No and no. I don't dream a lot and when I do it's just a jumble of oddness.

How much stock do you take in dreams?

None whatsoever.

But say you have a dream that seems to tell you to do (or not do) a specific thing. Would you listen?

No. I would do what I intended to do. Or not do.

Ever have a prophetic dream?

There is no such thing. There may be dreams that appear to be prophetic, but there are no prophetic dreams.

I've had prophetic dreams. Some speak in symbols but some were straight-up accurate.

To this day I wish I'd spoken up about one in particular. If I had told it to the parties involved it might have saved their marriage.

I only pay attention to some of them. But I don't put full faith in any of them.

Last night I had a distressing dream about Binky getting picked up and sold by some guy who made his living going around and stalking friendly dogs so that he could sell them. Somehow Binky ended up at animal control and I was sad because they weren't smart enough to scan him for his chip. And the dream bummed me out. Even though there's no way a guy could get to Binky since the only time he's outside is when I am with him and he is leashed. So um, funny brain!

Even if your brain is just randomly shuffling through information as you sleep, the recombination of information and details that didn't have your attention before has history in inspiring and alerting people's conscious minds.

People take in more information than they might be consciously aware of and dreams are a good way for the layman to have stuff giggle its way to the forefront in surprising ways.

That said, the women in my family have odd dream features and i'm not even going to get into my own personal details. But i am a freak, and according to taz, a which.

i've been recently taking time when i wake to decipher my horrible dreams. It's been interesting.

I don't take much stock in my dreams.

The dreams I remember are mostly stemmed from anxiety.

Just last week I dreamed that the kid and I were late for the first day of school. Then the stairway that lead to the classroom suddenly crumbled.

When family has died, they have visited me in my dreams. This is particularly creepy in the case of my paternal grandmother who came and said bye in a dream, I hadn't seen her for 17 years so she even said that I might not know her "but your mother will". This woke me up at four in the morning and the next day I called my mom, who had the same dream and also got up at the crack of dawn, mom figured out that the woman was my grndmother. Two weeks later my stupid arse uncle let us know my grandmother had died the night my mother and I both dreamt about her.

my uncles are idiots. we don't talk much, it might be contagious.

So yeah, in some cases (like when they wake me) I put a lot of stock in dreams. For the usual flying, trippy hippie, eaten by bugs, running in sand, messing with strange images, swimming forever or whatever else I might be dreaming of, I don't pay too much attention. A lot of it is clearly my brain just rethinking what's on my mind lately, so it might be entertaining but it's not like those important dreams. You can tell the difference.

What dabitch and ethylene said - I put a lot of stock in dreams. I had a strong, weird one on Friday night actually, about my father who died in 2000 and I still haven't quite figured out if I'm going to tell my mother or not. And yes, if I get something really clear in a dream, like "do this," then I do it. Or I would, but I hardly ever have, because my dreams are rarely so clearly suggestive. Although I have made food that I dreamt about, weird recipes, and once I spent days looking in shops for a green dress that I bought in a dream (alas, it did not apparently exist in real life.) I have a lot of deja vu too and I swear that there have been times it has completely saved my ass.

Even if your brain is just randomly shuffling through information as you sleep, the recombination of information and details that didn't have your attention before has history in inspiring and alerting people's conscious mind

I completely agree with eth on this. My dreams seem to be incredibly helpful in helping me clarify my feelings about things or people and in alerting me to problems and issues in my daily life that need more of my conscious attention. They're more direct and honest than my waking mind, at times.

I really don't know. I would be honestly alarmed if I had any kind of foreboding dream, and it would be difficult for me to entirely ignore it. I think I actually don't have (or don't remember) those kinds of dreams out of sheer force of will.

However, I have solved real problems in my dreams, and I like the idea that my mind goes on chewing over things while I slumber. I occasionally give myself directions to find a solution or come up with a needed idea while I sleep - and sometimes it works!

I don't take stock in my dreams. I've been known to float a bond or two on them, though.

I used to have a dream diary in which I wrote down everything I could remember the moment I woke up. Made for a bit of sloppy writing at times, I must admit. But I did dream that my grandmother came to visit me not long after her death. It was a very comforting dream. And I will swear that my pet dog "visited" me five years after his death in a "dream". I could feel his fur, his frame, his weight, everything. I have a friend who had a dream that her late mother told her that her second baby would be a boy - she was right. So, yeah, I do put a lot of weight in some dreams.

I'm sure most of you remember me talking about my friend who died in 2002. I used to dream about him occasionally after he died. The oddest one was one in which he was standing beside me and another friend and was talking to the friend. He then turned to me to continue the conversation.

I then told him this: "I'm sorry, but it's not my practice to talk to dead people."

He then immediately disappeared.

I spent the rest of the dream worrying I'd hurt his feelings.

Oh, I forgot about a dream I had over two decades ago...I had two friends, both married but as yet no kids. I dreamed that one was newly pregnant at the same time that the other one was around 4 months along.

I told both friends the dream. The one who in the dream was 4 months along was delighted to hear it, while the other friend was annoyed as she didn't want any kids.

Lo and behold friend #1 got pregnant.

Four months later friend #2 announced HER pregnancy.

My dreams are usually jumbled bits of information, imagery, and emotional stimulation left over from my waking life, all churned together into nonsense patterns. I reflect on them when I can remember them, mostly because I'm entertained by the gulf between how real and serious they seem to Dream Me and how how hilarious they usually are to Awake Me.

But often my dreams give me cues about real-life issues that I've papered over while awake. So I like to turn over dreams in my mind to see what might be spurring them.

If I appear to have a prophetic dream, usually it's just my unconscious mind putting together clues that I'd already seen, but hadn't put into a pattern.

(Last night, I dreamed I was an advocate for two crusty old men who had once worked in vaudeville. Some whippersnappers had stolen their tumbling act and made a fortune, and I was working pro bono to get them royalties or, um, something. In the process, they taught me a bunch of physically impossible tumbling tricks. It was fantastic, with a very real sensation of tumbling and spinning. I'm getting giddy just thinking about it.)

My first Mecha post ever is kinda about this topic.

It's my brain talking. Garbled, but yes, I listen.

As a person who doesn't Belive In Stuff, yes, I contemplate my dreams, because they come from me, not Somewhere Else.

Sometimes, carification is obvious, sometimes not.

Funny to see this now.
I just got back from getting my tattoo, and the artist is a friend of mine. Not close, but his roommate and mine are in a band together, and we run in the same social circles.
We were chatting, and it turns out we have shockingly similar reoccurring dreams.

Not quite sure what to think about this. I mean, it's nothing bizarre and off the wall, we both have similar car accident dreams, and we've both been in emotionally traumatic car accidents. But still, it's strange to deal with something like that, explain to SOs why you wake up afraid or upset all the time, etc... and then find someone else with the same issue.

I dunno, but I've been having lucid dreams for the last year or two.

I think ethylene is exactly right. The dreams I remember seem generally to merit some attention in just that way.

I have anxiety dreams sometimes. Typically I have to go on stage to perform, but I can't find my instrument, and I don't know the way to the stage. It usually involves running down a long corridor with no doors. From these dreams I conclude that I should be kind to myself to avoid excessive anxiety.

Back when I had train-track braces, in my teens, I used to have a variant on the anxiety dream which was the 'killer dentist' dream. The dentist used to do some work on me and then leave me to bleed to death in the chair. Strangely this did not translate into a fear of dentists or orthodontists - I never minded going for my appointments.

I've never had any dreams with anything more than some deja-vu type of stuff. So, I've never been in the position to either put stock in them or not.

I've always thought about trying to have lucid dreams. It seems neat, but I've never been able to get up the will power to put in the required amount of effort.

I've had two dreams, in forty years, that have come true. They were trivial so I don't a whole lot of stock in them. Now, if I dreamt of winning lottery numbers, that'd be a whole 'nother ball of wax.

Generally, my dreams tend to be "stress" dreams: late for school, haven't been at school in a long time so I'm so far behind in all my subjects, being at school half-dressed; stuff like that. Sometimes they're weird story-like dreams where they take bits and pieces of my life, put them in with pieces that don't make sense with the initial pieces and then, somehow, make some sort of linear story out of the whole mess. I find those fairly entertaining and can consciously (?) think to myself that I don't want the dream to end.

I put a lot of stock in the dream that I had this morning— it showed me that having gigantic casts of wax around my hands makes grocery shopping hard and that birds will chase me to eat off the beeswax.