Per Chance to Dream
By Robert Wallis
To dream or not to dream… Do you, and what does it mean?
There are those of you who say "I don’t dream at all, ever,
end of discussion." Nay say the experts! We all dream. Even
to this day there is still research claiming that one
doesn’t dream. You may not remember it, but everyone dreams.
In fact dreaming is essential to your health.
You must go through several levels of sleep in order to
dream. We begin at surface sleeping where you are aware
enough to still hear things, and then we move all the way
down to deep sleep where you wouldn’t hear a tornado if it
slammed a car through the front window of your house.
Deep sleep doesn’t actually last as long as you would
think—typically a half hour or so. Once you have hit this
deep sleep point you then rise upward in your sleep levels
and as your brain begins to "wake up", you then begin to
dream. Alcohol, drugs or medical problems can and do disrupt
the sequence of sleep. If you are unable to hit the deepest
level of sleep you are not going to dream.
Dreaming is a time for your mind to rationalize or make
sense of the day’s activities. As each dream is resolved you
go back into deep sleep. This cycle repeats four to six
times each night. Without this cycle you won’t receive the
restorative sleep your body needs. You could sleep 12 hours
without this cycle, and you would still wake up tired.
Without this dream work, you get edgy, irritable, and prone
to frustrations. Creativity dwindles and dullness sets in
with lack of sleep, along with a sense of fatigue that is
quite real. This can lead to further health complications
requiring medical intervention.
Your body will demand to get the sleep that it needs. This
could lead to bizarre events such as "waking sleep" or
"micro-sleep" where your brain says to your body, stop for a
minute I need a break. If you’re sitting you’ll wind up with
a blank stare for several minutes while your mind struggles
with what should be two seconds of material. When you snap
out of it to your amazement 5 or 10 minutes have passed. If
the boss notices this you’ll need a better excuse than "I’m
meditating on your latest project." If you're driving down
the road and this happens, you may find yourself
paraphrasing the late Jimi Hendrix "excuse me while I kiss
the bridge."
Hallucinations are another result of not being able to sleep
or dream properly. If you reach this point, you definitely
need to contact your physician. You will feel fatigued all
the time because your body has been deprived of the deep
sleep you so desperately need. Early stages show a street
sign appearing to read one way or maybe incorrect until a
second glance surprises you and shows the wording to be
entirely different. When things get worse you may notice
walls bending or bowing as you walk past them. When total
exhaustion hits you might notice road signs pulling
themselves out of the ground and walking in front of you.
You might hit the brakes to avoid running over them.
These symptoms are rare but if something rings true seek
medical help. Without sleep cycle's serious problems could
impact our health and lives. The point is we all need to
dream when we sleep it’s a natural part of life.
Dreams are many people’s introduction to the metaphysical.
From the earliest recorded times, dreams have been
harbingers of events to come and explanations of events from
the past. In the simplest of terms, your dreams are your own
subconscious psychic-self explaining what is happening to
you and your world.
The ancients interpreted dreams as omens. The Bible reveals
messages were sent to people of high and low station. The
ancient Greeks had a temple where one could go to sleep and
dream in order to find guidance. Freud, of more modern
times, devised a method of dream interpretation that found
great favor for a while, and his protégé, Carl Jung, devised
a system that is in common use today. During the past 50
years, many others have also contributed to the body of
dream interpretation as we now know it.
While each method has validity, no one method works 100% for
all dreams. The types of dreams can be broken into rough
categories. The most common type is the symbolic dream that
tries to clarify current events around you. Jungian
interpretation does a very good job with this type, for
example, a house will represent the self, and activities
taking place around hallways represent transitions in life.
A bathroom would represent cleansing of spirit; a basement
indicates your subconscious and an attic or upper floor
would be your super conscious. Even nightmares are not bad
per say, but rather mean that something stressful in your
life needs to be confronted and resolved.
This approach is good for perhaps 80% or more of dream
analysis, but doesn’t cover other types of dreams such as
lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences in the sleep state,
etc. Incidentally, since a house represents the self, and
the upper levels in a house represent higher planes of the
mind, sitting on top of a house doesn’t mean you’re out of
your mind, just getting an overview!
Dreams are messages sent to all people. Some people remember
their dreams and others not at all. Dreams help you make
sense of what is happening around you, they can also be
harbingers of things to come. Even if you don’t remember
your dreams studying dream interpretation and writing down
what you can remember will improve your recall.
