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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.
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