Some Thoughts On Dreams
Do dreams tell a lot about your subconscious mental and psychological state?
Or, do they reveal deeper movements of your heart and spirit?
It seems that they are both. There are many deeper reasons and meanings for why we dream.
Each of us has recurring dreams, for sure. Some of my recurring dreams include me living in the homes of my deceased grandparents. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents had comfortable, welcoming, warm homes that were always open to kids and grandkids. They often could be like a “home away from home” where I could go regularly and visit with my grandparents, watch television, play games, and eat snacks or special foods my grandparents prepared. In the dreams, I am aware that my grandparents have passed on but I am living in their homes. Still around me are many of their old things. The homes are quiet and desolate except for the occasional family member who comes and cleans while I sit and watch over everything. I often wonder if these dreams represent some unresolved questions or problems I have related to all of my grandparents who are now deceased. Certainly there is the nostalgia and longing for those times now past and a childhood that knew great love, innocence, and happiness. But I believe it has just as much to do with fact that much of my childhood joy, contentment, and peace came from these sacred places. Also, my connections with my grandparents — and their continued blessing of my life even now as I feel their presence from beyond — helped mold me into the person I am.
Sometimes, there are dreams that don’t seem to have any deeper meaning. I just feel they are random neurotransmitters firing or a stressed, sleep-craving brain desperately working to find re-balance. Perhaps this is the deeper meaning of such dreams — the subconscious and deeper self trying to find their way through existential and spiritual fog. I worked third shift at a grocery store chain for several years. From that time I had many crazy, daunting dreams. I would be flying and then kick-boxing people in the air, and in my sleep would start to lift my legs and perform an actual physical kick. I would frequently scream in my sleep, angry at some image of a real-life person for their unknown, unremembered rattlings of my inner peace. As I no longer work third shift, these dreams have almost diminished altogether. I just have the occasional weird or crazy dreams now, and I usually think it is just best to shrug them off as some lost part of my subconscious or deeper self realigning.
An unexplored type of dream is the “third-person dream.” This is where you are literally dreaming you are someone else. Or, it can almost be like another person’s life is flashing before you like characters on the big screen. Often, this is the deeper self’s creative faculties in full throttle. Quite a few amazing fictional worlds and characters first manifest themselves to fiction authors in dreams. Can you imagine the likes of Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyl showing their faces in their producers’ dreams? This is common in many other domains of the arts and humanities as well. I myself have dreamed of a few characters. Though these dreams were vivid and enchanting, I must say the hard work is still involved to further develop the worlds into a complete fiction work. I think the image of many fictional worlds and their parts will always be in the back of my mind, but they may find the need to visit other dreamers in the far future if I never find enough time to draw them out in this life.
50,000 hours. That’s the estimated amount of hours the average person dreams in their lifetime. And if there are 744,000 hours in the optimum life span, that’s 7% of our lives spent dreaming. With these mesmerizing truths, it is no doubt that we all have many types of dreams, for sure. Some are the recurring dreams while many are just bits of bizarre randomness. And sometimes, those dreams are even completely distinct and separate from our identities. And if dreams can be of whole new worlds unfolding behind our resting eyes — as moving and captivating as worlds we encounter from reading books or observing phenomenon around us — how can any of us really know the waking from the dream?
