the secret life of dreams
Every night, while we sleep, our dreams have their own secret life. Dreams serve many functions that support our waking lives: they allow our minds to sort and file the data that has been acquired during the day and to release any emotional tension that has not been processed. Dreams are doors to the subconscious and help us see how we really feel about our lives. Our dreams tell us the truth about ourselves. They are an expression of our true sense of ourselves.
The average adult dreams three to five times during eight hours of sleep. Dreams occur approximately every 90 to 100 minutes and last 5 to 30 minutes each. During the sleep state, the pathways that carry nerve impulses from the brain to the muscles are blocked. Therefore, the body cannot move while in a dream state. At the same time, the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain involved in higher functions, is extremely active. The cortex is known to be stimulated by neurons that carry impulses from the brainstem. There is a lot of emotional content in our dreams. Unresolved conflicts, concerns about performance, and feelings about people and situations play out in the dream world. Dreaming seems to provide a means to release tension and anxieties that we unconsciously repress during our waking life.
It is much healthier to express the content of dreams than to repress them. In the process of becoming whole, dreams of violence, murder, even death, are ways in which our subconscious allows a medium of thoughts, feelings, and impressions to escape our busy minds. Dreams free us from our inner conflicts and give us insight into our personal potential and promise. Dreaming is a process and the dream is a creation produced by our mind to create harmony in our lives.
During our waking life, we are always receiving clues and ideas from our Inner Being, but we are usually too busy to pay attention. We are too busy, too distracted, too caught up in our lives, to listen to important messages coming from within. In our conscious waking life we are not always open to messages. It is also possible that we are not willing to look at what is really happening with our lives. It is during the dream state that this information is often revealed.
Dreams are also direct routes to our Higher Consciousness/Inner Selves. Dreams can contain the most direct spiritual teachings that we can receive. Every dream we have is directly related to some facet of our life. In a sense, the dream world is just as real as waking, and we are not consciously editing the information. It manifests whether we like it or not, whether we invite it or not. It is important to remember that our being is more than a physical body. Our being contains our spiritual being, our truth, our souls. Our dream world can often reveal this to us better than our waking life. Our lives contain lessons for our souls, and in some ways the dream world can provide learning experiences that more directly engage our souls. This has a lot to do with integrating the various aspects of ourselves. Sometimes these parts are separate from our waking consciousness. By making the separate parts of ourselves one, dreams become an essential step in the process of becoming whole and healthy people.
Tips to remember dreams…
• Go to bed early… Don’t get too tired before you go to sleep.
• Review and process your day, clear your mind.
• Keep a Dreamwork journal and writing materials by your bed.
• Lie still when you first wake up, reviewing your dreams.
• Record everything you remember, including how you felt.
• Use your intuition to connect your dreams with your life.
• Talk about your dreams with another person. By talking about the dream you will remember new things.