I’m waking up and remembering lots of dreams lately, and I wonder….
Is it just me, or does the veil naturally grow thin for most people in their golden years as they start their gradual descent toward transition to the next life? Do they start having more dreams about the other side and remembering them more clearly when they wake up?
It would make sense:
As our spirit body-mind gets ready for its next afterlife adventure and loosens its grip on Earth illusions, its nightly excursions back home to the astral worlds become more meaningful, while the dramas of day to day living on Earth become more forgettable. As we age we have a growing awareness of our dreams, daydreams, recollections of long-dead loved ones, and other intimate connections to the worlds of spirit. We’re slowly relaxing our tight grip on the trappings of this material world.
Yes, it would make sense, but research today doesn’t seem to back it up. When I google the relationship between aging and more dreams and more memorable dreams, I find no articles at all on the subject.
There are lots of articles on related subjects…
- People who are dying often spend the last few days having amiable chats in their sleep with their departed loved ones, to the puzzlement of family members and caregivers who listen in. But that’s late in the game, when the body’s ready to “give up the ghost.”
- People with dementia or Alzheimer’s often have more vivid dreams, and the line between dreaming and awake becomes blurred. Here’s a moving article by a woman whose parents both have dementia. If you read that attached article carefully through the filter of what we know about ITC and afterlife, I think you’ll find the experiences with the answering machine, déjà vu, blending of past and present, and Clark Gable’s horses all very illuminating. It becomes clear how dementia is often just a blurred line between carnal mind and spiritual mind… between what’s happening on Earth and what’s happening at the same time in the afterlife. But articles like this one look at the association between dreams and “mental illness,” not what we consider normal, healthy aging.
What I’m looking for is simply the connection between “normal” aging and having more vivid, more memorable dreams.
It’s happening to me lately, and I’m nowhere near deathbed or dementia (knock on wood).
So, I’d be interested in hearing from readers who are 60 and older:
How are your dreams lately?
Macy Afterlife: The Beacon 
I’m not yet at the age of 60, but close. I’ve been a vivid dreamer all of my life and regularly dream of departed loved ones. I make a point to write down all of my dreams and have for years. Needless to say, I have many dreams that are recurring and bring me great joy.
I look forward each night to my dream world.
Thanks MarkW,
Would you say that dream journaling has had some tangible benefits in your life that could be put in words?
(That information could be helpful on one of my other websites.)
MarkM
I sometimes peruse my dream journals to see the evolution of my nightly travels. I often read my journals in the hope that it will “seed” my dreams. I don’t know if this actually works but I feel it keeps me balanced. My journals keep my dreams in a very positive light and I get great comfort from this.
Journalling works it tells your mind this is important and not to be forgotten, plus it opens up details. Dreaming or Out of body experiences are all signs of your enhanced ability to remember your other on going life beyond the vail. I am 65 and every night is the continuation of learning and growth, flying is great, too bad we can’t do it here.
That seems to be key, all right. Journaling apparently trains the carnal mind, or conscious mind, to remember its connection to the spiritual mind, or subconscious or unconscious mind. (These are the terms I’ve adopted and correlated over the years, and I’m not sure if their accurate… especially equating the mind of our spirit body with our subconscious mind. I think they might be the same thing, but I’m not sure. Can’t ask mainstream science about that because it denies the existence of the spirit body.)
So maybe journaling helps build a personal bridge to the other side by bringing the two different realities together? I wonder if that personal bridge is somehow related to or a necessary part of an ITC bridge. I remember several vivid dreams where I saw Luxembourg ITC researcher Maggy chatting with people who I somehow recognized as part of the spirit group Timestream, such as Swejen Salter. It seems like “just a dream,” but it also seems vivid and real.
As you know, Mark, I’m just over 70 but I haven’t noticed any difference in my recall of my dreams. Some are vivid, some contain deceased family and friends – but my conscious thoughts/daydreams can be that way too. I think they can simply reflect the feeling I get that someone is a long time passed over….
I’m sure that what you’ve suggested will be a real-life situation for some people but what percentage of a random group that might be is guesswork without conducting a large-enough scientific trial. I may sleep a little less than I used to but, then, I don’t work for a living so I’m less tired. But I haven’t noticed any change in my dream experience and recollection. I’ve heard scientists say that old farts need more sleep than they often get but how one achieves that I don’t know. I don’t feel like I have any more control over my sleep than I have of my dreaming!
Perhaps if one’s sleep pattern is changing, for whatever reason, you may remember more of your dreams after you wake. But does that mean you are dreaming more than you used to or might it mean that you’re dreaming much as you always did but you’re simply remembering more of your dreams?
I sometimes hear folk say they don’t dream but I reply that they’re probably dreaming much like everyone else (scientists say we all dream) but simply not recalling what they dream. In such a case it would FEEL like they hadn’t been dreaming of course. My wife says she remembers few of her dreams or details from those she does remember. It’s quite a surprise for her to remember and often not a nice surprise.
mac
On a related topic, it’s said that during sleep we all leave this dimension for a time and visit the etheric one for counselling, visitation etc. But do we? How do you know other than what we’re told? But if we all actually do this thing, how often and for how long? And if we do, do we store the memories in our ‘day memory’ in the way we remember regular details?
As a male senior I’m in the habit of making potty calls during the night and as I wake I can often remember in vivid detail the dream I’ve just left. I also know I’ll probably not remember it later, even if I try to consign it to active ‘day memory’ . By the next bathroom visit (oh, yes, men do need more visits some nights!) I KNOW I had a vivid dream only a couple of hours earlier but I may not recall more than a scrap of detail. By getting up time I may not even remember that I’d had that dream at all EXCEPT when sometimes a trigger later in the day, or even days later, brings it back to me.
So where do the details of dreams get stored and processed?
I forgot to ask how we can differentiate between an astral visit and a dream? If an apparent dream is actually a visit can we tell the difference if we can recall it?
You’ve hit on one of my main questions or concerns or issues. the connection between dream experiences and astral or afterlife experiences. Being steeped in afterlife research, I’ve lately been kind of assuming that all of my dreams are my spirit body’s excursions into astral communities and not just neurochemical phenomena in the brain.. Scientists would say just the opposite, and they’re busy trying to map REM dream activity to brain map images. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
As you say, mac, where do dream details get stored and processed? I’ve come to believe they get stored in the spiritual mind, the mind of the spirit body. The carnal mind treats them as spam. As they pass through the carnal mind or brain they get sent immediately into the spam folder, marked for deletion within the next few seconds. I guess dream journaling is like going into the spam file and moving the most recent spam item into the inbox before it’s deleted.
Yes, it’s all rather strange, the dream world. I do find as I grow older that dreams are more vivid and easier to recall but the figures that predominate in these dreams are people I have known whom I don’t like much; the dreams are boring yet not unpleasant. I only see people I have known, never new people or interesting people and if this is what the astral plane is or will be, it leaves me cold with no desire to “travel” there. To sum up, my dreams are of a trivial nature, they don’t even interest me. I find this sad.
Liz Wagner
Me too. Most of the people I encounter in my dreams seem familiar and I equate them with someone I’ve known in this lifetime, even if they don’t really look the same. Definitely these dreams are becoming more memorable and vivid in recent years.
Mark,
This is such a great topic.
My dreams tend to be a mix of earth-based settings/familiar surroundings and faces, and then other dreams really come out of “left field” and leave me mystified. In those dreams of the “left field” category, I can move extremely fast, I can hover and slowly ascend if I put enough thought and intention into it, and I never actually speak. My communication is through my thoughts. My movement is much different; I do not just walk around like we do in this world. I also have encountered very large, strange and quite intriguing palaces/structures. Everything is so fleeting when I am there – from one place to another. Sometimes, there’s not even a reason I am supposed to be there. Some carnal emotions can come into play in these settings, though – sometimes I am plagued by anxiety because I am late for a flight that I never seem to make. The airports are so vast, but nothing like what one would envision in an earth-like setting. I remember carpeted halls, dim lighting and “banquet”-style rooms, and people whose faces I’ve never seen before – crowds of people. Also, there are countless winding staircases, dimly-lit tunnels and even very large restrooms. I really have to start making an effort to remember these dreams and document these details. As I sit here typing these details, they’re just too profound and they keep coming to me. I really have to focus on retaining some of these dreams. One of the strangest dreams ever, by far, was when I somehow seemingly traveled to the rusted metallic gates of a very old temple in India – and I vividly remember complaining to myself how humid it was – despite being overcast. The oppressiveness of the humid climate was very real. Vegetation was everywhere and I had to climb the gates to get inside. Perhaps many of these dreams are symbolic, yet really do entail a visit to other realms.
Ricky
Hi Ricky,
Sounds to me like your regular dreams happen on the third level, and the ‘out-of-left-field’ dreams happen on the fourth level, where Timestream told us people in spirit can start to manifest things and to move themselves by thought rather than by earth-like conveyance. I think it’s also at the fourth level where people fly or soar over meadows, oceans, and glistening cities. (those are the levels described in the Myers Model, of course…)
I also remember a few dreams where I’m soaring over spirit landscapes, but by far most of my dreams lately are more mundane… third level scenarios. I probably need to spend more time meditating, like I used to do before getting involved in ITC, and during my years in INIT.
Mark
Mark, I agree!
It’s just so amazing how surreal these landscapes can become. A lot of them can be very similar to this world – but they are so different when they are explored. Just as a random example – a mundane dream about a familiar local grocery store will at first bring images of this grocery store, but then layout will be vastly different, with many undiscovered parts of the store that you never knew were there. It’s familiar, yet something is very, very different. I just wonder if these are random parallel worlds.
Also, a lot of my dreams can be repetitive, with the same theme – yet there is a different twist and outcome each time.
Ricky
I have kept dream journals since my twenties, then went through a busy child rearing era and kind of stopped. Notice now that I am a Grandmother my dreams of the other side can be either quite profound and require lots of meditation and journaling to understand or occasionally kind of humorous in particular when dealing with the Astral planes. Here is a recent one that involved my Grandfather who died when I was nine and I have never heard from him in all these years. I became lucid in the dream at a large happy family gathering when a huge white cadillac with gold tire rims pulled up. My Grandfather got out and he was wearing a silk Italian suit, very fancy shoes, appeared about 30,and began to greet everyone and was kind of the life of the party. Now what was strange about all this is in life he immigrated here from Europe, worked as a day laborer on the railroad, and was a pretty poor man through out his life. He was also quite shy and had little social confidence and was usually pretty quiet in a crowd. I think this obvious morph of his personality was probably his repressed desires being fulfilled on the Astral plane, he was experiencing a life style he could only dream about during his lifetime. I also realized afterward that my Grandmother was not there nor any real family. Although I didnt know these people in the dream they seemed like a loving, happy bunch. Go figure??
That’s real insightful to me, Sammi. Thanks. I suspect that there are so many obstacles and sidetracks in this world that our greatest dreams and our soul plans for a lifetime sometimes don’t come to bear… and we can then find them in the afterlife, like your granddad. That would make sense to me….
Mark
I understand our loved ones can communicate with us through dreams, but I don’t think that’s the same thing as us visiting *them* across the veil. It could be that as we age our spirit uses our brain to take stock of our lives while we are still here and can do something about our past failings, or deal with our grievances here, earthside. Less baggage to take. Possibly?
I gather that visiting other dimensions requires a dislocation of our spirit from our meditating or sleeping body. To use a vulgar, but often used analogy, astral projection (either to travel here, or across dimensions) is like an orgasm insofar as if you’re not sure a visit took place, then it didn’t. Spirit exit gives very real ‘symptoms’ that feel physical, and you’re hyper-awake at the time while your body sleeps.
Yes, I’ve noticed that a lot lately in my dreams. Usually I’m at peace and comfortable with the people around me in the dream setting, but sometimes I’m really angry for no apparent reason, and the spirits look at me askance. They keep their distance. There’s a sense that i don’t really belong there at the moment, and if I were LIVING there with all that anger, not just visiting in a dream, then I’d quickly move out of that third level community to a place where anger (and probably fear) was more a way of life for the spirits of that place.
So like you say, Nicola, dreams seem to be also an opportunity to come to terms with the baggage we’ve accumulated during this earth life, and to try to deal with it appropriately before we get to the other side. For me that probably means figuring out what makes me angry, other than crazy American politics, of course. 🙂
Mark
As you know I spend almost half my year in the USA so I hear quite a lot about US politics both from our friends there but also when I follow things via the news media. I also try to follow at least some events from my side of the pond when I’m back home in the UK.
In respect of politics and politicians it’s a bizarre situation as we move Stateside to UK or the reverse. It’s almost one of those deja-vu situations except with persistence we work out why – we HAVE experienced that situation for real! We hear much the same storylines, read about similar situations and criticisms of “useless politicians” – I’m being polite by saying “useless”! But often it’s tricky to work out which story from which side of the pond we’re remembering.
Only with gun crime is the situation in the US very, very different than in the UK.
mac
I suspect you’re right, mac. We in the States have self-righteous anti-abortionist networks who bomb medical clinics and oil billionaires who’ll do anything and pay anyone (including climate-change deniers) to get control of the government, military, and CIA to get control of world oil supplies. I’m sure you in the UK have similar groups driven by narrow interests of one sort or another. I suspect they crop up lots of places… wherever humans dwell. 🙂
Mark
But like I promise my wife time and time again, I’m not going to talk politics because I get too worked up. 🙂
(I do that venting on my other blog, which has a tiny readership… fewer than 10 subscribers at last check)
I think the net for the third level is wide.
Was it here I read that there were disparate or rival teams working with earthside communicators, and one caused trouble for another? Or that the guy pretending to be KR was within the third level running amok?
Could be just a fear of being judged, the anger dream? That’s what they’re doing with their looks after all.
Sorry to say, I think you may be right about that, Nicola. I used to believe that Afra and his negative spirit group (the one that called me with that croaking, cackling voice saying he was Konstantin Raudive) resided in the shadow world or at some dark level below the third level. It might very well be that groups like that live at the third level. And yes, Maggy in Luxembourg did receive a message from Timestream spirit group early on saying the sending station had be wrestled from the grip of another spirit group… the type of drama that Sir Richard Francis Burton had experienced from time to time during his earth life.
So I guess things are not all peaches and Summerland until you get to the fourth level. Still, when we (INIT) got into a relationship with spirit group Timestream, it was a relationship mostly of trust, respect, and good will, which is how ITC should be. That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it. 🙂
One of my main goals before I die is to figure out what we on Earth have to do in order to make that possible.
Mark
Oh well. If the net is indeed as wide as I think it might be, we can just ignore them … unless we continue ITC work on that side. Then they will be as big a pain in the ass there as they are here. Perhaps moreso.
I found studies that claim the opposite – that aging affects our ability to recall dreams, but that this starts in early middle age and doesn’t continue to decrease . They suggested lack of interest as the reason.
Interesting point, Nicola, thanks. I’ll search out some of those studies. What I’m doing here, of course, isn’t a study per se, just a conversation among a few interested people.
I suspect most scientific studies are reliable and useful… unless they’re funded by special interests (e.g.pharmaceutical companies) or unless they’re studying the human mind and don’t take the spirit body/mind into account… that is, the existence of a living spirit within us that’s separate from the physical body/mind and that survives death of the physical body/mind.
Still, the studies you describe would be illuminating, so I’ll do some looking.
Ahh. The guy (Marco Zanasi) is a scientist.
Thanks, I found his bio…….
http://dreamtalk.hypermart.net/abstracts2006/caporali_zanasi.htm
and the article…
http://www.ceoniric.cl/english/articles/dreams_and_aging.htm
Mark
Funny you should mention dreams Mark. I just posted on my blog not to long ago about a dream I had you might be interested in.
Hi George, that’s a interesting dream, all right… an afterlife experience where you could help someone. I also saw the great news on your site… in the “Im Back” article. 🙂
https://guitarplayergeorge.wordpress.com/
All the best to you,
Mark
Mark I had an interesting lucid dream last night and wanted to share it: I became Lucid standing on a beach overlooking a beautiful lake with a beautiful sunset in the background. I noticed a fairly large bird flying toward me and as it came closer I realized it was a small, white poodle with very large wings. It landed beside me and I said, ” Well I have never seen a flying dog before?” The Poodle answered and said, ” All during my life I loved to watch birds and admired their freedom and wished that I could fly like them. Now I can.” At that he took flight again over the lake performing all sorts of intricate maneuvers and joyful loops. I woke up feeling very happy and pondering what I feel took place somewhere in the Midastral region where this little Poodle got his hearts desire after he passed over.
That’s a lovely dream, Sammi.
It got me wondering if maybe that’s how we humans got that silly notion of angels having wings. Maybe people in their dreams or meditations sometimes see beings in the astral realms soaring through the air, sometimes with wings… and they wake up with a “vision” that angels have wings. Food for thought…………
Mark
I once had a healing for feelings of resentment I couldnt shake regarding my Mother I went to an Assembley of God Healing Convention and visited their “healing team”. They told me they had an Angel that worked with them and He would visit me during the night and give me the healing I requested. I thought, ” Yea, right?” That night in my Hotel room I thought my daughter had turned on the light when I sat up in bed I noticed the vacant wall was illuminated and a tall, bright being with a huge “force field” around him stepped through the light. He touched what looked like a large belt buckle on his belt and this field retracted. He then showed me scenes on the wall like a huge TV set from my Mothers life from childhood to present. I could feel her emotions and how things effected her as though I was living the experiences with her. When he was finished He touched his belt and the golden, electric force field surrounded him like an egg and he went back through the wall.
I thought at the time it was the force field people often see which I speculated allows Beings to move through solid walls that people might see as wings. Anyway it got me over the Spiritual hump I had with my Mother. It didnt make life easier around her but I understood the dynamics of why she behaved as she did. That was at the late John Wimbers Ministry in California and he did have a remarkable healing ministry with what they identified as the force of the Holy Spirit. Others may call in Chi, or Spiritual Energy but it worked for me at that time.
Yes I think a lot of people on the other side probably invent wings to move from place to place because they dont realize all they have to do to fly is think about it and it will manifest.
In the little Dog’s case his wings didn’t look permanent more like something he could take off and put on. Probably because in his dog mind he needed them to fly. I have seen many dogs and other animals in Mid Astral but never a flying dog, bless his little heart.
Great healing experience, Sammi, thanks for sharing it.
I also have noticed that the energy field around an ethereal being can resemble wing-like protrusions, and I agree, THAT is probably where the mystics’ visions became translated into bird wings on angels… not detachable wings on astral spirits. 🙂
Warm wishes,
Mark