Each night we close our eyes, there is a great chance that a dream will occur. This could be a pleasant dream or even a nightmare. Some studies show that most dreams occur during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) state. This is the state at which we are in the deepest stage of sleep. At this point, your body becomes very relaxed and immobile. Sounds familiar? Ever heard of "sleep paralysis"? REM sleep and sleep paralysis appear to have some of the same characteristics in my opinion, but many argue that sleep paralysis happens on very rare occasions. Let's just leave that argument for another time.
So, what exactly is a dream? Is it your imagination playing tricks on you? Is it a short movie played inside of your head based on your most recent thoughts? Or could it be a lot deeper than that? What if when we sleep, we subconsciously project ourselves to alternative dimensions and return when we are ready or aren't capable of handling the events that may be taking place? So many questions, I know. These are all things we have to take into consideration when trying to understand this strange phenomenon. Here's some food for thought:
"Lets suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream,
and you would naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes.
You would have every kind of pleasure, you see,
and after several nights you would say, “well that was pretty great.”
But now lets have a surprise, lets have a dream which isn’t under control.
Well something is going to happen to me that i don’t know what it’s gonna be.
Then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream, and finally you would dream where you are now.
If you awaken from this illusion,
and you understand that black implies white,
self implies other,
life implies death.
You can feel yourself, not as a stranger in the world,
not as something here on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke, but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental.
What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure
of existence itself." –Alan Watts
From what I have heard so far, we always have multiple dreams every night. If this is true, many of us may not be in-tuned with our subconscious minds, along with having a lack of memory. A great way to begin the process of remembering your dreams is to start a dream journal. Keep a dream journal and pen next to your bed so that in the event that you do remember a dream you just had, you can wake up and quickly write down everything you could remember. Once you get into the habit of recording your dreams, you should then be able to remember and understand them. I was thinking of adding information in this post about symbols and what your dreams could possibly mean, but I decided to make a separate post with a list of symbols and correspondences.
Questions
How often do you dream?
Do you remember many of the dreams you have?
Are there any recurring dreams that you may need help interpreting?
Do you have a dream journal?
Why do you think we dream every night?
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