I have the same dreams.
« Reply #1 on: July 17, 2011, 10:36:20 AM »
Tamo – It sounds as if you are a close knit family with unusual openness to each other.

The reasons this takes place takes a little explaining; but a simple explanation is that family members are like fingers on our hands. The fingers are all different and can move independently, but they are all connected in the hands, and the hands in the body. So each person has a connection with everyone in the family, and in fact with everything.

To explain this more technically, you as a person are one end of a polarity. At the other end is deep sleep and we are usually unconscious in that state. In the middle are dreams and dreams partake of both polarities. You are a fairly focused individual and you feel separated from everything and everyone else. At the other end of you – the other polarity – you are something very different.

Here is a quote from What we need to Remember about Dreaming (http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/what-we-need-to-remember-about-dreaming/):

1.   Life, if you look around you at Life’s creature, can take any form. So Life itself is without form. In fact the recent advances in quantum physics suggest that what gives us existence is beyond space and time – beyond understanding.
2.   So dreams do not come from the human unconscious, but from the formless origins of Life. To express in a way that is understandable to us as a person with limited understanding, dreams use all the common imagery and ideas. So people who say that dreams are a mish mash of common everyday events are mistaken. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/levels-of-awareness-in-waking-and-dreaming/.

3.   Our core self can be explained by realising that we are all dependent on the universe. We often feel that the universe is way beyond our understanding, but a few simple facts may help. The first is that the universe as we know it began with what has been called the Big Bang. But before that there was a situation prior to the creation of time and space. That situation is very much like the experience of Edgar Cayce who had an awareness reaching beyond time and space. But that original situation prior to the Big Bang, as it were died in the formation of our universe with time and space. But that enormous explosion created everything we know and experience, every atom and form of energy. So at the heart of all matter, all life is that condition of timeless and spaceless existence. In fact modern quantum physics hints at it.
4.   Irish physicist John Stewart Bell put forward a quantum theorem that has revolutionised the way reality is considered. In brief, the theorem states that when two sub-microscopic particles are split and moved to a distance from each other, the action on, or of, particle ‘A’, is instantaneously reproduced with particle ‘B’. This interaction does not rely on any known link or communication and is considered to stand above normal physical laws of nature, as it is faster than light. Prior to such findings it was thought nothing could transcend the speed of light. Nick Herbert, in an interview published in High Frontiers writes: ‘THERE ARE LOTS OF THINGS that are being kept from the public as far as the subjects of physics and consciousness are concerned. Bell’s Theorem was proved in 1964, and it is still not taught in physics classes, and you don’t hear it on your science news programs. A theorem is a proof, and no one has found a flaw in this theorem. It’s such a simple proof that a high school kid can understand it. So physicists can understand it. They have various ways of trying to ignore it, but it can’t be refuted because it’s so simple.’ Our Core self is that amazing part of us existing beyond time and space, and was within us from the start of our universe. It has no locality – it is everywhere at once. That is a fact stated by quantum physics.

So in your dreams you are half way between knowing everything, and therefore sharing your dreams. It is the Spirit mixing with the body’s awareness of time and space.

I would be grateful to have actual examples of your dreams. Also for you to realise that you have a gift you could explore. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/questions-2/#Summing
Tony
« Last Edit: November 20, 2013, 08:51:02 AM by Tony Crisp »

jen719

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 1
    • View Profile
Re: Why do family members and I have the same dreams.
« Reply #2 on: January 05, 2013, 03:42:59 AM »
Ever since we moved in our home about 17 years ago I always had a nightmare of me being scared in my house and I try to turn on the lights and the lights will not turn on they would not work I would go to everyroom and none of the lights would work. As years went by when my daughter got older I was talking about I had another nightmare of the lights not working well my daughter heard me talking about it and she said every time she has a nightmare she tries to turn the lights on and they don't work.We have seen ghosts in our house mostly in the day but sometimes at night.I have a picture of a orb and inside the orb it looks like a demon face. I don't get scared during the day just annoyed sometimes I'm sleeping and you hear them or it running from down stairs up to the upstairs and into my room and just stands they're right by my bed so if I'M really tired I just ignore it but if it's intense I have to turn around and see why it's looking at me but of course when I turn around No one is there.I also have a dream of my house but in my dream there's a secret door and I go thru the door and it's a whole other house but the house is huge tons of rooms more than one kitchen just a huge house and it's all behind
this secret door this door though is hard to get to and it's a tight door like you have to be skinny to get thru the door.I hope you can come to a conclusion to this I'm just lost what to think or do.
« Last Edit: January 05, 2013, 03:51:56 AM by jen719 »

Tony Crisp

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3419
    • View Profile
    • Dreamhawk.com
Re: Why do family members and I have the same dreams.
« Reply #3 on: January 14, 2013, 02:56:47 PM »
My Dear you suffer from nothing worse than anxiety. Everybody dreams about not being able to switch on the lights when they are anxious about the dark.

Example: ‘I am alone in the house. It begins to grow dark, so I switch the light on, but the light is very dim. So I go to another room and try another light, but this light is even dimmer. I carry on like this all over the house until I am in virtual darkness and very frightened.’ J. W.

J. W. was six at the time of the dream, and here light depicts feelings of sureness or confidence, which give way to anxiety. The light is the opposite to the emotions of fear which arise from within.

Example: ‘At the bottom of the hill was a lodge house. This was said to be haunted. I did not feel frightened, hut I did feel the need for light. I found some matches, but they were very difficult to light. I tried to light candles, and eventually succeeded, but they were not very bright, and it was still dark. A cat moved in the darkness. It did not frighten me. Using a candle I tried to light gas lamps noticed in the light from the candles. They were as difficult as the candles, and no brighter. Then I noticed electric lights, found I had some money and put it in the meter and switched on.’

The obvious anxiety in the dreams manifests itself as the physical reality of the lights being dim. A.T. is able, step by step, to deal with his anxiety through the dream symbols. First matches, then candles, next gas, then electricity. The confidence generated by the money enable him finally to dispel his anxiety by switching the lights on. Or rather, his dispelled anxiety enables him to change the physical reality of the dream. This demonstrates one of the fundamental ways human beings have dealt with negative (and therefore dangerous to survival) emotions. Perhaps some people substitute power of money as their means to combat uncertainty and stress. A.T. gains his eventual confidence by combating uncertainty and stress. In many dreams, however, a loved or respected person helps us transform our dream world from darkness to light, or anxiety to pleasure. Or else realisation or a change of heart brings it about.

Tony

gmf

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 4
    • View Profile
Re: Why do family members and I have the same dreams.
« Reply #4 on: November 15, 2013, 06:09:38 PM »
A number of years back my Mother, oldest daughter and myself were having the same recurring dream.  I mentioned mine to them and found out they had it too.

The dream is a house dream.  It is a large house and seems to be on a cliff overlooking the ocean in a location that evoked New England to all of us.  This is odd since family history shows no one south of Virginia since 1700s.

There is a hidden or out of the way small door which reveals a cramped, winding stairs.  If and when we can negotiate the stairs we find ourselves on the top story in a room that is our individual "dream rooms".  (mine was a fabulous sewing/craft/reading room.)

Stepping out of the room to what feels like a 'widow's walk' we all see the ocean view.

My daughter seemed surprised that I had trouble getting up to that room.  She said she navigated the stairs easily by "just becoming small".

My mother would often struggle up the stairs, but would reach the top room.

I only reached the top room once.  The rest of my dreams were struggling to navigate this cramped, dark, winding, space that led to it.

None of us have had the dream in over a decade, but we all were having it without knowing about the others for several years.

Any thoughts?

Tony Crisp

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3419
    • View Profile
    • Dreamhawk.com
Re: Why do family members and I have the same dreams.
« Reply #5 on: November 17, 2013, 09:30:47 AM »
GMF – Thank you for sharing such an interesting and rich dream.

I believe your dreams are highly symbolised, and their meaning is wonderfully significant for your whole family. Your mother seems to have been the carrier of a gift that has been passed on. It is the gift or realisation that as a family you are not individuals, but are branches of the one great family tree. The common dream is showing in the form of a symbol that you meet and are united at the level of your inner world. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/questions-2/#Summing - http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/inner-world/

The scene of New England probably means ‘New England’. In other words your original homeland – your spiritual home – and you are seeing it in a new way because you had the courage to climb the tower of awareness.

And of course because you are each individuals as well as branches of the same tree, you have different difficulties  and talents in climbing the narrow path toward the highest in you. What you each saw as the room at the top was a realisation of your real talents. And the widows walk was a wonderful view of the potential you still have to explore.

So please read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/allowing-the-spontaneous/

Tony
« Last Edit: November 20, 2013, 08:53:54 AM by Tony Crisp »

gmf

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 4
    • View Profile
Re: Why do family members and I have the same dreams.
« Reply #6 on: November 18, 2013, 02:22:56 AM »
Thanks for the prompt reply.

Is this common dream across generations unusual? 

Tony Crisp

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3419
    • View Profile
    • Dreamhawk.com
Re: Why do family members and I have the same dreams.
« Reply #7 on: November 19, 2013, 08:35:04 AM »
GMF - No it isn't common to have such a clear dream. As I said you have a gift.

But some dreams symbolise it. For instance I had a dream of being in Italy learning the language. It seemed quite meaningless until I explored it. Then suddenly I was in the life of my ancestors who originated from Italy. I was shown so much, the mass of inherited lessons that had passed to me without words. Also the tragedy that had burnt those lessons into the family. If you actually enter your dream you will find such treasures. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/practical-techniques-for-understanding-your-dreams/

Tony

Tony Crisp

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3419
    • View Profile
    • Dreamhawk.com
Re: Why do family members and I have the same dreams.
« Reply #8 on: November 20, 2013, 09:01:12 AM »
An explanation of the dream mentioned above. I tend to remain incognito in my books - thus Ron. It is quoted from my book The Eye of Dreams.

“I am walking along a cobbled road going slightly down–hill. I know as I dream that I am in Italy. I do not feel a stranger in this land, and am learning the language.” Ron.

Ron describes his exploration and insights into the dream by saying:

This was a very short dream and I didn’t think it had any real significance, but I was regularly exploring my dreams, and it interested me because I couldn’t understand what it referred to in showing me learning the language. I had never learned Italian and was not doing so.

When I relaxed and allowed the free flow of my associations and feelings, the first part of the dream was easy. My father was born in England of two Italian parents. So being in Italy, a country I had never visited myself, I could immediately feel and understand as referring to my family on my father’s side and the influences that have been left in the way I think and live.

But I felt myself falling deeper into the dream. It was something I had learned to do. I not only kept the question ticking over quietly of what does the dream indicate, but at the same time I relaxed control of my thoughts, my body and emotions. This is like being half asleep in a state where the body can twitch spontaneously, and perhaps I can even hear myself making slight vocal sounds, and yet I am wide–awake watching what arises. Because of this state a flow of memories began to arise about my father, and I realised something I had only been partially aware of before.

My father had taken over the family shop when his father had died. The shop was in London, just over a mile away from the old Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market. Most days my father walked, pushing a barrow, and in later years drove to the market to buy produce for the shop. I often went with him, helping carry and load, and perhaps push the barrow. In my youth I wasn’t aware of it, but now in my flowing memories I realised that my father was very distant or cautious in his dealings with the market salesmen and porters. A distinct and overall realisation arose out of the many memories and impressions; it was that my father was expressing a particular type of caution in all his dealings with other people. I saw this as keeping who he was secret – keeping his head down.

As I saw this in my father it hit me with great power that this attitude had passed to me, and although I expressed it in a different way, I had inherited it with equal strength. Why? And, how?

The perception that was taking place was not like my normal thinking. It comprehensively gathered memories and put them together in a way that made patterns and themes stand out. So as the process of insight was taking place I saw just how the urge to keep my head down, not stand out in the crowd, not get involved with people, had influenced my actions. For a start I had never voted in my life. This was because I could never identify with groups pushing for power. I had avoided everyday social activity, although relationships with individuals were not threatening.

Now I started seeing how this attitude had passed to me so strongly. My thought, as I witnessed the flow of memories, was that perhaps such information was genetic, because my father had never talked to me much at all. He had certainly never urged me to keep out of the limelight – to keep my head down, and until now I hadn’t been aware that he had been doing it himself, so it wasn’t simply conscious emulation. I can only say that I ‘saw’ how it had happened. What I mean is that through the still flowing memory and feelings it was as if I could actually look into the heart of things and see how they worked. The insight I achieved was that we as humans, like other mammals, in our earliest years particularly, still learn like most mammals do, and that is not verbal at all. A massive amount of information is absorbed from our parents without any effort or awareness.

What Ron realised is that just as a fox cub ‘learns’ how to hunt from its parents, so we absorb the deeply etched survival strategies of our parents simply by being around them. If genes come into it anywhere, they perhaps create the reflex response that instinctively draws in the survival tactics that perhaps even our parents themselves have never really been aware they live by. In doing this the higher animals learn what cannot be passed on as instinct, what is not ‘hard wired’ into them. This holds in it a tremendous advantage because ‘hard wiring’ takes a long time. Through this faster method we learn what to be afraid of, what to eat, how to hunt, because the lessons learned by pain through many generations are exhibited in our parents behaviour in dealing with events. The experiments with apes in Japan, where Imo the macaque ape learned the ability to wash sweet potatoes to remove sand grains, show how this was passed on from this one female to the whole group, and then to subsequent young macaques, and illustrates how survival information is passed on non verbally for generations. An important aspect of this is that whatever of such information is held in the present generation, it is an accumulation of skills and responses learned over many generations, and is the fundamental survival strategies of that particular family or group line. (5)

Ron goes on to say:

The degree of this was staggering to me. It led me to wonder just where my father had got the information from, and although this was obvious from my own perception of where I had received the messages from, the resulting experience profoundly moved and impressed me. It taught me things about myself I don’t think I could have learned in any other way. A floodgate of impressions rushed into my awareness at such a pace I can only record the main ones.

Suddenly my mind let the power of the messages my father had carried and passed to me speak, as if they were alive. I experienced what appeared to be a direct connection with my far ancestors. This may sound strange, but my father had, as it were, handed me a recording. He and I had been impressed with the cover and it had led us to live in a particular way. But now I had put the recording on the player and the ancient originators expressed their own message.

Obviously this is only an analogy to convey the experience, but in some way the message played out in me from centuries back. From it I learned that my forebears had lived in Italy during a period of great religious and political tension. The pressures to conform had been enormous. Not only were my ancestors told to believe in a particular sort of God, but also to accept leadership from people they had no respect for. If they did not live this belief and submit to it they were killed or rejected by the community they had been born into. In their own words I heard them saying to me something like ‘The worst was they did not kill us, but they cut our vine at the roots. They burnt our land and they killed our children. If you want your sons to live, teach them not to hold their head up, but to keep their eyes on the ground.’

And out of that trauma the message had been passed to me many generations later. It was survival. I was still living it, but perhaps it was time to reappraise.
« Last Edit: March 08, 2015, 09:07:17 AM by Tony Crisp »

gmf

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 4
    • View Profile
Re: Why do family members and I have the same dreams.
« Reply #9 on: November 22, 2013, 04:15:22 AM »
So if I'm not being to pesky, what do you mean by "a gift"?

As for the symbolism of the dream, that was always easy for me, and the comparison between the three of us interesting too.

It fits that I would be the one who only reached the top room once and struggled so hard.  The very thought of a tight, dark space is an issue for me as I am pretty claustraphobic.  I have never been physically graceful or atheletic.

Of the 3 generations I was the least adventurous.  I am the least strong-willed in a trio of exceptionally dominate women.  I have probably lived a life the least to my liking of the three of us too.

For my Mom the trip to the top was difficult, but nearly always achieved.  This seems reflective of her life also.

My daughter saying she simply became the size of a 4yr old also fits.  She has not only excelled at everything, she has ventured far off the beaten path along the way.

It also fits with my daughter's description of being born, looking at me and thinking "You, oh no, you are not going to be in charge of me!"  I'm not sure what I believe about past lives, but again, it fits with reality.  This was a child who would argue about everything from wash dish soap I used to who was running the house, all before age 4.  She was a totally different child with my Mom.  She believes we were all witches, or shamans and have crossed paths before.

On my Mom's side there are quite a few people who seem to deal with things not of the world explained by conventional physics.  My other daughter has dead people talk to her, generally against her will.  One of my sons and my grand-daughter have a list of things too.

These things have always fascinated me, but I am seldom the one to experience them.  I think my Mother has worked very hard to keep them at bay.

I know all of this is way off topic from dreams, but when you mentioned "gifts", I thought this might be the sort of thing you are talking about?

Tony Crisp

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3419
    • View Profile
    • Dreamhawk.com
Re: Why do family members and I have the same dreams.
« Reply #10 on: November 24, 2013, 09:37:47 AM »
GMF – No you have not been ‘pesky’. In fact you started a post that has so far got 2500 views.

A gift as far as I understand it is either something we are born with, perhaps in some repressed by circumstances until it flowers – an example is in the book The Gift by Mia Dolan where her gift of clairvoyance suddenly appeared – or something we develop or uncover through persistent action. In a sense we all have the gift of infinite potential, and as said, sometimes it is already there in our life from the past. The potential can be stimulated, as in my case through constantly trying to develop the gift of intuition.

Such gifts can be a natural ability in art or music, or even in mothering or caring.

As for not believing in reincarnation, okay, but you must admit that you didn’t suddenly pop out of your mother without enormous backgrounds of family and culture. Remember that you did not come from death but from life – the seed planted in your mother. No plant or tree grows from a dead seed, and each living seed carries within it all the past. So the seed in your mother’s womb is as old as and even older than human kind, and you carry that wisdom in you. We are all seeds of seeds of seeds from the very beginning.

It might be good to read the life of Edgar Cayce, a very ordinary guy with extraordinary gifts – and he explains them as what we all naturally have but have buried through the ages. See http://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Edgar-Cayce-There-River/dp/0876043759/ref=sr_1_sc_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385284532&sr=1-2-spell&keywords=Edghar+Cayce also http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gift-Story-Ordinary-Womans-Extraordinary/dp/0007154518/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385283487&sr=1-7&keywords=The+Gift

We have been taught and punished for believing in what we call The Gift because the organised church was against it and punished it with death. So we have been brain washed to deny it in ourselves. See witchcraft in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchcraft and http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/witch/

Tony
« Last Edit: March 08, 2015, 09:10:31 AM by Tony Crisp »

gmf

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 4
    • View Profile
Re: Why do family members and I have the same dreams.
« Reply #11 on: December 01, 2013, 12:33:56 AM »
I am familiar with Casey. :).

As I said, reincarnation would explain a lot, but I can't say I know anymore than I know.

As for religion, ugh.  My family history is rich with religious conflict among sects, inflicting misery on multiple generations.  Somehow in my mother's family they managed to incorporate the "gifts" with their religious myths.  I think it helps to have lived in New Orleans, a city rich with things not explained by physics, lol.  Or maybe it was just so strong there was no escaping it.  I know growing up it was simply accepted as fact that certain people in the family "knew" things and occasional had interaction with those departed.  I think it also helped that often the one with the strongest gift was also the solid, sober, grounded one that it would be hard to discount.

There seems to be a strong energy afoot in my near family which keeps return to this realm, right down to me thinking of that dream and stumbling on to your page. :)

Tony Crisp

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3419
    • View Profile
    • Dreamhawk.com
Re: Why do family members and I have the same dreams.
« Reply #12 on: December 01, 2013, 10:08:33 AM »
Thank you for sharing so much. I am sure other people found it as interesting as I did.

Tony

Sharper

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 1
    • View Profile
Re: Why do family members and I have the same dreams.
« Reply #13 on: March 04, 2015, 04:05:56 AM »
My father and I had the same dream 2 nights ago. We were at the old farmstead with most of the family there. My aunt (my fathers older sister) was there alive and well, she's  been deceased for four years. My father lives 500 miles aways from me. Does anyone have any ideas on what the meaning or significance of this dream and us both having it the same night could be?

Tony Crisp

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3419
    • View Profile
    • Dreamhawk.com
Re: Why do family members and I have the same dreams.
« Reply #14 on: March 05, 2015, 10:38:43 AM »
Sharper - I have explained this in several places - Some thinkers, like Carl Jung and now quantum scientist, see individual human consciousness like an island in a huge ocean in which there are countless other islands. Above the surface of the water - waking self-awareness - there is a sense of separate existence, with definite boundaries where the shore meets the sea. Beneath the surface however, one island is connected to all other islands. The land stretches away under the waves and rises here and there into other islands. So, it is that, personal awareness, beneath our everyday consciousness, shades off into a connection with a collective unconscious we all share. Through this connection we may be able to arrive at insights into other people otherwise denied to us, and of course share dreams with those we have ties of sympathy with.

Because we depend upon our brain for our sense of what is real, and most of what we receive is through our senses we feel we know the world. But our eyes are only sensitive to 1% of light and our ears can only hear 1% of audible sound, so we are virtually blind and deaf to the reality of what we are surrounded by. See - http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/inner-world/
In recent years there has been a lot of research very strongly suggesting that the quantum level of the universe is such a universal memory and consciousness. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/physics-new-physics-and-the-mind/

Tony
« Last Edit: March 08, 2015, 09:12:30 AM by Tony Crisp »