It can be puzzling to try and track one's stream of conciousness from a supposed mental "source", through a sinuous path filled with ebb and flow of interuptions and random mental rabbit-holing, all the way to some delta of residual thought and off into the sea of total mental ambiguity. To be able to begin with one simple thought or seed in your conciousness and then arrive, after a lightening quick, yet incremental process, with a completely differnt thought is interesting. For example, I woke up today, not remembering my dreams and took a shower. I shaved my face in the shower and afterwards applied a lotion to my skin. As I drove to work , I felt the wind chaffing my skin and thought to myself that it was a good idea to use lotion on such a blustery, cold day as to avoid some type of dry skin of the face or whatever it is called when someone's cheeks are flaking at the epidermal layer. This reminded me of a friend of mine from high school, Sur Lax. Yes, that was his real name and he is one of the most unique individuals I have come across in my existence. One thing in particular I remember about Sur was his horrible skin. He had the palest, dryest skin you could imagine; so that his skin looked like tiny, crusty, white tectonic plates adrift on a sea of irritated pink skin. Thinking of Sur in such detail made me think of a conversation we had had recently about his work experience at Burger King and how much he missed working at Kroger...or did I? That is what I was thinking to myself as I was driving and suddenly remembered my inconsequental dream involving me running into Sur Lax after many years now, and asking him what he's been up to since his Kroger and Burger King days. And I wondered if I would have remembered my dream if I hadn't shaved my face, applied lotion, had the wind bite my freshly shaved cheeks, and then fear a facial skin flaking which made me think of a friend with a similar condition that I had had a dream about that night?
Can any of you remember remembering a dream after a catalytic stimuli?
Can any of you remember remembering a dream after a catalytic stimuli?
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I'm reading up on Indian Philosophy (as in Southasian) - and your thoughts on thoughts reminds me of an element of the Yoga-Sutra
according to the tradition of Yoga - past thought and experience seed present thought
what you have thought and experienced in the past are the raw materials out of which present experience is made
in other words - there is a school/tradition of Indian Philosophy that delves deeply into what you are talking about
[Edited on Mar 06, 2005 2:46PM]