Friday, July 25, 2008
Dreams
"Baby don't wake me
Let me take you
On an endless journey"
~ In My Dreams with You - Steve Vai ~
I've become very fascinated with the subject of dreaming. Not from a weird, psychic "tell your future" sort of way but more ... erm.. scientific I guess!
What are they? Why do we have them? Why are they so often utterly bizarre?
From my own knowledge and a quick bit of Googling, it would appear that there are 2 main trains of thought.
Firstly, that dreams are the body's way of "clearing out" the un-needed thoughts from our brain (rather like a computer clean-up system) so that we don't get mentally cluttered up.
The second theory, put forward by Sigmund Freud in his book The Interpretation of Dreams, is that we dream to fulfill our surpressed desires and wishes that we can't in our day to day life. This is a very simplistic interpretation - his theory obviously goes into a lot more detail!
It's been suggested by many that dreams can help you in your day to day business by giving you "clues" to help solve any dilemas you might be having. This is not fortune telling but, say, your having problems coming to an important decision - you go over and over the details but get nowhere. When you sleep at night you dream - an apparently unconnected, jumbled series of events - it's been said that these jumbled events are, subconciously, giving you the answer to your problem.
IF you can remember the dream and IF you can make sense of them!
Apparently, the best way to try and interpret your dreams is to, obviously, write them down upon waking (if you've remembered it at all - quite why we remember some dreams and not others is beyond me). Over a period of time, particularly if you have several dreams in a row, you may see obvious connections between them that lead you to go "aaahaaa!" Or maybe not.
Personally, most of my dreams are bonkers ... which is slightly worrying! *laughs*. I fail to see how they could be my brain trying to "tell" me something. Nevertheless, being very interested in the subject right now, I've decided to give it a go and keep a dream journal and see if I can make sense of any of it.
Thus far, I've just been left baffled but I have only done 2 entries. I've decided (for your interest or plain amusement factor!) to reproduce them here - word for word, from my journal.
My email addy is in the sidebar - if anyone has any interesting thoughts then please do get in touch (note: I don't want any "you're barking" comments please! I know that already *laughs*)
**************
Night of:
Wednesday 23rd July 2008
I was walking down Redhill Avenue – the age I am now, although it’s been many, many years since I walked down that road. I heard a man’s voice call out “hey! wait a second!” and I turned round and saw a man who I obviously recognised in the dream but not in real life. He was getting out of a car (sort of posh, big, silver or light grey car) and he was tall, fairly dark hair and wearing a suit. I said “oh, its you” and he caught up with me. Then he put his hands on my face and kissed me. I felt giddy. The dream ended.
Thursday 24th July 2008
Nothing much in the way of a proper dream although I have a VERY brief, fleeting recollection of being stood in a dark room in a very enclosed space with tall shelves or cabinets either side of me. I don’t see anyone but someone puts their arm around me and their hand on my belly. I look down. They’re wearing a signet ring of some kind. That’s it.
**********************
I might occasionally post more dreams here and will definately post when I come to some sort of conclusion. Although I might not come to a conclusion because, so far, none of it is making any sense!
Added a bit later: I've been thinking about the first of the 2 dreams above. What I want to know is this ... WHY did my brain come up with "that" particular road for me to be walking down? It's a road that I walked for many years on my way to school but one that I've not been down for a long, long time. So why that road?!! Out of all the roads that I must have been down in my life, why, when my brain was piecing together this dream, did it pick THAT one?!! I haven't been there recently and it's not come up in conversation. The mind boggles.
[ Previous post | Home | Archive index | Next post ]