WHY DO WE DREAM?

Why do we dream?

Why do we dream?

In general, “A dream reveals a reality which conception lags behind.” Dreams have been a mystery to us since Adam first breathed life. With a stuff of legends, myths and fairy tales, dreams have always fascinated mankind. Dreams are private mental experiences, which may be described as an alteration in consciousness in which remembered images and fantasies are temporarily confused with external reality. It is a communication of a mind, body, and spirit in a symbolic communicative environmental “state-of-being.” Investigators do not yet understand why we dream at all, much less why they dream what they dream. However modern methods of study have answered many great questions about dreaming. In a dream state, we have an opportunity to access our private unconscious and a collective conscious. Private unconscious materials are those things that are “exclusively ours.”

“Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare.”  (H.F. Hedge)

“Dreams are nature's answering service - don't forget to pick up your messages once in a while.”  (Sarah Crestinn)

“Such fantastic images give us great delight, and, since they are created by us, they undoubtedly have a symbolic relation to our lives and destinies.”(Gackenbach)

Discussion

Jung thought that dreams were generally compensatory in nature. They try to deal with errors, deviations, one-sidedness and other shortcomings in our lives and personality. Dreams that arise out of our private unconscious are generally valuable and relevant to a current time. (If a dream brings up a past experience, it must be because old issues are unresolved.) Basics About Dreaming 1 When we are dreaming and a dream is about something from our daily life, then that dream comes from our private or personal unconscious. A dream may be ego based and is very important. This type of a dream will increase our awareness and enable us to see some issue, problem, or a personal characteristic in a new, more fulfilling and productive way. For instance, in our society, dreams can be an excuse to say something intimate to someone.

It may be a tentative way to see if a deeper relationship is possible, as in “I had a very nice dream about you last night.” People do not want to take as much personal responsibility for their dreams as they do with most of their other thoughts. It then produces a platform to say whatever nonsense, lie, or fantasy someone might have on his or her mind, because there's no way to determine if a claim is true or not. Conscious thoughts are those that we can control and can be quite aware of. A word “consciousness” can be substituted with a word “ awareness.” We can think of a conscious and a unconscious as two sides of a coin. A coin being us humans - which is of this physical world, and connected to a ...