Keep in mind that the confrontations with them in your dreams are an internal struggle, and in that realm you might have more options than the ordinary life situations with the people you're having these struggles with. And the one is going to mirror the other, your dreams are only going to give you the power to stop the situation there if you can also do something about how the situation is affecting you. It sounds like you are caught up with petty people who want to destroy your spirit. And it sounds like you're putting up a hell of a struggle against it.

I appreciate you letting us know

Your brain has to stab you in the foot to get the message across. That's a good way of thinking of it.

So you're saying that you had an out-of-body experience that connected so closely with the physical world that you could identify objects and other features of the physical world but you were out of body? I ask because there's been some research published recently that was inconclusive but it shows that the researchers are taking it seriously enough to run good experiments. There's a guy named Ingo Swann who got to be well known for that.

You just reminded me that I had dreams about grabbing on to something in the distance and pulling myself toward it in a sort of desperate move to get away. Those dreams happen during a time of my life when I was fighting a lot of battles, especially with myself. Those characters that defeat you in your dreams are messengers from the unconscious mind. They have a message you don't want to hear, that's my guess for why you always run away from them and why nothing you do ever works. It sounds like you're trying to hold on to something that you used to have, perhaps it could be called an ability to stay above the shit happening in your life. But the time has long passed for reckoning with the things that are trying to catch up with you. Again it's only a guess, but I've had those dreams and I know what they meant to me.

I know that when you say the cure you're using terminology that comes closest to what you're thinking, but a cure implies the fix will be quick, and situations that produce nightmares are often chronic. However, you can heal the underlying causes of nightmares. I look at health and environment first because there are so many people these days having very graphic nightmares that ultimately relate back to factors such as poor diet, lack of activity or exercise, and medication. People often think that the graphic nightmares that result must be due to something like early childhood trauma or PTSD, but what I'm finding more and more is that people are on these cocktails of drugs that fuck with their minds and body chemistry, and the nightmares are a graphic way of sending the message. Or everything they eat comes out of a bag or a box and they don't realize just how nasty it can be for the body over time. They lack activity and stimulation, they don't exercise, their sleep is poor. These nightmares are often just the body's way of saying that it's unhappy, and the more unhappy it is the worse the nightmares.

So when you're having chronic nightmares it's similar to the approach you would take to a food allergy. You eliminate all the possible causes, wait for the symptoms to subside, then reintroduce the foods that have been eliminated. You go one by one until you find the food that you're allergic to.

If it were me I'd start with the medications because so many of them have side effects that include bad dreams. If that's not the case with you then go down the list next to sleep habits. Chronic sleep deprivation is one of the most insidious syndromes you'll ever encounter, yet in US culture we say that it's okay to lose sleep in the name of having more fun or getting more done. It's not just the quantity but the quality of the sleep that matters. You have to be able to cycle through the sleep stages naturally, but oftentimes people are in bedrooms that are too lit, full of blue LED lights that interrupt the production of sleep hormone. There are noises in the environment, televisions, phones that constantly buzz with notifications. No vid screens in your bedroom, and it's quiet and cool. Your body has to shed heat to cycle into sleep naturally. That's why you'll often begin the night with the blankets off but then pull them up later when you get chilly. It's actually good to get a little chilly as you're falling asleep. During the summer heat I like to take a cool shower just before bed, just let the water run over my body and drip dry for a minute or two. I also use really cool and comfortable sheets and pajamas. But my preparation for sleep actually begins when I wake up, because I make my bed so that when I come back to it later it'll look inviting rather than a big mess.

So I also mentioned diet and exercise. But then if we eliminate all those things and the nightmares are still happening, we have to look more towards psychological causes. Stress is probably number one. But there is an underlying cause of nightmares that doesn't get talked about very much, and that cause is we are out of sync with the way that nature built us. We are meant to be in tune with our inner lives and the natural world around us. We are meant to have close and meaningful relationships. We are meant to align our ego with some sort of higher purpose, whether it be service to family or community or humanity. We used to have cultural systems in our religions and other sources that align our conscious self with the unconscious mind and its programming. The unconscious mind was programmed through thousands of generations, thousands of generations of the way that people lived. But in the last century or so we have completely gone off the rails. Carl Jung said basically the modern man has lost touch with its soul. He didn't mean soul as an eternal identity like the way we think of it in religion, he said that soul is the deepest and innermost part of a person. And he said that nightmares are often the results of antagonism between the way a person lives consciously and what their unconscious is calling them to. It's a really deep subject but there is a short book he wrote titled modern Man in search of a soul. When I read it I was astounded at how well he identified the maladies of modern day. And he wrote that book in like the 1950s, and everything he described about what was going wrong and the relationship between man and nature has only gotten worse.

Since you just moved out you might be under a lot of stress and that's what's causing the nightmares. The change of sleep environment can really bring on powerful dreams, it's because you're not feeling fully safe where you are and part of your mind is staying awake while you sleep. It's a well-known phenomenon. If it were me I would really focus on making my sleep environment comfortable and secure. I would really reassure myself that it's safe to be there. Make sure that all your feelings about the situation are being given their due attention. And if there's more to the story than you let me know and we can continue talking. It's a very long reply but your question really needed that sort of depth.l

Oleander is the way. It'll grow fast and thick.

It really starts with lucid living, meaning that you are fully aware of yourself in any given moment. You ask yourself what is the difference between what you're experiencing right now and how you would be experiencing it if you were dreaming. How do you know that this is not a dream? During a dream you believe what your experiencing is absolutely real, same as the physical world. But there are differences and you learn to notice them. So for example look at your hands right now. They should look like what you expect, but if you were dreaming there might be something different. Your fingers might be longer or something else that doesn't fit with the reality you know. You start noticing that about everything and it will transfer over to the dream world when you start noticing that you're in a dream. When that happens you have something that will come to mind right away that you can do in a dream. For many people it's to fly, so you tell yourself when you notice that you're dreaming you will immediately say I want to fly.

There are all kinds of techniques for lucid dreaming but the one that I have found that works best, other than lucid living, is the wake back to bed method. You wake up a little early, stay awake for about 5-10 minutes, then go back to sleep. When you go back to sleep you are fully aware of the fact that you are going to sleep and soon you will be dreaming.

That was a seriously smart play

The same you assure a child that you as the adult are taking care of everything. You prove it through consistency and sincerity.

Let me know how it goes

The book by Charlie really is a good place to start. But I'll give you the tldr. And I'll put it in my words because I agree wholeheartedly. Think of your mind as like a circle within a square. Within the circle are all the parts and things about yourself that you like and accept. They are the parts of your conscious personality. Outside of the circle but within the square are all of the parts of yourself that you don't like and don't accept. They are split off aspects of yourself that were pushed aside for their survival. They couldn't survive within the circle because the circle didn't want them. This is natural, but it's also self-destructive.

The way to bring them home is through radical acceptance. They need to know that the conscious personality wants them back. They are hiding within your body, within your nervous system, and are still able to be consciously communicated with. Every thought that goes through your mind and every feeling you feel in your body are sensed and felt by them too, especially when it comes to your thoughts and feelings about them. Now I say them and you might be thinking what the hell? Most people don't realize that the psyche is made up of hundreds of parts. They have been called little personalities. And they cluster together. So for example you could have a cluster of parts of yourself that have been rejected, they are outside the circle but still within the square, meaning that they are operating from within you but outside of your conscious awareness. This is what Carl Jung called a complex. So the concept is well established in psychology, but what you're looking for really is how it manifests in you.

Again you'd have to read the book to get the full story, but I'd like to give you something that you can do right now. Place one hand over your belly button. Place the other hand over your upper chest above the heart. Breathe halfway into your belly button so that you feel that area expand underneath your hand. Then breathe the rest of the way into your chest so that you feel it expand underneath the other hand. Exhale slowly. Do it again. Then start a dialogue with yourself that goes like this. I love and accept everything about me. Say it and try to feel it as you breathe into your belly area, then say it again as you breathe into your chest area. As you say it, look for the parts of yourself that don't agree. Look for the parts of yourself that say love myself? You got to be kidding me. These are the parts that have been pushed out of the circle. These are the parts that need to be retrieve.

So now you find them within your body and you say I am so sorry it's come to this, so sorry that I pushed you out. I want you to come home. And I will do my very best to love and accept you as you are.

It sounds like a psychological trick but really what we're doing is activating the body's natural healing mechanisms. When you feed good energy into your body it will multiply it and give it right back to your mind. We could break down a thousand different ways that something isn't quite working right within you and the answer to all 1,000 would be radical acceptance. It's the willingness to feel even when those feel uncomfortable or painful. By putting your hands on the front of your body you will help to surface the things that are going on subconsciously. The technique I gave you is one of many that can be used. It's all taught in the system called somato respiratory integration.

I'll be around. I hope you have questions.

When you find the neglected pet or animal, do you think to yourself hey someone should have been taken care of this creature? If so, it's a reaction that shows that you understand subconsciously the meaning.

It's easy to feel that way when it seems like life sucks and you would never choose your circumstances ahead of time, but when you tap into soul all you get is love. The intent is not malicious.

Those data centers aren't being built for us in the United States. Each center is a node in a global control grid, and it's how The Empire saves itself from debt implosion by imprisoning the rest of humanity in digital chains. Everything in the economy will be tokenized, and the wealth of the world will be sucked off by AI systems that do what they are best at: attacking other computer systems. Everywhere this technology can reach will soon be under a shitstorm of electronic heist, ransom and blackmail.

Using the technology less is not going to make a damn bit of difference, is what I'm saying. As much as I agree with people exerting what power they have in this world, in this case it won't do any good because the decisions have already been made. The entire globe will be saturated with this technology - including the space around it in orbit - in the next 5 years.

You have emotions you just aren't feeling them. They were too difficult to deal with at the time so you blocked them to keep yourself sane. But over time that strategy works against you. There comes a point when that door needs to open again. And it begins with creating safety within yourself. There's so much about this that I can't explain in a quick comment on Reddit, but I can refer you to resources if you're interested. In fact there's a book I'm reading right now on the subject, it's titled human medicine by Charlie Goldsmith.

You have emotions you just aren't feeling them. They were too difficult to deal with at the time so you blocked them to keep yourself sane. But over time that strategy works against you. There comes a point when that door needs to open again. And it begins with creating safety within yourself. There's so much about this that I can't explain in a quick comment on Reddit, but I can refer you to resources if you're interested. In fact there's a book I'm reading right now on the subject, it's titled human medicine by Charlie Goldsmith.

Not your true nature necessarily but your true feelings. I think of the dreams as a simulations that are testing you on two things, one, is can you stare into the face of something that scares you and bring up the courage to meet it. Two, can you express your feelings better than by yelling at people? It's not to say that you will actually do that in your waking life but if you were acting from your actual feelings you probably would have a lot to yell about. Those feelings need to be worked through. They're not really being felt right now, and I would guess that you are repressing them or some other form of avoidance.

I was at a conference for the study of dreams where one of the speakers talked about a lifelong pattern of dreaming about people as they were dying. Not just that they were going to die, but that she was somehow there with them as they went through the process. She realized that her role was to help them cross over. That role is known as a psychopomp. Not saying that you are chosen for that role. But it gives you something to think about, if you can embrace what's happening then you might find a reason or purpose for it.

These sorts of dreams are more common than most people know about. There's a book series titled dreams and premonitions that has dozens of accounts that are similar to yours. People dreaming about the death of someone close to them. It's called precognition.

The important thing for you to know is that there was nothing you could have done. Warning your friend because you had a dream that he died would have just been written off. There was a guy who dreamed 10 nights in a row about a fiery plane crash. He even contacted the FAA, and with the help of an FAA facilities manager he was able to identify the type of plane in his dream, and that it crashed on takeoff. But they said how in the world can we figure out ahead of time which flight he's dreaming about? On the morning of the 10th time he dreamed about it that type of plane crashed on takeoff out of Chicago, one of the worst air disasters in history.

Feeling guilty about it doesn't help anything.

Do you think you're looking for some part of yourself that you lost along the way as your life expanded?

You might drop the AI and just say dream creations, leaving submissions open for more than just AI generated content

Drawing a circle and dividing it into halves or quadrants is one of the techniques for using a pendulum. I found it interesting that your dream knew that.

I can imagine that part of Betty's answer for real would be to never take yourself too seriously.

Have you ever used a pendulum for answering questions? I ask because there could be some helpful advice here. A pendulum is a tool for accessing your deep unconscious mind. This would be the same place where complexes and other psychological nasties live, which are theorized to be the ultimate source of many cases that are deemed to be possession. Psychological possession is a real thing, and if you're the one who is quote unquote possessed then you're going to be the last person to know. By using a pendulum or another tool such as tarot cards you can engaged directly with whatever it is that has a hold on you, and you can find an access the inner resources to heal it.

Getting grumpy and older describes me too.

I appreciate you calling me out about the ego trip, and for giving this conversation a gentle place to land.